Mysterious Unit.....

[Aegisthis The Infantryman]

I was being the Britons on a campaign and after many years of peace with my nieghbours I turned on them. Gaul first them Germania.
This is the interesting bit...

I was about to siege a German town and looked to see if my army could take it. There was a unit called:
Night Raiders
I've personally never seen them. I've done something simlar to this but this is the first time I've seen it.

Unfortunately I erased the file before I thought of bringing it up here. so there's no pic.

so what do you think? Have you seen anything yourself? Please do tell.

[IliaDN]

Yes it is just a special unit which can be trained when playing Germans.
You can set Custom Battle to see them.

[Somebody Else]

German unit, can be built with a Bardic Circle... Axe-infantry that scares other infantry, I believe. Can't remember much else.

[Wishazu]

very good for ambushing and pretty good defence for a barb unit

[The Stranger]

yup, thaTs it. axe inf, pretty good, they are the more defensive counterpart of your chosens

[Mikeus Caesar]

You're extremely lucky to see those in a campaign, because the AI very rarely builds good units like those.

[The Stranger]

yup

[pezhetairoi]

And did I mention, they rock. Very much. Slightly more than Chosen Axemen and slightly less than Berserkers.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Yeah, Night Raiders rule, I always have at least four of them and two Chosens in custom battles as Germany.

[pezhetairoi]

Ahaha, there you're different from me--my backbone is spear warbands. The mobile flanks are Chosens, and the reserve are Night Raiders.

[Viking]

You're extremely lucky to see those in a campaign, because the AI very rarely builds good units like those.

In my ongoing campaign, the germans keep sending those night raiders at me like crazy!

[Alien of Germania]

After 3 long campaigns playing Germania (Im now playing Britons for a change), I found the Night Raiders very useful to take walls when fighting against Romans, they often have loads of principes and cohorts up there. So a mix of chosen axemen and regular axemen with night raiders works really good there, after taken the gates send the spearwarband inside the town, thats a crush.

[sunsmountain]

That means the Germans either grew quite large, or were quite lucky in that particular city to have that particular bardic circle.

You see, germans are balanced mao, according to descr_strat.txt
In this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=45212

you can read what that means.

mao
biased towards mass troops, light infantry

So its rare to see a German faction with:
A. a minor city
B. money to spare on a bardic circle
since most of it is spent on units. And night raiders dont qualify as mass troops or light infantry.

It gets even better: Gaul is a 'religious smith' in which religious means it will build temples to Abnoba and Teutatis, but not Esus/Epona. Pretty shitty if you're the Julii and you want to build your Pantheon (level 5 temple) to Epona, for which you need a level 3 Epona temple from the Gauls. Epona gives +5 experience to 'raw recruits', making them instant veterans.

Spain could help out, but is geared towards Esus, if Abnoba fails.

and dammit this reminds me of the night battles that should have already been in the game.

[pezhetairoi]

AHHHHH I love you to bits sunsmountain. I've been looking for that thread about faction characteristics for, like, forever.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Ahaha, there you're different from me--my backbone is spear warbands. The mobile flanks are Chosens, and the reserve are Night Raiders.

Yeah, I usually love to use phalanx units, but as the Germans I find them to be too slow to keep up with my heavy infnatry and cavalry advances and flanking manuevers. Due to this i either use them as garrison troops or to protect my toehold in an assaulted city by stretching from wall to wall after I send my main force in.

[pezhetairoi]

mmhm, you have a point there, but I rather like spears for their staying power, even if they are slow... maybe it's just my more defensive playing style :-)

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Probably, lately in my Romans campaign in RTR I have been using an odd heavy infantry as my mobile force. They have been a bit slow at times and end up spread out and vulnerable, but the enemy is scattered when they scatter so it doesn't do much harm. Mostly I have had trouble getting enough cavalry and skirmishers so my Triarii and Principes would end up chasing skirmishers and routers across the battlefield. An odd highly aggressive heavy infantry tactic that I developed by accident, only problem is when I fought the SPQR army I lost EVERYTHING. My best general barely escaped alive. Besides that though I have only lost a couple of battles against Carthage and one siege where I was totally overwhelmed by a much larger force.

[barocca]

in previous total war games
there was a chance upon the death of a ruler that his succssor would be a different characteristic,

and thus the makeup of armies and province buildings chosen for construction would change

this made it a little harder for the human because while leader/ruler one was not aggressive and not expansionist his son could (and often was) a much different kettle of fish

perhaps the Germans built bardic circle and night raiders because their original ruler died and the current one has a different characteristic.