Civilization IV

[ChaosLord]

Strength is the base factor English Assassin, theres many things that modify it. Like Archers get bonuses to defense in cities, Axemen get bonuses versus melee units, Spearmen get bonuses versus mounted units, Mounted units get bonuses against artillery. And artillery gets a bonus versus melee and has the ability to damage all units in a stack in an attack. They're also like Civ2-Civ1 in that it has to actually attack not just bombard.

In addition to all this cities provide a substantial defensive bonus, so you can't simply run over your neighbors with hordes the latest most powerful unit of the era once you get it. If you want to actually capture anything but a poorly defended city you'll need combined arms including artillery so you can destroy the defenses in the city and negate their bonus.

From all i've heard its been balanced quite well, and of course unit abilities aren't limited to just those. Units gaining experience in this is handled by gaining promotions, these promotions able to grant them abilities like bonuses attack cities(City Raider I-III), or bonus versus Archers/Guns(Cover), or the one i'm definitly going to be using the ability to use enemy roads(Commando). Theres thirty some-odd promotions in all so theres alot of combinations/setups possible.

So yeah, you really can't just look at base unit strength for comparing units.

And yeah Simon Appleton is right, you can't really compare the two. TW is focused on a time period and around the battles, whereas Civ tries to span many time periods and be open to peaceful or agressive strategies.