Using "hopeless" leaders

[Akaoz]

Also, I seem to NEVER get Horses, and then the French UU is a godsend

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by Solver
So, Napoleon's Musketeers are the better units vs. Longbowmen. Just as fast as Knights, a bit cheaper, and as shown above stronger.

...

Maybe it's worthwhile even to consider ignoring ignoring Knights and just going for Gunpowder with Napoleon, and excecuting a massive Musketeer-attack there.

Remember that Knights are immune to 1st strikes, so that boosts them vs bowmen. And they upgrade to Cav, of course.

So I'd build one round of Knights while researching gunpowder then concentrate on Musketeers, maybe upgrading some strong melee units to kickstart the attack.

This is fine in theory, but I'll admit to not trying it out yet!

[JereL]

I like Bismark. He's pretty suited to me liking to build wonders and the +2 health helps getting cities to grow. He starts with hunting and mining which both are nice to have, especially mining since the starting city site will probably have 1-2 minable hills. The special unit comes along a little late in the game but can turn things around quickly. The last game I played on prince I was doing pretty well but noticed that Huyana Capac on the other continent was ahead in tech so I had to go for domination victory since he was already building space ship parts. The panzers rolled over 3 AI players and the game ended just as my modern armor was starting to make it's way into Inca territory.

[LzPrst]

bismarck crappy? NEIN!

I would claim that no leader is horribly bad or nerfed.
its all about play style. Bismarck is superb for having a powerful military and building a lot of wonders. the cheap granary increases your growth early, the cheap forge increases your production. bismarck is supposed to be played for maximum production, in other words, large cities with lots of shields (oops. sorry, hammers).

now that production can be used to build military, wonders, improvements, or even science\culture.

imagine early game with bismarck where he has some hills and decent food production (some flood plains or food resources) (ideally stone as well). toss up a granary and get growth going, toss up the pyramids early, switch to representation and get +3 happy in your cities allowing for extra growth. now you have +3 happy and +2 health. allowing for larger cities than most of your competitors.

play to the strengths of a civ and you will see them competitive with just about all others.

[couerdelion]

Didn't get very far with this yesterday. It gave me a starting position with 11 floodplains and I spent too much time struggling with this.

I'll hope for a more "normal" starting point today.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Didn't get very far with this yesterday. It gave me a starting position with 11 floodplains and I spent too much time struggling with this.

I'll hope for a more "normal" starting point today.

Sounds like cottage heaven!

What the level and speed you're going for?

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli


Sounds like cottage heaven!

What the level and speed you're going for?

11 Floodplains = 3 unhealthiness. With rivers and forest I had scope for growing to size 2 before future growth starts to create unhealthiness penalties.

And I soon realised that the forests had to stay so I lose the ability to chop around the capital.

In short, there can be too much of a good thing

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I still think Bismarck is one of the worst although his traits do gel a little better than some others. His unique unit is garbage. I only play on monarch+ where I think Industrious is pretty close to useless, so I try to avoid anyone with this trait. Exansive is nice, but I'd rather have something else. On prince and below he can dominate, but above that hes pretty weak.

[uberfish]

Wow, no idea how Industrious got such bad press.

On any level below deity you can make what I call the Industrious GP farm with National Epic + a bunch of wonders in the same city. Pyramids? No stone? No problem.

Also, you get cheap Forges (and cheap heroic epic) to boost your production whether you're building wonders or military. Bismarck's expansive then negates the forge health penalty, while Napoleon can keep one city focused on wonders and still have as large an army as everyone else.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Wow, no idea how Industrious got such bad press.

Hehe, its probably just me. Most people seem to like it. I tend to put very little focus on wonder building.

[JackRudd]

The Panzer is garbage?

*coughs, splutters, sends Panzers up against everyone else's Tanks*

[Blake]

Panzer meets Gunship *coughs splutters dies*.

The top notch UU's are ones like Praets and Cossacks with no natural enemies. Garbage ones are ones like Panzers with lower-tech counters.

Also good are UU's that are better at what they normally do, like Samuari's (city busters) and Phalanxs (mounted unit busters). Well Tanks are presumably city busters at heart, but panzies are only better at skirmishing with *other tanks*.

To be fair - Panzers do make it very hard to attack a German player, since tank stacks will be massacered. But it's no biggy, since Panzers will get smashinated if they try to invade - the combination of airpower and rails + artillery makes very short work of invading panzies. And herein lies the problem - if you havn't already won by the time you get panzies, they aren't going to help you win, at best they can only delay the inevitable, and at worst otherwise they wont speed up victory because the enemy doesn't have any tanks anyway - the Panzer bonus is ONLY against tanks, which is fairly unique for a UU. Most UU's at least get extra strength, first strikes or retreat chance or something, so that they are better in all fights than their base unit. No such luck for the panzies. (other UU's without generic boosts are the Quechua, Jaguar, Conquistador and Musketeer)

[Yosho]

I don't know why Alexander gets such flack. He has two of the best all-around traits, and does just fine with any standard mixed millitary/economy stratagy.

[Blake]

I agree. Alexander is in my top 4-5. His traits don't work together in a spectacular way, but they are both solid standalone traits.

My usual Alex style is to subsidize rampant warmongering with settled great people. The UU is also very solid, formation Phalanx's can handle any mounted unit in the game except Cavalry (and conquistadors), while Spearmen (especially non-aggressive spearmen) falter against elephants. In short, Phalanx's have fantastic longlivity.

I might prefer a city-raider upgraded UU, but since spearmen are 100% essential (unlike say, Crossbows or Macemen) it's certainly not a bad UU - you'll get guaranteed milage out of them, can't ask more than that.

[Swiss Pauli]

Started a trial with boney last night (monarch/epic) and after a couple of rerolls got an OK start (low on hammers but that's hardly unusual).

Was going for an Oracle slingshot and was shocked to found Bhuddism in 2200BC. Decided on a CS sling to fund research (as opposed to farseer for production).

The fun part will be dealing with my near nieghbours - Alex, Toku and Cathy. Roosey, Cyrus and Mao lie on the far side of Cathy and Toku. I've annoyed Cathy by not giving her pottery and Toku has picked up Bhuddism from Alex. Looks like I'll need to get back in Cathy's good books ASAP.