Why do some units suck?

[mbrasher1]

The stats of the AHC are definitely equal or better in almost every respect than that of Ottoman Sipahi, which requires the more advanced buildings.

I have noticed this in in other unit trees, too. I realized this after using Turkey to build armies consisting of futuwwas, otto inf, sarcs, and AHC. I guess that you do not need anything else, but it'd be better if advanced units made your army ever more obsolete, as opposed to the best you can get (OK, OK, JHI are great, but they take sooooo long, and are hard to field in decisive numbers).

[Papewaio]

Not 100% sure about those units...but there is a trend for some factions to get (relatively) worse as time progresses... to sort of model history.

However Turkey was on a more upwardly dominate trend...

[Herodotus]

Sometimes a new unit needs to be used differently to gain its new effectiveness. For example I always rated pikemen as poor alternatives to spearmen, but now I realise they require a different strategy to ordinary spearmen. I read a bit about pikemen and the strategy they used. They would form up in squares and since they were not armoured they had excellent speed when turning (on the spot) and when marching. This contrasts heavily with the way I was using them: statically holding the weaker parts of the line of battle.

[oblivious maximus]

Interesting, a weakness of the Macedonian phalanx was its ability not to turn as such.