Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Just some comments to the Arco Chariot Archers:

They are quite usefull because after taking the 10 damage (full hitpoints) only the archer dies and the chariot still attack with the charioteer and have another 10 hitpoints!

The best thing is after the battle the chariot is full repaired and has a new archer.

The normal chariot has a better protection but die after 10 damage.

I use both units and especially the archer chariots. The good defence, the acceptable protection and the 2 Lifes make them extremly powerfull in early game. They tremple independent forces all in ground and lost nothing most of the time.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

For light units swarming heavy units inst it better to create many units spread across the front rather than one large one? It seems to work better for me.

Also if I dont think there are many archers I find it better to make the heavy units run to me rather than charge them.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Units with low (or no) resource cost but the same gold cost as a heavier unit can be recruited in high quantities quickly, which can be useful. Also, 20 units with 1 resource cost will beat 2 units with 10 resource cost almost always, no? In any fight where armor makes a difference they are clearly inferior 1vs1 (or even 1vs4), but sometimes armor makes little difference.

Likewise, units with low morale can be forced to go berserk, in which cases morale becomes irrelevant. There are other such examples

These are perhaps niche uses, but that doesn't mean we should disregard them.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Let's assume the 2 units are 10 gold 20 resource each.
And the 20horde is 10 gold 2 resource each.

20horde is 200 gold 40 res.
2 units are 20 gold 40 res.

20horde consumes 10x as much supplies.
20horde costs 30 upkeep per turn.
2 heavies cost 3 gold per turn.
----------

There should be a global enchantment that makes each unit cos -1 upkeep (gold). It would make quite a difference for hordes.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

All that is true, but sometimes it wont make any difference. If a decisive battle is imminent, for example, you'll not care about upkeep or supplies.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

If decisive battle is imminent, I guess it's the best idea to use Pythium gladiators.
Ironically, in long run it may be easier to amass heavy armor units, which is kinda strange.
With heavies, you tend to have more gold left. For this gold, you can build extra forts, for example. So you can recruit even more heavies.
How about history ? Were heavily armored soldiers paid more ? Probably not. First of all, as far as I know, early medieval armored soldiers were simply nobles, because no one else could afford a sword, armor, horse....

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Why? Do you have a use for any of the Pangaean units I mentioned that makes them a better use of your gold than the other available units? If not, then those units should be improved so that they add useful capabilities to the nation. Minotaurs can't be fixed without either removing their trampling or fixing trample so that normal attacks also take place, but satyrs could be given a use by dropping their cost by a great deal. Stating that the truth of a matter must lie somewhere between two opposing viewpoints is known as the Golden Mean fallacy.

The game would be improved, and would be much easier to learn, if many of the units that have little use compared to the other available units were improved. Perhaps by halfing or quartering the gold cost of those units. Realistically, a unit such as militia that's unarmoured and has a morale of 8 is probably worth somewhere between 2-5 gold when compared to the performance of heavy infantry at the same gold cost. Such a change would have the additional advantage of bringing the relative abundance of heavy infantry to light infantry closer to historical levels. As an example, the Persian army outlined by Herodotus was virtually all unarmoured.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Useless is not to be a light unit. useless is to be another better unit so it make the first unit redundant.
It´s always better to recruit tribal shortbows intead of generic ones because they cost 8g intead of 10g and cost less resources, and have map movement 2 instead of 1, and they have a bonus dependant on the tribe (deer tribe have better defense).
other tribesmen are ok if you have a sudden war and are in need of some bulk force. low resource and special ability like if you mass the guys with two daggers cover the battle front filling the gaps between your heavy elites and delivering 2 attacks to lessen the defense thanks to multiple attacks effect.
bear tribe javeliners have extra strenght and this means more range of throw and more damage to hand to hand.
on the other hand light cavarly archers are a little crappy.
but normal light cavalry can buy you quick flankers.
I often overlook recruiting barbarians because of they high cost and little survability. so of indt units i find them to be near the worst units.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Barbarians can deal some mean damage with their strenght and heavy 2-weapons, useful if you need to punch through armor or take down units with lots of hitpoints.

It's true that some units like light cavalry archers, without lances or something like that, really seem rather useless. The higher map move is the only benefit I can think of for them.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Obviously we disagree quite abit. When playing Pangaea I purchase mostly Pan, Centaur Archers, and Harpies. Sometimes I will put some minotaurs in with maenads, and dryads as I need them. I almost never purchase the other centaurs. I wouldnt mind the satyrs being more effective stealth units.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Remember also that a low resource army can be left unrecruited as a big pile of gold and popped up on short notice later on. The oni who cost 25 gold and 1 resource are often a crap deal. But if you get an event that gives you 3000 gold you can burst out quite an army in a surprising place on short notice. That's valuable, and well worth noting that the unit exists even when you don't normally use it.

There's no way to see how much gold an opponent has in a pile, and gold reserves don't cost upkeep. While a hopplite army takes many turns of effort and costs upkeep along the way, a large army of crap is free and invisible until it exists in full.

-Frank

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

I also notice that the people who feel gold or resources are the prime deciders of a worthy army, tend to play strategies that stress order and production scales. Id rather see changes that allow for more variety in strategies and tactics than to see some strategies forced into other strategies.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

You'd be better off buying tribal shortbow archers than those centaurs. You'd get about three times the offensive potential and 50% more hitpoints for the same cost. I don't consider harpies a useless unit, as any fliers that can be recruited in massive quantities have a use. Panii are mages, which means that they don't really belong in a discussion of which national troops are useful.

There's nothing wrong with Dryads, they are Pangaea's most cost-effective researcher. The maenads that you get for turmoil 3 on the other hand don't have anywhere near the capability of the centaur warriors you could have bought with the extra gold from an order scale. You can defeat the computer with maenads, but that's mostly because the computer is not capable of building thugs with charcoal shields and 20 protection.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Unless I can find local archers that have stealth Im afraid that they dont replace the centaur archers. Also they dont tend to travel as fast which makes even the stealth ones not work as well for my tactics. A stealth army is most effective if it gets to the other nations before the provinces connect up the nations.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Funnily enough, with Pangea I normally use massed Minotaurs. They're pretty decent in combat, and nicely surviveable. They're also one of the few Pangea units that can go toe to toe with other national troops and have a fighting chance.

I think the trample has been under rated though. In the first instance, it prevents them being swarmed and mobbed by smaller units. It's always nice to see a bunch of smaller units scattered by a charge of war minotaurs, and often the inability of the smaller units to mob up and reduce the defence of the war minotaurs is incredibly useful.
The other benefit is setting the minotaurs to charge rear. It's probably just me, but I love watching trampling units just stroll straight through the enemy ranks and hit the archers or commanders hiding at the back.
(admittedly, the commanders are usually powerful enough to easily mince the minotaurs, but I just literally walked all over your army dammit!)

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

I would like to see those changes too. Unfortunately I don't think the current system allows it at the moment. Most troops ends up having a better alternative. One of the best examples of this is Jomon, you can probably get away with pure samurai archers with possibly the occasional cavalry for running down xbows. Yeah the other samurai troops aren't bad actually stat wise but the samurai archers are just so much better with that longbow option.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

The other unit would be centaur warriors, who have fantastically better stats and allow you to take a sloth scale instead of the production scale that minotaur warriors require.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Trampling units get swarmed even more often than non-trampling units, because they move right into the middle of packs of enemy units and get mobbed on the next turn.

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

This discussion prompted me to test how useless light units were against heavy ones. They’re not. In fact, at least one light unit is better than at least one heavy one for either equivalent resources or equivalent gold.

I tested one light unit against two heavy ones (separately, of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ):

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
lt spearmen hvy spearmen swordsmen
resources 7 11 18
protection 7 10 13
encumbrance 4 5 6
defense 13 12 13
move 2/11 1/10 1/9
</pre><hr />
MR and precision don’t matter for these tests. All of them had ten hit points, morale, strength, and attack skill, and they all cost ten gold.

I initially tested light vs. heavy spearmen at equal resource cost. This yields ratios of 11 light units for 7 heavy ones. I tried both 22 vs 14 and 44 vs 28. I’d thought that on a resource basis, the light and heavy units would be about equal, so I prepared elaborate tests: grouping each side into one or two units and varying which side gets the first hits. For each variation, I ran 20 battles using Dom3. (I didn’t think Saber Cherry’s most excellent combat simulator would work with the new rules.) Actually, I ran 30 of each, in case random events fiddled with the battlefield -- during testing, a “celebrant of the faith” showed up to help one side.

None of it mattered. At equal resource costs, the light spearmen slaughtered the heavy ones. Of each of 30-run sets, the light units would win 28 or 29. There’s about 50% more of them on the battlefield, so they get about 50% more hits every round. The three points of armor the heavy guys had didn’t help them, and it lowered their defence by a point. And once the heavies broke, the lighter guys would chase them down and kill them. Very few survivors made it off the field.

I then ran equal gold costs (equal numbers) of light vs. heavy spearmen, but only one set of trials: one group on each side, heavies hit first, 28 to a side. That helped the heavy troops a lot: they were winning about 100% more battles: three of the 30, losing the other 27. I think the light guys did so much better because the extra point of defence is simply more useful than the three points of armor.

Time to bring up reinforcements. Equal resource costs of light spearmen vs swordsmen, one group on each side, 36 vs 14. The swordsmen were anilhilated. They lost all their battles. It’s hard fighting worse than 2:1 odds.

At equal gold costs, the situation was reversed. The swordsmen won 28 of 30 battles. Not only do they have the same skill as the light spearmen, they’ve got a lot more armor. OTOH, some light spearmen were able to run away from each battle.

So, I’d have to say the light troops aren’t as hopeless as we’d thought.

Caveats: Yeah, I didn’t test very many kinds of units. And they are “generic” independents; there are more cost-effective choices for both indies (heavy amazons and light tribesmen) and national units. Nor did I look at guys with missiles. Maybe I’ll do that next weekend. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I’m not even gonna *try* to figure out what effect magic has on this...

Re: Useless or redundant units?
 

Independents in general are rather weak in armor department. Try that same test against national spear-wielders. Like MA Man's spearmen. Prot 13 isn't heavy. It's between light and heavy.