Good Tanker units?

[aaaaa]

There are many good attacker; unit with good attacking capability & damage, i.e damage dealer. But IMO, this game lacks good tanker/defender units; Unit with good defense and high health (HP) with high initiative and moderate movement point AND relatively low price & leadership requirement.

I personally prefer shooter type units like archer. But to make good use of relatively weak shooter units, I need good tanker. It will jump into middle of advancing enemy troops and take all the enemy fire/hit in behalf of shoots. The knight unit is good example. But the knight is too high level unit. It is expensive and too good attacker, too. I need good defender/poor attacker, less expensive and with less damage. High initiative and moderate movement point are plus but not priority. Talent like Evasion is good plus.

Do you have unit to recommend for such defender/tanker unit?

[Paksenarrion]

In terms of health per leadership there are only 4 units above 1.00

Dryad = 1.25 (25/20)
Griffin = 1.125 (90/80)
Orc = 1.083 (65/60)
Black Knight = 1.067 (160/150)

These units would tend to be better defensively.

[edwin]

Griffins are superb for that at low to mid levels i find. They have good hp, decent defense, furious so they do loads of damage while grabbing the enemies attention, are very fast with high initiative so that you can park them right next to the enemy base line. Sure they'll need support when taking the brunt of the attack but that's to be expected.

Archmages can cast Shield which halfs the incoming damage. Stoneskin may help, Resurrection II can bring them back to health, Magic Spring gives you mana and strengthens their defense a bit etc.

Polar Bears are also decent tanks, they have 160 hp or so, so you may be able to keep them alive with Heals against weaker enemies. They are slow though.

[Infiltrator]

Black Dragons are the best tanks, no contest, the dryad may have a high HP/ldrs ratio but you will still lose a lot of them from most attackers. Whereas the enemy has to really make an effort to kill a single black dragon.

[ender]

Griffin seems good, with unlimited retaliation.
Ressurection+magic spring+a single stack of griffins=win many battles without loss and good experience for rage box.

[Zhuangzi]

Griffins. They are the best, hands down. Black Dragons are too expensive and by the latter stages of the game your strategy will probably be different. I do use Black Dragons at the end, but not in this fashion.

[alon]

Originally Posted by aaaaa

Do you have unit to recommend for such defender/tanker unit?

As was mentioned before, level 5 units are your best tankers because they have the greatest amount of Hit Points = TANK. It's in the very definition of the word.

So I think your Tank Progress tree for a single unit could be something like:
Cavalry > Giants > Green Dragons

A couple more point:s
Giants + Level 3 Stone Skin = virtually invulnerable.
Any tank + Target = perfect anti-Archers.
Giants / Green Dragons + Level 1 Sacrifice = Free Resurrection!

Plus the giant stomp ability is nice.

[Darmani]

I'm a big fan of Ancient Ents. Typically my first move in battles is to teleport them over and cast Stoneskin on them. If some of the enemy stacks have fire damage, I'll cast Divine Armor instead -- it replaces their 100% Vulnerability with 36% resistance. Oftentimes they can take a full round of hits from the enemy army without dying. I can't use healing on them, but I can use Life Light, which makes this strategy even more awesome for the Land of the Dead. When one of them dies, well, I keep a stack of Thorn Hunters for Sacrifice+Time Back for that purpose.

Yes, the enemy can move away, but the Ents can still use Wasp Swarm, and, if need be, there's Target and Mass Haste.

(By the way, having something low-level enough to use Time Back on in my army allows for major exploits. When I fight an army with a stack that has the No Retaliation ability, I keep it alive, get infinite mana by letting it bang on my Ancient Ents with Magic Spring for a while and get practically infinite rage by using Rage Draining. I then use Sacrifice+Ressurection to get free Thorn Hunters, and, once I've gotten them to full, use Sacrifice +Time Back on them to regenerate all my other stacks. Thus, I turn a heavily-depleted army into a full one for free.)

[Smash]

people miss a point, hp per leadership is not the most important thing but resistance and defense are thanks to them unit will stay longer.

Most important is physical resistance.

[player1]

Actually, both are important. If just cost effectiveness is important, not just 0-loss policy.