Woodsman III & Medics

[Bed]

red cross : free Medic I promotion for all new units built in this city

red cross + barracks + stable (+ west point and/or theocracy+feudalism) could help to get some woods 3 + medic 1 unit without any GG

 

[nbcman]

Stable won't help there. Woodsman promotions are not available to the 'mounted' line of units.

 

[Tephros]

Here’s my healers strategy:

My first and second (sometimes more) warriors do scouting but try to stay in the forests as much as possible. One of them usually survives to get Woodsman II from animals, provided I don’t run into a lot of bears. Once barbarian archers appear I keep them in a large swath of forests but only move one tile at a time despite the fact that they can move two spaces in forests.

If I start in or enter a tile that contains a warrior and no other enemies, I stay put or even follow them to try to get them to attack me. Their odds of winning are very low, and you will get one point closer to woodsman III. If I start in a tile that contains a more powerful enemy, multiple enemies, or an animal, I will move away via forest to avoid getting killed or getting attacked with no gain in experience. If where I move to is still in danger, I’ll use the 2nd move to try to get away from both threats, and usually this will keep your warrior safe even when axes are around. Hanging around on coasts or peninsulas could get you trapped, though. If I move into a danger tile and the initial tile was safe, I move back to the safe tile. The only time I allow an archer to attack my warrior is if he has woodsman II and is fortified on a forested hill. He will win nearly 90% of the time but it’s a greater risk than getting attacked by another warrior.

In this way I can usually get that warrior to woodsman III and get him safely back to my borders. Odds are good if you try with at least two warriors (not together). I then keep him with one of my offensive stacks as a healer, and upgrade him so that he can get further experience to try to make it to combat I and medic I. I use him to attack only the weakest of units, like the victim of a successful catapult attack. There is some risk that he will defend and be killed if your stack defends in the forest, so be sure to have competent stack defenders so that he isn’t forced to defend a second and third time and then die. Obviously you should have stack defenders regardless.

Normally I settle at least two great generals to be able to produce units with 3 promotions without civics but with west point. The first one gives you an extra promotion by itself so there’s usually a big incentive to settle that first one. If you have pyramids and representation they also produce 3 beakers. However, depending upon my needs, I may attach a great general to the unit I’m talking about sooner or later in order to reach medic III, but usually it’s not needed. Often he was my very first unit that I started out with and he’s named Woody. 15% healing is good, and 25% seems adequate most of the time. If you really need 40% then your stack is probably too small to be safe anyway.

The problem with Red Cross is that I already have my medics by the time I can build it and I’m often close to winning. So I never have built the Red Cross.

 

[Simple Simon]

A good way to get a healer unit to WMIII & medicIII status is attaching a GG, then having the unit on the same tile when attaching a GG to another unit. Granted, this means that half the EP do not go to the new unit you attach the GG to, but instead they go to your MagicMedic(tm)

 

[mikotian]

if you had red cross in a city, and maybe running some +exp civics and with Pentagon + west point, would it be possible to get an explorer to +3 woodsman +3 medic without a great general?

 

[Solomwi]

if you had red cross in a city, and maybe running some +exp civics and with Pentagon + west point, would it be possible to get an explorer to +3 woodsman +3 medic without a great general?

No, because Medic III is only available to a GG-attached unit, like Leadership, Morale and Tactics. It is fairly easy to pump out WIII/MI units, which heal 25%, with Red Cross and no GG, though. You only need XP for three promotions (10 XP, 8 if charismatic), so with a barracks, you need four GGs settled as instructors (3 if CHA). The Pentagon and XP civics each replace one settled GG, and if you were to put West Point in the same city as Red Cross, it would replace two of them.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Explorers can't learn woodsman III.

 

[Roller123]

-woodsman III, medic III, combat I, leadership
-combat VI, city raider III, leadership, march

This is wow, just wow. 150% strength bonus vs city and restores 50hp every round. Or should, if combat VI healing stacks with w3/m3 healing from another unit. One hell of a city cracker.

 

[carl corey]

I usually don't want the leadership promotion on the super-medic, as that unit will most likely not fight. It's probably going to be an old warrior/axeman/chariot, and although it can be upgraded for free would it be worth it? Having one less rifle/infantry for the bonus of healing everything in two-three turns, I think there's no contest there. If you do get an extra promotion, then morale is the way to go, making it easier for the unit to move between captured cities.

 

[Roller123]

I dont know for multiplayer, but for singleplayer its probably worth it. W3 is pretty good by itself. If on plain field it will not be attacked. If staying on forest thats +125% to def to our best(free upgrades), very experienced(leadership) unit. Couple of combat promotions. Who is gonna kill him. The AI has to bring incredible force to kill him, and if it does, that stack was doomed anyway probably. Morale.. maybe for mounted heavy army. But the army only moves as fast as its slowest link, which would be the 1pt move siege units.

 

[UWHabs]

Morale (+1 move) is good for the super medic if you have 1 super medic and 2 stacks, for example. Then you can move him easily between the stacks whichever needs healing. Or after taking a city, as your stack moves slowly through the territory, you can use it to catch up.

But for me, since I almost never have the XP to get all the way to W3/medic 3 in one go, I'll often take leadership. Then, you use it as your mop-up unit for ennemies that are like .3/10 for health. 2 easy XP gets you that much closer to your super medic than just adding medic 2 would.

So, for example, a charismatic leader needs 7 promotions for this super medic (W1, W2, W3, C1, M1, M2, M3), or 8 with leadership. That means you need 40 XP with no leadership, or 52 with the leadership promotion. If you attach it to a guy with 7, you're only at 27. Meaning you need 13 XP without leadership, or 25 with leadership. Since Leadership gives you X2, it's basically the same either way.

 

[Simple Simon]

yeah, leadership is a great promotion for a healer unit. It simply allows getting to super medic status quickly, because the unit will always be a mopup unit anyways.

 

[Tephros]

I usually don't want the leadership promotion on the super-medic, as that unit will most likely not fight. It's probably going to be an old warrior/axeman/chariot, and although it can be upgraded for free would it be worth it? Having one less rifle/infantry for the bonus of healing everything in two-three turns, I think there's no contest there. If you do get an extra promotion, then morale is the way to go, making it easier for the unit to move between captured cities.

There's an analysis with a charismatic leadership above, but sometimes you have a leader than is neither aggressive nor charismatic. Suppose you start with a unit right off the press with 3 or 5 xp, lets assume 5. The promos come at (n^2)+1, so it's 2, 5, 10, 17, 26, 37, 50, 65, 82, 101, etc.

So you attach the leader to the unit, which gives him 25xp. You have 4 initial promos available, and 1 point to the next.

So we have two basic choices: woodsman first or medic first.

Obviously you'd want to do all 3 woodsman promos at once if you're doing that route. And obviously you'd want to get medic III all at once if you do that route.

So we could do woodsman I, II, III, and leadership; Woodsman I, II, III, and combat I; or Combat I, Medic I, II, III. And keep in mind a 5th promotion will be available as soon as that unit kills something. So the last choice could do leadership next or go into the woodsman promos.

There are short-term advantages and disadvantages to each choice. The woodsman without leadership but with combat is the most powerful. Woodsman with leadership starts with no combat promos, but still gets the 2 strikes, which is good against weaker non-mounted units. Woodsmen are good for attacking units in the woods that receive no defensive bonuses, as they get the +50% forest attack anyway. Going woodsman first means your unit can rack up points while your stack defends in the woods, but also risks losing the unit to some extent as they're likely to be the best defender. Going combat and medic first gives you a better healing unit at first.

But I'll confine the rest of the post to whether or not it makes sense to use leadership if your goal is to get an ubermedic (woodsman III, medic III) with the fewest possible points.

Without leadership, you would need combat I, medic I-III, woodsman I-III, for a total of 7 promos, or 50 xp. With leadership, it requires 8, or 65 xp. Subtract the initial points from each: 50-25 = 25, 65-25 = 40. Due to leadership, divide the second one by two: 40/2 = 20. So leadership would require you to effectively get 20 more xp, while without leadership it would require 25xp. In terms of getting to ubermedic first, leadership helps. Leadership is an investment that pays off later in exchange for short-term opportunity costs. In most cases it is worth it, unless giving that extra promotion instead of leadership is game-changing.