So glad to see other people obsessed with civ 4. It’s just an amazing game. Do you know anything about modding outside of altering the xml? I’d love to create a unit that stores and launches missiles and tactical nukes from land like a missile truck much like in real life. I love the idea of using guided missiles they’re just very limited in an aggressive way due to being able to only strike 4 tiles in from the coast
Glad you enjoy the game! I think it's fantastic. Unfortunately I haven't gotten too into modding yet. You could check out some of the forums or post in Reddit for better references.
You can actually do that just fine with just the XML. Just create a new unit entry in there, set the cargo type to missile (you can find that on the Missile Cruiser or Submarine unit) and set the cargo capacity to however many you want it to hold.
If Knights are top-tier units, Camel Archers should be ranked higher than them. They’re Knights you can build WITHOUT either of the mandatory resources for Knights.
Horse archer rushes are extremely effective and I'm very surprised you'd put them so low. Are they Cuirassier or War Chariot level? No, but they can be used even on deity to great effect.
Knights are probably my second-favorite Medieval unit(next to Samurai). Two stacks of 10 knights are my go-to during that time period: One keeps my homefront secure by destroying attacking armies, the other harasses enemy armies and pillages tiles in enemy territory. Such a fun unit to spam.
Yeah, this seems to be one of my more controversial videos. I think how you value units depends a lot on what settings you play on (especially the speed) and what playstyle you have.
@@mediocreattempts1212 Very true and on re-watching sections I have to balance out my subjective stuff ("but I love horse archers, how dare he mark them low") versus looking at your points objectively. You play Deity, I play Emperor (getting there!). We both play marathon speed but you said you prefer the excellent Earth map which is like a grand game of chess while I prefer randomscript (though I love the odd game of Earth).
Is so fun to do a first strike rush. Samurais, sitting bull archers, or oromo warriors. I haven't done a oromo warrior yet. But I had fun with the first two
Subscribed....good list. I'd make a couple of notes... 1. The unique units should be judged on their impact later in the game through their unique promotions that they get to keep...this means a Gallic Warrior gets thay sweet hill bonus for free, which will be inherited if you upgrage the unit (which can be expensive, but helpful for units like it and the Orono. Also, the unique units should be judged on the leaders/civs they can be built with. The charismatic Boudica allows those Gallic Warriors to get those promotions quicker and the special stable helps the mongolian horse units.
After just watching Henrik's Isabella Earth game where he ran over chinese mechinfs with basically just artillery, no, they can totally win you the game.
Just checked it out. Very impressive with the high experience units to overcome the tech disadvantage. He had so many numbers on his side, but it was a very nice move letting China's stack take one of his plains cities where he could counterattack and wipe it out. His super cavalry did a lot of work there too.
Yeah, when I face a civ with a slight tech advantage and their land is all railroaded I dont dare move my stack through it because of how fast the AI can maneuver to attack it. I'll just wait until their main stack is in *my* territory and wipe it out with the help of artillery. The game feels almost broken using this tactic.
A couple of things I definitly have the complete different view as you are probably Carracks, Horse Archers, Artillary/Mobile Artillary Carracks are rarely usable to be fair. It doesen't take long between getting to optics and getting to astronomy for it to be viable and if you settle cities overseas before astro it will be a huge cost for them which means you can't really use Carracks that much and you need to many of them to carry troops to attack someone. Horse Archers are definitly a viable strategy to get into a winning position bc you can fairly quickly rush to them and with 3-5 cities spam out a good amount of them to take out atleast one neighbur. Even if they have metal you can do it even though it ofc will cost some then (and the improved HA like Keshik are ofc even better for it). Artillary and Mobile Artillary with 2-3 city raider promotions (specially City Raider 3) can break any defence of their eras and even an era higher. Artillary against Mech.Inf will break them down if you have a good amount, you can't take cities without it otherwise. Other than that we value some units a bit different but these are definitly the ones that I'm way appart from how you think. Tanks for example I definitly have higher than Knights and Cavarly I'm definitly having over Grenadiers for example. Corporations I probably rank way lower as well when I think about it, usually never comes into action for me, but I rarely play on Marathon which ofc could make them a bit more viable. Nice content overall though and I agree with great artist being way worse than the other great people.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this; my ADHD makes it so I have to get in a good frame of mind to answer every aspect of your comment all at once... That's fair about the carrack, but it ended up so high based on the way I was defining the tiers: there are games that you will simply win because of a carrack, although it isn't often. And, if you know that ahead of time, you can even build triremes ahead of time and upgrade them. Because of that though, they are quite good. I've always found horse archers to be really awkward; although that might just be on the earth map. Since I know where all the iron is on the map, and going for iron working costs basically just as much as horseback riding, but iron working is arguably better for the economy, I find it really hard to justify the expense of going horseback riding. Also, with a stable and higher production costs for the HA vs. swordsman, I find it difficult to build a bunch without slavery (but if you get slavery, why not just move towards iron working instead). In a map where you don't know if you have iron, but you already know you have horses, I can see it being way safer to just go horseback riding and know you're going to have a decent unit for an early-game rush. But even then, if the opponent has copper or iron and is prepared enough, I just feel like spearmen counter HAs too well. For artillery, I literally just saw Henrik's Isabella earth game where he used artillery to take down mech inf, and I didn't realize how well that could work. I still feel like they are countered a bit by machine guns (although the AI doesn't know how to use them correctly) and not as good as the trebuchet or cannon which are generally fighting units that are much weaker in comparison. The thing about modern warfare in Civ IV is that all of the units start to just sound like spam to win: build enough airplanes and you'll win; build enough tanks and you'll win; build enough artillery or cyborgs, etc. And it's all possible with the explosion in productivity from the assembly line. By this point in the game, you usually have an economy that can support pumping out units, too. It's really where the massive doomstacks of Civ IV shine. But I gave higher ranking to the types of units like knights, or riflemen, or trebuchets, where a more reasonable number of them can still stomp. Cavalry is probably the unit I feel the most conflicted about and was probably irrationally harsh on. Like yes, it should fall into the spam to win category; it's quite good. It's 100% better than a grenadier, which stacks up poorly and just has niche uses once rifles come online. I ranked it lower because I feel like it shows up later than it should to be really effective. Grenadiers can show up when the AI still has longbows and muskets; when that happens, grenadiers are fantastic. Cannons can do the same thing. Rifles, which are only slightly worse than the cavalry offensively, can be rushed as a technology, whereas cavalry need two different trees of techs. Because of that, I think you're way more likely to have successful rushes going for something like grenadiers, cannons, or rifles. If you plan for a cavalry rush, you're more likely to let the AI get better tech to counter you; even worse, the AI will be closer to assembly line or railroad where cavalry start to obsolete without having a unit to upgrade to anytime soon. My cavalry ran into this problem in my Cyrus of Persia playthrough where I had amazing cavalry, but I decided to play very risky with them because infantry were starting to pop up and the cavalry's usefulness was starting to end.
Carracks can't ferry settlers anyway. They have some niche uses, for example on Terra maps to explore the New World, and as they are the first high seas capable ships they are the first that can circumvent the globe which gives all your naval units +1 movement speed.
A note on airships. When it comes to bombarding a city, you can use airships to damage some units before you start sacrificing artillery to bring down everythings health. As such, airships can save an artillery piece or two. That being said, I don't think that is enough of a tactical advantage that you must build them. As such, I still agree the C tier defined here is a good spot for them.
Plus airships can't do too much damage and it would take too many of them if there was more than a few units, which is often the case on deity. Also, since I play on the Next War mod, unit maintenance is 2 instead of 1, so it's better to be more efficient with the kinds of units you build.
Destroyers are fast and come earlier than Battleships. They can also spot Submarines. 2-move units in general are powerful and Chariots come very early. They can fend off barbs for a long time and make great scouts. Horse Archers are very good units. Strength 6 in the ancient age is about as high as it gets and 2-move units are again powerful. Depending on difficulty, you can stomp the AI with them if you rush early enough. Airships go very well with Cavalry. They don't require oil, come earlier than Flight, and actually have more range than Fighters. I have more disagreements, but I think all of the above units deserve better rankings than being at the near bottom.
Yeah, I only ever build Crossbows because of their +50% against melee units to defend my stacks from melee units and heal them or heal my City Defending longbows.
Yeah, I use Great Merchants for two things: Feed my Golden Ages or send the first one I get on a Trade Mission to the furthest capital I find for a shitton of gold before my economy’s really cranking. SOMETIMES, I’ll stick one in a city that needs a little more food. But that’s rare.
All that gold can make a huge difference in the early game. The issue is normally getting a great merchant in the early game. Not many options to do it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Phalanxes got nerfed in BTS, right? They replace Axemen instead of Spears, so their +50% against melee is still good, but their anti-cav is gone and replaced by a +50% against only chariots.
Right, the Phalanx totally changes from Vanilla to BTS. Originally replaces spearman and gets +1 strength and +25% defense in hills: Pretty good buff, basically means that you can defend against mounted units up until knights. Having a unit that can actually beat a war elephant is pretty great. In BTS it replaces axemen and only gets +100% defense vs. Chariots. This counters the +100% attack Chariots get against axemen, so you're basically just looking at a 5 vs. 4 now. Makes it so you don't have to build spearmen in your axemen rush, which is nice because spears are trash, but it doesn't fix any of the other vulnerabilities that axemen have. It's still a relatively weak rush; still gets owned by war elephants; still loses to horse archers; still stopped by walls until catapults.
Yeah, Samurai are the ultimate Macemen replacement for me. They chew up both ranged and melee units of their era with little effort thanks to the First Strikes they start with and can upgrade. They only really have two weaknesses: 1. The Japanese civilization in 4 sucks ass and is only good for waging war and nothing else. 2. Knights and their First Strike immunity tear Samurai to shreds, so you need to protect the stack with Pikes. But that’s really about it.
And those pikes are mandatory anyway in a regular stack, so it's not a big deal. Also gives an easy choice on who the healers are. And the knights don't get defensive bonuses when attacking cities, so it shouldn't slow you down at all.
@@mediocreattempts1212 In my experience, even without defensive bonuses, knights defending cities still need to be softened up a bit with catapults or trebuchets before you hit them, otherwise they’ll still chew up your samurai.
I guess it depends on the promotion. I was assuming 2 or 3 city attack promotions with the samurai, plus you're probably getting 1 strength promotion if you're Tokugawa.
@@mediocreattempts1212 Yeah, I’ve generally gone for straight Strength upgrades because of how much more versatile they are compared to the niche uses of City Attack or Shock. But that’s just me.
Makes sense, although you have to weigh the production and maintenance cost of the trireme vs. the cost of rebuilding anything on the coast. I don't play with barbs, so I'm spared this decision.
Prophets are only good for two things: Feeding Golden Ages and constructing religious wonders. If memory serves, they only give +1 food as a Super Specialist, so I only use them for those 2 purposes. Scientists are versatile as all hell. You can Bulb to rush a crucial tech, you can put them in a city to boost your research over the longterm. They’re really good at everything they do, when you get right down to it. Great Spies have a good niche use in that I’ll stick them in a city that gets sabotaged a lot to boost its espionage and thus crackdown on sabotage attempts.
Great Prophet will give +2 prod and +5 gold per turn in the city. Generally I consider adding great specialists to cities to be a waste, except a great spy, which gives a lot of espionage per turn when it joins a city. It doesn't matter which city you join it to though.
@@mediocreattempts1212 Really? I swore Prophets added food. Ah well, all the more reason to not Super Specialist them(though that +2 hammers makes it tempting). I tend to use Super Specialists when I’ve got no other real use for them in that moment. I like to use Great People as quickly as possible to get them out of my hair ASAP and not possibly get lost in the shuffle if I decide to save them. At least a couple of my games were lost because I had an Engineer sleeping in my Production city that I could’ve used to pop production on a crucial wonder or discover a crucial tech, for instance. So if I can’t use either of those and I’m already in a Golden Age, I’ll stick them in a city and let them benefit me more over the course of the long term. That’s my philosophy, anyway.
So glad to see other people obsessed with civ 4. It’s just an amazing game. Do you know anything about modding outside of altering the xml? I’d love to create a unit that stores and launches missiles and tactical nukes from land like a missile truck much like in real life. I love the idea of using guided missiles they’re just very limited in an aggressive way due to being able to only strike 4 tiles in from the coast
Glad you enjoy the game! I think it's fantastic. Unfortunately I haven't gotten too into modding yet. You could check out some of the forums or post in Reddit for better references.
You can actually do that just fine with just the XML. Just create a new unit entry in there, set the cargo type to missile (you can find that on the Missile Cruiser or Submarine unit) and set the cargo capacity to however many you want it to hold.
If Knights are top-tier units, Camel Archers should be ranked higher than them. They’re Knights you can build WITHOUT either of the mandatory resources for Knights.
Horse archer rushes are extremely effective and I'm very surprised you'd put them so low. Are they Cuirassier or War Chariot level? No, but they can be used even on deity to great effect.
Love these videos bro!
Thanks, glad you like them! More to come
Knights are probably my second-favorite Medieval unit(next to Samurai). Two stacks of 10 knights are my go-to during that time period: One keeps my homefront secure by destroying attacking armies, the other harasses enemy armies and pillages tiles in enemy territory. Such a fun unit to spam.
I don't agree with all your choices but I've watched a handful of your vids now and I gotta subscribe.
Yeah, this seems to be one of my more controversial videos. I think how you value units depends a lot on what settings you play on (especially the speed) and what playstyle you have.
@@mediocreattempts1212 Very true and on re-watching sections I have to balance out my subjective stuff ("but I love horse archers, how dare he mark them low") versus looking at your points objectively. You play Deity, I play Emperor (getting there!). We both play marathon speed but you said you prefer the excellent Earth map which is like a grand game of chess while I prefer randomscript (though I love the odd game of Earth).
Is so fun to do a first strike rush. Samurais, sitting bull archers, or oromo warriors. I haven't done a oromo warrior yet. But I had fun with the first two
Yeah, I have yet to really go for one, but I recognize the potential
Subscribed....good list. I'd make a couple of notes...
1. The unique units should be judged on their impact later in the game through their unique promotions that they get to keep...this means a Gallic Warrior gets thay sweet hill bonus for free, which will be inherited if you upgrage the unit (which can be expensive, but helpful for units like it and the Orono.
Also, the unique units should be judged on the leaders/civs they can be built with. The charismatic Boudica allows those Gallic Warriors to get those promotions quicker and the special stable helps the mongolian horse units.
After just watching Henrik's Isabella Earth game where he ran over chinese mechinfs with basically just artillery, no, they can totally win you the game.
Just checked it out. Very impressive with the high experience units to overcome the tech disadvantage. He had so many numbers on his side, but it was a very nice move letting China's stack take one of his plains cities where he could counterattack and wipe it out. His super cavalry did a lot of work there too.
Yeah, when I face a civ with a slight tech advantage and their land is all railroaded I dont dare move my stack through it because of how fast the AI can maneuver to attack it. I'll just wait until their main stack is in *my* territory and wipe it out with the help of artillery. The game feels almost broken using this tactic.
A couple of things I definitly have the complete different view as you are probably Carracks, Horse Archers, Artillary/Mobile Artillary
Carracks are rarely usable to be fair. It doesen't take long between getting to optics and getting to astronomy for it to be viable and if you settle cities overseas before astro it will be a huge cost for them which means you can't really use Carracks that much and you need to many of them to carry troops to attack someone.
Horse Archers are definitly a viable strategy to get into a winning position bc you can fairly quickly rush to them and with 3-5 cities spam out a good amount of them to take out atleast one neighbur. Even if they have metal you can do it even though it ofc will cost some then (and the improved HA like Keshik are ofc even better for it).
Artillary and Mobile Artillary with 2-3 city raider promotions (specially City Raider 3) can break any defence of their eras and even an era higher. Artillary against Mech.Inf will break them down if you have a good amount, you can't take cities without it otherwise.
Other than that we value some units a bit different but these are definitly the ones that I'm way appart from how you think. Tanks for example I definitly have higher than Knights and Cavarly I'm definitly having over Grenadiers for example. Corporations I probably rank way lower as well when I think about it, usually never comes into action for me, but I rarely play on Marathon which ofc could make them a bit more viable.
Nice content overall though and I agree with great artist being way worse than the other great people.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this; my ADHD makes it so I have to get in a good frame of mind to answer every aspect of your comment all at once...
That's fair about the carrack, but it ended up so high based on the way I was defining the tiers: there are games that you will simply win because of a carrack, although it isn't often. And, if you know that ahead of time, you can even build triremes ahead of time and upgrade them. Because of that though, they are quite good.
I've always found horse archers to be really awkward; although that might just be on the earth map. Since I know where all the iron is on the map, and going for iron working costs basically just as much as horseback riding, but iron working is arguably better for the economy, I find it really hard to justify the expense of going horseback riding. Also, with a stable and higher production costs for the HA vs. swordsman, I find it difficult to build a bunch without slavery (but if you get slavery, why not just move towards iron working instead). In a map where you don't know if you have iron, but you already know you have horses, I can see it being way safer to just go horseback riding and know you're going to have a decent unit for an early-game rush. But even then, if the opponent has copper or iron and is prepared enough, I just feel like spearmen counter HAs too well.
For artillery, I literally just saw Henrik's Isabella earth game where he used artillery to take down mech inf, and I didn't realize how well that could work. I still feel like they are countered a bit by machine guns (although the AI doesn't know how to use them correctly) and not as good as the trebuchet or cannon which are generally fighting units that are much weaker in comparison. The thing about modern warfare in Civ IV is that all of the units start to just sound like spam to win: build enough airplanes and you'll win; build enough tanks and you'll win; build enough artillery or cyborgs, etc. And it's all possible with the explosion in productivity from the assembly line. By this point in the game, you usually have an economy that can support pumping out units, too. It's really where the massive doomstacks of Civ IV shine. But I gave higher ranking to the types of units like knights, or riflemen, or trebuchets, where a more reasonable number of them can still stomp.
Cavalry is probably the unit I feel the most conflicted about and was probably irrationally harsh on. Like yes, it should fall into the spam to win category; it's quite good. It's 100% better than a grenadier, which stacks up poorly and just has niche uses once rifles come online. I ranked it lower because I feel like it shows up later than it should to be really effective. Grenadiers can show up when the AI still has longbows and muskets; when that happens, grenadiers are fantastic. Cannons can do the same thing. Rifles, which are only slightly worse than the cavalry offensively, can be rushed as a technology, whereas cavalry need two different trees of techs. Because of that, I think you're way more likely to have successful rushes going for something like grenadiers, cannons, or rifles. If you plan for a cavalry rush, you're more likely to let the AI get better tech to counter you; even worse, the AI will be closer to assembly line or railroad where cavalry start to obsolete without having a unit to upgrade to anytime soon. My cavalry ran into this problem in my Cyrus of Persia playthrough where I had amazing cavalry, but I decided to play very risky with them because infantry were starting to pop up and the cavalry's usefulness was starting to end.
Carracks can't ferry settlers anyway.
They have some niche uses, for example on Terra maps to explore the New World, and as they are the first high seas capable ships they are the first that can circumvent the globe which gives all your naval units +1 movement speed.
A note on airships. When it comes to bombarding a city, you can use airships to damage some units before you start sacrificing artillery to bring down everythings health. As such, airships can save an artillery piece or two. That being said, I don't think that is enough of a tactical advantage that you must build them. As such, I still agree the C tier defined here is a good spot for them.
Plus airships can't do too much damage and it would take too many of them if there was more than a few units, which is often the case on deity. Also, since I play on the Next War mod, unit maintenance is 2 instead of 1, so it's better to be more efficient with the kinds of units you build.
Destroyers are fast and come earlier than Battleships. They can also spot Submarines.
2-move units in general are powerful and Chariots come very early. They can fend off barbs for a long time and make great scouts.
Horse Archers are very good units. Strength 6 in the ancient age is about as high as it gets and 2-move units are again powerful. Depending on difficulty, you can stomp the AI with them if you rush early enough.
Airships go very well with Cavalry. They don't require oil, come earlier than Flight, and actually have more range than Fighters.
I have more disagreements, but I think all of the above units deserve better rankings than being at the near bottom.
Yeah, I only ever build Crossbows because of their +50% against melee units to defend my stacks from melee units and heal them or heal my City Defending longbows.
Yeah, I use Great Merchants for two things: Feed my Golden Ages or send the first one I get on a Trade Mission to the furthest capital I find for a shitton of gold before my economy’s really cranking.
SOMETIMES, I’ll stick one in a city that needs a little more food. But that’s rare.
All that gold can make a huge difference in the early game. The issue is normally getting a great merchant in the early game. Not many options to do it.
@@mediocreattempts1212
Very true.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Phalanxes got nerfed in BTS, right?
They replace Axemen instead of Spears, so their +50% against melee is still good, but their anti-cav is gone and replaced by a +50% against only chariots.
Right, the Phalanx totally changes from Vanilla to BTS. Originally replaces spearman and gets +1 strength and +25% defense in hills: Pretty good buff, basically means that you can defend against mounted units up until knights. Having a unit that can actually beat a war elephant is pretty great.
In BTS it replaces axemen and only gets +100% defense vs. Chariots. This counters the +100% attack Chariots get against axemen, so you're basically just looking at a 5 vs. 4 now. Makes it so you don't have to build spearmen in your axemen rush, which is nice because spears are trash, but it doesn't fix any of the other vulnerabilities that axemen have. It's still a relatively weak rush; still gets owned by war elephants; still loses to horse archers; still stopped by walls until catapults.
@@mediocreattempts1212
Chariots are +100% against axes? I distinctly remember it being +50%…
Yeah, Samurai are the ultimate Macemen replacement for me. They chew up both ranged and melee units of their era with little effort thanks to the First Strikes they start with and can upgrade.
They only really have two weaknesses:
1. The Japanese civilization in 4 sucks ass and is only good for waging war and nothing else.
2. Knights and their First Strike immunity tear Samurai to shreds, so you need to protect the stack with Pikes.
But that’s really about it.
And those pikes are mandatory anyway in a regular stack, so it's not a big deal. Also gives an easy choice on who the healers are. And the knights don't get defensive bonuses when attacking cities, so it shouldn't slow you down at all.
@@mediocreattempts1212
In my experience, even without defensive bonuses, knights defending cities still need to be softened up a bit with catapults or trebuchets before you hit them, otherwise they’ll still chew up your samurai.
I guess it depends on the promotion. I was assuming 2 or 3 city attack promotions with the samurai, plus you're probably getting 1 strength promotion if you're Tokugawa.
@@mediocreattempts1212
Yeah, I’ve generally gone for straight Strength upgrades because of how much more versatile they are compared to the niche uses of City Attack or Shock.
But that’s just me.
I usually build a couple triremes to counter barbarian galleys.
Makes sense, although you have to weigh the production and maintenance cost of the trireme vs. the cost of rebuilding anything on the coast. I don't play with barbs, so I'm spared this decision.
I love Cataphracts.
Definitely a powerful unit!
Nice video. I think praetorians are the best :D
They are certainly a lot of fun to play with and easily spammable. Totally outclass every other unit until war elephants.
@@mediocreattempts1212 yess
Prophets are only good for two things: Feeding Golden Ages and constructing religious wonders. If memory serves, they only give +1 food as a Super Specialist, so I only use them for those 2 purposes.
Scientists are versatile as all hell. You can Bulb to rush a crucial tech, you can put them in a city to boost your research over the longterm. They’re really good at everything they do, when you get right down to it.
Great Spies have a good niche use in that I’ll stick them in a city that gets sabotaged a lot to boost its espionage and thus crackdown on sabotage attempts.
Great Prophet will give +2 prod and +5 gold per turn in the city. Generally I consider adding great specialists to cities to be a waste, except a great spy, which gives a lot of espionage per turn when it joins a city. It doesn't matter which city you join it to though.
@@mediocreattempts1212
Really? I swore Prophets added food.
Ah well, all the more reason to not Super Specialist them(though that +2 hammers makes it tempting).
I tend to use Super Specialists when I’ve got no other real use for them in that moment. I like to use Great People as quickly as possible to get them out of my hair ASAP and not possibly get lost in the shuffle if I decide to save them.
At least a couple of my games were lost because I had an Engineer sleeping in my Production city that I could’ve used to pop production on a crucial wonder or discover a crucial tech, for instance. So if I can’t use either of those and I’m already in a Golden Age, I’ll stick them in a city and let them benefit me more over the course of the long term. That’s my philosophy, anyway.