Units that aren't too useful....

[Khorak]

Gladiators are supposed to be a hard hitting unit with loads of stamina. But their stamina seems to run out really quick....I assume it's that hardiness bug or whatever that makes hardy units get knackered even quicker than normal.

They should be useful for, as said, wall defence (because they hit like freight trains until uber post-Marius units and don't get knackered, so can keep on fighting effectively), and for fast reactionary infantry on a battlefield. They can run anywhere you want them to and still be able to lay the hurt down. On a siege attack, they can be good breach stormers, hard hitters who can get in there, really tear the place up and last long enough for others to arrive.

They have fairly limited uses, but gladiators aren't utterly worthless. Well, I suppose the Velites ones are stinky....

I vote for incendiary pigs.

[Kraxis]

The Velites Gladiators? I vote them as being possibly the best. They are the lowest tech gladiators and they are as tough as the Mirmillos (highest tech).

I tried the Arcani for fun when my campaign was rolling... In fieldbattles they never did do as well as I had hoped. But then came a siege... Damn! One unit that was depleted a bit (from a field battle) racked up no less than 400 kills (on huge granted) but lost only one guy, and this was in serious fighting. Those streets were covered with enemies where they had faced that unit, the other unit never managed to get into much fighting because of the first one.
But of course I had to try and take hte square with them. Bad idea as some cavalry routed them, lost half the unit to them.

[Productivity]

I was playing a multiplayer battle against a friend, and used both arcani and mirmillo gladiators...

A strong central bunker, legionaries and archers, with auxilia up the front to take anything really nasty...

Out wide have two repeating ballistas on either side, guarded by cavalry and arcani.

In the gaps between these groups, have gladiators. My plan was to use the repeating ballistas to scare him into commiting his better units (because he didn't want them getting shot up) into the central bunker area, which should have been able to beat them. The gladiators act to stop the spilling around of the enemy, and anything that trys to march wide gets hit by the ballista.

Anyway, the plan worked. The ballistas scared him enough into marching all of his better units right down the middle, which ended up in a huge brawl, not much finesse there. But the gladiators did a great job of picking off anyone who looked like lapping around the sides of this combat.

The arcani were useful, because he sent some units to deal with each of the ballista groups, and when they got there they found themselves with far more units than they expected to deal with, and lost both fights, which allowed me to swing my cavalry round from the side, and hit him in the rear of the brawl.

Anyway, the arcani's ability to hide meant that my oponent commited understrength squads.

I'm not sure if other units would have worked as well as the gladiators, but they seemed to do very well as a skirmish unit to take out anythign that threatened to flank.

[Es Arkajae]

When I bother to build gladiators or get given them by the Senate I use them to take walls.

The main benefits have already been pointed out, namely their toughness, but an additional benefit is actually their small unit size, thanks to that it takes much less time for them to get up the siege tower and deploy and whats more be able to move as a whole unit since the whole unit can pop onto the wall almost at once.

It also means less time to get down from the walls and into the streets below. for that reason they're great for seizing the gate houses and then deploying into the street below to clear the way for the main body of your troops to enter through the front gate.

So a tough body of troops in a small package.

And to be honest as they're gladiators I don't feel so bad about them dying as I do my normal troops, good Romans all