Hi, I’m a ~1200 elo player, and though I’m not the best I watch a lot of pros play and listen to their opinions. Anyway, today I wanna talk about unique units and who has the better ones. Don’t take my list as truth, it’s just my opinion and I would like to see yours. But in agreeing/disagreeing/making your own list, please consider:
how EASY it is to tech into the unit (for example, civs without Eco Bonus such as Sicilians have a harder time massing Serjeant because typically they will be behind when they have a good mass and/or countered). This includes how easy it is for the civ to go to Stone unimpeded, how fast the unit produces and how many resources it takes to produce 1 unit.
if the unit has value only when massed/as part of a unit composition (e.g. Longbowman is not a very strong stand-alone Castle Age unit) or it’s more of a Imperial age “advanced” unit, or if the unit is good on its own right away in moderate numbers with few upgrades (e.g. Keshik).
how easy it is for the counters of the unit to counter it (for example Mangudai is very hard to counter while Longbowman fairly easy until late Imp).
how the unit fits into the overall composition of the civ (since this is a bit of an advanced consideration and also matchup-dependent, you are free to skip this point)
Some results that perhaps some might find surprising:
Plumed Archer is so low because overall I feel the lowered damage and requirement of a Castle doesn’t make it as desirable as early Castle crossbows. It’s a good late Castle/early Imp raiding unit but even in case of raiding, the situation must allow for it (e.g. opponent has few Castles).
Organ Gun is bottom-tier because they have an excessive Wood requirement. Wood is a precious resource in Castle and early Imperial age, and furthermore the stats on the Organ Gun are not that amazing until you get Siege Engineers (1100 resources tech), Arquebus and Elite. It is probably good in team games but in 1v1 it suffers the same problem of Paladin of requiring too much eco and resources to get to a reasonable mass.
Teutonic Knight is not D-tier because I feel they can actually be viable on drawn-out games, mostly good at defending at the bottom of a Castle and pushing back Rams, Halberdier and so on. Though it’s a very niche unit.
Boyar is so high because situationally, in early Castle Age, the added armor can be very valuable.
Shotel Warrior is a good emergency unit and doesn’t need that many upgrades, either to be effective (doesn’t need the Silver crown tech, either) so it’s fairly high on the list)
Kamayuk is fairly low on the list because it’s good only at doing 1 thing, and before Imp it’s a unit that generally is not needed.
War Elephant is perhaps harsh in bottom tier but I feel it’s really too prone to conversion in early Castle and in Imp it’s just too hard to mass.
well, each tier has some further “branches”, obviously Mangudai is better than those 2 but it would feel bad to have a tier comprised only by 1 unit.
well I don’t interpret S tier as “OP”, merely "very good and worth teching into early on. I think almost every UU with few exceptions has a certain situation when it’s optimal, the problem is that 1v1 Arabia “standard” economy often doesn’t allow you to tech into them.
I’m a little surprised about conquistadors and to some extent kipchaks. In my mind the cavalry archer UU’s are all pretty viable, the ones with a bow in late game, the ones with some other ranged attack in mid castle.
But maybe they’re just viable compared to regular cavalry archers, that might be it.
Mangudai could probably use a small nerf, Chu Ko Nu also maybe +5 Wood a piece… other than that I think the rest are fine.
Conquistador is in my opinion a bit subpar due to 3 factors:
6 range that can’t be increased (Crossbows and especially massed Skirms with Ballistics murder it)
low speed for a cav unit (I get that it’s armored, but iirc it runs more slowly than other “fast cavs” such as Kipchak or Mangudai)
I actually think without Ballistics, most Gunpowder units are too gimmicky to use reliably, in campaign Conquistador can be good, but as soon as the opponent does the Scattered formation change or even micros a bit, you miss shots hence DPS.
probably true, here it might be my bias, Arambai is 1 of my favorite units and Burmese 1 of my favorite civs but I admit you need a substantial number of them to make them work.
The new Korean bonuses made it so that war wagons are cheaper and get 2/5 armour straight away as opposed to just 0/2 so they are much easier to use now.
I dont think it’s that easy, but i think i agree with the notion: there is definitely situations, where war elephants are the best unit in the game and in team games its more common
Viking does not need berserk at all because it has champions. so it should be in tier D
Lith and Hun don’t usually use their UU because they have Paladins. so they should be in tier C
War Elephants are hard to counter when massed. It should not be in rank D
