Unit Information

A - C

AEGIS Cruisers - These warships are only effective when the other civilizations have the ability to produce submarines.  AEGIS Cruisers can see submarines within two squares of it and are useful in protecting fleets and your coastline.  Otherwise, the Battleship is a more effect warship as it is stronger in attack, defense, and bombardment, and it is well worth the extra 40 shields to produce.  AEGIS Cruisers also have a Zone of Control, discussed in the Game Concepts part of this site.

Requires:  Robotics, Aluminum, Uranium

Cost:  160 Shields

Stats

Attack:  12        Bombard:  4        Defense:  10        Range:  2        Movement:  5        Rate of Fire:  2

Archer - Archers will help in the early defense of your civilization.  They are cheap so they can be produced quickly.  If defense is a main concern, research Bronze Working and Iron Working to be able to create a Swordsman.

Upgrades to: Longbowman

Requires:  Warrior Code

Cost:  20 Shields

Stats

Attack:  2        Defense:  1        Movement:  1

Army - A huge advantage when fighting forces more or equally advanced as yours.  If you have a huge technical gain, your tanks fighting their spearmen, it's just a waste because you probably won't lose even a single unit.  Load up with any mixture of units, however, the entire army will only move as fast as it's slowest unit.  If you want a fast army, you won't want to put any units with 1 movement point with Horse or other fast units.  Also, the attack and defense value is an average of the units in the army.  The Hit points are simply added together.  Example:  An army is made up of Regular Cavalry, a Regular Swordsman, and a Veteran Marine. The attack values of these units are 6, 3, and 8 respectively.  The average attack is 5.66, so the attack value of the army is 6.  The defense values are 3, 2, and 6 respectively.  The average defense is 3.66, so the defense value is 4.  The slowest unit in the army is the Swordsman, 1, so the movement of the army is 1.  The Hit points are 3, 3, and 4.  Therefore, the stats of this example army is (10/10)(6.4.1).  This allows you to customize your army to have what ever stats you want.  Remember that bombardment units, artillery, sea, or air units can't be in an army.  Also units can upgrade, and add hit points to the army, when victorious, so you don't necessarily have to load in all elite units at the beginning to have a 15 Hit point army.  By upgrade, I don't mean from Tank to Modern Armor.  In fact, once units are in an Army, they cannot ever be upgraded to better units, only from conscript to regular and so on.  To make an army, you must have a Leader to enter your city, and build an army, and then load the army with units of your choice.  You can load and unload units from an Army only if the Army has not yet left the city it was created in!  Also, if you build the Pentagon Small Wonder, which allows the maximum number of units in the Army rise from 3 to 4, you cannot add a fourth unit into a pre-existing Army.  Once an army is victorious, building the Military Academy Small Wonder will allow you to build armies at that city only, at a hefty cost of 400 shields.  Tip:  Build this in a city with high shield production.

Artillery - Upgrades from Cannon.  It is the first bombardment unit with a range of 2, and is useful for an offensive push or defending cities.  Remember, if the other military units that are on the same square are killed or there are no other military units, your Artillery can be captured by the enemy.

Upgrades to: Radar Artillery

Requires:  Replaceable Parts

Cost:  80 Shields

Stats

Movement:  1        Bombard:  12        Range:  2        Rate of Fire:  2

Battleship - The Battleship is the flagship of any civ's fleet.  The strongest ship in the game, the Battleship will offers strong attack and defense along with an impressive bombardment value.  I personally use these to escort my Carriers near the shores of enemy territory.  If there is only a difference of a few turns between producing this and a modern Destroyer, don't even bother with the weaker, slower ship.

Requires:  Mass Production, Oil

Cost:  200 Shields

Stats

Attack:  18        Defense:  12        Movement:  5        Bombard:  8        Range:  2        Rate of Fire:  2

Bomber - Bombers and any other aircraft are priceless if you can get them close enough to enemy territory.  An entire civilizations economy can collapse in a single turn if you have one bomber for every luxury or resource that they produce.  By not having any resources, civs cannot get money from trading and must spend more money on happiness to keep their cities out of civil unrest which takes money away from the treasury and scientific advancements.  Also, you can weaken units to 1 Hit point before sending in ground units to finish the job.  However, when the city or Carrier that the Bomber is stationed in gets captured or destroyed, the plane goes with it.

Requires:  Flight

Cost:  100 Shields

Stats

Defense:  2        Operational Range:  6        Bombard:  8        Rate of Fire:  3

Bowman (Babylonians) - Takes the place of the regular Archer.  Still a weak unit and unless you really want a Golden Age (a civilization's unique unit being victorious in battle may trigger a Golden Age), get the Swordsman.

Upgrades to:  Longbowman

Requires:  Warrior Code

Cost:  20 Shields

Stats

Attack:  2        Defense:  2        Movement:  1

Cannon - Upgraded from Catapult and useful in defending cities.  As you already know, bombardment units can be used to weaken enemy ground units before attacking them with other ground units or destroy terrain improvements.  Since Cannons are wheeled units, they cannot enter jungles or mountains or jungles without a road.  Finally, Cannons can be captured if not escorted or guarded by ground units.

Upgrades to:  Artillery

Requires:  Metallurgy. Iron, Saltpeter

Cost:  40 Shields

Stats

Movement:  1        Bombard:  8        Range:  1        Rate of Fire:  1

Caravel - Upgrades from Galley, little stronger with more capacity.  Simple transport.  Can safely travel coast and sea squares but may sink in ocean squares.  Personally, I found that if I have the Great Lighthouse, I can have these ships end in ocean squares and not get a single sunken ship.

Upgrades to:  Galleon

Requires:  Astronomy

Stats

Attack:  1        Defense:  2        Movement:  3        Transport Capacity:  3

Carrier - A carrier full of 4 aircraft is a huge offshore threat to any civ.  Since all civs are located on some shoreline 99% of the time, a carrier is a must in order to bomb targets not reachable from any friendly ground bases.  Since a carrier is unequipped to defend itself against anything but the earliest frigate, they should be escorted by at least a battleship.  If the enemy nation has modern warships of their own, they'll send everything to destroy the carrier.  In this case, send 2 or 3 Battleships as an escort.

Requires:  Mass Production, Oil

Cost:  180 Shields

Stats

Attack:  1        Defense:  8        Movement:  4        Transport Capacity:  4

Catapult - The first bombardment weapons available.  Blah blah, you already know all there is to know about this stuff already.  Just don't forget that these are wheeled units and need a road to go across jungles and mountains.

Upgrades to:  Cannon

Requires:  Mathematics

Cost:  20 Shields

Stats

Movement:  1        Bombard:  4        Range:  1        Rate of Fire:  1

Cavalry - The strongest units of the Middle Ages, Cavalry upgrades from a Knight.  This is actually a unit that isn't made obsolete so quickly by scientific advances, depending on the order that you study advances, that it is worth producing.  One problem is Cavalry requires Military Tradition, which is a dead end advancement.  That means Nationalism might be available for study, which allows Rifleman.  Rifleman is one of the units in the Ultimate Chain (see strategies section of this site), so you might want to consider getting the advancements leading to the Industrial Ages to get Rifleman, which will eventually upgrade to Mech-Infantry. Cavalry is also a fast unit so it will withdraw from battle if losing.

Requires:  Military Tradition, Horses, Saltpeter

Cost:  80 Shields

Stats

Attack:  6        Defense:  3        Movement:  3

Chariot - A weak unit that only has one extra movement point than a warrior.  Since it's wheeled, it cannot go though jungles or mountains without a road.  It costs the same as a warrior, so which one to produce is up to you.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, get Bronze and Iron Working so you can get a Swordsman if you want decent early military units.

Upgrades to:  Horseman

Requires:  The Wheel, Horses

Cost:  20 Shields

Stats

Attack:  1        Defense:  1        Movement:  2

Cossack (Russian) - Takes the place of regular cavalry.  Refer to Cavalry for my take on this.  There's only one extra point in defense so it's not a real big difference between them.

Requires:  Military Tradition, Horses, Saltpeter

Cost:  80 Shields

Stats

Attack:  6        Defense:  4        Movement:  3

Cruise Missile - The first missile available and the only one that won't piss off the rest of the world when used, unlike the nukes.  Cruise Missiles can be moved anywhere, then bombard the target.  They're stronger than Stealth Bombers and Battleships, but can only be used once and can be captured and destroyed if they are unescorted.  When it blows up it also makes a cool explosion animation.

Requires:  Rocketry, Aluminum

Cost:  60 Shields

Stats

Movement:  1        Bombard:  16        Range:  2        Rate of Fire:  3