Praetorians!

[Swiss Pauli]

Rome is my learning civ. Keep it simple. Keep it violent.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Magnus60
I agree on the Praetorians, although I think they are misnamed. They should simply be "legions". Praetorians were essentially just the guards of Rome and not the usual field unit. Having said that, I think that the praetorians are the only unit in Civ IV that have any real advantages over other units, especially in the early to middle game. They can wallop anything until maceman and crossbowmen are invented. I have used the Romans to try and win the Prince level because you always fall behind with technology and you need a unit you can get early and will not soon be obsolete.

We can argue about Cossacks and panzers which are nice but by then there are usually good countermeasures for these and they are much harder to build in large numbers unless you are already way ahead. You also need other units for balanced army.

The praetorians are truly great because you can build them almost exclusively and beat most everything. A few catapults makes them hugely dangerous. I personally think this is pretty accurate as they dominated warfare in Europe for about 700 years.

[One_more_turn]

As you go up in difficulty levels, Praetorians are getting ever more important.

[Will9]

Well promoted Praetorians can beat Crossbows. Cover and Combat 3 gets rid of a Crossbows advantage. You would need a very well promoted Praetorian to defeat a Maceman. You would need Shock and Combat 5 to even the odds, but the odds are probably only 55-60% for the Pratorian. If I had a level 7 I wouldn't be risking it like that.

[Prussia]

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli
Keep it simple. Keep it violent.

Words from the Roman Gods.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Common Sensei


Is this a hint that they're getting nerfed in Warlords?

Not in and of themselves, it's suggested that the AI is more likely to build axemen if they find themselves next to the Romans. I think there is a file you can manually tweak to change the build percentages that the AI uses for different units.

[Prussia]

Yeah, you have to agree that Praetorians are so imbalanced you have to make a special AI behavior next to Romans.

[Magnus60]

I think in the new patch/upgrade they made the praetorians slightly more expensive to build didn't they? That would be an admission of their strength as well as change the calculation of any advantage in being Roman.

[Prussia]

Maybe, I'm not sure statistically, but when I play Noble, I can feel how unfair it is that I'm slaughtering city after city after city with my legions.

Kinda fun, though.

[Magnus60]

Yes, but when you go higher than Noble to Prince the praetorian advantage just becomes an equalizer. I've also notice that at the higher level the AI tends to put me on an isolated island so I fall way behind on the tech tree. I couterbalance it by using pangea and the Romans. If the new patch makes 'em more expensive it'll make it even more difficult.

[Prussia]

Well it depends on what kind of map you're using, because if you get stranded on an island somewhere as the Romans, your screwed because your advantage is almost totally destroyed.

This does not really have much to do with this, but I was playing civ 3 once and it was a big map with me and 7 other Civs; nobody knew who the seventh one was, and we were all in mid-industrial era to late midieval ages.

So I was exploring the world when I found the zulu... They had just finished researching the wheel... Naturally, they were obliterated, but I guess being stranded on an island can win the game for you, or totally blow it.

[Magnus60]

I play continents more than anything else, so one can get isolated. The advantage of a continent is that it limits your adjacent civs unlike Pangea where they may declare war from the other side of the world. The trade off is that you can end up alone. I have never seen a game (in Civ III or IV) where being on an island and isolated is an advantage. By the middle of the game you get way behind. It's far worse on the higher levels because you are not only falling behind but the other AI's naturally advance faster, too. The only nice thing about an island is you do not have to fight for city locations and if it's a big island you can get quite large. The trade off again, though is that CIV IV does not make it cost effective to grow too rapidly. I've gone flat broke expanding too quickly.

My point is still that praetorians are an equalizer at higher levels on the same continent. Incidentally, the organized characteristic offsets some of the higher city and expansion costs, too. I personally think they give the AI too many advantages too quickly at the higher levels. They should get ONE change only such as cheaper units or faster tech. Not everything at once.

[Prussia]

Really? I get stranded on an Island all the time and I can keep up or even excell at research, it's just the wonders and such that get to me.

I am a research fanatic and always have to stay on top, so I always (or most of the time) prioritize it into my strategy.

[Vaniver]

Prussia, I normally go for tech as much as I can, and yet the only game I've played where I had more tech and was alone on an island was a game where I disabled tech trading. Otherwise, you've just got your empire against what is most likely the combined brains of all the AI empires (while they lose some due to duplication of research, they're normally either ahead or quite close to you). Of course, if you're just against 3 AIs it's far different than if you're against 13 AIs.

[Prussia]

I guess you have a point, but I rarely trade techs anyways so even if I was on a continent it wouldn't help me.

At least this way, I'm secluded and allowed the chance to build up my empire without having to worry about the politics plagueing the mainland.