Using Nationhood

Simple Question:
How do you draft units?

 

like, what do you press, and stuff, and is it useful, and what does it do?

 

It lets you get 1 of the most advanced millitary unit from a city at the cost of population. So, If you just got gunpowder, you would draft a musketman. To use it, highlight a city and click the button DRAFT above the slavery and sufferage buttons.

Beware: this costs some of your population and can only be used once per turn per city.

 

I'd just like to clarify; it gives you the most advanced "defensive" unit available, costs 1 population, and gives 3 unhappiness for 10 turns initially, with an increase in duration for multiple drafts (a la Slavery). Very useful, especially if you're using Musketeers, Redcoats, or the like.

 

I think its 2 pop at (mech) infantry.

 

hum
It's the idea, but not exactly so.

no, it's 3 pop for mech inf (It's indeed 2 pop for infantry)

Drafting :
What does it do?
It gives you one unit (the best available) out of this list at the cost of population :
- (I don't know before maces, probably LB? or archers?)
- macemen (1 pop)
- musket (1 pop)
- riflemen (1 pop = best value for the pop)
- infantry (2 pop)
- mech infantry (3 pop)

There is also a unhappiness penalty of 3 each time you draft in a city, for 10 turns. This penalty stacks in value and duration (like slavery).
The draftees have half the xps a normally built unit would have.
Meaning that if you have what it takes in a city for level 3 (5 xp) units, you'll only have level 2 (2 xp) draftees.
The draftee is available as soon as you click on the button = can move in the same turn.

- You need to be under nationhood civic (requires nationalism).
- You can draft up to 3 units in a turn (only one in a given city).
- a city needs to be size 6 at least, and to have 10% of your national culture in it to be draftable.
- You can draft AND whip AND $rush (although $ rushing and whipping only finishes the current production in the city, so it's 2 units tops in a given city in a given turn) in the same city.
- note that nationhood gives 2 happiness points for a barracks, making the unhappies less painful
- the best units to draft are riflemen, because they cost only 1 pop point, and are strong enough to make a difference. It's even better if your UU is rifleman derived

Is it useful?
Yes it is. It's the fastest way to bring up an army.
You "slow build" or whip the siege units, and draft the bulk of your troops.
After 5 turns, you can have 15 riflemen and a good deal of whipped cannons/catapults/trebuchets.
This should be enough for an early gunpowder invasion.
If you're gunning for the win, you just don't care about unhappiness : push the slider as high as it gets and continue the drafting all the way.
a 10 turns war gives you 30 units. Unstoppable.

What the bad thing about it?
1) you're not running free speech, or vassalage, or bureaucracy
2) you can't really have a mixed stack
3) You have a big population loss.

 

Please forgive the dumb questions. I've never used drafting or the nationhood civic, but I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

The three frowny face penalty seems severe. Wouldn't you be better off being in slavery and whipping the unit?

 

You're missing 2 things :
- drafting and whipping are possibly cumulative (= they are not exclusive)
- drafting has a better "per population point" value = You cannot whip a rifleman for 1 pop with no hammers invested. But you can draft it.

I see nationhood as a middle of the game way to push a tech advantage into a win.
While slavery is a early game way to get into a good position.

 

Drafting is extremely useful with the Globe theater and 2-3 + food resources in place. You can basically draft one unit pt under Nationhood in this case without worrying about happiness. Really an eyeopener for me. I always thought Drama is a useful tech, this mechanism makes it even more attractive to research it early.

 

Remember that Nationhood also gives you +2 happiness from barracks. So if you draft in a city with barracks right after switching to Nationhood, you would not suffer any immediate unhappiness (even if the city was at its happiness cap before the civic switch - you must also consider the lost population as the loss of one unhappy face from overcrowding, so -2 + 3 - 1 = net of 0 unhappy face).

 

You can also draft more units on larger map sizes. I think the number of units you can draft is proportional to the map size but I don't know the exact details (it's 4 per turn on large maps).

 

In my current game, I have Gunpowder, Chemistry and Railroad, but temporarily skipped Rifling. Drafting gets me a Musket instead of a Machine Gun. I cared only to defend some cities from hoardes of invading Grenadiers and Cavalry. Although not fabulous against Cavs, MGs are superb defending against Grenadiers. Muskets are pathetic against both.

Even if I had Rifling, I'd end up drafting Rifles, which would be great against the Cavs, but would be wasted by the attacking Grenadiers.

I usually never use Nationalism, and now I remember why...

 

If you draft riflemen, you don't get butchered at least.
Drafting muskets when you're attacked by cavalries is a bit... weak?
If you draft muskets, you can upgrade them to grenadiers, or MG. Of course, it costs money.

 

Interesting idea, I haven't really used Nationhood much in the past (have never needed it), but I might have to give it a shot to try out this strategy. Is it better or worse than using the similar Globe Theatre / Slavery combo to get units? I would think it's better since you're only losing 1 pop per unit (up unit Riflemen). Of course, the civics that Nationhood restricts against are quite nice ones, so I guess that's part of the penalty of running it.

 

Well, really, there's nothing stopping you from doing both. As to what's better or worse -- if you've got the globe theater, drafting is undoubtedly better IF you're looking for that unit (musketman, rifle, infantry, etc.). If you're looking for anything else, you don't have much of a choice. =)

Something else to keep in mind is that the +2 happiness (with barracks) can be pretty useful even if you don't draft, once you've got enough WW going on.

I've found myself doing something I'd never done before in 2 of my last 4 or 5 games -- drafting mech infantry. I used to scoff at the idea because 3 pop is a pretty heavy cost, IMO, but I found myself (twice!) in a position that demanded it. In both games, I was running a pretty light and/or outdated military due to some circumstances that made any post-medieval warring too costly to be worth it. The AI DoWed me in both games when I was around 10 turns from finishing the space ship, so I started drafting Mech Inf in every city that wasn't still making parts to hold them off. In both cases, I ended up not only holding the AI off but really decimating their military -- my domination/conquest games don't usually make it to robotics, but if they ever do I can see how this would be handy.

I agree with the above poster re: drafting rifles, though: that's definitely the "sweet spot" for nationalism, IMO, especially if you're the first one to Rifling.

 

And if you're (especially vanilla) English...

 

I think Nationhood is very underrated, and it can be excellent at times.
Aggressive leaders in particular will seriously benefit from the barracks happiness, which does a lot to nullify the happiness cost of drafting. And the drafted units still start with combat I too! Run with Theocracy to get them an extra promo, and you're churning out quality gunpowder units en masse almost for free.
Also not to be sneezed at is the fact that it's the only civic in the game with absolutely zero maintenance cost (apart from pacifism, but that has a unit cost). So it's great for big sprawling conquering empires where the cost of Vassalage eats you alive, and bureaucracy costs more than it earns.

Try it with Shaka to see it exploited to its absolute fullest (it's like it was tailormade to be his perfect civic). The poms (Churchill in particular) are pretty terrifying with it too.

 

But Shaka doesn't get the happiness bonus so I don't see it being his perfect civic.

 

are you sure of this?

 

Ye gads, you're right! I never actually noticed that (maybe because Shaka usually mops the floor with everyone else well before that ). I assume it's a bug rather than a deliberate design decision. Bummer