Favorite/Least Favorite Bodyguards

What is your favorite family member type? What is your least favorite? Why?


My favorite would probably have to be the Saka Generals, followed VERY closely by the Eastern Generals, like the Hayasdan. I just really have a thing for super heavy cavalry, and the Sakas are the best of both worlds, able to shoot amazingly high attack power arrows and still charge home and melee. However, the Eastern Generals use maces, and I *DO* love me some maces and axes.


My least favorite, hands down, without a doubt, is the Casse Generals. I just CANNOT use these guys. Their javelins seem rather weak to me, and I can never resist the urge to charge home with them which ALWAYS results in my General being one of the first of the bodyguard to die. I don't understand why other Generals seem nigh-invulnerable, always being the last to die, and the Casse Generals are the first. That said, I do appreciate the fear factor they have on nearby infantry.


Honorable mentions include: Hetaroi bodyguards, Baktrian bodyguards.

Parthian bodyguards and Koinon Hellenon bodyguard hoplites are my favorites, since they're both very effective. It's amazing what those guys can do, but I like the hoplites a lot because they're the only footmen that I know of that count as bodyguards.

As for least favorite, I would have to go with the Hetairoi, not out of any special dislike toward the unit, but because every greek faction has them, and fighting them gets old after a while.

Casse generals suck. While I'm sure that watching dozens of chariots crashing into each other would be awesome, pitting Cidanh against anything results in mass chariot slaughter. They are only ever good for a routing charge, and using them in sieges will cause a shortage of FMs. I once lost my entire family after I made the mistake of sending them into the settlement I was attacking.

I have no favorite bodyguard, although the Baktrian Basilike Ile look badass.

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Originally Posted by desert

Casse generals suck. While I'm sure that watching dozens of chariots crashing into each other would be awesome, pitting Cidanh against anything results in mass chariot slaughter. They are only ever good for a routing charge, and using them in sieges will cause a shortage of FMs. I once lost my entire family after I made the mistake of sending them into the settlement I was attacking.

I have no favorite bodyguard, although the Baktrian Basilike Ile look badass.

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Casse generals don't suck, they're just not designed to be used in melee. They grant morale penalties to the enemy, and have a good supply of javelins. If you use them in combat, drive them through the enemy troops instead of just attacking. This creates gaps which you can exploit by following up with your infantry.

With that said, compared to other generals they do suck.

I love Pahlava and Saka FMs. Those are the best in combat, and they look awesome. Romani are probably the worst, being horrible in combat and not nearly as cool-looking as the others.

For me it would easily be the Saba bodyguard but sadly I am normally to paranoid of losing my general to let them fight many battles.

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Originally Posted by Zradha Pahlavan

I like the hoplites a lot because they're the only footmen that I know of that count as bodyguards.

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The Sweboz bodyguards are dismounted as well...which I prefer of the two because they have spears and swords (and not just spears, like the greeks), i.e excellent against both cavalry and infantry.

My least favorite bodyguard is the Getai Bodyguard. Although mounted, their stats are too weak and they ride in a loose formation, making their charge not as powerful as other mounted bodyguards.

My favorite bodyguard unit are either the Pontic/Hayasdan bodyguard, or the Pahvala/Saka Rauka one. With heavy armed and armoured ranged cavalry, you want to grab as many adopted family members as possible!

Favourite: - Basilike Ile Baktrion

Least favourite: - Equites Romani

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Originally Posted by Jaertecken

The Sweboz bodyguards are dismounted as well...which I prefer of the two because they have spears and swords (and not just spears, like the greeks), i.e excellent against both cavalry and infantry.

My least favorite bodyguard is the Getai Bodyguard. Although mounted, their stats are too weak and they ride in a loose formation, making their charge not as powerful as other mounted bodyguards.

My favorite bodyguard unit are either the Pontic/Hayasdan bodyguard, or the Pahvala/Saka Rauka one. With heavy armed and armoured ranged cavalry, you want to grab as many adopted family members as possible!

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They fixed the Getai Bodyguard thing in 1.1 I think.

Their defensive stats are 30 like Hetaroi now, but their charge is lower.


Oh and I love the Saka Bodyguards too.

I just wish you could recruit them, both early and late.

Saba bodyguards are also not mounted and actually, much like the Voloix units during my Romani campaign, I've found that they're not only surprisingly effective, but that the idea that the general in such a unit dies more quickly than a mounted general appears to be a myth... :yes:

Those Hayasdan bodyguards are vicious. I once had an enemy unit of them sandwiched between my Hetairoi, a phalanx, and some thureophoroi, and it still took about 3 minutes of constant attacks to kill them all. So they get my vote.

My least favorite would be the Casse chariots. Don't get me wrong, they're useful troops, they're just not as straightforward as I'd like.

I really really hate chariot bodyguards. they are good in open fields, but that is it, it is horrible in forests, or cities. practically useless.

I can't decide between heavy cavalry or infantry bodyguards. they are both good.

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Originally Posted by Hax

Favourite: - Basilike Ile Baktrion

Least favourite: - Equites Romani

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i concur

Favorite: old Carthaginian
Least Favorite: new Carthaginian

same guy, worse charge

favorite : Casse chariots (they can rout whole hordes of enemies on their own)

least favorite : Saba, your generals just die too quickly.

I'd have to say the Pahlavan one, followed closely by the ... err... oh wait, the Casse use wagons instead of actual chariots. Yeah, the Pahlavan one.

The Baktrian one is nice as well, but I'm not a fan of face masks.

As for my least favorite, probably the Hetairoi. They're so boring, I mean how many times haven't you seen something Greek? and they're all identical, and there's tons of family members everywhere, and ugh...

Judging the bodyguards from the context of their faction, my vote would go for the Sweboz: They are the only well armoured unit that you'll have for most of the game (save for occasional regionals in conquered territories). The other factions are able to recruit units that are similar to their bodyguards from their factional barracks. For example, Greek factions can recruit a lot of shock cavalry and don't need to stack many FMs in their armies to prefrom that role.

For the same reason I wouldn't call the Equites Consulares the most useless: they are good (not "very good", leave alone "excellent"), but you get a unit for free that you need on the field and for what you otherwise have to pay a lot recruiting a similar unit from Roman barracks (Equites Romani).

My least favorite would be the Casse chariots. Regardless on how good you are in using chariots, they still remain an auxiliary unit tacticaly and not "desperatly needed" in any situation. You cannot use three or four of them to clean an enemy town's square on their own, what you could do with Sweboz or KH FMs, nor can you use three or four of them crash the enemy line in an open battle, what even Equites Consulares or Brihentin are able to do. Chariots are not able to fight more or less on their own in any situation, what is in particular problematic in the early game, when your army is small and FMs should play an important part in every battle.

Gg, seems no one like Casse bodyguards.
Well I won't break the tradition and say that I hate them as well.
The juiciest bodyguard for me is Baktrian ones, old and new, those gorgeous cloth and decoration and palm tree and masks. Plus they are pretty decent in combat too.

I'm sorry I cant vote for Baktrians because they always get destroyed by my Saka (see AAR).

My fave is obv the Saka ones, though they're all great.

And, I also hate the Casse bodyguards. Can't beat 2-4 times their number like the others.

My selections seem depressingly avarage: my favorite are the Pahlavan bodyguards and least favorite are the Casse chariots.

I despise the Casse bodyguards as well. They can't fight worth a damn, and giving morale penalties to an AI that already sucks badly enough as it is just isn't much fun IMO.

I actually like the Koinon Hellenon bodyguard quite a bit, they aren't mounted, just heavy, powerful hoplites that saved the day quite a few times in my finally doomed (thanks to the Alex.exe) KH campaign.

Why was your KH campaign doomed? CTDs?

What year did you quit?

I personally like the Saka bodyguards, although I haven't played them yet in a campaign. They have the bows and spears, which makes them very versatile as well as pretty good stats. The Hellenestic Somatophylakes Strategou are also pretty good.

So what's all of this talk abut Casse bodyguards? I personally perceive them as being the weakest bodyguards around, since they are practically useless. They are few in number, don't have enough javelin men to be effective missile unit, and they can't really pursue routing units, and they suck at melee. Their charge, although being something like 50, has almost no effect. Most importantly, they have no scythes, which means they cannot just run through infantry or slaughter cavalry. I even had a cattle when I attached a 1 gold chevron, 64-men Casse chariot bodyguard with my 30-man 2 experience Romani bodyguard and annihilated all of them in exactly 10 seconds! While losing absolutely none of my horsemen! What exactly are those chariots used for anyway!?

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Originally Posted by desert

Why was your KH campaign doomed? CTDs?

What year did you quit?

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Was playing it with the Alex.exe, which makes the strategic AI brutally efficient compared to vanilla RTW. I ended up totally hemmed in by Rome in the west (who liked sending in armies made up mainly of principes, triarii, and pedites extraordinarii), and the menace that Pontos became in the east (they annhilated the Seleukids and stretch up into Parthian lands). I was eventually just worn down from both sides, and unable to decisively win one way or the other since I was always having to defend a second front while attacking on the other one. It really was awesome, first time I've ever lost (or even come close to losing) a TW campaign since Medieval 1.

Oh. I'm playing a KH campaign on Alex.exe as well. I thought that maybe you had been ahead of me in the game and encountered some fatal CTDs.

That said, I don't really see much difference between Rome.exe and Alex.exe AI, except that Alex AI does extremely retarded things less frequently. That and the recruiting of mercenaries and retraining.

Then again, I probably just don't remember what things were like before Alex anymore.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Very off-topic, but I want to rant a little.
I once lost as Baktria because in 260 BC a Seleukid FM was wandering through Baktria, nothing out of the ordinary really, and then the next turn he attacked Baktra, and suddenly had a huge army made of every single mercenary unit in the region. Not even 6 FMs were enough to stop him.

In another campaign, I was obliterated by that super-elite army in Noricum, but inflicted some losses on them. I began to assemble a new army, but when my spy entered the area, somehow all of those elite units were back on full strength. I decided to retreat and wait for someone else to conquer them. I have seen several Roman and Epirot full stacks enter the region, but they never come out, and the Noricum defenders are always at full strength...

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

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I personally like the Saka bodyguards, although I haven't played them yet in a campaign. They have the bows and spears, which makes them very versatile as well as pretty good stats. The Hellenestic Somatophylakes Strategou are also pretty good.

So what's all of this talk abut Casse bodyguards? I personally perceive them as being the weakest bodyguards around, since they are practically useless. They are few in number, don't have enough javelin men to be effective missile unit, and they can't really pursue routing units, and they suck at melee. Their charge, although being something like 50, has almost no effect. Most importantly, they have no scythes, which means they cannot just run through infantry or slaughter cavalry. I even had a cattle when I attached a 1 gold chevron, 64-men Casse chariot bodyguard with my 30-man 2 experience Romani bodyguard and annihilated all of them in exactly 10 seconds! While losing absolutely none of my horsemen! What exactly are those chariots used for anyway!?

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I know exactly what you mean. Couldn't beat 3-5 units of skirmishers with the chariot dudes. And I lost my only settlement because of it.

"Bodyguard, lolwut? They can't beat skirmishers? Forget it! I'll take Brihentin, please."

-Aedui general, when choosing bodyguards

Hey now, you're being unfair!

Haven't you seen how easily Cidainh destroy Apeleutheroi? :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by desert

Hey now, you're being unfair!

Haven't you seen how easily Cidainh destroy Apeleutheroi? :laugh4:

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They don't, actually. They die. take it from me. :wall:

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Originally Posted by desert

Oh. I'm playing a KH campaign on Alex.exe as well. I thought that maybe you had been ahead of me in the game and encountered some fatal CTDs.

That said, I don't really see much difference between Rome.exe and Alex.exe AI, except that Alex AI does extremely retarded things less frequently. That and the recruiting of mercenaries and retraining.

Then again, I probably just don't remember what things were like before Alex anymore.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Very off-topic, but I want to rant a little.
I once lost as Baktria because in 260 BC a Seleukid FM was wandering through Baktria, nothing out of the ordinary really, and then the next turn he attacked Baktra, and suddenly had a huge army made of every single mercenary unit in the region. Not even 6 FMs were enough to stop him.

In another campaign, I was obliterated by that super-elite army in Noricum, but inflicted some losses on them. I began to assemble a new army, but when my spy entered the area, somehow all of those elite units were back on full strength. I decided to retreat and wait for someone else to conquer them. I have seen several Roman and Epirot full stacks enter the region, but they never come out, and the Noricum defenders are always at full strength...

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

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It wasn't actually brilliant or anything, just efficient... Creating large, powerful armies (instead of large, skirmisher and reserve filled armies, or 3 unit "armies") and just sending in masses of them is what eventually wore me down. Granted, I was destroying the AI in the battles, until finally the sheer mass of numbers just drove me back city by city until my only real, powerful strongholds were Athens in Greece and Syracuse in the mediterranean. Once those each fell, I "roleplayed" that the few cities I had left (a terribly depleted Sparta included) would have just gone right back to the old city-state system and happily kissed the Romani boots that would stomp through their cities within the next few years- I just didn't want to keep hitting end turn over and over to see it finally happen, so ended the thing.

I guess I am the only one who likes looking at my Roman FM bodyguards' white horses.

Most favourite: Hetairoi Kataphraktoi (Baktrian Late Bodyguards), for obvious reasons.

Least favourite: Saba bodyguards. They are just lame and weak in comparison to others.

Maion

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Originally Posted by Maion Maroneios

Least favourite: Saba bodyguards. They are just lame and weak in comparison to others.

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Almost forgot about them, yeah, they blows big time!

my fav is the good ol' Somatophylakes Strategou.

they're great all-around for me.

All of the bodyguards have their uses and strengths but I think my favorite ones are Pahlava, Greek and strangely enough the Casse chariots:dizzy2:. I think the least powerful and least useful, for me, is the Romani bodyguards but they have their uses in the Roman army too.

Like Cavalry, if you don't use chariots properly they suck but I"ve achieved some massive slaughters with my Casse chariots. Their ability to shower javelins at the same time as charging right through the enemies lines makes them extremely useful. Besides it looks awesome when they send men flying. Like these campaign pictures show, my main # of kills was by my Chariots:

http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img....jpg&srv=img29

http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img....jpg&srv=img33

General Aetius

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http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img....jpg&srv=img33

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54 casualties...
Yes, if you have no other cavalry, they would be useful for chasing down routers.

I personally enjoy the Gallic bodyguards because they're consistently powerful cavalry throughout the game in the western regions.

But the Swebox and KH bodyguards are ridiculous to fight. If I was in a dark corner, I'd rather have a bunch of them than some pretty boys in checkered pants saving my butt.

And the Getai bodyguard suck the big one. They're a bunch of wusses.

Have no real favorite, but my least favorite is the Lusotannan bodyguards, for those that remember the old Pontika Spahbet and all the talk about how bad they where, the Lusotannan guys are in essence the same (but in my experience maybe even worse). While not really bad, they don't do what at least I want from a bodyguard. All others atleast have something going for them, the infantry ones are real though guys, the Casse chariots have the whole fear factor (at least the last time I played Casse in one of the previous versions) so the fact they aren't impressive in combat aren't that important. The other cavalry bodyguards all are able to charge and break the enemy. The Lusotannan guys, no charge whatsoever, get eaten alive by Curisi, not to mention anything that remotely looks like infantry. The javelins are useful but really, do one want a bodyguard that is just a really good Hippakontistai?

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Originally Posted by Laman

Have no real favorite, but my least favorite is the Lusotannan bodyguards, for those that remember the old Pontika Spahbet and all the talk about how bad they where, the Lusotannan guys are in essence the same (but in my experience maybe even worse). While not really bad, they don't do what at least I want from a bodyguard. All others atleast have something going for them, the infantry ones are real though guys, the Casse chariots have the whole fear factor (at least the last time I played Casse in one of the previous versions) so the fact they aren't impressive in combat aren't that important. The other cavalry bodyguards all are able to charge and break the enemy. The Lusotannan guys, no charge whatsoever, get eaten alive by Curisi, not to mention anything that remotely looks like infantry. The javelins are useful but really, do one want a bodyguard that is just a really good Hippakontistai?

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I dunno. I like the Lusotannan bodyguard. Their javelins have a high enough attack value to actually be useful, unlike the Cassee generals, and they have a really nice high attack value sword melee attack, so even though they don't have a massive charge bonus, they are WELL able to fight most units in prolonged melee, something I usually avoid doing with my cavalry.

I love the Spartan body guards. i dont like that only the starting spartan characters have them :(

My personal favorite is the Koinon Hellenon's Somatophylakes Strategou. They can handle just about anything. However, the Hayasdan are probably the best and I have not even reached the reforms yet. Their charge, defense, and melee are all very effective. I do things with them I simply won't do with bodyguards from the Romani, Averni, Makedonia, & Epeiros. Early on they are one of the most important components of your army.

To be fair, I must admit I have not played with Pahlava, Baktria, Saka, or the Arche.

My least favorite is the Casse, and they are one of my favorite factions. Yes I know. They have their uses. All factional bodyguards do! People get very defensive about them. But in truth they are worthless in sieges (except with a wooden wall they can pepper the enemy all while getting peppered themselves). Overall they are the least effective factional bodyguard in the game. Chariots are slow, clumsy, and tend to not stay together very well (especially inside a city). My only role for them is to stay close to the battle line, pepper the enemy, and keep hitting 'f'. With some factions I will have 2, 3, sometime 4 generals (early on) as a main component of my army. 3 or 4 chariots just seem to get in everyone's way, and they seem exposed and vulnerable. With Casse I actually prefer Celtic lesser kings once I am off the island.

Again, to be fair I must admit I have never played as Lusotannan which I hear are worse. At least the chariots create fear in the enemy.

My Favorites are:
Early mounted-Sauromatae
Late mounted- Hai, Pahlava, Baktrian, Saka

Least favorite mounted:
Romani

Favorite unmounted:
KH Spartan

My favorite is the Late Armenian BG unit. I like the other Elite cataphract units as well, but the mace for the Armenian version is what makes this unit my favorite.

My favourite: Molosson Agema
Least favourite: Those Iberian guys.

People keep saying that Casse chariots are supposed to simply sit back and scare the enemy, or cause gaps in their line for your infantry to exploit.

The first one is fine, scaring the enemy, yeah. But after playing RTW for years, EB for years, and knowing that on the recommended difficulty settings, one can annihlate the AI when vastly outnumbered against vastly superior troops, all this fancy, opening up gaps to exploit shit is pointless.

You're still going to win every single battle. The point is, to have fun doing it, and you can't have fun with the Casse because their generals are not only shit, but they get in the way. Their unit alone takes up half of the battle map. They're impossible to move from one place to another in siege battles.

Casse generals are my least favourite.

I can't say that i have a favourite though. They all look splendid, so i guess whatever faction i'm playing as are my favourite bodyguard at the time, except Casse.

Actually, scratch that. Maybe KH are my favourite. I've always been an infantry commander, i'm clumsy with cavalry and it's not my thing, at least not en masse. The Spartan hoplite bodyguards are great. They take casualties very very slowly, so you can use them as bait to tie up as many units as you like while you position other units around them ready to strike, then after the battle they regenerate to their original size. Awesome.

Just as a bonus, my other least favourite would be Lusotannan. I don't know if those guys get a reform at any point and get those Kataphract-esque Iberian cavalry as bodyguards later in the game, but the early ones are just rubbish. And they look bad.

No disrespect to the guy that made the skin for them, the skin is fine, all nicely detailed and whatnot, just the way they look offends my eyeballs.

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Just as a bonus, my other least favourite would be Lusotannan. I don't know if those guys get a reform at any point and get those Kataphract-esque Iberian cavalry as bodyguards later in the game, but the early ones are just rubbish. And they look bad.

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Dont think they do.

They didn't the last I saw.

My personal favourites would probably be the Baktrian ones. Just because they look so over-the-top funky.

Also, I actually rather like the Casse chariots. Sure they're a pain in the ass tactically, nevermind now if you have to maneuver them in built-up areas, and hardly awe-inspiring, but that's sort of the whole point - you can't use them like the usual elite-cav BGs, period. Makes for a dramatically different approach to things, indeed to even how you have to plan, which is good.
Plus I have a hard time not yelling "ROAD RAGE" when I launch them on a foe tossing charge... :sweatdrop:

No real "least favourites", although both the Brihentin and Hetairoi BGs get a bit boring to look at after a while - if only because they look the exact same as their non-FamiCav colleagues, and not that different from their peers in cousin factions, so the look tends to get a bit old eventually.

Carthy BGs are my second favourite. But my favorite is Baktrian late BG.

Also I was surprised at how good my Spartan body guards were when assaulting 800 men settlement with 3 body guards (around 80 man). Athenian general died first but the two Spartan generals massacred Scythian nobles and several other cavalry plus several spear mans.

My least favorite is the Casse BG. Though I know how to use it, im too used to Eastern style, charging my BG with my heavy cavalry. I just can't be bothered to use them in battle :sweatdrop:

I like the Casse chariots, they may be horrible against infantry but they are amazing against cavalry. They may not have scythes, but they still have the same effect. Cavalry that come into contact with the chariots just seem to die right away. Try charging a unit of Cidainh (sp?) against a unit of cavalry and watch all the horses get knocked down like bowling pins. Just make sure the chariots are always moving and not standing idle.

My least favorite are the Iberian body guards, using javelin-armed cavalry is a big pet peeve of mine.