What's your least used unit in game?

[brucedecatz]

I do not mean to include UUs of a civ or a religion simply because players have not played that civ or adopt that religion.

My vote goes to the Khazad battering ram. They may be useful if it takes a turn to create (since one more trebuchet can be freed to attack), but at 3 turns I can never see their uses.

 

[Love]

War elephant.

First you need to capture an elephant, then you get a lousy unit.

 

[Wyrmhero]

Marksmen. Marksmen are only around 12/9 (?), but they require two expensive techs to make. They require, but don't get mithril. I might as well make a dozen Champions with 10/10 strength than 4 Marksmen, or 4 Phalanx with 15/15 strength straight out for the same cost nearly. They may get the Marksman promotion, but this doesn't justify building them for me.

 

[avalonnn]

Playing at lower difficulty levels, I did not need the assassin and archer, but as I move up, they become very useful. I still don't use archers much, but longbowmen are great for city defense, and crossbows are good if the AI has keyed on my preference for champions. Of course, the Arquebus with fire arrows is better.

Until recently, I had failed to use rangers as much as I should.

Having read comments about mounted units gaining experience by surviving difficult fights, I've started to use them more too.

 

[mahazel]

Archers, newer build them, wariors/axemans are better. I like longbowmans, but their tech is too expensive.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I personally don't use axemen/swordsmen much, but that is just because I prefer not to fight any offensive wars until I have stronger units.

I don't use flagbearers or Demogauges, but that is because I don't like the economic effects of Crusade and don't play the Bannor much anyway.


I haven't used Rangers or Beastmasters much since their recent nerfs.

Useless units don't remain useless for long for those of us willing to mod. I started to point out the important strengths of these units that you are forgetting, but then I realized that these strengths are mostly my additions.


Battering rams do suck though. The civ I'd most expect to make crude battering rams in the field instead of bringing finely crafted siege engines to the siege is the Doviello. They seem far too crude a weapon for dwarves, at least given the tech requirements. At Construction they might make sense, but at Engineering they really don't. Besides, you should have a lot of trebuchets by then, which are much more useful (especially when you let them attack at range).


I still think that archers and siege need ranged attacks to make them useful.


I think that considerable collateral damage would make sense for war elephants. They should also really loose the HN promotion when they upgrade.


Marksmen needing Mithril doesn't make much sense. I say drop the resource requirement, and also make them the only unit in the game that has ranged attacks with no damage limit.


I'm still not sure that Beasts of Agares are worth the population and anarchy costs that everyone but the Infernals get for building them.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'll second MC when he says that marksmen needing mithril doesn't make sense, but that's minor. the real problem is that you need a TON of beakers to get em, and then they don't even get the bonus from those mithril weapons that you had to research

oh, and battering rams as well. crude things, don't really look dwarven. agreed that they would fit the doviello a lot more

 

[Keeper_GFA]

I'll add my vote for the Marksmen, for the same reasons [to_xp]Gekko gave.

War elephant.
First you need to capture an elephant, then you get a lousy unit.

I love war elephants. Strength 7, move 2 HN units are a great way to peacefully cripple your neighbors.

 

[OzzyKP]

Hunters, archers, rangers, longbows, etc.

 

[arcticnightwolf]

Hunters, archers, rangers, longbows, etc.

Same there ... whole recon-line and archery-line (ok, maybe except druids and aquarebus? (or how to spell it))

 

[Micky Onimusha]

War elephant.

First you need to capture an elephant, then you get a lousy unit.

They'd be great units if they didn't cost so much IMO. As Keep said:

I love war elephants. Strength 7, move 2 HN units are a great way to peacefully cripple your neighbors.

I've used them, but they're just too much trouble for their cost though.

In order to get a War Elephant you need:
-A Hunter with Animal Handling (that's a building and 4 techs already, 4 essential techs admittedly but still 4 techs).
-Have said Hunter be strong enough to bring down a wild elephant.
-Escort your captured Elephant back to your city.
-Pay 185 gold to make it a usable offensive unit.

Considering that War Elephants can be brought down fairly comfortably by one or two Hunters (I've found if I leave any Elephant in AI territory for more than a turn, they end up dead), I don't think it's unfair to make their upgrade cost be 50ish gold, as opposed to the very high sum, which is basically paying for the ability to attack and an extra move-ment point.

 

[Love]

I'm still not sure that Beasts of Agares are worth the population and anarchy costs that everyone but the Infernals get for building them.

But they are a freaking awesome unit while playing Infernals

 

[Blackmantle]

Clearly the Archery-line (except Arquebusiers which are decent...) and especially! Marksmen (Longbows are equally seldom but i could see some sense in getting them for some civs.)
They are just to hard + late to get and to heavy to reasearch.

Just cut the metal-line requirements (so iron-working for bowyers and de-facto mithril-working for precision) and let them fully! benefit from metal weapons instead (according to tier of course. So archers up to copper, marksmen up to mithril...) and Precision should still get a tad bit cheaper + make archers more interesting overall. Then they might! get interesting enough. (Would also help AI since it seems more fond of Archers anyways...)
A bit of economy added (like Windmills at Archery) might also help.

And War Elephants rock. (but they do change in power depending on gamespeed. The slower your settings the stronger they become.
So on quick at very high difficulties it may make some sense to say they aren't strong. But then that counts for many, many units.)

 

[onedreamer]

Least used unit for me are Priests of the various religions. The problem with priests is that there are better solutions in any field they can be used in, except healing. So they are merely there for their Medic 2 ability.
I obviously disagree with War Elephants being lousy (they have almost twice strength of their contemporary counterparts and a further 50% innate bonus vs mounted, plus the possibility to stay HN) or archery units for the matter, since they do a better job than any other unit in defense.

 

[brucedecatz]

On priest: courage + regeneration + priest is an army that is always on the march. No march promotion needed.

On archer/recon line: At higher difficulty, aggressive AI and no copper, the recon line is much more useful for early survival.

An early war elephant is great. If it is too cheap to upgrade it will be overpowered. However they are mounted and do not take defensive bonuses, so they are better at an active defense than at sitting in cities.

 

[Ekolite]

For me, its the entire recon and archer line. I only go up the recon line for dwarven druids, or if I'm playing the svartalfar. I can't remember the last time I built anything on the archer line, and I only research the techs to get to stirrups and I think machinary(?).

 

[Demus]

priests are very useful, you just don't need that many of them (besides the FoL blooming priests playing as the elves, you need quite a few to get your entire territory forested in decent time).
The recon line is nice, expecially for the civs with specials in the line (Svalt, recon UU's). They're fast, with decent strenght, and can easily exp up on barbs if you get them early enough.
War elephants have gotten tougher to get with the nerf to rangers. They're fun, but hardly worth the hassle (185 gold is a lot, even with mitigation worth well over 100 beakers, or putting your tech rate at 0 for a few turns).
Battering rams are redicilous, just bring a trebuchet instead.
Archers are units i seldom use. I never research the tech myself, and only get it through trade with a bottom-score AI or the eyes & ears. They're nice on the defence, but a purely defensive unit isn't of that much use compared to a multi-purpose unit like an axemen, a hunter, a priest or a mage (even though you should compare the latter one to rangers and longbowmen instead). I wouldn't know how to buff them though, besides granting the techs some economical benefit.

 

[heisenberg]

Hmmmm i'm a pretty big fan of certain priest units myself--
Ritualists: Ring of Flames--who needs siege/fireballs when you have them?
Cultists: Tsunami--spells doom for any coastal rival cities.
Water-walking potential so early allows for very easy mapping of other continents, much easier than teching up to optics, though with the recent naval unit buffs OO priests become relatively much weaker.
Priests of leaves: Bloom anyone? str 4 free fodder compared to lousy skeletons?

I think stonewardens and vicars I use much less though, but I do build a few sometimes early on in case I teched up to theology later and needed level 6 for high priests.

 

[Nimbus]

I have always found priests to be a great unit to upgrade into a paladin/druid/eidolon etc. will start with more xp than an altar of lounatar usually gives it, plus the addition of a few spells.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

I almost never use mounted line myself. I've never really seen a point... I like to only attack when I have 99.9% odds of survival so even though my mounted have a 75% chance to escape, I'm still needing to weaken a stack of mounted units to kill one enemy unit. I'd rather spend my time getting fireballs or rings of fire or something that will damage all their units and allow me to kill them 1:1.