Useless units?

[caravel]

***Sniff, sniff***

Not too late for a resurrection...

***Slaughters chicken, utters the sacred words, etc...***

I have only the vanilla MTW (no Russian Spears, no Heavy Steppe Cav, etc) so I still find myself training light steppe cav when I conquor eastward with a western european power (no horse archers). Hobilars are basically a slower, slightly cheaper steppe cav (trading one attack for one defense point). The extra speed (vs hobilars) seems to work well for the years leading up to allowing the prov to be able to produce mounted sgts, imo.

I agree... also base stats aren't everything in MTW, some units only come into their own with upgraded morale or a regional + master level valour bonus (e.g. clansmen). I like light cavalry, but many do not know how to best utilise any cavalry properly except heavy. Someone said that vanilla horse archers could be used for chasing routers, they're also one of the weakest melee units in the game and can take heavy losses doing so. I would rather have one unit of light cav for this purpose. Light cavalry are not just good for pursuing routers however, they can be invaluable for disrupting formations of archers or javelinmen.

Javelins; except for the exceptional Jinette :)

Javelins are truly useless - especially in the hands of the AI. I have been experimenting with some slav javelins and kerns lately and it has only reaffirmed my opinion. Even on hold formation, rather than skirmish, deployed directly in front of the battle line they are a dismal failure, as they can never seem to get a volley off before being charged head on. They're a little useful as bait I suppose, as they serve to lure enemy cavalry onto your waiting spears/pikes... but if they get caught up, they can trigger a chain rout.

Rarely do I build urban militia as early spears are much better overall. Militia sergeants are also rarely built.

Urban Militia are made redundant by Militia Sergeants, but early on they are useful if you have nothing else (e.g. Ghazis, Woodsmen, Vikings). Axe units are valuable as flankers, especially against cavalry, due to their AP ability. It's all about combined arms tactics. Spears are good pinning units (i.e. they are good at tying up cavalry and dying slowly) but using them alone to counter cavalry is a waste. Once the spears have the cavarly units engaged, you should bring in flanking units to do the actual killing. In the high era this is going to be the pole arms, such as the bills, halberdiers or JHI, but in early the axe units are best for this.

As far as useless units, how about that AI? When I fight the Spanish (in early, at least), nothing but Jinnetes - a nice auxiliary but not a frontline unit. The Turks are mainly horse archers. In fact, archers of all types seem to be over built making enemies a walkover. Worse, once available, its all crossbows and regular archers eat them alive.

This is because in auto resolve battles (the type of battle always played out in AI vs AI encounters) only the melee stats of units are taken into account.

There are too many x bow units in the vanilla game, it's that simple really. I usually mod the pavise variety to italian only and remove the standard ones from their roster, the arbalests can also be moved to late era only, making standard x bows more relevant.
@ferdi / @DEB8: UM are not really the source of the stars. Those are "hero generals" you are seeing who are set to appear at certain dates. In a typical English or French campaign, they don't appear as spear units due to the "general candidate" parameter. I believe this is set to as low as possible for spears, but is a notch or two higher for UM. If you train any hobilars you'll see most of those generals leading those units instead.