Quote Originally Posted by caravel
That is the common sentiment as regards Lithuanian cavalry. MTW has quite a few disappointing units. I don't mind a unit being poor if it's also cheap to build and support, and actually has a role to fill. The problem with MTW is one of redundancy. CA added a glut of units to it, but most are just stopgaps until you can spam build something better. This is what breaks the old combined arms model that worked so well in STW.
Indeed. The problem with Lithuanian cavalry is that the building requirements are huge for an unit that is not much better than mounted seargents. If the requirement was keep-level horse breeder and amrourer (for instance), one could consider using them if the maintenance costs is ok. Since they are far weaker than feudal knights needless to say that I stopped using them without even checking their upkeep cost.

Quote Originally Posted by caravel
For example if one has Feudal Sergeants then why build Spearmen? Why not just quickly tech up to the Spearmakers Workshop and you'll actually get a half decent unit that won't die like flies and run away at every given opportunity If spearmen were the only spear unit available to a faction in a given era and you actually had to use them and make do, then that would add a while new dimension.
Honestly I do not think that the vanilla spearmen are such a poor unit. First there are some faction who do not get anything better. For instance the Byz if I am not mistaken (perhaps they get the armoured version with VI but I never play as the Byz so I don't know for sure). More fundamentally, you have the timing issue. If with some factions it is quite possible to skip the spearmen cause you have a little cosy staring location (Danes, Sicilians, Egyptian), because you can use other units that can be able to deal with light cavalry (AUM for the elmos - urban militia valour one from Tuscany for the Italians) or because you can spam light cavalry yourself almost immediately (holibar for the French, English - cavalrymen for the Danes and Hungarian- Jinette for the Spanish and Aragones) for other that is simply not an option cause you need to gather troops asap and cannot afford to tech-up. For instance, if you play as the HRE you are bound to raise spearmen "en masse" cause they are the only units that can deal at all with other factions cavalry and cause the only cavalry you can get (mounted seargeants) requires a keep to be built first. Playing as the HRE, I always end-up with loads of spearmen and frnakly they do ok most of the time as long as I do not ask them to do more than 1) killing peasants hired by the French, 2) hold urban militia and keep adverse cavalry busy. Of course they die like flies but they do ok as long as you keep them tidy and avoid that they are flanked. A good illustration is something that happened to me last week-end, I invaded Normandy (which was empty) from Flanders with four units of speamen (no general with any star) and the IA moved two units of royal knights and two holibars in the province (with a three star general natural leader). It was a bridge battle and my four hundred dodgy spearmen manage to prevail (even though it was a close call since I lost about three hundred of them in the process). Since it was a bridge battle it was of course easy to keep my units tidy and all but that is also acheveable in other circumstances (at least against the IA) if you are patient enough. On the other hand, when you use spearmen against feudal men-at-arm's, Byz infantry or AUM that's a completely different story and a good receipe for a mass rout.

Basically, I kind of like spearmen. IMHO, if you treat them right and do not expect too much from them they do their job (as long as your general does not die or flee at least) which something that cannot be said of valor 0 urban militia, slav warriors or peasants.