My favourite has always been the cataphract archers for Armenia. In BI I guess it would be clibs or clib immortals. Otherwise I love the other style of factions I play horse archers factions just because I love these units so much.
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My favourite has always been the cataphract archers for Armenia. In BI I guess it would be clibs or clib immortals. Otherwise I love the other style of factions I play horse archers factions just because I love these units so much.
I have to go with Cretan Archers, you can get them right away and they have a great attack. They are great early and middle on in with the macedoians, greeks, and seleucids. Another good bargain unit is macedonian cavalry, they are great medium cavalry that can be acquired very quickly.
Armoured hoplite, because they just look so good you can't chose anything else.
On a strict gameplay value, I'd say the pikemen : they cost close to nothing, and despite that they have very honorable stat, 240-large units, and are virtually unbreakable and a killing wall with front-faved fights.
Campaign game wise, I believe that peasants are the best, the most flexible unit. They are cheap enough to move entire populations from one place to another. They can be used as cannon fodder. They can sap and operate rams and such. Although they are weak, they are the most versatile.
Although I havent played RTW in a while, I remember using Basternae (sp?) to great effect early on in the game. Though expensive (I could usually only afford one or two units at one hiring time), they are easily worth your hard spent cash if used correctly in battle. I used to love seeing them carve into the flanks of my helpless enemy and scythe them into pieces...ahahaha.
Thracian Falxmen!! My favourite by a mile. Charging enemy lines and cleaving heads in half is a must for my favourite unit. And any unit that forces an entire army (ie Roman) to redesign their helmets gets bonus points.
I have to mention Cretian Archers coz I WILL buy them anytime they are available to me (but I cant build them normally so its only a mention they get). However, if it was for being on walls I would pick the experienced Balearic Slingers from around Palma. I cant use them successfully in an army in the field but on a wall its all go for death!
Redesign their helmets? Say what??? Please show me a link! Also, Falxmen are good early on but they are terrible later on. They are easily beaten by Legionaries.
The weapons of Thracian and Dacian tribes could crush/slice the skulls of Legionaries, even with their helmets on.
Is that historical?
Yes.. to the extent of my knowledge.
Hmm... the later roman helmets called cooli had two stronger pieces of metal which met in a cross at the helmet crest. In the forging of a helmet the crest in the front is the most contorted shape and therefore the thinnest. The cross bars were solid pieces of metal, not hammered other than to fit them to the helmet. The difference should not be underestimated, but the protection was probably more for one's confidence than defense. To work it would require an overhead blow, which would be difficult for a falxman to land solidly during a charge, because an experienced legionare, providing that he didn't miss the opening in the act of guarding, would stab the man full in the chest (he would be unable to defend himself with the falx twisted in an unusable position). A landed blow would probably come to the face, which would result in a labotomy at best, but would be more than likely fatal.
Err to make sure I don't hijack this topic I like urban cohorts... not exactly a practical unit for campaigning but you can't deny the shininess.
The bars in the helmet were added after initial battles with Thrace and Dacia. Redesign was required because heads were being cleaved in half!
Diablodelmar: I believe the info is in the game for unit descriptions but there is also Roman history websites with the details. Can hunt them out if you really need it but pretty sure that info is also in the game...
sorry for the side-track; back to fav units!!
The falxmen arent useless later on, they just require more attention in fights against higher tech units. You could go bastarnae units which have more hp but I prefer to keep my falxmen busy fighting then the exp falxmen units will be worth alot more than raw bastarnae in the long run. Keep the pressure on and they are ace! If you are Thrace you dont want a late game wit hadvanced units.
Its my opinion remember, I am sure someone could charge them down with Cataphracts or whatever but thats not the point of favourite unit :)
On the falxmen issue, historically it went even further than that. They reissued greaves to certain units of legionaires and constructed special arm protectors for the sword arms of the men in these units, specifically to face falxmen. This was in the late 1st century/early 2nd, up until Traianus' conquest of Dacia, IIRC.
I think Trajan conquered (at least part of) Dacia.
For me, German spearmen. They could well be the strongest unit to come out of level 1 barracks (even though they are ahistorical).
Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus is more commonly referred to as Trajan these days. Latin doesn't have a J in the alphabet. It uses the I instead.
Hmmm I wonder why I didn't learn that when I studied Roman History.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quillan
Horse Archers and Cataphract archers. The first is cheap, and the latter, well, is incredibly flexible. I would like to add though that Horse Archers are my favorite unit in the game, and for my stragies/tactics, the best unit in the game. I also think that the Spearmen, always forget their name, available to Armenia, and can form phalanx. They are great for the money, and a phalanx, aided by horse archers is lovely!
I like standard elephants. I've only played through 2 games, (Scipii M/M and Carthage H/H), and I'm 10 provinces away from winning Carthage.
I don't really use standard elephants anymore, since I have the ability to build bigger ones, but they are still nice quick weapons to ship across the sea from little African provinces.
Playing as Carthage, it is really hard to survive in the early game without a serious ace in the hole, which comes in the form of elephants. You don't have much cash, but you need quick ways to defeat the Spanish, the Numidians, the Romans, and the Greeks, all at once. The best defense as Carthage in the early game is Blitzkrieg. Most places just have wooden walls, and nobody can build catapults yet, so Carthage (and the Seluecids, I guess) hold a 30-40 some turn monopoly on the zero-turn seige. It is very nice to just blitz the Romans away by knocking down their wooden walls with standard elephants. You take a settlement before the rest of the Romans can react. Standard elephants are a great, cheap tool to use against barbarians even in the late game, because barbarians can't build big walls.
They do lack a little in defence, but if you keep them moving it's not a problem. I used them to defend choke points against big armies of Romans- let them fight through some Spearmen for a while to take some losses and lower their moral, and then just blitz them with a single Elephant charge and make them run.
To conclude, I like elephants not because they can beat up on everything (because they can't - they're not much good against the Numidians, for one), but because they monopolize the zero-turn seige in the early game, and make it possible to survive as Carthage in the early game. Carthage is almost always outnumbered in the early game, sometimes more than 2 to 1, especially against the Romans in Corsica, but if you have a good, old-fashioned unit of elephants and you use them correctly, you outnumber them 1 to 2.
Cataphracts. It's really a shame that in the game they're trumped by the Roman Praetorian cavalry (wich is ridiculous from a historical perspective, and even more because even CA's description of the Roman factions mention they should have limited cavalry)
My second choice: regular hoplites. When I still played regular RTW I always built the highest level barracks wich gave them an experience bonus. Add weapon and armour bonuses and you have an extremely cost effective unit.
Third: Cretan merc archers. Sadly suffers from the same problem as the cats.
Cretan Archers rule! They are the best mercs by far along with Sarmation Cavalry.