UUs that feel too "normal"

[Iranon]

Jaguars give you unlimited healers, units for easy worker stealing/sneak attacks and a resourceless general purpose unit good enough to successfully wage classical age war.
Relaxed resource requirements and a free promotion that sticks isn't that bad in my opinion... raw power on top of that would not be good for balance.

The Phalanx is disappointing and has poor synergy with Greece as well. It would be somewhat more useful in a civ that didn't start with hunting (avoiding that tech is often desirable so you can keep building warriors for cheap garrisons and upgrading).

Numidian Cavalry don't impress me either. War Chariots don't do embarassingly badly against Spearmen (sometimes better than NC on a hammer-for-hammer basis!) and are *very* efficient against everything else. NC can do things WCs can't, like prey on stacks of catapults with heavy cover or keep a promotion on upgrading... but against the AI situations where they are more useful than War Chariots are rare. And WCs are already past their prime, having possibly enabled you to eat 2 neighbours by now.

 

[kochman]

The Phalanx is disappointing and has poor synergy with Greece as well. It would be somewhat more useful in a civ that didn't start with hunting (avoiding that tech is often desirable so you can keep building warriors for cheap garrisons and upgrading).

Completely agree with this... and I think it should replace the Spearman at that... instead of the ax...

 

[Absolute Zero]

I never really got the lack of enthusiasm regarding Numidian Cavalry. Sure, they're not Praetorians, but I've found them hugely helpful because 1) they get a nice free promotion (which of course carries over on upgrade) and 2) they are much stronger against Spearmen (which I seem to run into lots of) than Horse Archers. Sure, there's still a hammer disparity and strength disparity (7.5 to 8, in essence), but you can get them to Shock much more easily than the spear can get to formation. Since spears only have 4 base and worse fortification than archers, they'll almost always be the last units in a city.

So with NC, you suicide (or retreat) a few Shock NCs into the spears to take them out, then the archers (thank you first strike immunity) and swords are pretty much free reign, and end with rather puny axemen. Without NC, I've usually ended up just suiciding hordes of axes and swords into fortified axes and archers, at least pre-construction.

I see NCs as siege that can kill. You can give them Flanking II straight off with barracks and they'll have something like 40% retreat chance. Then you can throw them against anything - spears, archers, axes, whatever - and they'll survive the majority of the time, leaving weak defenders for your Swords or Axes to overcome. The big difference is that they don't cause collateral damage, but that's compensated for by the few times they happen to kill the enemy.

I like NCs, but they don't stand out as much as other UUs, IMO.

Hmm, you know come to think of it, I don't even remember what their old stats were. Could someone refresh my memory?

It used to replace Spearman, had 5 str instead of 4, and +25% hills defense. (Or was it city defense? I don't remember.)

Regarding the Jaguar, I think it's pretty nice. I don't like the strength decrease, but Monty's aggressive so the free Combat 1 makes up for that somewhat, and they're resourceless. (Not that that's too big of an advantage in most of my games, as by then I have at least one source of Iron and my cities are almost all connected.) The best advantage, IMO, is the free Woodsman I which obviously leads to Woodsman II and III, multi-faceted promos: Woodsman II gives double movement through forest/jungle; Woodsman III gives 2 first strikes and healing boost, too. Not to mention the huge forest/jungle defense bonus from all three of those, allowing your Jags to travel to enemy cities safely through forest/jungle. Not really the best UU but above average, I think.

 

[Molybdeus]

Bowmen still lose to axes in the field, barely beat spears (won't on d terrain), and are badly destroyed by swords, chariots, and horse archers.

Axemen have a slight advantage vs Bowmen, but they also cost 40% more. In most cases vs barbies, you end up trading one Bowmen for one axemen in the worst case, which is still a good deal. In a pillaging stack, you obviously run a stack of several Bowmen and chariots together to cut the opponent's copper or iron supply, and at that point s/he is in trouble. The Bowmen let you break through the initial defense of spears that would crush chariots on their own.

I would never choose Bowmen over an ancient, classical or even medieval UU you can exploit. But they are far, far better than the truly garbage UU's like the Panzer.

 

[Lyoncet]

It [Phalanx] used to replace Spearman, had 5 str instead of 4, and +25% hills defense. (Or was it city defense? I don't remember.).

Hmm, OK I remember the +strength now, but I thought they used to be spears that also got a bonus against melee. It's been a long time though.

Also, one I almost forgot, and probably the most exploitable in the game: Carracks. Sure they're of limited use, since a map without many islands that need ocean-crossing ships will have no place for them, but on a map like Terra, they're pretty much gamebreaking (and they synergize perfectly with João's Exp/Imp). In my last game as Portugal, on a huge Terra with 11 AIs and Monarch, I literally had enough settlers/workers/missionaries/longbows on the new world to get ~75-85% of its landmass before anybody had astronomy. Needless to say space race victory was pretty much assured at that point. If there's anybody in-game who plays exactly like his historical counterpart, the Carrack is the reason.

 

[lshockley]

I third France's Musketeer - +1 str vs Musketman, and, Longbowmen don't upgrade to Musketman/Musketeers, so like an earlier poster, it's not so much that the unit is bad, but that it's use is very limited. Fail.

 

[say1988]

Same strength, an extra movement point. The key is that they can keep up with your mounted units and not slow your advance.

 

[Absolute Zero]

Same strength, an extra movement point. The key is that they can keep up with your mounted units and not slow your advance.

What about siege? They're only 1 move, and it's difficult to picture an effective attack without them in that era.

It's true that Musketeers can keep up with mounted, but the question is whether they even need to be there.

 

[lshockley]

Oh yes, you are correct, I'm sorry, that was my mistake. I meant +1 mvt vs Musketman. In theory - great! But having to build them all, and then having Rifleman come in just around the corner - not so great. Also, it expects the player to intuitively use the Musketeer as an offensive unit, rather than the defensive Musketman.

But, I never thought of chasing mounted units around. I'll have to crank up a game as Napolean and give it a try,

 

[say1988]

What about siege?

Spy.

So long as you have priorities other than rifling and/or get gunpowder relatively earlier it can last long enough.

 

[Nilmerf]

But, I never thought of chasing mounted units around. I'll have to crank up a game as Napolean and give it a try,

I did this and got a fairly quick domination victory. Forget siege even exists and have mobile Musketeer/Knight armies with spy support. The first couple of attackers are flanking knights, and then the rest will fall easy. Musketeer is very underrated, especially with Napoleon. It's true that knights will be better at attacking anything but pikes and elephants, and those are somewhat rare. But the Musketeer will give key defensive bonuses in forests and cities to protect your stack.

 

[Sincro]

When you wage war using spies instead of seige to bring down the defenses, how many bloody spies do you need to bring? I've tried it a few times, and more often then not my spy is caught before being able to attempt the mission, which itself doesn't have a 100% chance of success.

Actually, spies in general annoy the heck out of me. I can't keep them in enemy territory without them getting caught, and I rarely catch enemy spies as they run through mine. That mechanic is B R O K E N.

 

[the343danny]

BTW by plain I meant boring. Unlike with mods like FFH, theres no new mechanics, just for example with prets a +2 strength. Godlike no doubt, but dull and boring.

It also ruins games for me too, because its just too easy to steamroll, and makes all my Rome games more or less the same.

 

[Cusanus]

When you wage war using spies instead of seige to bring down the defenses, how many bloody spies do you need to bring?

'bout 4 per city.
Not much different from regular siege, actually.

 

[Badtz Maru]

When you wage war using spies instead of seige to bring down the defenses, how many bloody spies do you need to bring? I've tried it a few times, and more often then not my spy is caught before being able to attempt the mission, which itself doesn't have a 100% chance of success.

Actually, spies in general annoy the heck out of me. I can't keep them in enemy territory without them getting caught, and I rarely catch enemy spies as they run through mine. That mechanic is B R O K E N.

I send spies ahead when I go this route. There's a few things you need to do to make this work better.

1. Make sure you have lots of espionage points with your target. You don't just need to spend them on the mission, the more you have the higher the chance of success is. On the espionage screen you can give priority to one civ and all your EPs will go to them. When you start planning the war, you might want to start spending at least 10% on espionage and focus all your EP on your target. If you've infiltrated them with any great spies and haven't used up all the points yet on stealing techs, you can probably skip this point.

2. Don't stick two spies in the same city. This greatly increases the chances that one will get caught. If you want to have a backup spy, have him chill next to the city.

3. Don't leave your spies in the city too long. I think the most benefit you can get is for leaving them there 5 turns, but if leaving them one or two turns gets you up to 95% chance of success, you get a reduced rate of return for leaving them longer.

4. Border Cities Only - if you plan on striking a city that is only one turn's move from your borders, keep open borders with the AI and use the spy to cause the revolt before declaring war - open borders greatly increases the success chance of espionage missions.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I do feel that some of the UUs are too bland, but none of them are the ones listed in the original post. Praetorians get an obscene boost to base strength, janisarries get a considerable boost against medieval era units, and land-whatever-the-hell-they're-called are solid stack defenders.

Ballista elephants, phalanxes, camel archers, and Gallic warriors are much stronger offenders of "why does it feel like I'm using the stock unit" syndrome. Not that any of those are necessarily bad units, but using them doesn't always feel so unique.

 

[kochman]

2. Don't stick two spies in the same city. This greatly increases the chances that one will get caught. If you want to have a backup spy, have him chill next to the city.

3. Don't leave your spies in the city too long. I think the most benefit you can get is for leaving them there 5 turns, but if leaving them one or two turns gets you up to 95% chance of success, you get a reduced rate of return for leaving them longer.

I disagree with #2... If the 2nd spy is next to the target city, he is going to have 2 issues when you go to attack.
1, the spy has to have started the turn in that city to be able to engage in espionage, so you would be losing a turn...
2, you get a 10% discount on required EPs for each mission, for each complete turn a spy spends within that city... so you would be spending twice as many EPs to do the same mission.

On critical missions, like city revolt just before I attack, to take down culture, I usually try to have 3 spies in their for 5 turns... that way even if one gets caught, and one fails, the 3rd will usually be successful.