UU longevity?

[madmaven]

People are talking about the redcoat, but no one's really saying anything...

I think the redcoat is a good UU. It's more powerful than it's replacement. Most UUs don't even give you a higher power rating than the unit they replace (not including special bonuses of course). The problem I see with the redcoat is that steam power is right around the corner and then the assembly line which gives you infantry. How long can the redcoats be a decisive unit? Long enough to give you the edge when crushing or defending vs a civ? That's the key.

Pretorians, as an example, seem to be decisive for an incredible ammount of turns. Probably up to longbowmen. Iron working to feudalism is a long time.

I think people have issues with the Panzer or the Navy Seal because they come so late in the game and probably can be trumped in a few advances. I wonder if any other units--besides India's fast worker--have the long-term impact that pretorians have.

UUs I haven't tried but would seem to stand the test of time:

Greek phalanx as a stopper vs horse arcerhs, elephants, and maybe even knights. That seems effective.

Coassak, maybe. Takes an already strong unit compared with other units of it's time (calvary) and makes it stronger. Could be a game turner until infantry.

Just mulling here while bored at work.

 

[R3dKnight]

cossacks tech is really out of the way for me, so i hardly went for that. But true, Cossack has decent strength compared to what's available during that too. But I'd say nothing . Nothing comes anywhere close to Praetorians dominance during their age. We're talking two techs off the bat grants ability to build that unit. That and maybe The Wheel to connect the iron.

It seems ridiculously overpowered to me having 8 strength city killer stacks out so early in the game, with city raider bonus they'll be knocking down at 10 strength with no help from Catapults. I'm just glad / disappointed Julius Ceasar traits isn't Agressive ..else his civ is just amazing. No other civs can do that kind of city crushing feat, Elephants don't have city raider, Swordsmen are less powerful by 2 points.

Tokugawa AI is terrible, but I liked his UU a lot. The samurais, if u lived that long will really shine during their age, 2 First strikes is a lot when dealing with those pesky longbowmen. Too bad they still have trouble dealing with Knights but I digress, it's a great city raider unit till post-gunpowder age. I'd rather have stacks of Samurais than Knights accompanying my catapults since they're well rounded.

Other UUs get obsolete too quickly for me. I don't really appreciate them much. But yeah Keshiks when employed en-masse early on gives amazing results if u really aiming for that blitz effect. I played the Earth map started as mongols and went straight for horse riding. It was amazing. I blitzed Asia taking out China and India before the dawn of AD with nothing but Keshiks as the backbone of my offense.

 

[Joh]

Redcoat... the reason I like them is that they are located on a tech transition point and are better than everything the AI has when you get them.

You can do it so you have redcoats whilst the enemy still only has medieval, muskets, or riflemen at best.

Conversely, if you wait till infantry to start attacking, it gives the AI time to develop riflemen and machine guns, which isn't so good...

So redcoats are good just because you don't have to wait to build up your anti-machine gun units. You can just charge in against macemen and grenadiers and clean up. In fact, often artillery is not needed, since the redcoats walk over everything before the AI has machine guns.

 

[iamdanthemansta]

The Praetorian is an 8 which makes it 2 better then the 6 Swordsman and equal to the 8 Maceman and only 1 worse the the 9 Musketman. That means it can span 3 eras. That's got to be the most logevity, except the Fast Worker.

 

[Joh]

In response to your actual question, as to longetivity, well I find the redcoat has enough.

As I said, their power comes from the shock value they have against AI's struggling to make the transition from medieval to rennaisance.

This is often enough to cripple a large civiliation, steal their holy city, and generally get in a comfortable lead by the time you need to counter industiral-age units.

You don't have to use them for a long time - just long enough to wage the war which sets you up for the industrial age.

Once you get infantry, use them instead, but it will be the redcoats who got you the infantry in the first place

Because of their placing in the tech tree as opposed to the gunpowder counters like machine guns, redcoats can have a large long-term impact on the game despite the fact that they can be made obselete quickly if you want to.

 

[Gufnork]

Praetorians are overpowered. Can't compare any UU to them.

 

[Joh]

Can still get by without them though... And one thing the praetorians can't do is topple off mid-game or end-game leaders.

UU's which are later placed in the tech tree like redcoats, SEALS etc can be set loose on the clear leaders and take the bite off the space race.

I know I love redcoats, but it is true that when you get them, you can see which civ is going to be a problem later on and fairly swiftly cut them off at the knees. It's often not possible to do this with praetorians when you don't have access to a world map or a navy.

So the Romans are good for a 'crush all your neighbours' approach, but not really for an approach which involves fighting alot of mid-game or late-game battles against the top 3 civs.

 

[R3dKnight]

Problem is, by mid game, ur empire span is huge enough to give u considerable lead with tech n economy I usually just set research to 0% for a couple of turns to bank enough cash to upgrade my highly experienced Praetorians to the most advanced infantry of that age and proceed to stack em with siege units and roll over the next civ.

I had one Praetor named Maximus having accumulated 27 EXP over 3 wars with other civs before I retired due to tiredness. 12 civs in standard pangea is just draining lol XD

 

[Mon Mauler]

In my current game, I was able to take out three civs before the Jaguars became obsolete. I found them to be very useful.

 

[Joh]

That's true, there are just different ways to win.

Romans do it by building a huge empire early and carrying that forward. Americans and british do it by cutting off thier nearest competitors late game just before they trade techs with them and use their financial leaders to accelerate their own research...

In these situations, it doesn't matter how long the UU's are capable for, it just matters that they are in the right place at the right time. So with the later game units, you have to be prepared to unleash them the moment you get them. No holding off your attack till you get artillery or infantry, just charge as soon as you get the UU.

I'm even thinking musketeers might be good. Can start building them up really earlyand then just concentrate on getting cavalry. A strong force of musketeers already in place when the cavalry comes and able to keep up with them would be rather good I think. Wouldn't be relevant for a long time, but it would be devastatingly effective against large cvilisations who are still making the transition to the rennasiance era.

 

[madmaven]

I don't consider myself an expert player or anything like that. But I've found it very hard to turn the tide of the game once it gets to be about AD 1500. If I'm in 4th or 5th (I usually play on a huge map with 12 civs) unless I can form an alliance and a miracle occurs, I'm not going to win.

At least with pretorians or some ancient era unit you can establish your position early. I think it's a lot harder past 1500 and civs gain techs faster and faster and if you go to war with one that is behind he'll just research or trade for a military friendly tech like gunpowder, or rifling, and suddenly your war of conquest is slowed to a crawl.

I do enjoy how the game is so realistic though. After 1500 advanced nations warred with each other on a harassment scale. They spent most of their time conquering countries with techs that were way behind. I can't think of any large scale advanced nation vs advanced nation conquest until WW2 (the tank, the bomber, the infantry).

 

[Joh]

You've still got to maintain a strong position early game to be a late game contender. Just that the british and americans don't need to be as overwhelming as the romans do, because they get good late game UU's and the financial leader trait.

 

[george_manet]

I find that UU's are much less of a factor now than they were in civ III, where some of them could pretty much win you the game every time. Since you got a golden age after your UU won a couple of battles, you could really pump them out and create a serious stack o' doom and march through any AI civ's territory. In cIV, with promotions and all that, you need a pretty substantial tech lead if your UU's going to be anything close to that dominant. A promoted pikeman in a large walled city will hold off a freshly built Cossack (believe me... ). Maybe I'm not using my UU's to their full potential?

 

[R3dKnight]

thats why i hate late game UU's they're usually too late to do anything. something like samurais is barely useful cause conquest is best done before the towns ripen with defenders.. Which is why praetorians are simply just perfect for those early breaks. Quechuas phase out too fast for me, Jaguars aren't an improvement either.

 

[Gufnork]

Against the AI Quechua's don't really phase out until Longbowmen. They still have mostly Archers in their cities and with only a little support from other units they can still be useful for a long time. Atleast if you can get the enemy's metal and horses. But their main use is to take an enemy capitol really early, effectively doubling your empires size and giving you lots of room to expand.

Jaguars just suck. The only UU that is worse than the unit it replaces. Seriously, how many games have you been completly unable to get Copper or Iron?

Cossacks are meant for wars of destruction. Get a bunch, run into enemy territory and pillage away. They can't take cities after the enemy gets Riflemen and before that Cavalry would work almost as well.

 

[R3dKnight]

i dunno man, it works on the first civ, but when the next one gets coppers and starts pumping out axeman ,its time to ditch the Qs and try something else IMO and that's pretty quick IMO

 

[Gufnork]

The AI is too dumb to build Axemen. "Duh, my neighbour was just conquered by a swarm of Quechuas. But I'm sure he won't go for me next. I'd better build some Archers to show my trust."

 

[DangerousMonkey]

Well, it's pretty ovious that Preorians are by far the best UU. I think that's established. Other UUs with good longevity/general usefulness i'd say are the Egyptian Chariot, the Mongolian kleshik and the Redcoat. Most of the others arn't really interesting.

The thing about UUs is that their power decreases the later in the game you get them, because they remain useful for less time and there are more competeing units and other factors to blunt thier power.

 

[UnspokenRequest]

On longevity: it depends if you're using epic or normal speed. On epic every UU has its moment when he can shine.
+ On epic, you also have more time if you want to turn the tide later in the game...

On redcoats: I (as Elizabeth) am currently using redcoats in a war with the Incan empire. (Noble, Epic, large map, 9 civ, Aggressive AI). Let me say this, they are VERY usefull.

Here's the situation:

The Incans were leading (I was second). I had fought them before and I had managed to come out alive (My navy was crushed, but the big invasion never came and I managed to make peace. I switched to free religion, to appease them a bit.

I waited until I got my UU and started planing a blow to the heart of the Incan Empire. My redcoats had to fight Rifleman, Infantry and even machine gun, but I was able to turn the tide with proper planing (Yes it is possible to do it, even that late in the game).

A bit more context, so you know what I was up against:

My military and geographic situation were not good. I had:
- few very productive city (bad starting location : I'm playing on Archipelago and Tropical= very few hills + very few forest since I was placed at the exact center of the map),
- few resources, even though I had the second largest empire (no coal, no copper, no oil, few luxuries and just a bunch of pigs, fishes and clams for health).
- I kept trying to expand to find resources, but I was very unlucky - lots of not so productive city to defend, spread on half a dozen islands.
- Not able to build a navy fast enough to defend all of them
- The way the map was designed meant that all seas led to my islands. Most other passages (to make the way around the globe) were blocked by ice and small continents...

To sum it all, even though I was big, I was paper tiger other civs kept trying to attack (Good thing the AI doesn't handle sea invasions as well as a human).
Conclusion: the redcoat saved my neck and, having grabed the Incan Empire (with LOTS of resources), I'm now heading for a decisive victory.

 

[Joh]

I just used the redcoats in a game from 1500 through to 1800, in the process conquering 15 cities.

They maintained their edge over riflemen so the war kept moving forward.
Which was there value - I didn't need to go to infantry or artillery to get an advantage over the other civs. Most of my conquests were done with redcoats, cavalry and cannons. I didn't even bother with artillery, going straight from cannons to flight because I didn't need artillery to get a quick advantage.

After that the next war was fought using modern armour and mech infantry.

So it really all comes down to how you plan it out.