UU's retaining promotions

[Poomermon]

Not all may know that you retain your positive promotions as you upgrade your units. A lot of unique units have some nice bonuses right off the gate and if you manage to keep them alive until you reach the needed tech for the upgrade it will pay off quite nicely. As upgrading old units seems to be the way to go in CiV anyway it would be wise know your options. I have listed all the unique units' bonuses here for you convenience and my opinions of them.

Really good bonuses. These are good enough to base your strategy around:

Jaguar – Combat bonus in Jungle only (50) + heals 2 damage if kills a unit – Upgrades to swordsman

Because Jaguar comes so early you can really benefit from its bonuses. Jungle combat may be rare but its something to keep in mind if situation arises and kill-healing will keep your Jags alive and operational.

Janissary – Heal if destroy enemy (non-barbarian) + Combat bonus when attacking (25) – Upgrades to rifleman

These bonuses are just ridiculously good. Too bad nothing upgrades to musketman and they become obsolete so quickly. It is still worth avoiding rifling until you can build a nice Janissary force and then benefit from super powered gunpowder units for the rest of the game. As a matter of fact that might be the only reason to play Ottomans at the moment.

Cho-Ko-Nu – May attack twice – Upgrades to rifleman

China's UU is already good and if you plan ahead you can get really high powered riflemen later. Cho-Ko-Nus get experience almost twice as fast as other units because they gain xp from every attack. You can set up a nice xp farm from a city state and bombard it and its units with Chokos and retreat to heal when necessary. Honor trees double experience will help obviously too. Or you can use them in actual conquest too as they are really good units on their own right. Just remember that it is not wise to actually promote your archers as ranged promotions do nothing once you upgrade to rifleman. But when you finally do you will get really powerful units for the rest of the game. Blitz is not necessary as you can already attack twice a turn but small band of marching medics is nearly invulnerable if you don't get too reckless.

Samurai – Shock I + Great generals II – Upgrades to rifleman

Just all around goodness. You obviously want to go iron route and avoid shock promotion for earlier units as you will get it with Samurais.


Average bonuses. These nice to have but not that powerful imo:

Mandekalu Cavalry – Bonus vs cities (30) – Upgrades to Cavalry

Bonus is nice but I'm hesitant to go Cavalry route as they will become useless later in the game as they are upgrade dead end. Still might be worth it if you can manage to get a decisive lead with cavalry warfare.

Foreign legion – Combat bonus outside friendly territory (20) – Upgrades to mechanized infantry

Solid bonus that comes a bit late. Still nice to have.

Companion cavalry – Great generals I – Upgrades to Knight

Bonus is not that great but since you are building companion cavalries anyway it is a icing on the cake.

Naresuan’s Elephant – Bonus vs mounted (50) – Upgrades to Cavalry

Same as songhais unit exept the bonus will not matter as much.

Mohawk warrior – Combat bonus in forest/jungle (50) – Upgrades to longswordman

Nice bonus but AIs tend to chop their forests away so it might not matter much later in the game.

Immortal – Heal at double rate – Upgrades to Pikeman

Solid bonus but it takes imo quite long to reach rifling and you want to ask yourself do you want to pay upkeep for nearly useless (for some time) pikemen until you can upgrade them to riflemen.

Minuteman – All tiles cost 1 move – Upgrades to rifleman

This ability can be a liability as you cant use your own roads but it can pay off later when you can blitzkrieg with mech infantry.

Minuscule bonuses. Says it all really:

Landsknecht – Bonus vs mounted (100) – Upgrades to rifleman

Not really a special ability as pikemen have it too but can sometimes come to play if your rifles go against knights or cavalry. Again is it worth to pay the upkeep until the upgrade though?

Zero – Bonus vs fighters – Upgrades to Jet fighter

Like this would ever matter.

Ship of the line- Extra sight (1) – Upgrades to destroyer

A tiny boost but nothing to write home about. Note that caravels also have extra sight that they retain when upgraded to destroyers.

 

[Unearthly]

I love upgraded Jaguars, Jaguar long swordsmen will decimate any army you send them at. They are also really easy to build up, since it's the best thing to build early. (So you can knock on your neighbors door and steal his cities and workers.)

 

[Lyoncet]

Janissaries upgraded to Mech Infantry are one of the most broken units in the game (next to one other in particular; see next paragraph). If you can get them out while your enemy is still spamming Infantry (which they seem to do for a really way too long time, even on emperor/immortal), it's ridiculous. Roll over the first 2-3 enemies with your super-mechs (62.5 strength on attack vs 36 before terrain, assuming promotion parity), heal to full with the ability, get a little damage with city bombardment/artillery, then stay at full health while the AI suicides units into you. And since you've had those units around for a long time, they're probably pretty highly promoted as well. Only problem is how heavily that incentivises putting off rifling, which can really come back to bite you.

Only one of your rakings I don't really agree with is the Immortals. Yeah, you have to keep them around and protected as Pikes until Rifling, but you can easily build up some pretty scary numbers of them pretty easily (even putting off Civil Service for a while if you're relying on city-states for most of your food). Get enough built up, promoted to medic, and upgraded to Rifles and you'll be an enormous threat, since immortals/former immortals get double healing from all sources. Double healing from resting, double healing from being in friendly territory, double healing from being in a city, double healing from being a medic, and double healing from having a medic nearby. Since the AI isn't smart enough to focus weaker units, holding the line with even just a few rifles/infantry/mech. infantry becomes trivial; maybe even moreso than with Janissary upgrades. Just get a fort or two on a hill or forest (not even necessary, but it makes things even easier than they already are), fortify a few of these gems, and just hit end turn until your opponent is last on the power charts.

Promote them all with medic and march and it's even more broken. It eats up a couple promotions, yeah, but they'll heal six HP per turn even when in enemy territory and when attacking. That's some serious .

 

[linearcore]

Minutemen can be amazing, with a couple minor changes. There is a Mod for it, or you can change your own XML files if you want (your choice), to give the Minutemen the "Ignore Movement Penalty" promotion instead of their usual "Flat Movement Cost" promotion. This means they are actually Strength 16 scouts. Now they're pretty impressive, and they can use roads.

That mod, which I can't find right now, also places Minutemen and other musket units in the upgrade path (before Rifleman). The cost is trivial, but as Americans, or Ottomans, your normal swords/spears/bows pick up the musket promotion on the way to Mech. Infantry. It's unhealthy.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The trick with Immortals against the AI is to delay Civil Service and building (most) Immortals, get to Gunpowder swiftly, use Rationalism to get Rifles, and pump out a bunch of Immortals as you research Gunpowder and Civil Service. There's no reason to pay the GPT for them until they're ready to rock.

You end up with a few Immortals that have promotions from barb slaying, and the rest will rocket up the promotion trees quickly enough.

Avoid researching CS early if at all possible. It's a huge research time sink at that phase of the game that will severely delay your conquest run.

 

[tibbles]

I'm liking the Cho-ko-nu one, though I nearly lost before I got it going in my immortal game. I beelined 2 short of rifling, then researched machinery and had 2 GSs waiting while building archers. Plan was: when I got machinery in, I'd upgrade my 6 archers to cho-ko-nus, then next turn bulb rifling and upgraded them all to early 2 attack rifles.

What nearly got me though was an ai declared on me 3 turns before machinery came in, so instead of a crushing attack I had to do some careful defending with just archers vs their horde of immortals and pikemen and do my upgrades in phases so a few defenders could still fight back. Least those dual shots raked in the xp. Now my whole army has march+blitz just in case they become mech inf and get more movement, though I'm probably going to win before I tech it.

 

[linearcore]

I posted this in another thread about Chu-Ko-Nus not getting a logistics bonus, but I think this is the more appropriate thread for the discussion topic.

Here's a promotions break down: (Remember that 1 Attack=1 MP)
Chu-Ko-Nus get a unique promotion called Second Attack.

Second Attack gives you +1 Attack.
Logistics gives you +1 Attack. Logistics is only for Ranged and Naval.
Blitz gives you +1 Attack. Blitz is only for Melee and Air.

Each attack uses up 1 movement point though, which means a Chu-Ko-Nu would need 3 movement to get 3 attacks with Logistics. However, a Mechanized Infantry gets 4 movement points as standard. So, as long as you can get that Chu-Ko-Nu upgraded to a Mech, you can get that extra attack back even without Mobility.

A sickening thing to note: A Chu-No-Ku which is ranged and can get Logistics could be upgraded to a Mechanized Infantry, which is Melee. Technically, with enough upgrades, you could also get Blitz with that Mech. That Mechanized Infantry would get 4 attacks. It would also have Level 3 Shock/Drill and Level 3 Barrage/Accuracy. Ew.

 

[vendur]

I posted this in another thread about Chu-Ko-Nus not getting a logistics bonus, but I think this is the more appropriate thread for the discussion topic.

Here's a promotions break down: (Remember that 1 Attack=1 MP)
Chu-Ko-Nus get a unique promotion called Second Attack.

Second Attack gives you +1 Attack.
Logistics gives you +1 Attack. Logistics is only for Ranged and Naval.
Blitz gives you +1 Attack. Blitz is only for Melee and Air.

Each attack uses up 1 movement point though, which means a Chu-Ko-Nu would need 3 movement to get 3 attacks with Logistics. However, a Mechanized Infantry gets 4 movement points as standard. So, as long as you can get that Chu-Ko-Nu upgraded to a Mech, you can get that extra attack back even without Mobility.

A sickening thing to note: A Chu-No-Ku which is ranged and can get Logistics could be upgraded to a Mechanized Infantry, which is Melee. Technically, with enough upgrades, you could also get Blitz with that Mech. That Mechanized Infantry would get 4 attacks. It would also have Level 3 Shock/Drill and Level 3 Barrage/Accuracy. Ew.

Blitz does not give you +1 attack. It allows you attack as many times as you have movement. So mech infantry getting blitz and having logistics is meaningless.

 

[linearcore]

Blitz does not give you +1 attack. It allows you attack as many times as you have movement. So mech infantry getting blitz and having logistics is meaningless.

Huh. Fair enough. I was comparing the manual and the XMLs at the time so I probably pulled the +1 attack from the manual. Yet another instance where the manual is completely wrong.

 

[tibbles]

But melee units dont get to use the +1 attack from logistics. Or at least ex cho-ko-nus dont as you note. So if you want the extra attacks at mech, save your promotion for picking up Blitz post rifleman upgrade.

 

[Paeanblack]

Blitz does not give you +1 attack. It allows you attack as many times as you have movement. So mech infantry getting blitz and having logistics is meaningless.

Also, melee attacks do not cost 1 movement point; they cost whatever it would have cost to move to that tile.

Along roads in your own territory, a Blitz Mech Inf can attack 12 units in a single turn.

 

[Roxlimn]

That IS a Blitz Mech Inf! Good lord.

 

[Paeanblack]

That IS a Blitz Mech Inf! Good lord.

Yeah, it surprised the hell out of me when I realized what was going on...and that was with a Rifleman getting 4 attacks. I've never had the computer line 12 weak units up neatly on roads in my territory in front of a tank or mech inf.

I don't want to know how many kills you could get if you railroaded your whole front lines.