It is quite interesting that you made a list without factoring civ bonuses in, I don't think I ever saw that kind of approach. Makes you realize things that make a unit good is civ bonuses sometimes like in the case of Malon Raider, Black Army or Impi. I personally really think highly of Varu because having one of them sit in a city makes you untouchable until musketman arrive, since it is 40 strength and lowers adjacent units who might be attacking cities. Same with crouching tiger, you only need to build one to make your ranged city attacks go nuts, makes you really defensible until muskets or perhaps even line infantry. Of course this doesnt apply when you get the unit from a barb clan, those don't affect city strengths. Would have put Gaesetae lower myself since, in my mind, that unit's power comes from +2 cs from every adjacent unit, ability of Ambiorix, and that you can upgrade it straight to Man at Arms via Oppidum with lower gold cost than normal thanks to its higher production cost. In barb clans mod the unit is kind of worse because the clans have warriors in them so often (at least that's what happens to me all the time) so its ability to defeat spearmen quickly doesn't even come to play.
Gaesatae is great because it has an included stopgap function, where it becomes stronger in the late ancient era push as you face stronger units. This alone makes it a very good unit, especially for ancient era pushes on the AI.
Trying to rate a civ’s unique unit without factoring in the civ it belongs to has got to be the most pointless challenge you gave yourself. You think these units just fell out of a coconut tree?
@@Zondagskind.Gaming I’m making a joke based upon Vice President Harris’ satiric use of the phrase “you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” to remind people of the importance of context. I’m basically saying that the units exist within a context and removing them from that context gets rid of all practical value to the ranking. However I do understand that you want to rank the unit and not the civ, but given how intertwined they are, it’s gonna spill over.
Yeah the Black Army is S tier with it's ability to work so well with city state units you can easily overcome the AI Deity bonus to wipe out their armies and free your siege units to take the city
Great to see civ content in 2024. I just started it so updated stuff like this helps a lot. Especially since I have very less time to play so efficiency matters! Keep it up!
Thanks, and it was important to me as well to try and do this. The best unit tier list to date is the one by PotatoMcWhiskey, but it predates the inclusion of Men-at-Arms. While people who were already playing at the time know how that changes the ratings, it's like reading Middle English to new players.
A lot of units here are pretty strong defensive units, but for some reason they appear to be in dom civs. This alone drops them to C. Divorcing units from civs makes sense. Civ bonuses are often situational and you can't take them into account every time, so this angle is interesting to take too.
I think you should've made some exceptions to the rule of separating the units from the leader or civ. The tagma in particular can only be used with Basil and the ability to melt walls comes with it. AFAIK there is no other way to get a tagma that can't do regular damage to city walls, so it is an intrinsic bonus of the unit.
You can hire a Tagma from Barbarian Clans with the game mode enabled. Conversely, as Basil you might feel even better with hired Mamluks and Mandekalu than with your own Tagmata.
The culmination of your organized yet aesthetically pleasing presentation mixed with your.proper pronunciation of every word has me convinced if you aren't a professor you must be a TA in some capacity. Also I was today years old when I found out it isn't "queer-wuh-ser" lol
Brother no the impi is not d tier. It only cost 1 gold per turn with the millitary card that reduces gold costs by one that is free units. That means with the lower production cost you can crank out tons and tons of impi's without needing to build a single commercial hub. With the wonder statue of zeus and the milltary card that reduce the cost of anti cavalry units you can flood the world with impi's.
@@Zondagskind.Gamingthe Impi’s big advantage is their low cost. The whole idea is to overwhelm with numbers (similar to real history, the Zulu would win battles with spears and shields versus opponents with gunpowder just overwhelming them with pure numbers). Not disagreeing with your ranking, individually they are not great, and I know you mentioned it 1000 times but Shaka’s abilities mesh perfectly with them I know we are divorcing the Civ looking at it in a vacuum lol
@@Zondagskind.GamingZulu have bonus to corps combat strength. Making impi corps is very cheap cause of impis low cost. Impi also gain exp faster and combined with military district in every city they level up very quickly. Also they have bigger flanking bonuses which makes big numbers of impi even stronger. On paper impi is weak. In reality you probably never played Zulu if you say impi is D tier. I personally would put impi in A or S
@fantom1108 I didn't factor in civ abilities that aren't part of the unit itself, because that would just amount to "Impi good because Zulu good". There are great units that just have the misfortune of being in a pacifist civ, and the Impi are a so-so unit saved by a domination juggernaut. I've played two domination games and a culture game with the Zulu. I know the Zulu are strong. The Impi aren't.
The Warak'aq can honestly be a menace if you prepare for them in the Classical Era. Attacking twice means they get double the exp from Survey, so you get four times the experience. (Due to scaling, it can even be higher depending on what unit you're fighting.) If you can attack twice that's already basically twice the damage of a crossbowman which is good, but with survey you can get Ambush consistently which can mean you've already effectively got base spec ops damage, and double that if you can get two attacks in. This means they can kill basically any unit from full health if you can get both attacks in. For small maps it's an easy Dom victory since they'll still be able to catch and chew through even most Renaissance Era units.
Having alliances is quite important in games where you are doing a lot of conquering, because that status does a lot to protect you from the downsides of all the dislike you build up by conquest, at least with those civs you are aligned with. Alliances themselves have nice benefits, but keeping at least some civs happy with you allows much better deals that you could get from civs that have denounced you. Even if you final aim is domination, you can often keep that last ally that you are eventually gong to betray as your ally and partner in lucrative deals, if only you have cultivated that civ for from even before you could make alliances. So, sure, a Hungary that has by the time hussars become available already decided to go domination, can and should try to still have 2-4 alliances active. Those are the 2-4 civs you save for last, or at least until your hussars turn into attack helicopters And even if you plan to end an earlier career of conquest and turn to a science victory, you might still have 1-2 last conquests planned while hussars are available before you turn peaceful.
About Hoplite (Greece) I would like to add that beside being Anti-cavalry unit, he doesn't benefit from any Great General bonus since Hoplite is unit of the Ancient Era. Also if you prefer to train him ASAP, it's very likely he will miss any +25% combat experience from Encampment buildings (if you haven't built any) which sucks even if you upgrade him to Pikeman. Note: There is way how a Military unit can obtain +25% combat experience from existing Encampment buildings if it was trained before the building was constructed. You need any 1 unit of the same type that has these +25% bonuses. Combine this unit with the one that doesn't have 25% bonus and make a Corps or Army from them. Merged unit will have all these 25% bonuses.
Excellent video, love the presentation. The explanations are clear and concise. I strongly dislike men-at-arms unlocking at apprenticeship in vanilla instead of military tactics. It’s already one of the most important early technologies for the production boost, also granting a 45cs melee unit is overkill. …And it makes the Toa’s availability even worse. Rude.
Amazing work as always) I must say that I hard disagree on gaesatae. I think that unit is D - C territory. Gaesatae is quite expensive thus trade badly against warriors and very badly against archers. For that production you kill the barbarian spearman better and can attack a city with +5. It has very bad numbers when compared to eagle warrior and war cart. Ambiorix ability and the fact that you get one for free hard carry the unit. Also huge disagree on hypaspist. Hypaspists cost only 5 iron, they are as good as a legion in combat and they kill cities better. In comparison, immortals are slightly better unit killers and they are better in defending but you need 10 iron for each and they are 8 str weaker when hitting cities. For a swordsman, hypaspist is a fantastic replacement and much safer push unit than the immortal. I think legion still has the edge but in a game where you secured only 1 iron mine, your hypaspist attack wont be any later than a legion attack. I think varu isnt an F, its a D. Its a different swordsman with little ups and downs, its clear edge is not costing iron, and being defensively good while providing +4 era score in classical or ancient era in a peaceful game.
Thanks for the feedback. The Gaesatae is certainly an oddball, I just think that the extra strength against Spearmen is pretty important in the Ancient Era - it's exactly why I hate the Sabum Kibittum.
You are incorrect on the Gaesatae. That unit is tremendous, for the reason that it becomes a stopgap unit for when you are falling behind in unit tech until the Man at Arms becomes available in the classical Gaul man at arms rush. The Gaesatae becomes stronger at that awkward point where the target AI gets heavy chariots and worse, swordsmen. It straight up beats heavy chariots, and can trade favourably against the swordsman, which is the real killer. And once you start facing those swordsmen, the Man at Arms is about to unlock and you get a renewed power spike over the AI. And that cost is actually a good thing, because it means you get more culture out of the ability, which also means that you hit Agoge (+50% melee/archer production, which cuts on production times further) and Politicial Philosophy for Oligarchy (+4 CS) incredibly fast. Then add in the combat strength bonus for adjacent units, which in the ancient era is important because you want to ball up your units to some extent with archers behind. This unit pairs incredibly strong with the whole kit and timing that the Gaesatae is if not S, then at least A. You can literally invade and kill a deity AI neighbour with it straight off the bat. Eagle warriors over overrated to the extreme though.
@samuelhakansson6680 do note that this tier lists divorces units from their civs, so you're making a couple arguments that don't line up with what we're discussing.
@@samuelhakansson6680 ye I wanted to be in line with zondags. Ambiorix ability is very powerful. The unit is often worse than having a warrior but having one for free at the start of the game makes me less harsh on it. Still a bad unit imo
@@Zondagskind.Gaming Thats fair, but I think the whole distinction does viewers a disservice for educational purposes by looking at these in a vacuum, as they never get played in a vacuum. Yes you can sometimes buy these units from barb clans, but in 95% of cases you will get these units as part of a normal playthrough as that particular civ (if you even play with barb clans active). And even if two leaders share the same unit, thats a pretty dubious reason to start ranking units in a vacuum.
main disagrees: Varu is really good. if you don't take Chandra's bonus movement into account it's not great, but they're basically unmatched in their era, and can hold off vs crossbows because they reduce strength of units in cities. they also don't require strategics, though they're expensive. have an easy time getting to the pretty good heavy cav promotions. Toa is still pretty great. it's almost a cheaper MAA unlocked slightly earlier with no strategic cost. the Paa is really good, and the build charges means you can chop into them, which hurts in the long-run as Maori but still an option. can also be used to repair stuff you pillage. Keshig can be pretty dangerous, at least a C. Tagma is at least B if not A, it's a great general on a knight that also works for religious units. and unlocked earlier. not S without Basil, but still powerful. Domrey alone makes Khmer a scary war civ in the medieval era. moving and attacking on siege like that isn't to be underestimated. how is Oromo cav A but Tagma C? Black army is akward to use but if you can, it's like you're an era ahead. Malon raider should be B if you're gonna put Mameluke there tbh
Thanks for the input. I can't go into all the points, but the Malón gets a hefty penalty for being a super-unique, so I have to start producing them when I get to Gunpowder, whereas I can pre-build Mamluks.
When comparing unique unit swordsman replacements, you have to consider their iron cost. Iron deficiency is the greatest clog on a swordsman rush. Especially at higher difficulty levels, a swordsman rush that would have succeeded beautifully if launched 10 turns earlier, will fall flat on its face if you are forced to wait those 10 turns for enough iron to accumulate. All the swordsmen replacements get an iron discount, but the hypaspists get twice the discount as the legions. It's 2.5 turns per iron mine for a hypaspist, compared to a full 5 turns for a legion.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming I tend to consider doing a swordsman rush no matter what civ I'm playing, though admittedly by the time you get to Deity that path is less often viable without an early conquest specialist. Taking the land of even one neighbor sets you up to pursue any victory type later on, and the swordsman rush is not only early enough to maximize the benefit and avoid much of the downside of conquest, it presents other unique benefits. The strength advantage over the melee unit it replaces is 15 instead of the 10 that is the case for all later upgrade transitions. Get it off the ground early enough and you might get in before your victim has any walls at all, and even if your victim is Deity, they aren't going to have anything beyond ancient walls, and you have some time before they get crossbowmen. Best of all, the swordsman and its unique replacements is iron-dependent. If you have explored widely enough you know as soon as you research bronze-working whether or not you suffer from an iron deficiency such that it categorically rules out a swordsman rush, so you can abandon that plan early enough to jump to some Plan B with minimal wasted effort. But, you also know early whether or not your neighbors have or lack iron. People in forums complain a lot about iron scarcity, but that is your best friend, because it often means that at least some of your neighbors can't build swordsmen or men-at-arms. If you only have one possible iron mine site, a swordsman replacement that only costs 5 iron instead of the usual 20 keeps your swordsman rush viable against any possibility except all of your neighbors having 4 mines each. Even against Deity there is this consideration, that while their gold and production is boosted +100, they have the same iron per turn output that you have. Of course this lower iron cost is situational. There is no benefit if you have absolutely no hope of snagging even one iron mine, if you suffer from total iron deficiency. But it is wonderful at rescuing the usefulness of the swordsman rush in the more common situation in which you suffer from only a relative iron deficiency. You can get your swordsman rush out the door four times faster, and the tempo is decisive for this plan to work, especially the higher the difficulty level.
Germany should have just gotten a unique tank instead. The Panzer was way cooler than the U-boat, and while it might still come too late, at least it is cool. And I say that as someone who likes naval warfare. (Would have loved a naval warfare Japan leader who gets the Yamato to replace the battleship and it has extra combat strength and can carry planes or something).
I won't weigh in on the relative coolness of U-Boote and Panzer, but Tanks are certainly way more useful in the final throes of a game, if it goes that long, than Submarines.
I disagree with Samurai. Feudalism represents the single biggest power spike in civ 6 because the additional charges on builders + the scaling costs of builders means your builders will start from 66% more efficient to up to 100% more efficient. Those builders can then chop out more hyper efficient builders which can quickly turn a lacking empire into a highly improved one. That’s means you wanna focus culture more then science in the early game to get feudalism. Having a unit in the culture tree AT feudalism means you can deforest your empire with 5 charges builders to pump out samurai AND they have a bigger window then conventional man at arms. They’re A tier, honestly S tier simply because they unlock the single best civic/tech in the game and can be paired super well with the power spike. Any scientific unique unit around this time still needs culture to get feudalism, reducing the amount of science required to get it quick, with Samurai it’s a super culture rush to get man at arms faster and cheaper then anyone else. Put any medieval unit at feudalism and it’s an automatic A tier, especially since after political philosophy it’s a clean 3 tech path to feudalism with the colosseum wonder also being takable for even more culture. Taken at face value Samurai are ok, but when building around them and planning for their timing they are ridiculous.
In the past of the game the Saka horse archer only replace in the industrial era with field canon not tu the crossbow so it was Wei worst back the in the based game
True, on the other hand, a lot of units that were super-uniques once are now MaA or Cuirassier replacements, so I think the Saka was left behind all in all.
Saka deserved to have move after attack as a based ability. Hit with one range and run away. Would increase survivability and you can hammer a single spot with multiple units.
The Janissary is my most favorite unit in Civ 6 SOLELY because I think it utilizes history the best out of any other unit. Janissaries were traditionally trained from a young age where the army would come and literally kidnap children from their families to become lifelong soldiers. These children came from Balkan Christian nobles and were forcibly circumcised and converted to Islam so they could be entirely devoted to the Sultan. This plays into the population malus for Ottoman founded cities, as they didn’t take from their own population, but from their conquered lands, which is also part of the ability. Whoever wrote that up is a historian through and through
The Janissary is... off, even when arguing for the unit in a vacuum. I see people ranking it highly, but the best? An important factor here is that the value of melee units starts to drop off hard around the point in the game where they unlock. Whereas warriors/swordsmen/men at arms are still used offensively (in conjunction with battering rams and siege towers, with archer/xbowman support), the musketman (and its replacement) and up has the role of melee units function as blocking units in front of siege units rather than an integral part of the attacking force (especially true against renaissance walls). They are still good at blocking, but the value as such drops because you can still use cavalry for that purpose as well. Especially light cavalry are sometimes even better suited for blocking, because they can move in an pillage a farm on the same turn (as well as everything else), which lets you rotate them effectively instead of hoping that they survive in a blocking position with fortification.
I'm sorry, but what? Yes, you're using your swordsmen offensively, which means they'll easily already have 2 or 3 promotions, so the free promotion for the Janissary makes getting to Elite Guard child's play. They're also dirt cheap to upgrade into. You're frankly off your rocker if you're looking at Janissaries and saying you'd rather use Coursers.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming Yes, I think that free promotion is overrated. For the reason I pointed out above, even if it pushes you into the double attack upgrade, the unit comes at a time where melee class units generally arent primarily used for attacking anyway. A free upgrade is still a free upgrade, but thats mostly a benefit for having an instant heal available when you are pushing (and using them to block). I am not saying Im rather using coursers than Janissaries, but Im usually more heavy on Coursers (and later Cavalry) rather than melee units in general, past Men at Arms. That last upgrade is really overrated for melee, the one that really matters at this stage of the game (Renaissance) is the last upgrade for siege class units, which lets them shoot outside city bombard range. That siege class upgrade is tremendously important because the Renaissance is usually when any offensive action is at its slowest, due to being in that awkward position where you cannot really use melee units as a primary attacking force anymore (renaissance walls etc.), but its also too early for Bombers to come into play. Thus you should definitely prioritize the final upgrade on siege units, at which point the blocker in front of it matters less,and where Coursers are an excellent choice for their multi purpose of pillaging and blocking. Pillaging in general extremely important to prioritize, because at this stage you should have the Grand Masters Chapel unlocked. This lets you faith buy more units in the cities you conquered, which means that all the faith you got can be dumped into even more siege units and Coursers, which increases the speed of your snowball. Relying on melee units at this point is gimping your own offensive momentum, because they are too slow to matter in the grand scheme of things. Janissaries are great for blocking the most fortified cities, but generally its much faster to rely on light cavalry and siege units (ideally with a great general).
The Babylonian sabum kibittum has 3 sight, the scout only has 2? Big advantage for early game scouting. More first meets, more huts, more wonders found - tons of era score from all this too. Also giving 4 score just for being built. Feels like a guaranteed ancient era golden age all on its own. Never E. U crazy
@@Zondagskind.Gaming I respect your opinion but disagree. I can choose not to build those units. I have no choice but to build the Cree scout. The fact that I am forced to waste extra turns for no bonus to the actual use of the unit is what bothers me. I don’t need combat strength and the first promotion is easy. It would have been balanced to have it at the same production cost as a regular Scout as once it’s upgraded it’s useless and the rest of the Cree toolkit is average at best.
That unit is surprisingly underrated. The reason is that you can get it to the t3 (+20 CS) promotion very early with the Survey card slotted, and you can even cheese this by finding a city state to farm for XP. Once you get that T3 promotion (even if just on one unit), you can dumpster the AI with it in the late ancient or early classical era. The AI is not capable of handling a 40 CS unit at this stage, especially not one that has 3 movement and ignores rough terrain. It does take dedication and forces you to slot Survey though (which you usually don't do), but once you unlock the ability (which happens early), that unit is top tier. Tried it recently and by god that thing is strong. You can usually rely on getting the promotion long before you unlock swordsmen, which is very important in deity if you intend to take a target out this early.
It is quite interesting that you made a list without factoring civ bonuses in, I don't think I ever saw that kind of approach. Makes you realize things that make a unit good is civ bonuses sometimes like in the case of Malon Raider, Black Army or Impi.
I personally really think highly of Varu because having one of them sit in a city makes you untouchable until musketman arrive, since it is 40 strength and lowers adjacent units who might be attacking cities. Same with crouching tiger, you only need to build one to make your ranged city attacks go nuts, makes you really defensible until muskets or perhaps even line infantry. Of course this doesnt apply when you get the unit from a barb clan, those don't affect city strengths.
Would have put Gaesetae lower myself since, in my mind, that unit's power comes from +2 cs from every adjacent unit, ability of Ambiorix, and that you can upgrade it straight to Man at Arms via Oppidum with lower gold cost than normal thanks to its higher production cost. In barb clans mod the unit is kind of worse because the clans have warriors in them so often (at least that's what happens to me all the time) so its ability to defeat spearmen quickly doesn't even come to play.
Right, I didn't really factor in the garrison function, as I try to be fighting on the offence. Good points though. 🤔
Gaesatae is great because it has an included stopgap function, where it becomes stronger in the late ancient era push as you face stronger units. This alone makes it a very good unit, especially for ancient era pushes on the AI.
Editing is on point with this one! Thanks for making this video, I can tell it took a lot of time and effort
Thanks! Yeah, it took quite a lot of time especially because the slides went through multiple versions.
Trying to rate a civ’s unique unit without factoring in the civ it belongs to has got to be the most pointless challenge you gave yourself. You think these units just fell out of a coconut tree?
@Cassius4 Well, I explained why I do it and the pros and cons of it in the video, and I don't remember using the word "coconut tree".
@@Zondagskind.Gaming He was referencing Kamala Harris when he said 'fell out of a coconut tree'
@@Zondagskind.Gaming
I’m making a joke based upon Vice President Harris’ satiric use of the phrase “you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” to remind people of the importance of context. I’m basically saying that the units exist within a context and removing them from that context gets rid of all practical value to the ranking. However I do understand that you want to rank the unit and not the civ, but given how intertwined they are, it’s gonna spill over.
First logical UA-cam comment I’ve ever seen
Yeah the Black Army is S tier with it's ability to work so well with city state units you can easily overcome the AI Deity bonus to wipe out their armies and free your siege units to take the city
Great to see civ content in 2024. I just started it so updated stuff like this helps a lot. Especially since I have very less time to play so efficiency matters! Keep it up!
Thanks, and it was important to me as well to try and do this. The best unit tier list to date is the one by PotatoMcWhiskey, but it predates the inclusion of Men-at-Arms. While people who were already playing at the time know how that changes the ratings, it's like reading Middle English to new players.
This is such a high quality video its actually kinda insane, well done!
Thanks and yes, I'm insane. 😅
What a hidden gem of a channel! Thank you so much for the content, your videos are great!
Thanks!
You genuinely have made me so much better at civ. I can’t wait to watch your vids when civ 7 comes out!
Thank you so much! I'm definitely chomping at the bit for Civ VII.
Nice video. I think you did a good job presenting this and articulating your points of view
For me the viking longship deffo deserves to be in S tier, having won science games with a purely pillage based economy
I dig it! Can’t believe you have almost 0 comments. Come to think of it, I find myself adoring this trope in turn
A lot of units here are pretty strong defensive units, but for some reason they appear to be in dom civs. This alone drops them to C.
Divorcing units from civs makes sense. Civ bonuses are often situational and you can't take them into account every time, so this angle is interesting to take too.
I think you should've made some exceptions to the rule of separating the units from the leader or civ. The tagma in particular can only be used with Basil and the ability to melt walls comes with it. AFAIK there is no other way to get a tagma that can't do regular damage to city walls, so it is an intrinsic bonus of the unit.
You can hire a Tagma from Barbarian Clans with the game mode enabled. Conversely, as Basil you might feel even better with hired Mamluks and Mandekalu than with your own Tagmata.
The culmination of your organized yet aesthetically pleasing presentation mixed with your.proper pronunciation of every word has me convinced if you aren't a professor you must be a TA in some capacity.
Also I was today years old when I found out it isn't "queer-wuh-ser" lol
I'm a teacher, but my presentation skills are mostly me being a nerd. 😅
Brother no the impi is not d tier. It only cost 1 gold per turn with the millitary card that reduces gold costs by one that is free units. That means with the lower production cost you can crank out tons and tons of impi's without needing to build a single commercial hub. With the wonder statue of zeus and the milltary card that reduce the cost of anti cavalry units you can flood the world with impi's.
True, but I prefer to pay some more for better units than get a million okay ones.
finally a fellow anti cavalry enthusiast
@@Zondagskind.Gamingthe Impi’s big advantage is their low cost. The whole idea is to overwhelm with numbers (similar to real history, the Zulu would win battles with spears and shields versus opponents with gunpowder just overwhelming them with pure numbers). Not disagreeing with your ranking, individually they are not great, and I know you mentioned it 1000 times but Shaka’s abilities mesh perfectly with them I know we are divorcing the Civ looking at it in a vacuum lol
@@Zondagskind.GamingZulu have bonus to corps combat strength. Making impi corps is very cheap cause of impis low cost. Impi also gain exp faster and combined with military district in every city they level up very quickly. Also they have bigger flanking bonuses which makes big numbers of impi even stronger. On paper impi is weak. In reality you probably never played Zulu if you say impi is D tier. I personally would put impi in A or S
@fantom1108 I didn't factor in civ abilities that aren't part of the unit itself, because that would just amount to "Impi good because Zulu good". There are great units that just have the misfortune of being in a pacifist civ, and the Impi are a so-so unit saved by a domination juggernaut.
I've played two domination games and a culture game with the Zulu. I know the Zulu are strong. The Impi aren't.
The Warak'aq can honestly be a menace if you prepare for them in the Classical Era. Attacking twice means they get double the exp from Survey, so you get four times the experience. (Due to scaling, it can even be higher depending on what unit you're fighting.) If you can attack twice that's already basically twice the damage of a crossbowman which is good, but with survey you can get Ambush consistently which can mean you've already effectively got base spec ops damage, and double that if you can get two attacks in. This means they can kill basically any unit from full health if you can get both attacks in. For small maps it's an easy Dom victory since they'll still be able to catch and chew through even most Renaissance Era units.
Having alliances is quite important in games where you are doing a lot of conquering, because that status does a lot to protect you from the downsides of all the dislike you build up by conquest, at least with those civs you are aligned with. Alliances themselves have nice benefits, but keeping at least some civs happy with you allows much better deals that you could get from civs that have denounced you. Even if you final aim is domination, you can often keep that last ally that you are eventually gong to betray as your ally and partner in lucrative deals, if only you have cultivated that civ for from even before you could make alliances.
So, sure, a Hungary that has by the time hussars become available already decided to go domination, can and should try to still have 2-4 alliances active. Those are the 2-4 civs you save for last, or at least until your hussars turn into attack helicopters And even if you plan to end an earlier career of conquest and turn to a science victory, you might still have 1-2 last conquests planned while hussars are available before you turn peaceful.
About Hoplite (Greece) I would like to add that beside being Anti-cavalry unit, he doesn't benefit from any Great General bonus since Hoplite is unit of the Ancient Era. Also if you prefer to train him ASAP, it's very likely he will miss any +25% combat experience from Encampment buildings (if you haven't built any) which sucks even if you upgrade him to Pikeman.
Note: There is way how a Military unit can obtain +25% combat experience from existing Encampment buildings if it was trained before the building was constructed. You need any 1 unit of the same type that has these +25% bonuses. Combine this unit with the one that doesn't have 25% bonus and make a Corps or Army from them. Merged unit will have all these 25% bonuses.
Excellent presentation as always. Thank you for these videos!
And thanks for the compliment!
Me: Designing a SP rebalance mod
Me: *Furiously taking notes*
Excellent video, love the presentation. The explanations are clear and concise.
I strongly dislike men-at-arms unlocking at apprenticeship in vanilla instead of military tactics. It’s already one of the most important early technologies for the production boost, also granting a 45cs melee unit is overkill.
…And it makes the Toa’s availability even worse. Rude.
Yeah, I think that would be an interesting change, especially since it would incentivise us to try and get a Spearman more often.
Amazing work as always)
I must say that I hard disagree on gaesatae. I think that unit is D - C territory. Gaesatae is quite expensive thus trade badly against warriors and very badly against archers. For that production you kill the barbarian spearman better and can attack a city with +5. It has very bad numbers when compared to eagle warrior and war cart. Ambiorix ability and the fact that you get one for free hard carry the unit.
Also huge disagree on hypaspist. Hypaspists cost only 5 iron, they are as good as a legion in combat and they kill cities better. In comparison, immortals are slightly better unit killers and they are better in defending but you need 10 iron for each and they are 8 str weaker when hitting cities. For a swordsman, hypaspist is a fantastic replacement and much safer push unit than the immortal. I think legion still has the edge but in a game where you secured only 1 iron mine, your hypaspist attack wont be any later than a legion attack.
I think varu isnt an F, its a D. Its a different swordsman with little ups and downs, its clear edge is not costing iron, and being defensively good while providing +4 era score in classical or ancient era in a peaceful game.
Thanks for the feedback. The Gaesatae is certainly an oddball, I just think that the extra strength against Spearmen is pretty important in the Ancient Era - it's exactly why I hate the Sabum Kibittum.
You are incorrect on the Gaesatae. That unit is tremendous, for the reason that it becomes a stopgap unit for when you are falling behind in unit tech until the Man at Arms becomes available in the classical Gaul man at arms rush. The Gaesatae becomes stronger at that awkward point where the target AI gets heavy chariots and worse, swordsmen. It straight up beats heavy chariots, and can trade favourably against the swordsman, which is the real killer. And once you start facing those swordsmen, the Man at Arms is about to unlock and you get a renewed power spike over the AI. And that cost is actually a good thing, because it means you get more culture out of the ability, which also means that you hit Agoge (+50% melee/archer production, which cuts on production times further) and Politicial Philosophy for Oligarchy (+4 CS) incredibly fast. Then add in the combat strength bonus for adjacent units, which in the ancient era is important because you want to ball up your units to some extent with archers behind. This unit pairs incredibly strong with the whole kit and timing that the Gaesatae is if not S, then at least A. You can literally invade and kill a deity AI neighbour with it straight off the bat.
Eagle warriors over overrated to the extreme though.
@samuelhakansson6680 do note that this tier lists divorces units from their civs, so you're making a couple arguments that don't line up with what we're discussing.
@@samuelhakansson6680 ye I wanted to be in line with zondags. Ambiorix ability is very powerful. The unit is often worse than having a warrior but having one for free at the start of the game makes me less harsh on it. Still a bad unit imo
@@Zondagskind.Gaming Thats fair, but I think the whole distinction does viewers a disservice for educational purposes by looking at these in a vacuum, as they never get played in a vacuum. Yes you can sometimes buy these units from barb clans, but in 95% of cases you will get these units as part of a normal playthrough as that particular civ (if you even play with barb clans active). And even if two leaders share the same unit, thats a pretty dubious reason to start ranking units in a vacuum.
main disagrees:
Varu is really good. if you don't take Chandra's bonus movement into account it's not great, but they're basically unmatched in their era, and can hold off vs crossbows because they reduce strength of units in cities. they also don't require strategics, though they're expensive. have an easy time getting to the pretty good heavy cav promotions.
Toa is still pretty great. it's almost a cheaper MAA unlocked slightly earlier with no strategic cost. the Paa is really good, and the build charges means you can chop into them, which hurts in the long-run as Maori but still an option. can also be used to repair stuff you pillage.
Keshig can be pretty dangerous, at least a C.
Tagma is at least B if not A, it's a great general on a knight that also works for religious units. and unlocked earlier. not S without Basil, but still powerful.
Domrey alone makes Khmer a scary war civ in the medieval era. moving and attacking on siege like that isn't to be underestimated.
how is Oromo cav A but Tagma C?
Black army is akward to use but if you can, it's like you're an era ahead.
Malon raider should be B if you're gonna put Mameluke there tbh
Thanks for the input. I can't go into all the points, but the Malón gets a hefty penalty for being a super-unique, so I have to start producing them when I get to Gunpowder, whereas I can pre-build Mamluks.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming yeah. +10 is big tho.
When comparing unique unit swordsman replacements, you have to consider their iron cost. Iron deficiency is the greatest clog on a swordsman rush. Especially at higher difficulty levels, a swordsman rush that would have succeeded beautifully if launched 10 turns earlier, will fall flat on its face if you are forced to wait those 10 turns for enough iron to accumulate. All the swordsmen replacements get an iron discount, but the hypaspists get twice the discount as the legions. It's 2.5 turns per iron mine for a hypaspist, compared to a full 5 turns for a legion.
Fair enough, that might bump them up a tier. Although I still think a Hypaspist under a non-specialist civ would linger in obscurity.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming I tend to consider doing a swordsman rush no matter what civ I'm playing, though admittedly by the time you get to Deity that path is less often viable without an early conquest specialist.
Taking the land of even one neighbor sets you up to pursue any victory type later on, and the swordsman rush is not only early enough to maximize the benefit and avoid much of the downside of conquest, it presents other unique benefits. The strength advantage over the melee unit it replaces is 15 instead of the 10 that is the case for all later upgrade transitions. Get it off the ground early enough and you might get in before your victim has any walls at all, and even if your victim is Deity, they aren't going to have anything beyond ancient walls, and you have some time before they get crossbowmen.
Best of all, the swordsman and its unique replacements is iron-dependent. If you have explored widely enough you know as soon as you research bronze-working whether or not you suffer from an iron deficiency such that it categorically rules out a swordsman rush, so you can abandon that plan early enough to jump to some Plan B with minimal wasted effort. But, you also know early whether or not your neighbors have or lack iron. People in forums complain a lot about iron scarcity, but that is your best friend, because it often means that at least some of your neighbors can't build swordsmen or men-at-arms. If you only have one possible iron mine site, a swordsman replacement that only costs 5 iron instead of the usual 20 keeps your swordsman rush viable against any possibility except all of your neighbors having 4 mines each. Even against Deity there is this consideration, that while their gold and production is boosted +100, they have the same iron per turn output that you have.
Of course this lower iron cost is situational. There is no benefit if you have absolutely no hope of snagging even one iron mine, if you suffer from total iron deficiency. But it is wonderful at rescuing the usefulness of the swordsman rush in the more common situation in which you suffer from only a relative iron deficiency. You can get your swordsman rush out the door four times faster, and the tempo is decisive for this plan to work, especially the higher the difficulty level.
I've fallen in love with Civ Blitz recently, which really makes the civ detachment even more useful
Eyyyy, happy to help!
Great video broski!
Thanks!
Germany should have just gotten a unique tank instead. The Panzer was way cooler than the U-boat, and while it might still come too late, at least it is cool. And I say that as someone who likes naval warfare. (Would have loved a naval warfare Japan leader who gets the Yamato to replace the battleship and it has extra combat strength and can carry planes or something).
I won't weigh in on the relative coolness of U-Boote and Panzer, but Tanks are certainly way more useful in the final throes of a game, if it goes that long, than Submarines.
Great work on the vid, hope this gains traction and nets you new followers, definitely deserved
I hope so, too, a couple thousand views will go a long way. 😄
Why dont you have adds on these? You definitely should if you can
@@Diaboli21 I do, there are ad slots between all the eras.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming i thought that was just cos I was watching on TV, cos on mobile I havent really noticed 😅
I disagree with Samurai. Feudalism represents the single biggest power spike in civ 6 because the additional charges on builders + the scaling costs of builders means your builders will start from 66% more efficient to up to 100% more efficient. Those builders can then chop out more hyper efficient builders which can quickly turn a lacking empire into a highly improved one. That’s means you wanna focus culture more then science in the early game to get feudalism. Having a unit in the culture tree AT feudalism means you can deforest your empire with 5 charges builders to pump out samurai AND they have a bigger window then conventional man at arms. They’re A tier, honestly S tier simply because they unlock the single best civic/tech in the game and can be paired super well with the power spike.
Any scientific unique unit around this time still needs culture to get feudalism, reducing the amount of science required to get it quick, with Samurai it’s a super culture rush to get man at arms faster and cheaper then anyone else. Put any medieval unit at feudalism and it’s an automatic A tier, especially since after political philosophy it’s a clean 3 tech path to feudalism with the colosseum wonder also being takable for even more culture.
Taken at face value Samurai are ok, but when building around them and planning for their timing they are ridiculous.
@mishaf19 I think we agree on what makes the Samurai good, and fair enough: this specific unlock is really good.
In the past of the game the Saka horse archer only replace in the industrial era with field canon not tu the crossbow so it was Wei worst back the in the based game
True, on the other hand, a lot of units that were super-uniques once are now MaA or Cuirassier replacements, so I think the Saka was left behind all in all.
Saka deserved to have move after attack as a based ability. Hit with one range and run away. Would increase survivability and you can hammer a single spot with multiple units.
its impressive how Brazil is really versatile
The Janissary is my most favorite unit in Civ 6 SOLELY because I think it utilizes history the best out of any other unit.
Janissaries were traditionally trained from a young age where the army would come and literally kidnap children from their families to become lifelong soldiers.
These children came from Balkan Christian nobles and were forcibly circumcised and converted to Islam so they could be entirely devoted to the Sultan. This plays into the population malus for Ottoman founded cities, as they didn’t take from their own population, but from their conquered lands, which is also part of the ability.
Whoever wrote that up is a historian through and through
I wish we get more modern era +++ unique units
That would be interesting for sure, even though earlier units are just better.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming bombard or jet bomber unique unique would be broken even with high production and maintenance costs
This is giving me ideals for some buff mods.
Let's see them!
Can I suggest jadwiga for a buff mod.
Oh wait you mean increasing abilities...
Never mind
The Janissary is... off, even when arguing for the unit in a vacuum. I see people ranking it highly, but the best? An important factor here is that the value of melee units starts to drop off hard around the point in the game where they unlock. Whereas warriors/swordsmen/men at arms are still used offensively (in conjunction with battering rams and siege towers, with archer/xbowman support), the musketman (and its replacement) and up has the role of melee units function as blocking units in front of siege units rather than an integral part of the attacking force (especially true against renaissance walls). They are still good at blocking, but the value as such drops because you can still use cavalry for that purpose as well. Especially light cavalry are sometimes even better suited for blocking, because they can move in an pillage a farm on the same turn (as well as everything else), which lets you rotate them effectively instead of hoping that they survive in a blocking position with fortification.
I'm sorry, but what? Yes, you're using your swordsmen offensively, which means they'll easily already have 2 or 3 promotions, so the free promotion for the Janissary makes getting to Elite Guard child's play. They're also dirt cheap to upgrade into. You're frankly off your rocker if you're looking at Janissaries and saying you'd rather use Coursers.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming Yes, I think that free promotion is overrated. For the reason I pointed out above, even if it pushes you into the double attack upgrade, the unit comes at a time where melee class units generally arent primarily used for attacking anyway. A free upgrade is still a free upgrade, but thats mostly a benefit for having an instant heal available when you are pushing (and using them to block). I am not saying Im rather using coursers than Janissaries, but Im usually more heavy on Coursers (and later Cavalry) rather than melee units in general, past Men at Arms. That last upgrade is really overrated for melee, the one that really matters at this stage of the game (Renaissance) is the last upgrade for siege class units, which lets them shoot outside city bombard range. That siege class upgrade is tremendously important because the Renaissance is usually when any offensive action is at its slowest, due to being in that awkward position where you cannot really use melee units as a primary attacking force anymore (renaissance walls etc.), but its also too early for Bombers to come into play. Thus you should definitely prioritize the final upgrade on siege units, at which point the blocker in front of it matters less,and where Coursers are an excellent choice for their multi purpose of pillaging and blocking.
Pillaging in general extremely important to prioritize, because at this stage you should have the Grand Masters Chapel unlocked. This lets you faith buy more units in the cities you conquered, which means that all the faith you got can be dumped into even more siege units and Coursers, which increases the speed of your snowball. Relying on melee units at this point is gimping your own offensive momentum, because they are too slow to matter in the grand scheme of things. Janissaries are great for blocking the most fortified cities, but generally its much faster to rely on light cavalry and siege units (ideally with a great general).
The Babylonian sabum kibittum has 3 sight, the scout only has 2? Big advantage for early game scouting. More first meets, more huts, more wonders found - tons of era score from all this too. Also giving 4 score just for being built. Feels like a guaranteed ancient era golden age all on its own. Never E. U crazy
@@WombleWarlord Nah, the Warrior replacements are better. You get 4 era score just for loading into the game.
You say Janissaries are the best unit in the game, but I think the Bomber takes that cake.
@@christopherjohnson1873 by that time, Janissaries will have already won.
great video otherwise but the music is a little loud at some points
@kaanner243 it's always tough to balance that, because so much of the music varies in volume so much.
Cree unit is ranked too high.
Worst UU in the game.
Nah, I'll at least die on the hill that it has to be better than the Crouching Tiger and the Highlander.
@@Zondagskind.Gaming I respect your opinion but disagree.
I can choose not to build those units.
I have no choice but to build the Cree scout.
The fact that I am forced to waste extra turns for no bonus to the actual use of the unit is what bothers me. I don’t need combat strength and the first promotion is easy.
It would have been balanced to have it at the same production cost as a regular Scout as once it’s upgraded it’s useless and the rest of the Cree toolkit is average at best.
@@sogergamingI think most radical ones is having gaesatae at S instead of D, and having hypaspist at D instead of B or A
That unit is surprisingly underrated. The reason is that you can get it to the t3 (+20 CS) promotion very early with the Survey card slotted, and you can even cheese this by finding a city state to farm for XP. Once you get that T3 promotion (even if just on one unit), you can dumpster the AI with it in the late ancient or early classical era. The AI is not capable of handling a 40 CS unit at this stage, especially not one that has 3 movement and ignores rough terrain. It does take dedication and forces you to slot Survey though (which you usually don't do), but once you unlock the ability (which happens early), that unit is top tier. Tried it recently and by god that thing is strong. You can usually rely on getting the promotion long before you unlock swordsmen, which is very important in deity if you intend to take a target out this early.
@@samuelhakansson6680 and @sogergaming - your duel will be legendary
A Unug gaar ah comment.
Thanks! Who or where is that?
@@Zondagskind.Gaming That is how you say unique unit in Somali.
@@wakkosan aaaaaaaaaaaah that's really cool. In Dutch it's "unieke eenheid".
Video starts 6:07
Before that point is just yap
I added the chapters in the description.
Dog water
Okay, thanks for the constructive criticism.