Healers: Why are they never used?

[lesllamas]

I never build/send healers, but sometimes there's a treasure with a surgeon near my base, and sometimes I'll pick it up in late colonial, and send the surgeon to chill by my tc.

I mostly keep him there in case I have some high value/hp unit (like mams) that is low on hp. At that point I figure it's probably worth the cost of idling the mam for a minute to regain 1k-ish hp of tank.

And sometimes as lategame sioux when I've got 25 on the firepit, I'll waste like 20 seconds of it cranking out like 3 healers. They aren't eminently useful all the time, but I figure the cost is relatively low and I figure they provide a small benefit whenever they heal that stacks over time.

[Einfein]

...treasure with a surgeon near my base, and sometimes I''ll pick it up in late colonial...

...high value/hp unit (like mams) that is low on hp. At that point I figure it''s probably worth the cost of idling the mam for a minute to regain 1k-ish hp of tank.

Some good points here. If you can get a native healer or surgeon treasure (with out having to devote a lot of time to it) they can be beneficial for certain units that you need to keep up such as mams. Being able to keep up high value units like mercenaries can give a huge advantage. But again unless you''re getting these healers from a well timed treasure or playing spain in the late game with card there are usually better things to be spending your resources on.

[momuuu]

I played another india game today. Had my explorers alive throughout and paid some special attention to how often they healed units when not really taking the time to do it. I found that the mahouts I had that got damaged never even reached full health due to healing. Thats really whats terrible about healers. To make them heal you have to be extremely static. In an average game that just doesnt even happen apperantly.