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.

[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!)

[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]

Archonsod said:
They're also one of the few Pangea units that can go toe to toe with other national troops and have a fighting chance.

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.

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.

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.

[Evil Dave]

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 ):

Code:

---

		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

---

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. I’m not even gonna *try* to figure out what effect magic has on this...

[Endoperez]

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.