Your favourite units?

[DocRock]

So I gave Domination victory another shot and I wonder - what are your favourite units? In civ 5, we all beelined to certain UU, Xbows, Bombers or Artillery.

But now? Crossbows seem good, but mounted units destroy them pretty easily. Also if city defense upgrades to cannon (which is pretty much around the corner), they get oneshot by the city defense which is a bit sad.

Knights maybe? They are good I guess, haven't found a downside. Decent speed, good attack even against cities... how about Cavalry?

Or do you even use siege units? Catapults seem useless as always, given that an Archer can do the same. But the later mortars seem not too shabby.

So is there a slightly overpowered unit beelining is worth for?

 

[redwings1340]

If you have a good costal setup, frigates are possibly even better than they were in V. If you have frigates and your opponents on the other continent doesn't, your opponent is in trouble. There's definitely a window where your frigates are simply massively better than your opponents walls.

Early game I've found horsemen are insanely good, though they drop off in usefulness eventually. Still, with a good early game production setup, you can eliminate a couple civs before they do. I've also found that one or two catapults can still be useful, they are better than archers at taking cities.

Knights are pretty useful, I managed to break a stalemate in a war against sythia with some arabian UUs. Late game, nuclear missiles are insanely op if you can get a few of them produced. The niter based units also seem pretty strong if you can get a fair number of them.

 

[teakbois]

Horsemen. lots and lots and lots of Horsemen. They are a great value in the modern era. -the AI

In all seriousness, Catapults are far from useless. They do more damage to cities then archers or even xbows.

 

[redwings1340]

Horsemen. lots and lots and lots of Horsemen. They are a great value in the modern era. -the AI

lol, accurate

 

[3 EMS]

Bombards. 2 bombards linked together with a blimp and you can bring a city down in a turn or two. Well, with two melee units.

 

[Solitude]

So far i´d say Cossak and Mamluk´s are my favorite choices.

edit: Oh and the Battleship. Total nightmare for cities close to the sea.

 

[UponATime]

Legions take the palm for me. You can spam warriors in the early turns without worrying about iron scarcity, a handful can take a walled up city in two turns without needing too much support AND they can chop forests to produce even more of them in your newly conquered city!
I've got to say, I have a hard time going back to other civs after enjoying Rome so much. I'm new to deity and they have been my bread and butter.

 

[HeliosDisciple]

Egypt's chariots are really nice, especially how they upgrade to xbows now instead of knights.

 

[Promethian]

Spearmen/Hoplites. If you are wondering why look at the tier 2 promotions.

 

[Ozisl]

Legions are kinda boring (compared to some of the flamboyant unique units), but effective.

I always like mechanized infantry.

For new stuff, the battering ram/siege tower are the great.

 

[DocRock]

So the UUs are where to look now? Horsemen unfortunately have a serious caveat: they need horses. In my 5 games so far I never ever started with horses in my starting area.

So there is nothing really in the medieval-industrial time that stands out and is not a UU? Gotta check Bombards though.

 

[redwings1340]

Field cannons, muskets, and bombards aren't bad, I think they're just a victim of timing here. I generally get them during rebuilding periods, when I'm done with my initial conquering spree, and getting enough of an economy to use them is pretty difficult. It's easy to amass an army of horsemen early because they're cheap, but you need some trade routes and commercial districts to upgrade beyond crossbows, and are about the time you are probably getting an industrial district empire online. They also come at a time where city defenses start to increase rapidly, early game you can march up against a city without worrying too much, late game cities start to behave more like their civ V counterparts unless you come in with nukes.

 

[Ozisl]

Which is why I prefer marathon+ (with mods) game modes, it really makes the middle ages more important and involved.

But you know horsemen are great; the AI keeps offering them to trade for uranium.

 

[DocRock]

Yes well, at the moment I'm only playing at Immortal and I think an archer rush is pretty difficult because your enemies will have their warrior carpet of doom ready pretty early. While they cannot harm you because the AI is too dumb, it still takes ages to cross the terrain and usually a big barb wave is also coming from the other side. If they make it to heavy Chariots in time, they will just rush buy those and overrun your archers. And that happens pretty fast with the bonus techs from Immortal.

So you are basically stuck with Horsemen, which you can only build efficiently when one of your first cities has horses.

I think (besides UU), you usually get another good window of opportunity with beelined Crossbows, but this only lasts until Knights show up.

 

[achiafo]

Surprised nobody has mentioned the Varu yet. Everyone loves horsemen so much, why not use the UU replacement? A full 10 points stronger, and they give all enemies adjacent to them -5 strength. And yes, this does stack. So if you can get them to flank your enemy's front line, they are amazing shock troops.

And yes. I am fully aware they cost 50% more hammers/gold than their horseman counterparts. However, the caveat is that they do not require horses...

As far as vanilla units go, I actually like the anti-calvary units a lot. I'm not sure why. It's probably because they have such low cost and maintenance costs compared to their horsey and infantry counterparts. Oh, and you *never* need strategic resources to build them. Throughout their entire upgrade path.

 

[Shorlin]

For new stuff, the battering ram/siege tower are the great.

What scenario do you use each of these? I'm guessing ram for mix of melee/range, and siege tower for pure melee?

 

[criZp]

Spearmen/Hoplites. If you are wondering why look at the tier 2 promotions.

Does adding a battering ram to a spearman really make it strenght 50 and to a pikeman strenght 82? I have such difficulty imagining this to be true.

 

[GlobalTree]

Surprised nobody has mentioned the Varu yet. Everyone loves horsemen so much, why not use the UU replacement? A full 10 points stronger, and they give all enemies adjacent to them -5 strength. And yes, this does stack. So if you can get them to flank your enemy's front line, they are amazing shock troops.

And yes. I am fully aware they cost 50% more hammers/gold than their horseman counterparts. However, the caveat is that they do not require horses...

As far as vanilla units go, I actually like the anti-calvary units a lot. I'm not sure why. It's probably because they have such low cost and maintenance costs compared to their horsey and infantry counterparts. Oh, and you *never* need strategic resources to build them. Throughout their entire upgrade path.

because they have only 2 movement points for a cav imo it needs atleast 3 to be viable

 

[orasis]

Archers, but that's because they are OP at the moment.

 

[Sagax]

Can I squeeze in a vote for.......observation balloons? Because bombarding from 5+ tiles away is awesome.