What is your favorite unit?

Using the following criteria, judge your favorite unit:

Judge it for the Campaign, not multiplayer or custum battle. Don't judge simply because [insert unit x] has better attack/defense/moral than [insert unit y]. Judge also according to when the unit becomes availible, how much it costs and how many times you've used it with some moderate or better success. In other words I don't want to see lots of people coming up with Urban Cohorts or Spartan Hoplites just because they can beat the crap out of just about everything.

For me, it would have to be the Legionary Cohort. Why? It is a good allround unit (and I, for one, am attracted to allrounders) with excellent stamina, morale and combat abilities. It is also conveintly allowed by the Army Barracks which I find about 100 times easier to get a hold of than the Urban Barracks, meaning you will often be able to retrain them without having to send it all the way back to the best city which is cranking out all your units. A close second would have to be the Hastatii, since they seem to be capable of whipping all their contemporaries.

So, what is your favorite? I must apologize if there is a tendancy of this type of thread being repeated, however if you are dreadfully annoyed then I suggest you don't feel obligated to post a reply!

Under your criteria, definitely Light Lancers. Those guys rock!

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Originally Posted by Craterus

Under your criteria, definitely Light Lancers. Those guys rock!

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hmmm you must be refering to the Macedonian cavalry unit? Firstly, as macedon is unplayable in the campaign I raise an eyebrow, secondly I have fond memories of slaughtering light lancers.

Editing the files can unlock Macedon. The Light Lancers have a charge bonus to rival Cataphracts. Believe me, they are awesome for a first-tier cav.

Assuming that choosing units from normally unplayable factions is allowed, I'd plump for the Numidian Desert Infantry. They are not a particularly strong unit but in my view they are excellent value for money. Their hardiness and bravery also make them a good defensive unit in your home territories, where they can shield Numidia's archers from cavalry attack, and outlast the enemy under the desert sun. But must importantly, they are characterful, plausible and have a cool model.

Who get cut into ribbons once you can get them into a melee. Their charge bonus is all that's good about them, since they die so easily in close combat.

Cheap, easily replinishable Numidian Cav should be a good choice for Numidia, and were historically used by the Romans against Carthage to great effect.

Well like I said, they're not the most high-powered unit in the game but they will happily go toe-to-toe with most of Numidia's early enemies. Add an armour upgrade or too and at least three chevrons and you have a decent defensive unit, two or three of which can be used alongside Numidian Legionaries in late-game conquest armies.

Spearmen and Eles,Clibs and Cats,Power to the Them!!

Cataphract Archers. Though I favor a combined arms approach I have to say if you have cataphract archers you don't need any other units except a few mediocre infantry for sieges!

If you have excellent all-around cavalry like cataphract archers it doesn't matter if your infantry is mediocre, plus they can out-arch just about any other unit.

Any horse archers or javilineers. They're just so useful at luring enemies units away to expose the flank. They're hard to kill as well because of their speed. For the Romans though I would say the Hastati is the best because it can work through the whole game. After Marius reforms, the Romans get upgraded units which is basically just overkill since you can do anything with the starting unit set.

sassanids cavalry, can shoot arrows and clubs, arrows hardly touch them

any army with 6 of those units is almost undefeatable!

ps. I use all cavalry armies to clear the lands from the beginning, this way they get a very high experience level as well. Besides being fast & manouvrable in combat you are also able to transport them far during turns

Plumbarii and archers firing fire arrow together are Alexander surpassers. Two generals complete it. Although with patching the ai now fires its ballistas, it rarely used them en masse. That is three, if I have to specify one, it would be the plumbatarii. The RTW unit is probably the legionary cohorts. There is little is cannot do.

"Creeeeshun Arsherrrrrrs!"

They are a godly unit, and can make a faction who only has slingers unstoppable.

Phalanx Pikemen!

hastati

Well, light lancers used properly can destroy the cataphracts. If the cataphracts continue shooting when charged by LLs, LLs can just retreat and charge again. If they choose to engage in melee, the faster LLs can lead them into spears. When they stop chasing, if they do, charge again.

Warman: I'm assuming all you're talking about are the Sassanids. If you are, their spearmen are rubbish, though admittedly better than the Limanentai (can't spell). The elephants, cataphracts and clibinarii are vital but not your core units, since they're so expensive and take so long to recruit.

Except for Clibinarii Immortals, which you get for free as they're the general's bodyguard. They even regen their losses automatically. That unit is basically closest thing to perfection you can get:
- Super high morale so they rarely ever break.
- Extremely well armored.
- Armor piercing melee weapons.
- Long range missile weapons & Persian Shot ability.
- Extra HP.
- Against infantry, outrun & outmanouvre them and then smash them with a charge. Will beat anything but the elitest (ie First Cohort) foot units easily this way. Against the elites just keep skirmishing for a while and soften them up with arrows, then charge to finish them off.
- Against cavalry (heavy & light), simply melee them.
- Against faster horse archers, missile duel. The Immortals' superior armor will protect them. If the HA use Cantabrian Circle then approach them at marching speed to tire them.

The only real weakness is that you only get as many of these units as you can get family members.

Granted, Legionary Cohort (who have come up several times now) as well as their forerunners, the Hastati and Principes, can do most everything you want them to. But how boring is an army consistin of allround meleers? Favorite units for me have to be something fancy, or at least something interesting to play tactics-wise. I haven't tried Light Lancers yet, but as I'm currently playing Carthage, I must say there's not many jobs (except sieges...) that Round Shield Cavalry cannot do. A quarter to half of my armies consists of Roundshields, even though Long Shields are easily available. Why? They're recruitable everywhere with just stables, they're cheap, fast, expendable. And you can rout armored hoplites and whatnot with Roundshields, if you have a good sense of timing. First-tier units are the way to go: Easily retrainable, easily produced in masses. And using all-cav armies you're fast on the campaign map.
I know that Round Shields aren't exactly what you'd call fancy, but they're definitely the most important unit in my Carthage campaign. Going for something a little fancier, how's War Elephants? Basic Eles stink: They die easily, their impact seems to be a lot weaker, they have no missile attack, and they can't be upgraded. But War Elephants, while expensive, will never die on you if used rightly. I have an army with four units of War Eles in it that have seen more than a dozen field battles plus some six or seven sieges. Only a single Elephant has ever died! And don't think they don't see any action: I usually charge them in headfirst, followed up by cavalry. That's often enough to completely rout the enemy. So the huge initial investment pays off big-time, and you don't ever have to retrain them. The additional time and effort you have to invest in armored War Elephants doesn't pay off greatly: The additional armor doesn't make that much of a difference.
Somebody mentioned Cretian Archers: These guys rock, but they're recruitable in small numbers only, unfortunately. Nevertheless, in one Bruti campaign I had an army with six of them in it, accompanied by the usual Roman legion-stuff. I didn't need cavalry support: The Cretians could often pick apart the enemy so completely I wouldn't have had time to flank anyway. The moment my melee troops were readying their pila, the enemy fled, reduced to less than half their numbers regardless of armor or shields. I managed to beat Phalanx-heavy armies easily without flanking them, just by wearing them down with missile fire until their morale broke.
I also like Onagers a lot, for instant city assaults as well as for attacking field battles: I just love the sight of a firepot hitting square into the middle of a dense formation. And while I only ever fought two bridge defenses with Onagers, those were just sweet.

Out of ballistas, repeteaing ballistas and scorpions which are the best? I have seen many different opinions and the three are all so unique from each other. I know they arent very good and I try to avoid them but seeing as a couple of my automanaged settlements bought some I decided to try them out.

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Originally Posted by diablodelmar

Out of ballistas, repeteaing ballistas and scorpions which are the best? I have seen many different opinions and the three are all so unique from each other. I know they arent very good and I try to avoid them but seeing as a couple of my automanaged settlements bought some I decided to try them out.

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Although I have no experience with Scorpions, I'd have to go with Repeating Ballistas just for the sheer firepower. An experienced crew can absolutely annihilate units, even faster than my precious Cretans... :juggle2:

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Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief

Although I have no experience with Scorpions, I'd have to go with Repeating Ballistas just for the sheer firepower. An experienced crew can absolutely annihilate units, even faster than my precious Cretans... :juggle2:

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but shot for shot Ballistas are more powerful than Repeating Ballistas.

My personal favorite is the legionary cohort, for all the reasons mentioned. Rome was historically infantry heavy anyway, and I usually play like that. My usual "field army" consists of 10 legionary cohorts, 4 archer auxilia, 2 roman cavalry and a general. I'll add more as needed depending on the foe I'm facing.

As to the engines, I've recently started using scorpions in certain battles, mainly because in my current campaign Armenia has become quite powerful (they took over the Parthian starting lands, the city of Seleucia, and two of the Pontic provinces.) So, now I'm up against a mix of crap infantry, decent infantry (heavy spearmen and armenian legionaires), crap missile troops, and gods on horses. My usual army wipes the field with all the infantry, but those cataphracts cause horrendous casualties whenever they get into combat. I hired a couple of units of merc hoplites, and had one of them run over by a unit of cataphracts (not generals bodyguards, just the normal cats). Scorpions have a longer range than either the ballista or repeating ballista, and does enough damage that if you manage to hit the unit, you'll kill 1-4 people with every bolt. It doesn't matter how armored they are, they die. Once the unit gets down to only 1-2 ranks deep it becomes much harder to hit, but until then you hit them regularly. I haven't had the chance to use repeating ballistae yet; I just finished building a couple of them but they haven't made it to the battle area yet.

I love the Gallic Forester Warbands. Utterly deadly with the arrows, and more than once they've wiped out opposing armies fighting hand to hand for me. Gaul is a pretty worthless faction on the whole, but the Foresters make it all worthwhile. Four-five of those in a stack are quite dominating.

Well with units' campaign merits taken into consideration, I'd go for either Hastati or Roman Cavalry. Hastati are a low level unit that's cheap and able to defeat most infantry units they come across. They're probably the most useful fodder unit in the game. Principes are a bit better, but you'll probably be able to train about 5 times more Hastati than these until the reforms take place.

My reason for mentioning Roman cavalry is that they're a cheap and easy to train cavalry unit that provides excellent support for the rest of the Roman army. Playing as the Romans I make sure the focus is on the heavy legionaries, so cavalry is a secondary concern. I don't even bother with legionary cavalry or Praetorians, just a couple units of these provides all the cavalry I require in most circumstances. To be honest they're a bit boring and I wouldn't say they're my amongst my favourite if it wasn't for the fact they're so useful in a Roman campaign.

Scorpions and Heavy Onagers - but then, I'm playing a mod which increases the number of engines per unit. Currently, I have armies where most of the work is being done by massed artillery and a strong heavy cavalry wing. The infantry, poor beggars, are just there to provide defense for the artillery (and occasionally get hit by stray fire-pots for their efforts).

Scorpions for their range and accuracy, but many are needed to make a significant impact. Heavy Onagers for the range and sheer chaos they can cause.

Armoured Hoplites, Legionary Cohorts or Triarii. They never let you down.

Hi

Equites were the cornerstone of my Roman campaigns. In vanilla RTW there are many who say the unit is overpowered and they mod the unit down in size and up in price. I dont mod it. It remains in vanilla form and these guys do well on all fronts except against the German Spears and Brit Chariots. Available early, cheap, fast moving, and retrainable. I had units with silver chevrons of experience by the end of the campaign (without temple upgrades)

Playing now as Egyptian I like the Generals. Chariot Archers with multiple hit points. These guys kill averything and are versitile. Only massed horse archers pose a big threat to them. Being so powerful a lone general can go up against small enemy stacks with less than 1to1 odds and earn heroic victory. Thus gaining more positive traits. Playing on vh/vh the rebels occur often and dont rout. They become target practice for the generals who by killing non routing enemy gain more experience. In 10 years of play I have a general with a gold chevron and 10 stars.

I too like the look of the Forrester warbands of the Gaul. Might try Gaul next campaign.

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Originally Posted by Garvanko

Armoured Hoplites, Legionary Cohorts or Triarii. They never let you down.

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Would also add Numidian Cavalry for their flexibility and price.

Elephants, onagers, pikemen.

Definitely clib immortals. They are nearly invincible when they charge. Mine only take about 3 casualties per battle when they kill at least 300 enemies.