Best Unit in the game?

[Bhruic]

Spartans? Give me a 1:1 ration on plain old horse archers and I'll take on as many Spartans as you want to field. And that's not even pulling out Scythian Nobles or Cataphract Archers. Spartans may be impressive when you are facing another infantry heavy army, but if you know you are going against Spartans, why would you do that?

Bh

[Someone Stupid]

peasants - they eat up a ton of population (cheaply) in those dire times that one of your cities just decides to surprise you with a revolt thanks to a poor and drunk gov with a small garrison.

[Kaldhore]

Urbans maybe a fantasy unit, but all the units are fantasy really. And theyre in the game. And this is a thread about the best unit in the game. And whoever sadi that Urbans cant beat a spatan in phalanx mode - aint tested it well.

Horse Archers have gotta be the most annoying unit in the game, or wardogs :P

[Old Celt]

Best can mean many things, but no unit is designed to do every job on the battlefield. So, it is probably better to consider each arm of the military when making such comparisons: infantry, cavalry, missiles, artillery, special forces.

Horse archers cannot defeat Spartans in the hands of a competent Greek player. They can easily take the infantry out of phalanx and rotate them as needed to keep the shield bearing on the horse archers line of fire. The horse archers will run out of arrows without having killed many Spartans or routing them. Online battles of this sort, involving many units will end up with the Greek side pressing the HAs into a corner for orderly disposal, (if the HA player doesn't just quit after running out of arrows).

But as I mentioned in the first paragraph, different arms do different jobs. Infantry isn't designed, nor expected for the most part to chase down and destroy cavalry. I think it is only fair in the rock, paper, scissors game, to compare rocks to rocks, paper to paper, etc.

[Spartan117300]

best infantry unit in the game is the spartans bar none, ive sen them get surrounded, hit in the rear by cav, pelted with fire pots, arrows and javalins, you name it and theyve defeated it. historically and in the game, those guys are the best, end of discussion, as for bowmen........ok, lemme give ya a scenario here, i was defending a greek city while playting online, i had one ally who was greek and we played against 3 egyptians, we blocked the roads with phalanxes and every once in a while sent our cav out to attck any weakspots we noticed, i sent 400 cav against 160 bowmwn, my cav was wiped out...

[Arrowhead]

i like royal pikemen as well as Spartans...
sorry i take back what i said about the pharohs bowmen.. forester warband are indeed better! i haven't played with them as much as pharohs bowmen..

^Thank you, friend, someone actually realised!


GO FORESTERS

[Old Celt]

Arrowhead:

Pharoahs -
Attack/Range: 14, 170
Mellee Attack/Charge: 9, 4
Defense: 13


Forresters -
Attack/Range: 15, 170
Mellee Attack/Charge: 11, 8
Defense: 8

Pharoah's Bowmen have superior defense, equal range, and a bonus when fighting in their native desert. They have lower melee attack values, but in primary respect of archery and defense, PBs are clearly superior.

[Arrowhead]

Your forgetting that foresters are fast,can hide anywhere and are very hardy.
And I think pharoahs are slower with more defence to stand taking more hits.
Chosens are in between with a weaker range.

[n00bicus]

Scythian noble archers. Strong versatile and cheap.
Also, German spear warband.

[Mountaindew]

Mmmmm...it seems like the sad reality is, that there is no best unit in the game. if there was, then everyone will be exploiting them, and it will pretty much be used everywhere, and no one else would want to use anything else. the game, and all strategy games are created such that ALL UNITS will have strengths, but WILL have weaknesses. spartans, cohorts, chosens, bowmen and elephants have been thrown around this forum, hailed to be the best unit, however, someone is still able to successfully identify its flaws-from flanking, archery, speed, mobility, flexibility, and cost. It just goes to show that no unit is the best, or perfect. it is the combination of certain units that makes an ARMY, close to invincibility and immortality much much closer than just a single unit.

HOWEVER, i place my bet on ARMOURED ELEPHANTS to close to the 'best' unit the game, since NO UNIT (apart from from the pigs) are capable of defeating it singlehandedly without being crushed under elephant feet itself.

[Craterus]

its the simple concept of rock paper scissors..
all units are strong against one type of unit but weak against another!
bla bla bla etc.

[imdWALRU5]

SPARTANS ALL THE WAY!!!

Cataphracts are cool too

[Craterus]

I like Cataphracts, but my favourite unit has to be Egyptian Chariot Archers..

I'll take on a unit of Spartans one on one with Chariot Archers any day.

[Count Belisarius]

Without breaking my 'favorites' down by unit type, I'd have to go with Cataphracts. They're not as fast as Companions, they're not as much fun to watch as Armoured Elephants (in R:TW anyway, elephants are much more realistic in R:TR), and they're not as hardy as Spartans. However, that superlative armour gives them great staying power in prolonged hand-to-hand combat, a weakness of the Companions. They are functionally invulnerable to arrow fire, they're fast enough to run around the flank of a phalanx, and the sheer weight and killing power of all that armour makes for a nearly invincible charge. I have had them chopped up pretty good by spiked chariots, but that and elephants are their only weaknesses. Plus, you have to look at accessibility and maintenance cost: you can crank them out with a Level 3 [edit] stable, and they cost a mere 140 denarii (I think) to maintain! This makes them easy to retrain and cheap to have boatloads of them in your order of battle.

[katank]

Cataphracts are level 3 stables. They are indeed 890/140 and trains in a turn.

As for spartans, they are quite overrated when facing missiles, especially ones they can't catch.

There is no way they can pin horse archers into a corner and a competent HA user would make it impossible to have you facing them. Arrows will be coming in from all sides and they will continually shift towards your shieldless side, causing the units to involuntarily turn and gradually get destroyed.

Chosen archer bands don't have less range. All second level archers have 170 range. Foresters used to be worse than PB due to the primary secondary bug giving PBs an edge in melee but this is no longer the case. So what if PBs get a bonus in the desert? Foresters get bonus in snow and woods too IIRC.

[Viking]

Forester Warband could beat up a unit of Spartans easily.

Just stay out of hand to hand combat, and shoot until you run out of ammunition, then charge the Spartans and they`ll flee like flies!

[Arrowhead]

Forester Warband could beat up a unit of Spartans easily.

Just stay out of hand to hand combat, and shoot until you run out of ammunition, then charge the Spartans and they`ll flee like flies!

Up the forester fan club!