Who has the best unique units and buildings?

[The Rev]

Personally, I've only gotten to try out Greece's, but I fell in love with the companion cavalry. It's tied for fastest unit in the game with sipahi, and panzers, but available only a few dozen turns into the game. Plus it can move after attacking, and it's as strong as a spearman with its anti-cavalry bonus. Ultimate hit and run unit. Oh, and it gives you double great generals.

I whooped Russia with them early game. I had one out exploring in the boonies, and four more being built when Russia declared war. The one explorer came out of nowhere to steal Petersburg with a well timed instant heal promotion. Then I took the next one built and ran it straight though Russian lines, taking out a few archers and workers along the way, and rendezvoused with the first one outside of Moscow. Since they had no cavalry and bad roads, they couldn't even get back to their own capitol, and I took it with minimal effort. Even a pikemen that Catherine got from goodie hut draws fortified in a city on a hill in Rostov was no match for the companions because I was able to attack with one and withdraw each turn, never letting a wounded companion be in range of the city or the pike. I used them on the front lines for scouting, healing, and running down wounded units even into the modern era when I got a domination victory in 1800 or so.

And speaking of goodie hut draws, the hoplite is also full of cheesy rushiness. I got my starting warrior to an ancient ruins which upgraded it to hoplite maybe five turns into the game. So I marched him straight to Japan and offed Nobunaga by turn 15.

I'm also anxious to try out England, a three range unit available fairly early should be pretty fun. And ship of the line could be fun too, but I'm a naval warfare junkie.

 

[dorn]

Don't forget about the civ bonus. The Japanese Samurai doesn't seem all that amazing on it's own. It's just a swordsmen with double great general bonus and shock. Combined with bushido though it's pretty crazy.

 

[The Rev]

True, but Bushido applies to all Japanese units, not just samurai, so a samurai is still not much better than a hypothetical Japanese longswordsman. Personally, I think a movement bonus to represent the fact that they often rode into battle, would put samurai up to snuff.

 

[Stormfather]

Greece. You can see horses by the time you settle your second city; they're plentiful enough that there's no reason why you can't have an army of companion cavalry and hoplites whipped up in the early classical period.

Rome's combo seemed amazing on paper, but I've found the scarcity of large iron deposits makes it a lot harder to get the Roman warmachine up and running. If only Rome could get Russia's civ trait...

England- Longbowmen are the most annoying unit in the game, especially in rough terrain and chokepoints.

Germany- Research pottery, writing, philosophy, husbandry, and trapping, and use the Great Library to get Civil Service for free, and you can have landsknetch when everyone else is still using warriors and archers. They cost the same as a spearman but are 50% stronger, and they're able to crush absolutely anything in their path except swordsmen- who are much more expensive and require Iron to produce!

 

[sadinotna]

Babylon
Bowmen destroy everything up until medieval. You don't even need the cheap ancienct age castle that you get in the Walls of Babylon. then there's your scientists' unique ability to hit the industrial age before the time of Christ...

For those without the special addition? China.
Who the hell decided that losing two points of strength was a balance to doubling your attacks? (not to mention that promotions are now 200% effective!) These guys can murder calvary, for god's sake! They come out in medieval, but you're going to hit that faster than everyone (except Babylon) anyway because your libraries give you gold.

Other stuff that get's close: England: intercontinental longbows
Japan: Farnsworth Combat means any unit they could possibly have would get close.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Grab your great general and fire off a mounted attack. Laugh as the hapless AI has to put up with a bunch of 12 + 12(40%) = 16.8 str MINIMUM field troops in its grill. Turn of DoW city strikes, bonuses to snag city state puppets all over the place, and the speed to keep it going really make them scary.

I can probably kill off 4+ civs with just the horsemen, although that creates a lot of puppets.

 

[Wulf38]

Siam's elephants are pretty ridiculous, with 22 strength they have a slight edge even over pikemen. Most civs don't get anything that strong until rifles. I've learned to be very nice to them if they're my neighbors during the medieval period.

 

[Tomice]

I haven't decided yet.

In general, the devs see UUs,UBs and UAs as one package. They clearly stated that a late UU or UB is usually balanced by an early UA. USA for example. So I'm not sure if we can really seperate it.