Gladiators?

[Sombre]

I think they'd just kill your gladiators with a scout and move the raiding army elsewhere - they'd have cost you a chunk at gold an succeeded in disrupting your recruitment. I guess if the province is really important (which is going to happen very rarely) and it happens to be next to your fort and your other forces are an extra 1 move away and you can build enough gladiators rather than normal troops to actually stop/discourage the enemy army when combined with PD,... then they might be useful. But that's really, really niche.

[P3D]

As Ermor/Pythium, they are really useful for the very initial expansion. Especially as EA Ermor which does not have as many options. 15-20 gladiators could clean up most indie provinces, and the net+trident ones are surprisingly effective against heavy cavalry. That means you'd attack two provinces in turn three not one. You start with an admin 60 Great City, and that extra province should bring you important resources plus some gold next turn.

[chrispedersen]

Gladiators are situational - but more useful than often thought.

If you *know* you are going to take casualties anyway, (for example, facing cav, why not make the casualties glads?

It *is* difficult to use these troops multiple moves away from a castle. So, these troops are often best used with a nation that has a lot of castles.

The gladiators come in two flavors -- nets, and flails. (iirc). Nets are very useful against thugs, sc's and cav. Flails hit very hard for their density.

I wrote a little about glads in my EA-Ermor write up.