What Units DON'T You Build?

[Krill]

If you beeline for ele you can get them before anyone else gets anywhere near maces, and there is pretty much nothing that kills ele/axe/cat stacks (apart from catting them yourself, then hitting with HA (flanking 2 or combat 2, which ever is better)) then cleaning up with axes. Though generally requires more hammers invested in your army than the attacking army, purely due to the ele.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by fed1943
Explorers make the best Medics, IMO

Can Explorers get Woodsmen III?

Regardless, without being able to get free XP by picking off the occasional wounded unit, it's not easy to promote an explorer to Medic III and Woodsmen III.

Wodan

[johnmcd]

Machine guns are great. They are immune to collateral damage. That's very powerful indeed.

[Kuciwalker]

I stopped reading at Catapults. WTF?

I should have stopped at Archers...

[Cartimandua]

But elephants are my favorite! They make the best mascots! I usually build at least one or two in every city if I have them and I keep them forever, right alongside my lovely modern troops

[The Priest]

Catapults, warriors and muskets.

Catapults, not because they are not good, but somehow that is a point in teh game when I am focused on building up my infrastrcuture etc. That part of the tech tree has lots of other things to build. Also that moment is one when I find war difficult. Earlier the cultural defenses of a city are still weak, later trebs make cities take-able again. In between, the age of the catapult, war never works for me.

Warriors, I find that I don't need military until the point when I have archers. I hate the sense of wasted units. Warriors aren't really going to do the business once you have axes etc. around. So skip them and go straight to archers. In SP it normally works fine.

Muskets. They just don't seem to appeal. To much of an all-rounder maybe. Longbows are still fine for city defence. Maces and knights seem better for attack. Illogical probably but there you are.

And I definitely support the explorer medics. The reason for explorers rather than a combat until as medic is that the explorers low strength means it will never defend, and hence not be destroyed. This is particularly important if you are using a GG for a medic. Stick it on a powerful unit, and if that stack is attacked you find your medic on the front line.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Shalkai
Stuff I don't like and hardly ever build...

Antitank. I do use these once in a while. But it will be like two AT in my whole empire. They have very, very limited usefulness. You can almost never attack with them, because you don't find tanks alone that often. AT doesn't even get to defend against tanks too often, because of that low base 14 Str.

In a game that's going to go long enough for MIs to play a role, I build lots of AT, simply for the free Ambush promotion when they upgrade. On its own, though, I agree with you.

[prelynmax]

Re: What Units DON'T You Build?

Originally posted by egavactip
This is a spin-off of the worst non-UU unit thread. I am curious which units you personally tend to ignore, forget about, dislike, bypass, etc.

Here are some of mine:

-Archer. While archers can be very useful, I tend to try to go for axemen et al as soon as possible, which can be useful for both offense and defense, so researching archers is something I often don't want to take the time to do. If I can get them in a trade or free tech or something, great, but otherwise, I will typically grin and bear it with warriors until I get me some Axemen.

So I can easy take over your cities, because Archers are your main line of city defense.

-Horsies (chariots, horse archers, knights, cavalry). In some specific circumstances in particular games, I may build some, like some chariots to help deal with barbarians, or horse archers if I end up in an early crappy metal-poor area. However, the lack of defensive ability of these units means that their dual use ability is quite limited and usually there are non-horse units that are close enough to their offensive advantages that I don't feel the loss for them.

-Elephants. All the disadvantages mentioned above, plus they are slow.

The main advantages are that they are strong, espeically against axemen and warriors.

-Catapults. I typically prefer to wait until I get trebuchets. And early on, some pumped up axemen or macemen don't really need catapults all that much, not against archers and axemen and the like. It's not until you get nasty bowmen or a protective opponent that you start feeling the need for some artillery.

That means you'll wait until trebuchets until my axemen/horse archer stacks are attacking your cities for you to return the favor.

-explorers. I don't understand why these are even in the game.

Ok, I'm going to have to agree with you there. By the time explorers are avaliable, most of the world is already explored.

-triremes. I built one last night to chase away a pesky pirate ship. That's about all I ever do with them.

So that means YOU HAVE NO WARSHIPS, since Tiremes are you main line of aquaric offense.

OK OK OK, I'm done reading your garbage, since you're obviously a noob.

[Bkeela]

Horse archers and explorers.

The first post is absurd. What units do you build for crying out loud? I don't see how an early conquest can be achieved without horses in the form of chariots and cavalry.

[MyOlde]

Super49er: can you explain how you use MGs to defend your coasts, please?

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by MyOlde
Super49er: can you explain how you use MGs to defend your coasts, please?

Simple. I put them in every coastal city to protect against amphibious AI attacks.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Bkeela
Horse archers and explorers.

The first post is absurd. What units do you build for crying out loud? I don't see how an early conquest can be achieved without horses in the form of chariots and cavalry.

Um, axes and sworsd? Or, archers and archers. Really depends on what you mean by 'early conquest'. Some games I build few horsed units (although in BtS this is much rarer), just depends on what resources you have... although certainly horse archers are useful in some instances (and more so with catapults being flanked now).

[Ming]

Now that Horse Archers can flank cats, they are higher up on my scale to build. In the past, I would really only build them if I had no choice early (no metal). But since they really aren't the best for taking out cities, I only built them when needed and kept a few for defensive purposes.

Now, I don't mind having a stack of them around to counter cats. Granted, I would prefer having some Ele's, but you need ivory for those.

[Bkeela]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Um, axes and sworsd? Or, archers and archers. Really depends on what you mean by 'early conquest'. Some games I build few horsed units (although in BtS this is much rarer), just depends on what resources you have... although certainly horse archers are useful in some instances (and more so with catapults being flanked now).

Axes and swords are fine for the first couple of wars, but I can't imagine just using Riflemen and Grenadiers to wage later wars. Calvary are decisive in my opinion.

[Ming]

My wars are based around key units after the start.

My first war is whatever real unit I can find to do a rush.
Probably axeman or maybe chariots. It also could be an early UU like a Quechua, war chariot or dog soldier.

After that, the arrival of swordsman provides the next war. I may complete the war before cats, or cats may join the tail end of the war. It may include el's if I have ivory.

After that, bring on the maceman to start the next war.
Mace/cats is pretty unstopable.

The next wars is brought on by tribs. They nicely handle the longbowman.

Then comes cannons.

Calvary is the next war maker.

After that Infantry.

And last... assuming anybody is still left, the tank slaughter