note: This is The Column, a part of Apolyton where primarily Markos and Dan write whatever we want :). Well, not just the two of us. The Column is open to everyone. If you feel like writing submit your article to civ2@gamestats.com

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INTRO
A lot has been said about the new unconventional units in C:CTP. But almost were said from people who didn't play the game or just know the exact powers of these units. Having the chance of doing both for some of these units, I'll give out my personal experience of the Slaver, the Cleric and the Lawyer. Since so far I have played on small maps mainly, my games ended at most in the modern ages, I didn't have the chance to see units like the Televangelist or the Corporate Branch in action, but in most cases they replace or act like the units I have seen. Anyway, read on and make your own conclusions...

I'LL BE YOUR SLAVE :)
Slavers exist from the very beginning of the game. They can capture slaves from cities, after battles or settlers. It's a bit rare to find alone settlers in the open, and you don't always succeed on a city(especially on a city with city walls you have no chance), so perhaps the best way (and certainly the most fun one, if you can find fun in the idea of capturing slaves) is to have a slaver in your unit stacks. When your stack wins a battle you gain a slave. Slaves can help you a lot, but you must the be one to build the Emancipation wonder. If someone else does, you'll have cities rioting or even revolting. However, slavers and slaves will not always be in the game. It seems that only a AI-controlled Civ with the Slaver personality will use slavers. AI's with Militaristic or Religious personalities will use other strategies. For example...

THE TOUCH OF GOD
...a religious AI will research Theocracy and send Clerics to convert your cities to the "only true religion". A converted city will send 20% of it's gold to the AI's Civ. The interesting part in this is that in order to release a city from the conversion you have to pay a lot of gold(for that time period) and if you go to war with that Civ, the converted cities will be very unhappy. Even if you have a Theocracy too, you can't convert your own cities to your own religion, so you're stuck with it until the enemy Civ changes it's government type or if you build the Guteenberg's Bible wonder which eliminates conversion in your cities only. To defend yourself, you can built city walls to half the success chances, and have a couple diplomats "patrolling" your area for incoming clerics. And because offence is the best defense, you can switch to Theocracy (which is also better than Monarchy as a government type) and convert your enemies cities to your religion. This way you might end up getting more money from your enemy than he gets from you!

FACING LAW
From the law of God to the law of man. The Lawyer unit could be declared the "most discussed and less important" unit of CTP. It can stop the production of a city for one(!) turn, making it useful only in cases of holding the building of a wonder. Probably it's more important function is to spot and defend against Corporate Branch units and release franchised cities (the Corporate Branch unit can create a franchise in a city, sending the 50% of the city's production back it's Civ). I have only used the Lawyer for test reasons, and the AI haven't used them against me so far, but that's probably it tries to built defensive units :)

AN END
Yes, an end. It's time to end this column, it's gotten a bit big and I have other important things to play, errr, I mean work on. The point of this column? Well, it would probably be: don't say something sucks until you play it and don't say something is not important until you play it a lot. So, if you'll excuse me, I have to do some experiments with the lawyer unit... :)

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS or GameStats. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.