A Strategic Analysis of the Special Units (LONG)

[siredgar]

Great job on the analysis!

[notyoueither]

I'll take 3-3-1 against 4-2-1 any time in any terrain thank you very much. Man, large number envy must be prevailing.

Let's see, Legions attack Immortals with a 3 to 2 adavantage.

Immortals attack a Legion with 4 to 3 advantage.

Factor in terrain modifiers and more often the Legion attacks with odds of winning than the Immortal does.

But, that's OK. 4 is bigger than 3. You're right.

Tell me what you do when a 3 attack, 3 defence unit steps into the hills next to one of your cities in the ancient era. I know I'd kiss my *ss good-bye (that is if anyone else had such a unit other than me, Caesar, the happy Roman).

About the only thing you say to Legions before Knights is *Sir, yes Sir, how much to leave us alone Sir?* And say it with the proper respect!

That is if the stupid Roman had the foresight to pick a starting point with access to Iron.

Did you hear about the unfortunate *place civ name here* emperor? He sold Iron to Caesar in return for *whatever Caeser promised he'd pay placed here* per turn.

MP anyone?

Salve

[notyoueither]

And vs Mounted Warrior? Give me a break!

3 attack vs 3 defense, as opposed to 3 attack on 1 defense.

Who gonna win that one? The guys who can open the huge can of whoop*ss on you, that's who.

Gonna retreat from your cities? There goes that movement advantage!

When on the open plains you bounce off the Legion, but are still adjacent, do you think he's gonna say *sorry bout that*? I rather think that the Centurions are gonna say you're fit meat for the mules. And guess what, when you're crippled you don't retreat.

Yes, in open country you have mobility. That is true. But, Caesar isn't going to try to catch your warriors, he'll try to capture your cities, preferably via a forested and or hilly approach (not very uncommon). And if he can't approach through rough terrain, so what! Come bounce off our shield walls. More forage for the maggots.

The fact is that in the Ancient era and well into the Medieval, the Legions are a very potent weapon that need fear no one, but who most should fear.

Salve

[Badtz Maru]

The Panzer also has the Blitz ability, which makes it one of the best UUs in the game. The ability to attack 3 times in a turn is so awesome it could be considered unbalancing.

[player1]

Originally posted by notyoueither
And vs Mounted Warrior? Give me a break!

3 attack vs 3 defense, as opposed to 3 attack on 1 defense.

Who gonna win that one? The guys who can open the huge can of whoop*ss on you, that's who.

Salve

I already said that Legions (defense of 3) & Impies (movment of 2) are great coutermesure agains M. Warriors.
But they nicely take out Immortals or any other unit.

[ElitePersian]

Originally posted by notyoueither
I'll take 3-3-1 against 4-2-1 any time in any terrain thank you very much. Man, large number envy must be prevailing.

Let's see, Legions attack Immortals with a 3 to 2 adavantage.

Immortals attack a Legion with 4 to 3 advantage.

Factor in terrain modifiers and more often the Legion attacks with odds of winning than the Immortal does.

But, that's OK. 4 is bigger than 3. You're right.

Tell me what you do when a 3 attack, 3 defence unit steps into the hills next to one of your cities in the ancient era. I know I'd kiss my *ss good-bye (that is if anyone else had such a unit other than me, Caesar, the happy Roman).

About the only thing you say to Legions before Knights is *Sir, yes Sir, how much to leave us alone Sir?* And say it with the proper respect!

That is if the stupid Roman had the foresight to pick a starting point with access to Iron.

Did you hear about the unfortunate *place civ name here* emperor? He sold Iron to Caesar in return for *whatever Caeser promised he'd pay placed here* per turn.

MP anyone?

Salve

You cant say that a legion is a better unit than the immortal just cause 1 on 1, there's greater chances of a legion winning. What matters is how you use them in the game...again, it depends on your play style. What i like to do when i play as the Persians is to get the great library, and set my science to zero, and get a lotta cash, and pump out immortals and just plain and simple conquer everybody, without having to worry about science. Like someone else mentioned before, the industrious bonus allows you to build roads quickly towards your enemies - this gives you a speed bonus. Just remember, if you like to conquer early and dominate the early game, immortals are the way to go, if you get iron early on, you'll be using 4-2-1 against 2-1-1 or 1-2-1 units.

[Guildenstern]

I played a game with the mounted warrior and found that they are not as good as they should be. The regular horsemen is just as good.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Guildenstern
I played a game with the mounted warrior and found that they are not as good as they should be. The regular horsemen is just as good.

I really like the war chariot, although its potential can be limited if you are boxed in by jungles and/or mountains. If you have area to use them in you can leave horseback riding for your last tech in ancient and they are much better than horses because they only cost 20 shields. When you start pop rushing it doesn't make any difference, however. Usually I can get a few early wars done before I hit the mountain/jungle wall and before I have enough cities to start devoting some to pop rushing units.

[TiredEnglishman]

About the Man-o-war...

One annoying thing I would like to add about the English UU, which anyone who has tried to play as the English I hope agrees with me on. I play as them through most of my games and their traits are (as you will know) Commercial and Expansionist.

If you read Velociryx's Stratagy Thread, he will tell you that to succed as Expansionist you must have a lot of land to work with. Sound advice, I concur. But having a lot of land means less water. Less water means Navel power isn't a primary factor and thus the UU is not needed.

The Royal Navy has always had a fairly good war reputation (Lord Nelson, the Armarda etc etc) and I can understand why Firaxis gave the English a navel unit but it doesn't work with the expansionist trait. You can have an island and UU's or a big mass of continants and worthless UU's. Either way, you cannot exploit both your civ advantage AND your UU. Something has to give. Perhaps there is a fine line which exists to allow you to exploit both. It's just that I haven't found it (perhaps I'm not navy focused enough!).

Of course you could turn off the personal traits, but where is the fun in that?

Just a small rant.

TiredEnglishman.

[Aqualung]

I just tried the swarm tactic with Jaguars... unfortunately, my enemy was the Zulu. If there's one thing that Jaguars excell in, it's turning Regular Impis into Elite Impis.

I did get my GA, though. And at a good time, since I skyrocketed with tech and was able to pump out hordes of Horsemen instead!

[Dodgy Geezer]

Originally posted by jack_frost
alright. Lets go through an example.

You are in the dark ages. You have both horseback, and iron working, and a source of both horses and iron. You now have two choices.

A) you can opt to use swordsmen, attack 3 (30 shields).

B) you can opt to use horsemen, attack 2 (30 shields).

Your premise is that swordsmen are better, as you aren't "wasting shields" on a special ability (retreat) you will not use. Mine is - using the retreat ability (you will eventually) will save you more shields in the long run.

Jack, couldn't help post a reply on this one. You have given us quite a detailed analysis on this situation, but it is quite a bit more complicated than that.

1. You will be using all four HPs when attacking with Swordies, and only three HPs with the horsies. This is even worse if your units have only three HP. This reduces your chances of a success to 75%*50%, or 37.5% opposed to the swordies of 66%.

2. Terrain or city modifiers will make it even harder.

3. If both attacker and defender are on 1 HP then the horsies can be killed.

4. If you win only 50% of the battles against 5 spearmen, you may well use all of your horses (lose 3/5 first battles, 1/3 second and win third, which is 9 attacks). Of course second attacks should have a higher chance of success.

I reckon it would take a stato to work out the real odds.

To me what makes the mounted units far more powerful is firstly that the enemy doesn't appear to get promoted if your unit doesn't get killed (or at least not that I have noticed), and secondly that they can move twice as fast as swordies.

Having said all this, I only ever attack with Horsemen, Knights, Cavalry and Tanks. Having said that I haven't won on Deity yet.

[Aeson]

I personally feel that the mounted warrior is the most powerful and efficient unit in the ancient era when using pop-rushing. Likewise the war chariot assumes that role when not pop-rushing. The main reason is that in most games 80%+ of the horsemen (or UU counterparts) I build eventually end up being calvary. Any swordsmen (or their UU counterparts) I build can never be upgraded. Even if the swordsman side is balanced in the ancient era (and I don't think it is), future warfare will eventually pass them by.

One important use for 2 movement troops is defense. In your own territory, on roads, they can easily attack any invaders, and end their turn in the city. Invading armies almost never even get a chance to attack, and if they do, its after they have been considerably weakened. When people assume that an Immortal army would beat a Mounted Warrior one, they are basing that on experience with the AI, which doesn't know how to use their higher movement units at all. When this scenario is played out between two equally skilled players, the Immortals are going to be in a lot of trouble. I know that if I was playing myself, it wouldn't be any contest in most scenarios. The best that can come of it for the Immortals is a standoff if both sides play it right. And eventually, that means that upgrading to Knights (and the lack of upgrades for Immortals) will kill the Immortals off just as well. If warfare does occur then the more mobile force will be the one to dictate when and where the battles are fought. Of course a smart player will use combined forces in most situations, as other players can't be relied on to use the AI's suicide tactics.

The AI does a horrible job at defense in this game, so basically any unit that the player choses to use is going to be successful if used right. The only difference is in the efficiency that the unit can do its job. As retreat capable troops have a lower mortality rate, the production that is dedicated to producing them isn't lost as quickly either. Someone earlier mentioned that they used excess production to try to buy a few cities (through conquest). Why stop at a few cities when you can have several for the same cost?

One thought.. Why doesn't anyone ever mention the Zulu's? I think Impi's are perfect support for Horsemen. Not to mention the perfect defense against them. They can also be extremely efficient at cutting off resources and capturing workers on their own. The only ancient era unit that makes me think twice about sending my horsemen to war is the Impi. When in the hands of the AI, they have to be considered as the best of the UU's.

[King of Rasslin]

Chinese Riders do not require iron, i think.

And the Cossack is the best UU, since the cavalry is used for a longer period of time than any other unit, especially if you rush to it.

[eldoktor]

There's one more thing that makes Samurai cool - they can be carried by helicopter. They're by far the strongest two-move unit that can be. And you ought to have a bunch of Elite Samurai by the time Cav roll around.

I'm thinking airdropping units that can pillage a new square every turn will be useful. This would apply to Impi and JWs as well, but they're far less survivable once gunpowder rolls around.

[Arrian]

I have to agree with Aeson about the Mounted Warrior. It is incredibly powerful - and it upgrades. The Immortal is an excellent unit too, since there is a big difference between a 4 attack and 3 (Immortal/Swordsmen) and nearly every civ in ancient times has a 2 defender, making the odds roughly 2 to 1 in favor of the little green men. The Impi is surely a pain in the butt if you have an army of horsemen, or even knights - because they prevent your units from retreating. I've never played the Zulu, because their traits are awful, but I don't like fighting them until later on. The Greeks and Romans are also a pain to fight early on (provided that the Romans have iron). I don't think much of either of their units for MY use - I'd rather have the MW or Immortal, and in the case of Hoplites, defensive units aren't worth much in Civ III. I also like the samurai - and hate fighting them. Cavalry have trouble with Samurai. If the AI knew how to use them, Japan would be relatively safe from me until Tanks. As it is, like Aeson said, the AI doesn't use the mobile units in the game properly. I've never fought Chinese Riders, nor have I used them, but I'm sure I'd like the extra move. Kinda like Cavalry (a unit I really, really like), with a bit less attack... at the beginning of the era, instead of at the end.

For those who bring up MP: my thoughts on this matter are confined to SP. There is no MP yet, and if and when there is MP, you can play it and figure out what the best units are against intelligent opponents.

-Arrian