Highest Experienced Unit

[Dominae]

I got a Cho-Ku-No above 37XP in my latest game. It had Drill IV and Combat II (or maybe Combat I and Shock I). That's 5-8 First Strikes! Felt like I had an Army from good old Civ3...

[Silbeg]

Best I was able to pull off was a War Elephant that made it to 27xp - the last few were a bit tough, since Isabella had Conquistadors by then... eventually turned him into a cavalry (he was my early medic unit... so really valuable)

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Dominae
I got a Cho-Ku-No above 37XP in my latest game. It had Drill IV and Combat II (or maybe Combat I and Shock I). That's 5-8 First Strikes! Felt like I had an Army from good old Civ3...

I still don't have a feel for the value of first strikes. Sometimes I give them to longbowmen instead of garrison promos. I've given them to crossbows before. But given the usual AI unit composition, I usually hardly have any use for crossbows. I'll build a couple, but that's it. Mostly cats/macemen/pikes (and kniggots, if I have horses).

-Arrian

[Dominae]

I prefer Drill to the city defense promo, because I try my best to avoid situations where the AI is directly attacking my cities. It takes its time to pillage improvements first, which I hate, so most of the time I meet its units in the field with the appropriate counters.

You get more Experience for attacking than defending, so unless I'm facing very mixed stacks I try to lure the AI onto flat land and let my counters have their way. The city defense promo does not help in this regard.

Crossbowmen are nice because they kill enemy Macemen. Unless you have Ivory or Knights, without Crossbows your best counter is Macemen, and those are not good odds. Macemen are better than Crossbowmen if you're fighting against Ancient/Classical era troops, but if you're in a Medieval/Medieval war I would use Crossbowmen instead, promoting Macemen with City Raider almost exclusively.

[Arrian]

True, true. I think I've just run into a lot of mounted AI attacks, and spend most of my time on defense using pikes to kill their mounted guys and maceman to kill their axes/catapults (yes, I note "axes" not "maces"). Then I go on the offensive and again want maces, with pikes for cover. I'll bring a crossbow along, sure, but I haven't run into the perfect situation to use a lot of them yet.

-Arrian

[ghen]

I routinely get one or two units up to the 37ish level and then upgrade them which drops xp down to 10. This often happens when I upgrade to calvalry and go on a killing spree.. I love my wars

[Thedrin]

I parked a stack of axemen outside one of the ice-starting Indians main cities. I only used one guy to attack the city - letting him heal and attack in a cycle that lasted centuries (marathon mode). The remainder where there to keep the lead guy safe.

106

Promotions:
Combat I (Mongol starting trait)
Combat II
Combat III
Combat IV
Combat V
City Attack I
City Attack II
City Attack III
Cover
Shock
March (If I had realised how effective this promotion would have made the tactic I would have gotten it a lot sooner.

In truth this tactic only took him from about 20 something to 80 something. His earlier promotions (Combat I, City Attacks I - III and Cover) convinced me to try it out. His last set of experience points gained from going to genocide against the Indians.

After the war I naively upgraded him to a maceman. I could have cried.

Yoink.

[Arrian]

That's pretty cool, but I'd almost rather I didn't have such a unit. If I lost it, how much would that suck?

-Arrian

[Thedrin]

Yeah, the game becomes more about having a great unit than having a great civilisation.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Dominae
I got a Cho-Ku-No above 37XP in my latest game. It had Drill IV and Combat II (or maybe Combat I and Shock I). That's 5-8 First Strikes! Felt like I had an Army from good old Civ3...

I got a Crossbowman close to that (at around 30 XP, so one promotion less). Those guys with Drill III or Drill IV are invaluable when melee units need to be dispatched, almost never needing to rest.

[One_more_turn]

My highest is a 35xp Tank. You can get 14xp right from the start by having Barracks, the Pentagon, the West Point, Vassalage, and Theocracy. Since the Tank always has the Blitz promotion, it has far more opportunities to attack, and I often use Tank to pick on weakened Artillery and Riflemen units to gain easy xps. Having 1/3 of your tanks with Barrage promotions can help a lot too.

[maholic]

i got a cavalry upto 91 experience, (level 10)

it was like a tank as it got blitz, had combat 4 and flanking and anti archer and a few other things

it died attacking an injured elephant

(i groomed it by having it attack the last unit in an enemy city which had defeated a previous unit of mine and was injured etc)

this was on a marathon 18 civ huge map pangea game

(those marathon games are great for experienced units

[Sir Og]

My best unit was a level 7 Cossak. He had less than 50 experience when I promoted him to Gunship.

[madmaxxam]

I got a Samurai up to 102 experience, he was quite the badass too. I got him up there completely in a war vs. the Romans. The best they had was swordsmen, and after the initial clash of huge armies he just happened to be one of the high exp. units left alive with like 25 exp. After that I got him commando and march and gave him special missions pillaging and harassing the Romans, only choosing pretty safe battles. This was also on Marathon which helped. Then, much later, he was upgraded to an infantry (with all str. upgrades, commando, march, and all three city raiders, in addition to +against mounted). He was kicking ass until he died. I think in a previous game I had one unit (a tank) with about 40 exp. Other than that they usually don't make it past the promotion at 26.

[Dauphin]

Best I've had is 20 for a scout, 5 from barb animal attacks and 15 from huts. I've had stacks of knights all upto around 17 before.

I find Raging barbs helpful to get most units up to a 10 (on noble level) before you even go on your first campaign against an AI civ.