Useless or redundant units?

[FrankTrollman]

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

[Gandalf Parker]

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.

[KissBlade]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

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.

[Graeme Dice]

Gandalf Parker said:
Obviously we disagree quite abit. When playing Pangaea I purchase mostly Pan, Centaur Archers, and Harpies.

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.

Sometimes I will put some minotaurs in with maenads, and dryads as I need them.

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.

[Gandalf Parker]

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.

[Archonsod]

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!)