Jaguar Warrior: Would this be balanced?

[Jaguar]

Umm, this thread has no posts. As in not even an opening post. How odd.

[player1]

Strange...


Then I'll repost it:

If Jaguar Warrior (the unit) would keep current stats
1.1.2, cost 15, but added an extra 1hp.

Would it be too much.
Or will it remain balanced?

[ErikM]

Definitely not!

An extra HP is worth a lot, especially on the move-2 unit. And I understand that they will keep their extra HP after upgrading to swordsman, right?

Frankly, I don't see what was wrong with old 10-shield Jags. Good unit, true, but it comes bundled with a very early GA, so I don't think it was overpowering.

[player1]

No, extra hp is not kept of course.


P.S.
Well, if 10shield version is OK, then this one is weak.

[LzPrst]

jaguar warriors are a hopeless UU
by the time you've got a few to attack your enemy with their obsolete cause the enemy spearmen will thump your rear end all the way back to the chichen iza.
not to mention if you end up next to, say... Carthage! or Greece, or sumer, or babylon, or (the list goes on)

[Fried-Psitalon]

The old Jaguar Warrior in the PTW environment was fundamentally unbalanced - in the MP environment (and indeed any "equal start" environment) there was a distinct probability of a mathematically provable unstoppable kill on tiny and small maps. The debate in the Conquests beta RAGED over this topic, however the MP community won out largely because we simply offered repeated clear lessons in why this UU was unbalanced.... by bludgeoning people to death with it repeatedly. Starting with a forest (especially game forest!) and building in the worker meant you could have 10 jags before the other guy had more than 3 warriors, 2 of which were probably out exploring - flatline.

As it stands now, the Aztec civ is still *very* strong in MP - mass numbers of veteran jags can easily overwhelm one opponent if played right - AGR makes the typically smaller number of Aztec cities grow faster, which more than compensates for the 5 shield increase. True, this may seriously jepoardize the Aztec player's future if done wrong, but "being the one the Aztecs pick on" isn't fun either.

If you're talking SP, by all means add the HP to the jag. If you're talking MP mod - leave it alone, it's still one of the most coveted civs around.

The reason the majority of the SP community doesn't view the jag this way is simple: the idea of sacrificing ultra-early growth for military production is bordering on heretical. However, rest assured that the idea DOES work - and Jag rushing is the "archer rush" idea expanded, and done with style.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
The old Jaguar Warrior in the PTW environment was fundamentally unbalanced - in the MP environment (and indeed any "equal start" environment) there was a distinct probability of a mathematically provable unstoppable kill on tiny and small maps.

I would like to see this proof! Link?

How do you get 10 jags before the other guy has 3 warriors? They are the same price and Aztecs never were industrious, so I fail to see what difference a forest would make. Unless you find the other guy very early and pillage him to death, which is of course a possibility but not a certainty (depends on the map size though).

This is not to say that I disagree that Jags were strong in MP. In a competitive MP setting, all other things being equal, a fast unit that can initiate a GA would give an (possibly decisive) advantage.

On Demi+, though, those few JWs one can muster in the early going are not going to dent AIs. One might kill a couple of settler escorts with them, but it comes with a price tag of a ridiculously early despotic GA. Worker hunting is their only strong suit, but again on Demi+ it may or may not be feasible.

Below Demi they are effective - just as pretty much any other unit against the AI.

So I agree that utility of Jags depends on game setting, but on average I don't think they are decisively better than other UUs. At 15 shields they are pretty weak in SP.

[Aeson]

Jags are still very powerful at 15 shields in SP. Small and Tiny Pangaea maps aside, I would rather play the C3C Aztecs with 15 shield Jags and the Agricultural trait than the Civ/PtW Aztecs with 10 shield Jags and no Agricultural trait.

[Aeson]

How do you get 10 jags before the other guy has 3 warriors?

It's not quite 10:3, but close.

It's a gambit where you have 2 tiles that produce 2 shields each. Add the starting Worker, and your city now has 5 shields a turn. At 10 shields, you get a Jag every other turn.

Now you'd almost have to be insane to try this with anyone but the Aztecs (or maybe Sumeria, but they didn't exist in Civ/PtW), so everyone else is doing things normally. Given the same terrain, the other civ is probably producing 2 or 3 shields per turn. They will want to be growing, so probably not use Forests which are the most common 2 shield tiles. They also will want their Worker out improving terrain, so their pop doesn't start out at 2.

The 10 Jags would take 20 turns. In that time the other player's city will grow, and could spit out 4-5 Warriors. 4-5 turns for each of the first two, then 3-4 for the others. Usually a normal build would be 3 and then a Settler though.

If both players add the Worker and get to +5 from turn one, the numbers of units produced are the same, but the Jags should always win in that case.

I think the 10:3 reference is going to assume a Barracks build for both, the other civ non-Militaristic. Then you have:

Aztec Worker gambit Jags:

turn 4 Barracks
turn 24 10 Jags

Non-Mil Non-gambit Warriors:

turn 13+ Barracks (assuming 3 shields at size 1, best case, 4 shields at size 2, average case)
turn 22+ 3 Warriors (assuming 4 shields size 2, average case)

[Solomwi]

Aeson, a word on just how powerful that gambit can be:

After reading your post, I decided to try it, and started a PTW 1.27 tiny pangea game on Emperor (I'm a Monarch player at best). This was easily the shortest game I've ever played. I did get two forest tiles on the first go, though I had to move my settler north one tile to get it, put up a barracks and started cranking out jaggies.

When I had about three in the field, I saw a Viking settler/archer shuttle and bopped it without a second thought. Needless to say, it was their first (and only) one, since they immediately started trying to build up a spear force. Trondheim fell fairly quickly. In the meantime, my exploring jags had found the Japanese on the other side of Trondheim and the Koreans (thank goodness that's what the blue was ) on my other side. As soon as my Viking-killers had healed, I went to work on Japan. While taking Kyoto... boom, great leader. So now I have an army along with my little green monsters,

It was academic after that. Japan crumbled, Korea tried to put up a fight, but felt the Aztec heel crush them, too, and I wound up with a conquest victory in 875 BC, 58 minutes playing time and a score of 14,904.

After seeing how powerful that can be on smaller maps, I am 100% behind upping the cost to 15. I cringe to think of what some of you guys could do with them.

[Solomwi]

And just for those who might be curious, I had 28 jags at the end, several of which came from Teotihuacan (popped a settler from a hut early on, too).

[Fried-Psitalon]

And there, my good man, is your proof.

Unfortunately, the beta board where the proof was posted is gone now, but other interesting statistics, quoted from old memory-

As Vice Admin of the MP ladder, I saw a lot of games go by, many of them tournament games. In the later days of PTW, fully 90+% of tournament games included the Aztecs, and well over 2/3rds of those games included one player being eliminated in the first 20 minutes of the match, with an equally high percentage of those games going to the Aztec team. Check out the finals and you'd hear both teams say "We used the Aztecs on the way here" and far better than half the time, the Aztec team in the finals would be the one who walked away with the crown.

It got to the point that some of our TDs began banning the Aztecs. Now in C3C, much larger Jag Rushes are possible, but not quite as early; now they take *slightly* longer to find you, and you have somewhat more time to build up before the initial Dagger thrust tries to slip in..... and it's amazing what a few archers behind spears working together can do; the archers weaken the first few jags nicely, causing yummy promotions for the spears, and the jags start falling pretty quickly. This isn't to say that Jag Rushes don't still work - they work quite well - but they are counterable and beatable now; something they never were in PTW days.

[player1]

Now, we all know that 10 shields version was overpowered.

But what about 15 shields version with +1hp?



EDIT:
One of the reasons why I would like to add an extra hp, is that I planned Incas Scout with price of 15 shields.

So one is CS is faster and JW is tougher.

[LzPrst]

maybe its just my bad luck that has prevented me from having any success with the aztecs. in order for me to win ANYTHING I must outnumber the enemy at least 2-1, with superior units. that sux. the combat system is defect

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Aeson
It's a gambit where you have 2 tiles that produce 2 shields each. Add the starting Worker, and your city now has 5 shields a turn. At 10 shields, you get a Jag every other turn.

Now you'd almost have to be insane to try this with anyone but the Aztecs <...>

I think the second sentence is the key here. It is a very risky strategy. Sure, if it is a deathmatch between two civs on a tiny Pangea, it might work. For other settings, though... 20 turns into the game you have no workers, no improved tiles, and a single size 2-3 city with no improvements. You have 10 Jags that cost (10-4)=6gp in maintenance. If this gambit works, you get a second city which is likely to be far away from the capital, so it is fairly corrupt. Which you could have at this point using standard REX. You also have a GA, which boosts your capital production from 5 shields to 8, which is hardly helpful.

Sure, 1:1 it does not matter since your opponent is dead, but if there is a third player watching this gambit from the safety of his continent acrooss the sea, he should just chuckle as Aztecs effectively surrendered the game to him.

And if it is a 1:1 deathmatch on a tiny map, than the losing player is to blame for not hitting the space race screen on turn 1 and realizing what he is up against.

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
And there, my good man, is your proof.

It is not a proof, though, it is anecdotal evidence In the same league as "I overrun everything in sight with my 15 mounted warriors, capturing cities chock-full of wonders and improvements" or "Due to my seafaring trait, I obtained all contacts by 2500BC which allowed
me to pull way ahead of the pack technologically".

In the later days of PTW, fully 90+% of tournament games included the Aztecs, and well over 2/3rds of those games included one player being eliminated in the first 20 minutes of the match

I submit it is at least partially due to the type of game setting popular in the MP community. Of course, on a tiny/small pangea map with a few opponents, early fast unit gives an advantage. So maybe they should have been modded/restricted for MP games.

My point though is that in SP games under commonly used settings they are not particularly overpowered. And it is my impression that in Civ 3 SPers outnumber MPers quite substantially. Beyond any doubt, Jags are better than such gems as F-15 or conquistadors, but this rather to the suckiness of the latter UUs.