Worst UU

[Fluroscent]

Of the other contenders, only the panzer compares in not finding an extra bonus in most practical scenarios. I've found the biggest danger to tank based attacks are mech infantry although I suppose if panzers maintain their advantage against modern armor they still beat out ballista eles b/c they become an early end game unit simply through the merit of having favorable odds against the strongest base land unit in the game.

Tanks are hard countered way before modern armor, by anti-tanks and gunships. And tank vs tank battles are almost negligible in modern warfare anyway, due to the availability of instant collateral damage, mostly from bombers and nukes.

Ballista elephants, while admittedly having a very marginal application, are occasionally very useful. On defense, the ability to attack mixed stacks with good odds will help immensely. Also, when this bonus is applied, it will matter much more due to the early era.

 

[Lead Paint]

I still wonder, how people were able to play Carthage on Vanilla, where there was no unique building?

They didn't. Carthage was introduced with Warlords. And about time too, the vanilla leaders all lack a certain... sneery... quality.

OT: Through my insightful observations (i.e. being able to count) it seems that the bottom 5 would be the jaguar, dog soldier, ballista elephant, numidian cavalry and panzer.

Personally I'm going to step outside the box and say the bowman, if only to be awkward

 

[[username]]

What's so bad about the Bowman? Sure, he doesn't suit Hammy's aggressive trait at all, but I think he's a great anti-barb unit. Probably even more than the Skirmisher. Then again, my favorite kind of maps, huge/marathon, where barbs are actually an issue and barb axes are plenty, is not that popular I think.

 

[Lead Paint]

What's so bad about the Bowman? Sure, he doesn't suit Hammy's aggressive trait at all, but I think he's a great anti-barb unit. Probably even more than the Skirmisher. Then again, my favorite kind of maps, huge/marathon, where barbs are actually an issue and barb axes are plenty, is not that popular I think.

Well truth be told I think the Panzer is fairly useless on all but the hardest difficulties, but I didn't want to echo all the people who've said as much already

That's a good point about the barbs, though, generally I play standard/normal maps on Noble (which, granted, I'm beginning to feel is becoming a little easy), where barbs aren't really that much of an issue. I guess the bowman is yet another 'situtational' UU, alongside the jag and the ballista nelly

 

[plasmacannon]

What does everyone think about camel archers?
One usually has Iron and horse resourses, and units upgraded to macemen, by the time Knights become available.
So, vs the AIs, camel archers only improve a knights ability by 15% withdrawl rate.
I don't build many Knights (maybe more if Byzantine), so, to me this seems kind of a limited advantage.

@vicawoo (and others) The downside of the Ballista Elephant is that it's biggest advantage is also its biggest weakness. If you want to attack a stack of units to kill off a certain unit (say a swordsman) that is in a stack containing any mounted (chariots for filler, for example), you can't attack the swordsman, because, the game forces you to "target mounted units outside cities".
So, a CR3 swordsman would make it to attack your city, so, long as this stack contains any mounted to use as "Armor" vs. Ballista Elephants.

ok, the ivory req. is probably the biggest weakness, but, you get the idea.

 

[Ghpstage]

...I think he's a great anti-barb unit. Probably even more than the Skirmisher.

The maths sides with Skirmishers on this front! If both units get the same defensive modifier added then Skirmishers will become more effective at killing melee when they reach +50%, an amount that is trivially easy to get for Archers in this era as just standing in a forest, or on a hill will do it.

 

[plasmacannon]

Numidian cavalry nuff said....

as the worst? really?
I realize they are not the best, but, with their CHA leader requiring them to have fewer xp to gain promotions, and with your barracks and barbs for early xp, including shock, on larger maps, this unit can tackle any barb.
It can easily have 10xp before going into combat vs AIs, and makes a great scout with Sentry.

It is practically a Speed 2 Axeman (without the CR promotions), but, gaining flanking vs cats.

Aside from the UU issue, I like Hannibal's FIN trait and Cothon trade route, and usually don't have problems with the Carthaginians.
Their CHA with Vass+Theo gives me a Combat2 Trireme to defend my clams too.

 

[Lead Paint]

On the whole I think everything's fairly balanced, with good trait combinations often making up for poor UUs or UBs (or vice versa).

For example: Qin/Mao's and Charlemagne's poor Protective trait balanced by Chu-Ko-Nus (which actually get some mileage out of the trait) and Rathaus respectively.

Conversely, the Jaguar (which many believe to be useless) is buffed by Monty's Aggressive trait, and along with being resourceless makes it perfect for an early rush.

There are many others I could name. Did Firaxis deliberately pair up subpar UUs/UBs with solid traits? Almost certainly not. Worked out quite well in the end, though

 

[Iranon]

UUs can be of little use for many reasons: they become available too late, their benefit is too small or too narrow, you require a very small number of them, what's usually the strongest tech path ignores them entirely...
comparing which of these is even more irrelevant than the others isn't terribly useful unless we first hold that all UUs are a benefit. I am not convinced.

Splitting hairs aside (even a strictly better unit isn't; it may still lead to different and less advantageous defender picks), main drawbacks would be increased resource dependence, reduced base strength or the loss of useful abilities. Units that feature those:

Dog Soldier
Vulture
Jaguar Warrior
Praetorian
Numidian Cavalry
Keshik
Samurai
Cataphract

*

Unless someone wants to make a case of them, I'd like to ignore Praetorians and Cataphracts, possibly Vultures and Keshiks as well... those usually provide major advantages any any drawbacks tend to be neglegible to small. Which leaves:

Dog Soldier: Resourceless and stronger against melee, but leaves one without a good unit to take archer-defended cities with. Even later with more classical era units available, regular Axemen may be missed as strong offensive generalists without a counter: Swordsmen struggle with Axemen, Horse Archers with Spearmen, Dog Soldiers with Archers.
I may have had some praise for horseless emergency units to deal with rough starts... but not for a leader who blows a trait and a UB on better archers. Overall, I'd rather have regular Axemen.

Jaguars: Again, we need to make to with reduced strength for a useful combat unit and especially if we could keep an opponent off metal this is annoying. However, we get a persistent promotion, tactical mobility that the AI tends to overlook, a cost reduction, easy healers and, with Montezuma's AGG trait and a good enough generalist to wage resourceless wars (either immediately or supporting catapults).
Swordsmen also require iron rather than either metal, making the resourcelessness a larger advantage. On the whole, I like Jaguars but there were definitely games in which I'd have preferred to turn them in without a refund.

Numidian Cavalry: This one is interesting. Gaining a bonus against its direct counters and coming with Flanking I, these can be thrown at anything without commiting suicide but they don't really win points for cost-effectiveness and they can definitely make Horse Archer wars even more expensive.
Not really sure whether they are better or worse than vanilla Horse Archers, which should make them weaker than any UU with a distinct benefit.

Samurai are no fun at all if you can't build them but have copper. Macemen would have been very helpful in an era where iron is needed for anything else. Still, 2 first strikes and a free promotion is a very solid benefit and in my opinion worth the risk.

 

[vicawoo]

What does everyone think about camel archers?
One usually has Iron and horse resourses, and units upgraded to macemen, by the time Knights become available.
So, vs the AIs, camel archers only improve a knights ability by 15% withdrawl rate.
I don't build many Knights (maybe more if Byzantine), so, to me this seems kind of a limited advantage.

@vicawoo (and others) The downside of the Ballista Elephant is that it's biggest advantage is also its biggest weakness. If you want to attack a stack of units to kill off a certain unit (say a swordsman) that is in a stack containing any mounted (chariots for filler, for example), you can't attack the swordsman, because, the game forces you to "target mounted units outside cities".
So, a CR3 swordsman would make it to attack your city, so, long as this stack contains any mounted to use as "Armor" vs. Ballista Elephants.

ok, the ivory req. is probably the biggest weakness, but, you get the idea.

Ignoring the obvious use of using war elephants to smack down horse archers while avoiding spears,

That might apply if you're severely short on units, not enough to defend, and you can barely counterattack in the field. You would still be better off building a barrage 1 catapult + 10 extra hammers than a war elephant, and hide behind an axeman/archers with walls. The AI doesn't mass chariots either. If they have swords, they're more likely to have more swords or horse archers.

If you want to take out their stack entirely, you're going to have build something to take out the last chariot/swordsman. Just build more elephants, or more axes.

 

[ColossusXXIII]

@ Plasmacannon

Regarding the numidians, all of your points are valid. Maybe they aren't the absolute worst, but they're close. bottom line to me is regular HA with same promos beats a numidian every time. Carthage should have got some sort of elephant unit that has a reduced move cost or double move but minus 1 health. I think it would better represent Hannibal's crossing of the alps. Plus the Roman general scipio africanus defeated hannibal because he didn't have enough elephants to break the roman lines. Not because of a lack of numidian cavalry.

 

[plasmacannon]

@ Plasmacannon

Regarding the numidians, all of your points are valid. Maybe they aren't the absolute worst, but they're close. bottom line to me is regular HA with same promos beats a numidian every time. Carthage should have got some sort of elephant unit that has a reduced move cost or double move but minus 1 health. I think it would better represent Hannibal's crossing of the alps. Plus the Roman general scipio africanus defeated hannibal because he didn't have enough elephants to break the roman lines. Not because of a lack of numidian cavalry.

I agree, HAs can beat NC.
Personally, I would have thought India would have had elephants, as they used them in battles vs. Alexander centuries earlier.
The UU comes in from battles like, the Battle of the Trebia, where, they were used.
Hannibal is famous for his elephants, but, one could argue, that they were not his primary unique unit (and he did lose many in the Alps), and that any Civ could bring war elephants into their army.
Otherwise, Civ could have an Ivory requirement for UU elephants for Khmer, India, Carthrage, and probably other African or Asian Empires where the Elephants are indigenous.

 

[ColossusXXIII]

I always thought the same of India's UU they should have got elephants, or maybe Rajput warriors they were awesome. The fast worker is cool, but I don't really miss them much when playing other civs (I play deity/marathon). And yeah you're right Hannibal did lose many of elephants during his crossing of the alps, but I still regard it as an extremely impressive, cunning and bold military feat... The Romans certainly weren't adequately prepared for it. They ultimately won by counter attacking Carthage so that Hannibal had to lift his siege of the Roman peninsula in order to defend his homeland. That being said I also see your arguments for the Numidian Cav, they were renowned and feared in their time.

 

[Fleme]

Thinking realistically, meaning that how often each UU sees use, a lot of them seem bad.

For example, while the Cataphract is great on paper, it's too deep in an undesirable tech path that I'd ever get it. I don't get any kicks from the Conquistador either because the AI undervalues pikes as defense anyhow. Most UU's are bad and have little impact on the game.

Thinking about bad UUs from the bottom up:

Bowman: Nothing a regular archer cant do.
Dog: While ok defensively, makes rushing way more expensive as you need way more of them.
Phalanx: 1 Spear does a better job as a chariot counter anyhow and it's not a problem to bring 1 spear at any rate.
Hwacha: Anyone remember when you used it for the bonus it has?
Jaguar: Only merit is to get a fast great supermedic but other than that, decreased strenght at the cost of woods mobility, nah.
Gallic: Just opens up an upgrade path that is really not nearly as good as going CR/Combat
Numidian: While they can admittedly be a tad more survivable than your regular horse, they're still subpar because of their decreased str. They do have the benefit of having a free promo which would carry on to upgrades.
Ballista phant: Limited use and basically just your regular phant in most situations.
Landsknecht: A crossbow or a shock mace will do a better job at protecting stack from melee and a regular pike is what you need for horse counter anyhow. Besides, you need a few anti-horse and a few anti-melee in each stack and when the only role of the Landsknecht is to protect, it's wasted money. You still need maces for offense.
Cataphract: Down an undesirable tech path. Great unit, but it's in a bad spot.
Musketeer/Janissary: Musketeers have the application of being a horse stack supermedic and Janissaries can be used for technologically inferior enemies for a limited window. Beyond that, nothing worth writing home for.
Conquistador: The defensive bonus is admittedly a boon to this unit but the melee bonus? Not so much since the AI undervalues pike. Average at best.
Panzer: Bonus is never actualized. Never.
Seal: Comes too late to have an impact and the bonuses are too insignificant for that point of the game to put them over regular marines.

I probably forgot some but the point really is that more than half of the UUs are just plain bad and they don't really do anything for anyone and it is hard to choose which one is the worst.

Edit: Forgot atleast the Camel Archer and the Holkan as well as the Carrack.

 

[Lead Paint]

Tell that to Darius, Mehmed and HC.

Alright, I didn't say it's a hard and fast rule... just pointing out that often (not always), if you look at it from a wider perspective, these things have a way of balancing themselves out.

 

[jwez11007]

@ Fleme

While I agree many UUs have subpar/difficult to leverage abilities, at the end of the day when trying to settle on which one is the worst I prefer to look at which UUs will have little opportunity to leverage their bonuses in the majority of situations or which have no viable strategies to do the same (i.e. guilds beeline for cataphracts/engineering beeline for landsckneckts can be viable). Given the preponderance of unspectacular UUs I feel this is a fair guideline to narrow the field.

That said, that leaves the ballista phant and panzer as possibly seeing no plannable way to leverage the bonus in >99% of games. Every other unit mentioned at least has a niche role it can fulfill in >10% of games. Not that they're necessarily prefered over base units all the time, but that they can be leveraged in some way.

 

[enKage]

What does everyone think about camel archers?
One usually has Iron and horse resourses, and units upgraded to macemen, by the time Knights become available.
So, vs the AIs, camel archers only improve a knights ability by 15% withdrawl rate.
I don't build many Knights (maybe more if Byzantine), so, to me this seems kind of a limited advantage.

@vicawoo (and others) The downside of the Ballista Elephant is that it's biggest advantage is also its biggest weakness. If you want to attack a stack of units to kill off a certain unit (say a swordsman) that is in a stack containing any mounted (chariots for filler, for example), you can't attack the swordsman, because, the game forces you to "target mounted units outside cities".
So, a CR3 swordsman would make it to attack your city, so, long as this stack contains any mounted to use as "Armor" vs. Ballista Elephants.

ok, the ivory req. is probably the biggest weakness, but, you get the idea.

Are nice

If you play Saladin, you often have one of early religions, what means you shuold discover Guilds rather early to get grocers for gold multiplayer.

About CA: Again: they are not worse than base unit - and it is the most important thing. And they work really great on certain types of map - try Oasis - no iron, no horse, as you start in the southern part of map. All other southern nations don't have a liitle chance against you (if they don;t get ivory from the desert part), as well you can easily compete with northern nations.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Camel Archer is OK in most situations. Nothing awesome, but not needing either resource can be huge and the 15% withdrawal, while it may not be a big item, is something.

My considerations would be lower base strength or coming just too late. Lower base strength means weakness against most opponents.

I'd still go with Dogs. SB gets excellent archers for defense and fogbusters and the axe-rush just got a lot harder. It's only an anti-melee unit, albeit resourceless.

Oddly enough, nobody's voted for the Gallic Warrior yet. He's certainly a lower-tier UU and I would have expected some vote for him.

 

[vicawoo]

Camel archers used to have 30% withdrawal before they added in flanking damage, so they had cavalry quality durability.

I'm surprised people dislike late game units so much, when I see lots of players do what TMIT did: have relatively poor early games/great people use, stall to late game, then build lots of infantry/nukes/amphibious assaults/paratroopers and just win flat out through the AI's poor war capabilities or just use the UN.

I'm too awesome to play late game, so for the panzer collateral argument, well if both sides takes collateral damage, you'd probably care more about that bonus.

And as sitting bull, I hate going archery ... because I have dog soldiers. I'd rather have bronze working over archery, so I can chop out my first library/defensive units faster, cottage forested tiles, and occasionally get a super tile.

 

[Farm Boy]

Oddly enough, nobody's voted for the Gallic Warrior yet. He's certainly a lower-tier UU and I would have expected some vote for him.

Well, he isn't great and his U.B. "synergy" is no particular treat, but... it is pretty nice that he can be built with copper.

Granted it is only reduced resource dependence instead of resource free but it's on a typically useful unit and it does not come with a reduced strength penalty. It's not as good as a jaguar but I would still rather have Gallic Warriors than standard swords.