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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Quillan

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.

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Hmmm I wonder why I didn't learn that when I studied Roman History.

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.