Quote Originally Posted by Miracle
Tercio pikemen can be very easily upgraded to heavy mail which is 1 less armor than the Noble's partial plate.

Combined with their superior training, 39% lower training cost and 28% lower upkeep, this makes Tercio the overall best.
Those upgrades cost money, you know. You can't just write off the fact that you've spent thousands of florins to get the appropriate buildings and act like they're equal defensively because they can be upgraded.

Also, the Noble Pikemen are granted by huge stone walls as well as the armoury. Tercio pikes require a military academy to be recruited, which in turn requires a huge city to be built. So in addition to having a huge city, they also need a 4-turn building that costs 4800 florins. To get the upgrades they require to be remotely close to the Noble pikes, you need 3 upgrade buildings, or 2+3+4 = 10 turns worth of building, and 600+1200+2400 = 4200 florins of upgrade buildings. So right off the bat you've invested 9000 florins more to have your tercio pikes w/ upgrades than you would have just to have basic Noble pikes, who still will have a 1 point armor advantage right out of the box. Additionally the Noble pikes can come on the scene possibly 14 turns earlier due to not requiring any construction detours (earlier still if you use those turns to promote growth instead of blacksmiths). That's a fairly sizable difference. It will be a bit of time before the cost difference of the Tercio can pay back the hole you dig to get them in the first place, and that's not even accounting for your greater troops losses due to lower armor, which could realistically make them economically neck-and-neck with Noble Pikes as far as investments go.

On top of that, Noble pikes have an upgrade level of their own, which will make them further surpass the defense of the Tercio pikes. So with all the facts accounted for, it seems far less likely that you can claim Tercio pikes are the best simply on the grounds of cost. They are beaten statistically, and have an edge on cost/upkeep, but it's entirely unclear how those two interact to determine an overall best unit.