Jaguars

[Blake]

I'm really disappointed by this UU. What exactly is it meant to do? Be a fallback if you get no copper?

Axeman: 5 strength, 35 hammers. +50% vs melee.

Jaguar: 5 strength, 40 hammers. +10% vs cities. +25% Jungle Defense.

Given the choice, I'm going to build Axes every time.

As far as I can tell, it's only purpose is for a one-dimensional iron working rush, beeline straight to iron working, don't bother with wheel. Build mines, train jaguars and go for the kill...

But somehow every game as Aztecs I manage to get copper, often on a river so I don't even need roads to connect it.

But is my assessment right, Jaguars are only for a 1-diminsional rush or for those unlucky enough to have no copper/iron?

[Ansaga]

Your right, the Jaguar is WEAK. Probably worst UU in Civ4

[Aeson]

I think Jaguars are one of the better UU's.

[asleepathewheel]

Standard Map
Pangea
18 civs
Aztecs

Build a worker and barracks while beelining towards ironworking. A real trip of a game.

[khumak]

I actually have a lot of games where there's no copper in sight and up until my latest game I was cursed by 4 games in a row with zero copper and zero iron on my entire continent. Needless to say I took the time to research that deadend horse archer tech path in those games... Trying to defend against barbarian axemen when all you have is warriors and chariots is utter folly. Personally I don't think the map generator should allow a player to start in a location without access to either iron or copper but maybe it checks for horses as well because I've never had a game where I lacked all 3.

[xxFlukexx]

Going straight for iron working and mass producing Jaguars(chopping + slavery) is a decent rush. A Raider I Jaguar can just barely beat an archer. If 40% and 60% tile defenses and archer promotions come in, you are in serious trouble, you can't beat those unless you bring 2-1 numbers, and that's way too expensive. A city built on hills will stop your arnmy in their tracks unless you get lucky. Axeman absolutely crush the jaguar, by the time you get ~4-5 to an enemy city you will probably see a couple axeman, so you need to have more jaguars on the way to replace losses.

Problem is that your econ is going straight down the tubes with this unless you get extremely lucky on goodie huts and get free techs. Even if you kill one enemy civ, you'll probably be close to the bottom on points, an army that is worthless against the rest of the AIs, and a bunch of cities with almost nothing in them. If you can grab 2-3 free workers then get those cities running productively quickly you can climb back to the top points-wise.

So I'd give the Jaguar rush a C-, I mean it works, I don't think it'll be effective in MP games and it doesn't give you a very big advantage in SP games. And the jaguar is *only* useful in this capacity. The way the AI uses the jaguar(as a swordsman) is completely wrong and useless. I would much rather grab a second city and animal husbantry and the wheel and pray for iron, even have a settler waiting for you to research iron working, then found a city near wherever iron appears.

The Jaguar is definetly near the bottom in my listing of UUs.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
I think Jaguars are one of the better UU's.

I agree.

DeepO

[Blake]

Why not, justify those pro-jaguar comments .

As far as I can see they are one-trick ponies and I'd rather normal swords (and the civ traits do NOT make up for not having normal swords). If they are one-trick ponies then... just come out and say it?

[Krill]

Well...what happens if the RNG screws you over? What if you researched the religion techs first, or the worker techs while you build a worker at size 1 or 2, knowing full well that you would have the ability to produce swords no matter what happens with resources?

You see, the jags allows you to build up instead of out, where you would be trying to get Iron. With the jag, you don't have to research straight to IW to have a good chance of using it. You can use it anyway, with out iron.


Ever used jags in MP? they can be quite devastating there...

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Blake
Why not, justify those pro-jaguar comments .

As far as I can see they are one-trick ponies and I'd rather normal swords (and the civ traits do NOT make up for not having normal swords). If they are one-trick ponies then... just come out and say it?

I agree with Aeson and DeepO. Since they are uncharasterically silent on reasoning I'll guess their thoughts.

The jaguars are kind of a one (or one and a half) trick pony, but its a good trick. You compared axes with jaguars, but it's really swords that are the comparator. Swords require iron, not copper or iron, and the jaguar needs only the tech not the resource. This also means you can have lots of them very early. This is at least worth half a trick more.

Remember early on archers will defend with 3*(1+0.4+0.25+0.5) with no upgrades. Every little attack bonus helps.

[xxFlukexx]

Originally posted by Krill
Well...what happens if the RNG screws you over? What if you researched the religion techs first, or the worker techs while you build a worker at size 1 or 2, knowing full well that you would have the ability to produce swords no matter what happens with resources?

You see, the jags allows you to build up instead of out, where you would be trying to get Iron. With the jag, you don't have to research straight to IW to have a good chance of using it. You can use it anyway, with out iron.


Ever used jags in MP? they can be quite devastating there...

If you don't get iron eventually in the early game you are pretty much screwed over military-wise in classical/medieval, jaguar or not. No pikemen, no crossbows, no knights, no cannons, no frigates.

Errrr, give me a situation where you don't hit IW very fast and Jags are useful please. And you can't produce swords without iron, you can produce *jaguars* without iron which are weaker than swordsmen. If you wait too long, you will find walls+cultural defense which mean now you need catapults.....

No I don't play MP, but if I was going to rush in MP I'd do a quechua or a warchariot/immortal rush over a jag rush. I would guess that people who play mp are smart so they hook up copper asap to counter chariot rushes.

Fact is the later you wait on jags, the more of a chance your opponents have copper hooked up and once they have copper hooked up they should be making axemen and spearmen. Axemen are cheap and great for killing barbarians and great for killing enemy swordsmen. I always get copper hooked up asap and I am in no way a guru of this game yet, I expect the good MP people to do more than what I do faster than I do.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
Why not, justify those pro-jaguar comments .

"I think". Doesn't require justification, it's my opinion and was offered as such.

You already stated the reasons why I think Jaguars are one of the better UUs. We differ on our assessment of the value of "1-diminsional rush or for those unlucky enough to have no copper/iron".

I didn't think it was required to explain the blindingly obvious to you, but now I can see I was wrong about that. If you still don't understand why, you can ask me for further clarification.

[Blake]

No... opinions are "I feel" :P.

[Bobby Chicken]

Blitzing Iron Working takes under 20 turns. Even on a continent with copper, they can still pick off poorly defended cities, which will be common unill probably at least 40 turns into the game. With a copperless continent, it doesn't take much at all to see the advantage there.

[Bobby Chicken]

Oh, I think musketeers are the worst special unit. Does anybody see any value to them?