Unit Strengths by Era

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by pcasey
Archers ... if you want to rush, use horsesmen. Too slow and too vulnerable.
Chariots ... why not wait a few turns and get horsemen if you have horses?
Longbowmen ... I have to escort them with a pikemen anyway, so why not just make a knight that'll move twice as fast, cost the same as the two unit stack and have retreat options?


Musketmen ... 2 pikemen are better than one musketman and costs the same

Destroyer ... why not wait a few turns and build battleships?

Artillary ... Give me a tank or a modern armor over an artillary any day.

Cruise missile ... exactly what role is a range one disposable bombard unit that can't destroy anything supposed to play?

Mech Infantry ... why not just build modern armor? Almost the same cost, moves faster, defends 16/18s as well and can attack with twice the power and 2x on any given turn.

An Air Force ... I'm a heretic on this one, but I think the air units are useless in Civ III. For the cost of building up the 10 bombers I'd need to soften up an enemy city, I can build 10 modern armor. With 10 modern armor attacking, I won't *need* to soften it up. Plus I'll have units to garrison it with after I'm done.

Archers have a very short useful period, basically only useful before iron working or the wheel, or if you lack either of those resources. Chariots are better than archers if you have the right terrain, since they can retreat and be upgraded to horseys. I'd build a horde of them facing spearmen defenders any day. I usually don't, but there are circumstances where they could be useful(say you aren't the greeks or the zulus and have to deal with the aztecs' jag warriors, or you need to attack NOW, before the 16 turns to horseback are up). Longbowmen are nice counterattackers where they can use your roads, and even attackers if you don't have the horses.

I agree on the musketmen, I only get them by upgrading pikes or spears in critically contested cities.

Destroyers are nice, 2 destroyers = 240 shields, 1 battleship = 200 shields.

Mech infantry is a better defender, period. Modern armor should be used to attack, not sit defending a city and maintaining ML(if applicable).

You seem to find artillery and otehr bombardment worthless. It would be if it only damaged units, although its useful that way too. It does increase the chances of your modern armor units being successful, and with enough hp to attack again(if the modern armor only has 1 or 2 hp left you can't really take advantage of the blitz capability fully can you?).

[player1]

I think that 3-4-1 cost 50 Musketmens would be ideal.
For attack you could still use cheap Swordsmen, but if you want to be sure...

Longbowmen needs cost of 30, so Immortals won't be cheaper.
Cost of 40 prevents players from using them often instead of swordsmen (in pikemen combo of course). At least as cheap "defense" against enemy knights.

[zorbop]

am i the only one who sees the power of the babylonian 2/2/1 bowmen?
they come at the very begining, before mounted wariors or swordsmen.
if your capital has 5 shields per turn, thats one every 4 turns. it will overrun any civ(except greece) before they have a chance to defend.
jaguar warriors can't really hurt them either.
and as a bonus babylon cultur buildings are cheaper so you can get back to bowmen.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by zorbop
am i the only one who sees the power of the babylonian 2/2/1 bowmen?
they come at the very begining, before mounted wariors or swordsmen.
if your capital has 5 shields per turn, thats one every 4 turns. it will overrun any civ(except greece) before they have a chance to defend.
jaguar warriors can't really hurt them either.

Well jag warriors have retreat so they most certainly can hurt them, just like they take down ordinary spearmen. And if you are attacking the jags they can just run usually. It basically has the same shelf life of an archer since it has the same upgrade possibilities. Definitely as useful as the archer during that shelf life and a little more durable.

[Qilue]

Combining with the idea above with regards to musketmen changing to 3/4/1 and 50 shields, change musketeers to 3/4/2 and 50 shields. Although, this would basically give the french a medieval era version of an Impi.

As to strategy, few here have made any mention of using terrain improvements and catapults/cannon/artillery for defensive purposes.

I play a defensive builder style and usually always plant forests on my frontiers. Then, any invader is slowed down to a crawl in the forest (the only thing that can be damaged is any roads) while my catapults/cannon/artillery (which I build in large numbers) turns the aforementioned concentrated attack into a desparate retreat which generally gives me time to bring up units for an appropiate form of punishment for daring to invade me.

During my last game (I was Zulus) where I had 6000 years of war with the Russians interrupted by brief periods when there was an outbreak of peace, I was able to concentrate my defences in this three square wide ismus which was all hills. Only twice did her units reach the city improvements undamaged and both times they were exterminated after my catapults/cannon/artillery had finished with them.

Now, something I discovered during this games relates to a previous post regarding the AI not attacking combined arms stacks. It's not so much the combined nature of the stack, rather the AI doesn't seem to want to attack defensive units with def values high relative to the att values of it's units.

In the game mentioned above during the first war, I had three impis camped on a mountain and some rather big stacks of units actively avoided them. In a later war, I landed 24 riflemen (which came under heavy attack) to capture a city for it's rubber. After the upgrade, I marched 6 of those infantry up to another city (it had rubber too) and they were only attacked by a single unit and then ignored.

Later, I had a single regular infantry unit wandering around in russian territory destroying improvements while knights (for some reason she never built cossacks) were zipping past on their way to the front and not once did this unit get attacked. The two cities I had captured were likewise never attacked apart from the improvements destroyed. Also, down at the ismus, I had camped some riflemen (later infantry) on a mountain there (easier to kill attackers on hills) and they were also ignored, even by a stack of 60+ knights.

[Arrian]

A while back I tried to make the point that the AI's failure to upgrade its units, not to mention build veterans, were major factors that allowed us humans to defeat them with relative ease. I finally have an example.

I was chatting with a friend of mine this weekend, and he was preparing to invade the Aztecs (He was Greek, I think). He had massed a bunch of Cavalry and some riflemen at the border. He divided his troops such that he had 28 Cav plus some riflemen on the "Tenochticlan front" and maybe 15-20 on the other end of the line, with 3 Cav or so per city for the middle. He launched his attack.

At first, all was well. The border cities all fell, although he noticed his units were getting beat up pretty bad, and he even lost a couple of Cav. Then he went for Tenochticlan. I listened as he threw 20 or so Cavalry at it. He lost. He killed a bunch of units, but also took casualties, and his beat up Cav were anhiliated by the counterattack. He was progressing in the center and the left flank, but his attack on Tenochticlan was stopped cold and butchered. After a little while, he was on the defensive, desperately trying to hold those border cities.

It took us a little while to figure out what went wrong. One of the main reasons he wanted Tenochticlan was that it was home to 3 wonders: Coperincus, Sun Tzu and something else. Sun Tzu. *DING* There you have it. Normally, you fight AI armies that consist primarly of regular units, many of which are out of date. Not this time. The Aztecs defenders were all veteran riflemen, as opposed to one regular riflemen on top of a musketman and a pikeman. They also had Cavalry, which were of course also vets. They fought the same way, tactically speaking, as they normally do, but this time their army was better.

So, although I see the argument about various units (in particular the mobile ones) being overpowered, I think a LOT can be done to improve the AI's war ability if the AI were encouraged to build barracks, and if possible, cycle its older units through barracks-equipped cities to upgrade them. Then we can really discuss unit balance. As it stands now, unless the AI manages to grab Sun Tzu, the discussion of unit strength by era is hampered by the fact (at least in my experience) that the AI's units are usually regulars, and often out of date.

-Arrian

[player1]

Originally posted by Arrian
I think a LOT can be done to improve the AI's war ability if the AI were encouraged to build barracks, and if possible, cycle its older units through barracks-equipped cities to upgrade them. Then we can really discuss unit balance. As it stands now, unless the AI manages to grab Sun Tzu, the discussion of unit strength by era is hampered by the fact (at least in my experience) that the AI's units are usually regulars, and often out of date.
-Arrian

In my games most of obsolete units where in cities wich lacked BARRACKS.

So AI NEEDS to know to:
-build barracks more often
or
-cycle obsolete units (even those garrisoned in cities) and upgrade them in other barracks cities.

[barefootbadass]

Regarding barracks, I think the AI does not place enough value in them. Another thing, related, is that it underestimates the significance of hp of units in battle. I had a veteran knight fend off like 4 calvary from the ai in one game on open terrain(maybe a river, can't remember) but the reason was because the ai attacked with calvary that were wounded to 1 or 2 hp. My knight did become elite and they finally got it with a 5th calvary, but it clearly overestimated its advantage, although I was probably still a bit lucky to fight off that many, it shouldn't have attacked with those units.

[Darth Sidious]

havent read all the other replies, so might be discussed before.

Special units: some civ's have their special unit very early, some have it very late, like the F15.
I strongly dislike this in regards to the golden age. on deity, it is hard or imposible to trigger golden age by wonders when you want it, so you'll have to do so with your special units.

I think the best moment to get golden age is when you just conquered your first opponent and moved to monarchy or republic. This makes an imbalance between the tribes.

The units themselves also have a huge difference in potential. although i haven't played late game yet, i think a unit like the F15 will not be such a huge thing, and having a special unit on sea like the english isn't very usefull either.
The hoplite has huge defence in early game, it will stop the "iron" units and the early mounted units pretty well while another tribe has to get iron himself to stop those. Also the immortal seems very strong to me although i dont have experience with that one yet.
for the rest i think the idea is nice, just should be more balanced.

I did not play far enough to judge the way the strenght of units overal increasein time. Most units seem usefull to me, so compared to eachother they are balanced i guess. Only the bombard units i have only used once, and i think they suck.

[Darth Sidious]

a feature i would recomment

is that units would have strengths against certain others.

like pikeman, are of course usefull to defend against mounted units, but against archers they should suck. archers for example could have a defence bonus against other archers, since the defender is supposed to be in a good position while the offender has to get in range first before he can shoot.

In starcraft this is done very simple with the unit sizes and damage types. This adds a lot of strategy to the game (there barely would be any strategy without this)

[vmxa1]

You are so right, the F15 is not worth two cent over another jet as it comes too late to be significant. The Man O War, is a poor UU as it has a short life span and many people play on maps with little water so ships are not a factor. The Samuari comes at a good point and can be held off to trigger GA later with out a big penalty.

[Darth Sidious]

one huge bug/problem

special units are supposed to be a benefit right?

it really sucks you cant upgrade to your special unit. I mean it REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALy sucks.

change this please.

[vmxa1]

I have upgraded the Samauri and I think some others. It was strange as I recall. When I got calvary, I could not upgrade right away, but later it let me. I realized I had not used my UU in fight, so I had to build one and send it in to a fight (unit it attack at been reduced by arty to 1HP) so I could get my GA. This was prepatch.

[Arrian]

I think the reason you aren't allowed to upgrade TO your UU is because they are considered powerful units. I think the Civ that gets screwed worst by this is Russia. They can't upgrade Knights to Cossacks, and of course Cavalry/Cossacks don't upgrade to Tanks. Ouch.

-Arrian

[dadacp]

I personally am satisfied with the French Musketeer as a UU. I build only one to get a Golden Age. Then I quickly have many wonders and cavalry for attack. For defense I can still build the cheap pikemen, which I otherwise couldn't.

The main benefit of the the Musketeer is not that is in itself very useful. It comes soon after one is in Republic or Monarchy and can benefit from a Golden Age. And It blocks the upgrade path for pikemen, letting them still be built.