I'm still new to the game and i've only played with a couple of catholic factions but here are my favs:

1. Mounted sergeants: Relatively easy to produce, massive charge bonus makes them capable of delivering serious damage to already engaged units, even heavier cavalry untis like Royal knights that happen to be wailing on your foot untis. Fast, manuverable and able to both give and take a punch. These guys remain useful for a really long time, firstly as shock troops, then later as light cav.

2. Vikings, V. Landsmen and Huscarles: Vikings of all types rule the early age and remain useful for long into the high age. All three units are armour piercing, and all have good morale. Vanilla Viking can be produced from just a fort, meaning you can have three untis of 3 attack, armour piercing good morale warriors produced by the time you can produce your first Urban Militia normally. Add to this that Norway gives you +1 Valour Vikings and you have units that rate up or above FMAA right from the get go, but without having to build a bunch of other building to get to produce them.

Viking Landsmen for the same reason as Vanilla Vikings. The difference here is that they are just stronger Vikings, but again available so fast that producing a swarm of them to ovverrun your enemies forces isn't hard. Because they are almost always facing the inferior troops available to other factions, they also take fewer loses and Valor up pretty quickly. Combined with a decent leader, and early viking rush is tough to deal with. Add to this the fact that you can start producing them right away in your conquered province (as long as it has a Fort) and you can replenish losses fast and keep the onlaught rolling.

Huscarles simply rule the roost. They are simply better than basically every other early infantry and most High era infanty. 4 attack, 4 charge, 4 defense plenty of armour, high morale and armour piercing attacks mean they carve up almost everything they come up against. It annoys me that I can't build them in the High era, because they remain better than CMAA despite requiring far less infrastructure to build them. If I could use then in High Era I would and devote my building time to upgrading my castles and other buildings. In the early campaign I will conquer scandinavia asap and start spamming these guys as a priority so I have enough to last me intot he High era as well.

3. Gallowglasses: Massive charge, armour peircing, huge base attack stat and cheap. They are also ALWAYS valour +1 beciuse they are only available in Ireland. The +1 valor gived then a very important morale and defense increase. They are also very reasonably costed allowing for large numbers of them. With effective stats of Charge 8 Attack 6 (armour peircing) defense 1 morale 2 Armour 2 as well as being Elite they can really dish it out. ideal as flankers, but capable front liners against everything but heavy cavalry charges.


For my money, the most under rated unti is the humble vanilla Viking.
Perfect untis for Zerg rushing. Fast to make, pack a big punch in the early game and remain solid for a very long time, easy to get the valour +1 version. basically an arse kickign looking for someone to happen to. Supported by some cavalry once you get it from other provinces and some archers they provide a cheap but capable army very fast.