What's Up with Warrior Monks?

[steveg700]

Strength 35 and 3 move, so kind of a skirmisher parallel .Do these do anything of interest? They don't have an upgrade path so they don't seem very forward-thinking. AI loves to jump on this though, so it's almost never an actual option other than from building that wonder I've never heard of and can't remember the name to off-hand. I want to say Kua-Toa but those are fishpersons from Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[Palo]

I haven't played with them but I looked at their unique promotion tree and they appear to be viable most of the game if you start early and get them promoted. I'll probably try them out some time.

 

[enKage]

First of all they are cheap unit to buy for faith pre-theocracy. Bad thing - they faith-compete with monumentality golden afe

And they have unique promotions, including +10 strength and later +15, kind of invisibility or sth like that.

The time they usually come to play is still warriors' time, so they are pretty strong, can exp reasonably quickly and after combining into corps/army are usable even industrial or later

 

[CoconutTank]

I've tried deploying Warrior Monks and uh, they're not great :/ they're strong at first, but aren't readily available due to the limited amount of faith income in early game. When faith income makes WMs more affordable, they're likely outclassed.

The dream is getting Exploding Palms (+10 str) and Cobra Strikes (+15 str), but that basically makes WMs competitive with their environment given how long it takes to get WMs to 4 promotions. If you want a 60 str melee unit with more than 2 movement, there are easier ways to do that.

Victor and Moksha can help by giving free promotions, but it takes awhile to get to those titles. Victor isn't really a first pick gov, even if the free promotions are awesome. I guess Terracotta Army can help, but other units also benefit from TA and will eventually scale better too.

If you wanted to try making WMs work, I guess I'd recommend Scythia. Kurgans produce faith and are available early, so that makes WMs more affordable. The damage bonus and healing on kill will make WMs less squishy, so they can fight more often and gain more exp. Spain might work due to their str bonus against civs not following their religion, but I'm at a loss for other civs I would recommend.

 

[enKage]

Scythia is a bad choice, kurhan gives little faith and is not worth working aside of gaining pantheon. Good civs for monks:

1) Zulu - the best
You can upgrade them early to corps by taking cities so they become unbeateble

2) Mali
swims in faiths and monk conquest can help expand, because settlers are harder to build

3) Russia
swims in faith and using production for amfitheatres is advised

4) Macedon
guaranteed early GG makes it 4movemnt melle unit with boosted strength

5) Gandhi
better faith than many leaders and Varu help monk conquest

......

 

[bengalryan9]

Hell if I know, the AI will *always* take that belief when it gets the first great prophet and they seem to rush build Kotaku-in, too. I've never had one lol.

 

[Archon_Wing]

If you don't have strategic resources, they can serve a purpose for defense. Otherwise, they're pretty useless. I guess you can form corps/armies as Zulu?

 

[Victoria]

They are OK but you need them early and work them hard. They are a bit like scouts, a lot of effort and a lot of deaths for a wettish unit.
As @bengalryan9 hints, they are the guaranteed troop type you will face for the first prophet

 

[Karmah]

They are OK but you need them early and work them hard. They are a bit like scouts, a lot of effort and a lot of deaths for a wettish unit.
As @bengalryan9 hints, they are the guaranteed troop type you will face for the first prophet

This. I keep meaning to follow the dream of leveling them, pretty similar to scouts. Except at first glance they come too late to be able to use the combo tank one shot of city+take defenseless city. I'm not even sure that they attract city shots the same way as scouts do.

 

[Victoria]

I'm not even sure that they attract city shots the same way as scouts do.

Scouts only attracted then because their modified combat strength was lowest. Place a badly damaged archer and a scout and they will shoot at the archer.
If you read the XP guide below you should get the idea that you use them to take cities and finish off units to get more XP. Both require fiddling but are fun. Just not fun when a tank comes out of nowhere on a monk assassination suicide mission and all that hard work feels like it was for nothing.

 

[ezzlar]

The warrior monks are religious units and benefit from World religion congress outcome. Dont know if thats enough to make them viable...

 

[Victoria]

The warrior monks are religious units and benefit from World religion congress outcome. Dont know if thats enough to make them viable...

It comes at a time when it does help them, but that can be a highly contested vote. The extra combat ability does help them being promoted fast (as does double attacks) but the outcome is the same, a unit that is too weak for the later game which has some use as an invisible pillager (unconvinced over invisibility in enemy territory).

 

[Datian]

Huge disappointment for me.
If you invest a lot (get the first religion, hoard faith, fight very soon with them), they can be useful, fun, and keep up with the right promotions... for a very short while.
I still haven't found a way to make them worth the investment.

If they could be upgraded, or have the same charges as a missionary, that would be a different story.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Huge disappointment for me.
If you invest a lot (get the first religion, hoard faith, fight very soon with them), they can be useful, fun, and keep up with the right promotions... for a very short while.
I still haven't found a way to make them worth the investment.

If they could be upgraded, or have the same charges as a missionary, that would be a different story.

Eh, they were added because they were cool. I'd be even more upset if a David Carradine unit would be able to kill a modern infantry unit or whatever.

 

[kaspergm]

I rarely seem to have the massive early faith source it would require to make them viable. By the time I have enough faith to buy more than one, they are already starting to get obsolete, and at this point it will be hard to earn the XP needed to earn the promotions to make them stay viable.

 

[Datian]

Eh, they were added because they were cool. I'd be even more upset if a David Carradine unit would be able to kill a modern infantry unit or whatever.

They could go as cyber-ninja or something - I mean, we have GDR...

 

[steveg700]

Eh, they were added because they were cool. I'd be even more upset if a David Carradine unit would be able to kill a modern infantry unit or whatever.

Why not? You just said they were supposed to be cool. Being ineffective isn't cool.

= VERY COOL

A classical era unit that has no upgrade path is a dead end, so it's basically strong for one era and then there's little cause to keep using the belief to pop out more. Seems like the warrior monks should have rolled into a belief with some other benefit.

 

[Uberfrog]

Hell if I know, the AI will *always* take that belief when it gets the first great prophet and they seem to rush build Kotaku-in, too. I've never had one lol.

It’s a Follower belief, so you can still build Warrior Monks if your city is converted to the right religion.

They have been a handy way to reinforce my army when I captured a city with the ability to build them...

 

[lindsay40k]

Yeah, make the AI work for you. When you have solid faith production and capture a load of cities with holy sites and WMfaith, buy a bunch of them and put them to work

 

[Victoria]

One unit should be +10 per era for being bullet proof.