Worst Unique Unit

[TheMeInTeam]

Correction, TMIT... the Navy SEAL is the latest UU in the game.

? No.

Panzers and SEALS both come with the industrialism tech, but Panzers also require oil, which typically means combustion is required.

In the best case scenario, they're available at the same time, but in practice panzers are almost always later.

 

[Indiansmoke]

? No.

Panzers and SEALS both come with the industrialism tech, but Panzers also require oil, which typically means combustion is required.

In the best case scenario, they're available at the same time, but in practice panzers are almost always later.

Panzers and navy seals are both pretty useless in single player, but panzers are great at multiplayer...so that leaves navy seal as the absolute worst UU.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Panzers and navy seals are both pretty useless in single player, but panzers are great at multiplayer...so that leaves navy seal as the absolute worst UU.

What makes them so good in MP? It's hard to picture tanks mattering a whole lot most of the time, and the counters (air, anti tanks, massed siege) are many. Does it REALLY impact a realistic # of your MP games? SEALS do have some utility in SP.

 

[Krill]

MP games start in different eras, so Tanks start rolling off the production lines from t5 onwards in modern era games. They're the main attacking tool in modern, marines used to only be used to defend with (and now antitank has taken that roll...so SEALs aren't useful in MP in that roll, thus they are more limited).

 

[Indiansmoke]

What makes them so good in MP? It's hard to picture tanks mattering a whole lot most of the time, and the counters (air, anti tanks, massed siege) are many. Does it REALLY impact a realistic # of your MP games? SEALS do have some utility in SP.

Tanks are 2 move units. In the multiplayer world with city elimination on (usually2) and simultanious turns 2 move units are priceless.

In the era of taks there are rails as well so you can transfer tanks from one end of the map to the other instantly and hit cities in 1 move before opponent has time to use siege or realize what is going on.

double or alot of the times triple city raider tanks cannot be stopped by antitank guns sitting in the city...you don't even need siege to attack..

So tanks are kings of modern era multiplayer and panzers are the kings of tanks

 

[PreLynMax]

Tanks are 2 move units. In the multiplayer world with city elimination on (usually2) and simultanious turns 2 move units are priceless.

In the era of taks there are rails as well so you can transfer tanks from one end of the map to the other instantly and hit cities in 1 move before opponent has time to use siege or realize what is going on.

double or alot of the times triple city raider tanks cannot be stopped by antitank guns sitting in the city...you don't even need siege to attack..

So tanks are kings of modern era multiplayer and panzers are the kings of tanks

I rather choose a UU tank than a UU Marine anytime, even if the SEAL is an awesome late game unit that will own any other unit through water, which is why, inconsequently why I open an overseas attack with them, but weak or not, the Panser is a UU of an already (argumently) overpowered unit.

Edit: I second the Musketeer being a useless unit; when you upgrade it, it's advantage goes away.

 

[The Almighty dF]

After reviewing over the civilopedia for awhile, then testing them each out after my little idiot moment with the guerilla warrior, I've got my top three worst UUs:

1. Ballista Elephant. Useless, especially since the AI, for the most part, isn't big on mounted units. Even when they use them they don't have that many in their stacks.

2. Musketeer. Woohoo. The +1 to movement is fairly useless, especially if you have them as part of a stack.

3. Tie between Camel Archer and Jaguar.
Explanation: The odds of you not having horses and iron if you're playing aggressively are pretty damn low. On the bright side, the camel archer is at least still functional as a knight replacement. The Jaguar, however, is just a weak swordsman.

 

[Roxlimn]

I'm inclined towards Panzer, since it comes so late and has such a marginal benefit - but I'll still build and use them, if I want to use Tanks at all - they're still Tanks.

But I'm putting in with Iranon and say Dog Soldiers. For very poor starts, they can save your life, but the rest of the time, they're trash - we probably both play on Normal Speed.

The Axeman is the mainstay of my classical forces. Dog Soldiers cannot be used for this purpose, and the NAs don't have a suitable replacement for the role. Worse still, the Sitting Bull's traits and benefits do not lend themselves well to rushing with the Dogs - perhaps the only thing they might have been good for. The Barracks don't come cheap, and the Dogs don't benefit from Aggressive like the Jags do.

Assuming a Bronze Age rush window is open to begin with, it's marginally easiest to rush with Jags using Monte than with nearly any other Leader-UU combination, including Ramses (because he requires having Horses in your borders, which is not certain).

Dogs are only good at protecting stacks - and only against melee aggressors even then. Ick.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Tanks are 2 move units. In the multiplayer world with city elimination on (usually2) and simultanious turns 2 move units are priceless.

In the era of taks there are rails as well so you can transfer tanks from one end of the map to the other instantly and hit cities in 1 move before opponent has time to use siege or realize what is going on.

double or alot of the times triple city raider tanks cannot be stopped by antitank guns sitting in the city...you don't even need siege to attack..

So tanks are kings of modern era multiplayer and panzers are the kings of tanks

That makes more sense now. I kind of guessed it was something like that, seeing how much better chariots can be in MP than expected w/ simultaneous turns, but I admit limited MP experience.

With equal experience/promos, however, an AT will always beat a tank. CR III does get a boost vs gunpowder, but it doesn't overtake the free ambush promo on ATs, so technically a CG III AT would win w/o at least SOME collateral (and you'd usually want collateral since ATs are much cheaper). But the element of surprise and positioning makes the ATs weaker vs humans I guess. The big weakness for ATs, as I've noticed, is that they don't do very well attacking tanks because there's usually at least 1 other unit with the tank, and even cavalry beat them soundly .

Still, they completely wreck the hapless AI, which uses air improperly and tanks are mostly roving units that might attack you on occasion rather than a stack force.

And yet in SP the SEALS are probably better...the AI is just that terrible @ sea. I would take most UU's over either of these guys in SP though, other than the BE probably.

 

[Roxlimn]

TheMeInTeam:

You would take Dog Soldiers over BEs? I certainly wouldn't.

Ballista Elephants take a little effort to get but they certainly aren't worse than normal Elephants. In any situation where they could be, minor adjustments can remedy the situation - and in most situations, they perform identically if not better.

You can't say that for Dog Soldiers. The most common usages for Axemen is for taking cities and attacking stacks. Dog Soldiers are terrible for that - it wouldn't be such an issue if there were an easily available unit to sub-in for it, but there isn't.

Ever tried playing SB on Emperor where you don't have Iron, your neighbors do, and they're ALL Protective?

Hell.

 

[Gliese 581]

On the other hand dog soldiers are very useful on deity, they're resourceless which makes them great against barbs and early warmonger attacks.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TheMeInTeam:

You would take Dog Soldiers over BEs? I certainly wouldn't.

Ballista Elephants take a little effort to get but they certainly aren't worse than normal Elephants. In any situation where they could be, minor adjustments can remedy the situation - and in most situations, they perform identically if not better.

You can't say that for Dog Soldiers. The most common usages for Axemen is for taking cities and attacking stacks. Dog Soldiers are terrible for that - it wouldn't be such an issue if there were an easily available unit to sub-in for it, but there isn't.

Ever tried playing SB on Emperor where you don't have Iron, your neighbors do, and they're ALL Protective?

Hell.

Being surrounded by a bunch of PRO civs makes rushing with ANY non-agg axe a pretty weak call. God help you if they're on hills.

Yes, I'd take dogs over BE in a flash. They're essentially immune to barbs (barb horse archers are rare), allow you to skip archery until you need it (if ever, and if you do they UB crushes with archers or longbows), and make it virtually impossible to attack you (chariots are garbage vs protective archers, and everything else is screwed, making it very expensive to attack you on any terrain except flatland, but before horse archers there are no reliable anti-dogs on defense...chariots are 1/1 but that's not great considering how badly the dogs own everything else).

They're also top-flight early chokers so if you get a tight spawn you can abuse that aspect instead. If you choke away horses what's going to attack your forest (or forest hill) dog soldier...archers? Get a good 3-4 and the AI won't move.

So yes, they're a solid UU, not to mention one of the few things that REALLY gives the romans pause. Prat rush vs NA = no thanks. I'd take dogs over a lot of UUs, to be honest.

 

[ston]

Hmm, I wanted to vote 'Conquistador' but they're not on the list.

I only built a bunch of them once, sent them out and they all promptly got destroyed by one or two enemy Knights. My theory on why this happened is because Spanish Knights, by tradition, are only trained to attack Windmills

 

[Roxlimn]

TheMeInTeam:

That's exactly my problem there, you see. You don't need Dog Soldiers to give Praetorians pause. Your uber Archers are already going to do that. You can skip Archery, but then you're vulnerable to Chariots, and your Dogs can only choke one Civ. There are 3 others all around you and they have Swordsmen.

If I want to choke as SB, I could do that with Archers - and the Archers are cheaper, too.

Essentially, you're basing your assessment of them as a solid UU because of choke tactics and anti-barb performance? The normal Axeman unit can do that already. Against Barb Archers, the Dogs are actually worse.

A BE is at least as good as a normal Elephant, which is already plenty good.

 

[JTMacc99]

Instead of the 1-2 first strikes and the March promotion, they should have just opened up the City Raider promotions for the Navy SEAL. This could have been done at the same time they took away siege from ships.

It would also have nice synergy with the two charismatic American leaders. I'm pretty sure this change would greatly reduce the amount of votes for it in the worst category. It would still be a really late unit, but at least it would be awesome. CRIII Marines would be up there with the Roman UU on the scale of things that make you change the way you run your empire to take advantage of them. They'd probably be a little overpowered, in that you'd have to defend with CGIII marines or paratroopers just to have a fair fight on flat ground, but on the other hand, you'd have to build them all from scratch and marines don't upgrade into anything.


ETA: Now that I think about it, CRIII probably would be a seriously overpowered unit. How about Commando instead of March? At least that's more in line with a Special Ops UU. It's unrealistic, in that you probably couldn't sneak what would be the equivalent of 15-20 units along the roads behind enemy lines, but at least it would give the unit something really interesting to work with. Either that, or maybe just give it a bonus (rather than just the lack of a penalty) when attacking from sea. It would have to be substantial, like 25%, since I'm going to take away the first strikes.

 

[Roxlimn]

JTMacc99:

Commando is stronger than CR3. This is coming from someone who's had the opportunity to use a bunch of Commando units - very strong.

A Commando Marine is almost like a super-strong Gunship.

 

[Ermak-]

you silly nookies, try jaguar rush once in a while. i play FFA and try to plant city on a hill. GO stright for iron working and With any luck you have my 2 (woodsman II) jaguars by turn 26 or so. You can take out several ur oponents when they are just planting their first town. Jaguars are faster then chariots since you can cross woods so fast and hit unexpectidly. they are much stronger then chariots and can even kill archers fortified in towns. Unless player had copper capital is Etreemly hard to stops jaguars. Even if he has enough archers prepared you can just starve him til lcatapults. Jaguars are one of the best units in the game!!!

 

[Seraphic]

Hmm, I wanted to vote 'Conquistador' but they're not on the list.

I only built a bunch of them once, sent them out and they all promptly got destroyed by one or two enemy Knights. My theory on why this happened is because Spanish Knights, by tradition, are only trained to attack Windmills

Lol!
I think the Jaguar is pretty bad, as well as the Ballista Elephant. I can say I hate the Jaguar more though.

 

[Gliese 581]

TheMeInTeam:

Essentially, you're basing your assessment of them as a solid UU because of choke tactics and anti-barb performance? The normal Axeman unit can do that already. Against Barb Archers, the Dogs are actually worse.

A BE is at least as good as a normal Elephant, which is already plenty good.

The difference is you wont get the normal axemen in time on deity most of the time, having dogs you can skip archery altogether.
It's also about defending from early dows as mentioned, even without copper you're not screwed.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Hmm, I wanted to vote 'Conquistador' but they're not on the list.

I only built a bunch of them once, sent them out and they all promptly got destroyed by one or two enemy Knights. My theory on why this happened is because Spanish Knights, by tradition, are only trained to attack Windmills

That's just bad luck with the combat odds. Conquistadores are no better than standard Cuirassiers when attacking knight, but get terrain bonuses on defense.

I think they are one of the best UU, right behind the early ones. Cuirassier is a very strong unit by itself and a quick cuirassier war can win a game at the higher levels. They have a bonus vs their only reasonable counter (pikes) until rifles, wich you should not be facing anyway if you plan things right.

And they get def bonuses.
So a very strong unit with a few weak points becomes a very strong unit with no real weakness.