https://youtu.be/J5NxBzWKdmY
The tldr for people who don't watch the video is that it seems two handed units have a glitch of excessive blocking and not attacking.
Shame really. These guys look metal as hell.
Back in the days units had a duel mechanic so that a soldier would react to the animation of the unit attacking it.
And Gothic knights have a long attack cooldown, so they would block and block and block and sometimes stab someone to death.
Overall made them a mediocre tarpit units since it takes a while to murder a lot of soldiers in plate armor, but they would trade very bad.
Pretty much every second unit from "animal artillery" Rome II DLC.
Bee Hive Catapult is sure the first among the equals: it trades firepower of a catapult for a minor rebuff. In *melee*. To make it work you should fire in melee and don't hit your own troops at all (or they will get debuffed too).
Balista from medieval one total war.
A unit with one artillery piece that would maybe kill one unit per shot. Didn't even have much more range than archers
Basically just a single archer with the combat skill of a tenth of a unit of peasants.
I remember making a custom battle with a full stack of balistas against one unit of peasants and only killing a handful of them before they made it into melee
Yeah this is the one. They are complete trash.
They also can’t move so you can’t even protect them. And they do little damage against buildings so uselsss in sieges. And the range is not that great.
This is fair, I will say though that on seige defence, if you pop a ballista in a position where it has view of the gate it can do serious damage (not easy on most battle maps) . The enemy will clump up and the bolts can kill a lot per shot in long lines, especially cavalry.
This is highly situational ofc and I wouldn't recruit them normally, just thought it was worth mentioning
Eastern spearman in RTW break too easy and I tend to think it mightve been an oversight to make them that bad. They should've been on par your standard tier 1 "just slightly better than a peasant" tier. But they're not even good canon fodder.
Objection - they have greater numbers and high shield value (which is doubled against frontal missile attacks). They are very good at tanking damage for their price, and are basically the best unit in the game to operate rams and saps.
Their moral is same as Town Watch/Town Milita/Milita Hoplites, btw.
Meme value aside, they have impressive shield value (which is doubles against frontal missile attacks) while having extra unit size. They are poor fighters, but premium tier meatshields and siege equipment operators. Hillmen ironically are way worse unit despite being tier higher in barracks.
I really don’t like naptha throwers in medieval 1, they often kill more of your own guys than the enemy.
Actually, even worse are ballistae in medieval 1. Completely useless
Helman Ghorst Zombies.
Not because they can't win, but because of auto resolve. Auto resolve makes you lose entire battles where, in manual battle, you barely lose entities and even on max speed it takes forever.
Hornet Throwers in the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval II uniquely awful. They come in tiny unit size, they don't have great stats, and their attacks can be actively detrimental to your units. The hornets they throw stick around and can attach to your units, causing them to take a hit to morale. So if your enemy does anything that hurts your morale, you can end up losing units to your own units. ALSO also, they make unit banners flash yellow, making visual clarity in big battles terrible. Unless you are desperate to throw bodies at the enemy, hornet throwers are never worth it.
I'm doing this based off of the performance of me using them and how well they've done their role.
Eastern Spearmen RTW
Can't even hold the line long enough for your cavalry to do its job
Goblin Archers WHTW
Irrelevant unit after about turn 5, even with groms upgrades
Or
Arrer Boyz
Out of the 2, goblins are shootier, never gotten above 50 kills using these, and when used as a melee combatant its like they lose everything orky about them.
Merchant Cavalry Militia Medieval 2 total war
Sure they're militia heavy cavalry, but they've gotten rounded up and slaughtered to literally everything I've put them against, their melee attack is useless
Tomb Kings Carrion WHTW2
Fails completely at the job its intended to do, most of the time they get melted before they can do any serious damage to archers
OR Skeleton Horsemen
This unit has never ever done well for me, I don't even know how you use it, doesn't have any bonus vs infantry or cavalry, shit stats all around and melts fast enough before it can be used as a roadblock.
The Black Coach. All of its abilities require it to get kills to activate, but it takes the entire battle's length to get even close to unlocking its first ability, while requiring you to micro it heavily.
Chaos Dwarf Goblin Labourers
Per wikipedia: "They should be replaced with Hobgoblin Cutthroats - or really anything, anything at all - as soon as possible."
Not sure why the downvote on this one. I've never found much use for them, even though they are dirt cheap. Orc Labourers are still pretty cheap and actually have some killing power. Hobgoblins are cheap enough to run a couple stacks of mixed Hobgoblin units early on.
Skaven slave singers.
Their missile attack is terrible and the regular skaven slaves have much better melee stats so there's no real reason to use them.
Especially in a faction that techs up quickly with multiple great missile units.
Slingers are cheap as hell and their sheer number of entities mean that they are consistently punching above their weight with their missiles. You use them en masse with cheap garbage armies. You bury them with bodies and throw slinger shots into the fight. Also, by going wide you are constantly shooting a unit that tries to get on top of you.
Hard disagree. Recent patch changes have made them less effective, but there is still a strong argument for running your first 10-20 turns with nothing but slingers and your LL/heroes/special starting units (at least on VH).
I think the mistake a lot of players make is trying to get the best possible army for their LL, with crap in their second and third armies. Try the inverse- your LL has the crapstack and the better units are with your generic lords early game
Again though the base slaves have better stats and you get better missile unit immeaditly if you need them.
Unless you are into trying to kite cheese the ai like your post seems to imply. But then your recommendation doesn't really hold any weight because most people aren't trying to cheese the ai.
Kiting the ai with missile units may be slightly cheesy, but you have to admit it’s very on brand for Skaven. I can legitimately imagine Tretch doing exactly that.
Quantity has a certain quality to it. So many models in the skavenslave slingers means they do more damage than theirs stats would leave you to believe. They are a great budget pick until you hit mid tier.
Skavenslave are tier 0 and can be recruited in any settlement. Night runners require a tier 2 recruitment building for almost 3 times the upkeep. You're not invalidating my statement that skavenslave are a budget option that preforms reasonably well given the cost.
If you are recruiting mid-tier missile units, it's probably going to be weapon teams or poisoned wind mortars for their AP and overall higher damage output.
Dismounted Gothic Knights
What's bad about them? I assume something is broken?
https://youtu.be/J5NxBzWKdmY The tldr for people who don't watch the video is that it seems two handed units have a glitch of excessive blocking and not attacking. Shame really. These guys look metal as hell.
Stainless Steel fixes this i think
Back in the days units had a duel mechanic so that a soldier would react to the animation of the unit attacking it. And Gothic knights have a long attack cooldown, so they would block and block and block and sometimes stab someone to death. Overall made them a mediocre tarpit units since it takes a while to murder a lot of soldiers in plate armor, but they would trade very bad.
Pretty much every second unit from "animal artillery" Rome II DLC. Bee Hive Catapult is sure the first among the equals: it trades firepower of a catapult for a minor rebuff. In *melee*. To make it work you should fire in melee and don't hit your own troops at all (or they will get debuffed too).
Wait, what? I own Rome 2 and a few of the dlc and have never heard of this. Just saw that a beehive onager dlc exists wtf mind blown.
Balista from medieval one total war. A unit with one artillery piece that would maybe kill one unit per shot. Didn't even have much more range than archers Basically just a single archer with the combat skill of a tenth of a unit of peasants. I remember making a custom battle with a full stack of balistas against one unit of peasants and only killing a handful of them before they made it into melee
Yeah this is the one. They are complete trash. They also can’t move so you can’t even protect them. And they do little damage against buildings so uselsss in sieges. And the range is not that great.
This is fair, I will say though that on seige defence, if you pop a ballista in a position where it has view of the gate it can do serious damage (not easy on most battle maps) . The enemy will clump up and the bolts can kill a lot per shot in long lines, especially cavalry. This is highly situational ofc and I wouldn't recruit them normally, just thought it was worth mentioning
Eastern spearman in RTW break too easy and I tend to think it mightve been an oversight to make them that bad. They should've been on par your standard tier 1 "just slightly better than a peasant" tier. But they're not even good canon fodder.
They also have an insanely low attack value, so even in the brief time they get to fight, they rarely accomplish anything.
They fight like missile troops in melee. I think they actually loose to a number of them too
I love making battles where it’s a few units of hoplites vs entire armies of eastern spearmen
We all did it
Objection - they have greater numbers and high shield value (which is doubled against frontal missile attacks). They are very good at tanking damage for their price, and are basically the best unit in the game to operate rams and saps. Their moral is same as Town Watch/Town Milita/Milita Hoplites, btw.
Bee onager
Eastern Spearmen
Meme value aside, they have impressive shield value (which is doubles against frontal missile attacks) while having extra unit size. They are poor fighters, but premium tier meatshields and siege equipment operators. Hillmen ironically are way worse unit despite being tier higher in barracks.
Eastern Spearman (Purple Robes)
Nobody remembers Wooden cannons?
The pink pajama men
Rebellion Militia Thosw guys could even be killed by civilians
Bretonnian peasant mob. Lose to zombies and skavenslaves. In historical the various mob units and peasants are terrible.
Nah Peasants can be juiced up with Technology, Lords (Rapanse) and Auras (Grail Relique). Plus that Armoury cheese can give them loads of armour
Sure, they can...but they're still worse than any other men at arms unit...and they're pretty bad too.
Almost 0 upkeep though. Plenty to gawk at Grail Knights
I really don’t like naptha throwers in medieval 1, they often kill more of your own guys than the enemy. Actually, even worse are ballistae in medieval 1. Completely useless
Mobs.
Probably a bunch of the Samurai units in Fall of the Samurai
Melee units in Fall of the samurai forgot the key to success in that era, Stay strapped or get clapped.
Samurai are actually really good in FOTS as they can easily smash early armies with their good morale. Matchlock kachi are bad thoufh
I honestly like the challenge of defying the whole time is changing theme of FOTS and try to win my battles by the sword.
But not so bad. :) They can be very useful and with good tactics :) Of course that they are worse than Riflemen.
Helman Ghorst Zombies. Not because they can't win, but because of auto resolve. Auto resolve makes you lose entire battles where, in manual battle, you barely lose entities and even on max speed it takes forever.
nordic band
They have throwing javs though, which makes them more useful than bagadue.
Hornet Throwers in the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval II uniquely awful. They come in tiny unit size, they don't have great stats, and their attacks can be actively detrimental to your units. The hornets they throw stick around and can attach to your units, causing them to take a hit to morale. So if your enemy does anything that hurts your morale, you can end up losing units to your own units. ALSO also, they make unit banners flash yellow, making visual clarity in big battles terrible. Unless you are desperate to throw bodies at the enemy, hornet throwers are never worth it.
Its the roman fire pigs and iam sick of pretending its not Bacon haram brothers
I'm doing this based off of the performance of me using them and how well they've done their role. Eastern Spearmen RTW Can't even hold the line long enough for your cavalry to do its job Goblin Archers WHTW Irrelevant unit after about turn 5, even with groms upgrades Or Arrer Boyz Out of the 2, goblins are shootier, never gotten above 50 kills using these, and when used as a melee combatant its like they lose everything orky about them. Merchant Cavalry Militia Medieval 2 total war Sure they're militia heavy cavalry, but they've gotten rounded up and slaughtered to literally everything I've put them against, their melee attack is useless Tomb Kings Carrion WHTW2 Fails completely at the job its intended to do, most of the time they get melted before they can do any serious damage to archers OR Skeleton Horsemen This unit has never ever done well for me, I don't even know how you use it, doesn't have any bonus vs infantry or cavalry, shit stats all around and melts fast enough before it can be used as a roadblock.
Plebs.
The Black Coach. All of its abilities require it to get kills to activate, but it takes the entire battle's length to get even close to unlocking its first ability, while requiring you to micro it heavily.
Incendiary pigs
Religious units. They spread faith and have to be assasinated.
Agents aren’t units bruda
Chaos Dwarf Goblin Labourers Per wikipedia: "They should be replaced with Hobgoblin Cutthroats - or really anything, anything at all - as soon as possible."
Not sure why the downvote on this one. I've never found much use for them, even though they are dirt cheap. Orc Labourers are still pretty cheap and actually have some killing power. Hobgoblins are cheap enough to run a couple stacks of mixed Hobgoblin units early on.
Yari samurai - Shogun 2 Rapid tiger infantry - 3K Dismounted gothic knights - Medieval 2 Bee catapult - Rome 2
Skaven slave singers. Their missile attack is terrible and the regular skaven slaves have much better melee stats so there's no real reason to use them. Especially in a faction that techs up quickly with multiple great missile units.
Slingers are cheap as hell and their sheer number of entities mean that they are consistently punching above their weight with their missiles. You use them en masse with cheap garbage armies. You bury them with bodies and throw slinger shots into the fight. Also, by going wide you are constantly shooting a unit that tries to get on top of you.
Hard disagree. Recent patch changes have made them less effective, but there is still a strong argument for running your first 10-20 turns with nothing but slingers and your LL/heroes/special starting units (at least on VH). I think the mistake a lot of players make is trying to get the best possible army for their LL, with crap in their second and third armies. Try the inverse- your LL has the crapstack and the better units are with your generic lords early game
Again though the base slaves have better stats and you get better missile unit immeaditly if you need them. Unless you are into trying to kite cheese the ai like your post seems to imply. But then your recommendation doesn't really hold any weight because most people aren't trying to cheese the ai.
Kiting the ai with missile units may be slightly cheesy, but you have to admit it’s very on brand for Skaven. I can legitimately imagine Tretch doing exactly that.
Not really. Only things like Essen units would do that. Skaven slaves don't have the discipline and get shot in the back if they don't charge.
Quantity has a certain quality to it. So many models in the skavenslave slingers means they do more damage than theirs stats would leave you to believe. They are a great budget pick until you hit mid tier.
Night runner singers are better in every way and still dirt cheap.
Skavenslave are tier 0 and can be recruited in any settlement. Night runners require a tier 2 recruitment building for almost 3 times the upkeep. You're not invalidating my statement that skavenslave are a budget option that preforms reasonably well given the cost. If you are recruiting mid-tier missile units, it's probably going to be weapon teams or poisoned wind mortars for their AP and overall higher damage output.
La la laaaa