Best & Worst Units?

[stupidface]

Hi!

So far in my experience as a Paladin playing the game on Hard, I've found the following units to be amongst the best for the following reasons. I'd love to hear what you think the best and worst units are too. I'm only at level 15 now, so I can only say what's best up to halfway through the game.


Early Game:

Best:

Bowmen: Higher Damage and HP than Thorn Hunters, plus unlimited supply at home castle after completing a few King Quests. Bowmen may very well be your mainstay for ranged combat throughout most of your game. Their damage scales very well with the demands placed upon them by new, more difficult areas. By midgame however they do tend to die quickly, but they are easy to find to recruit.

Royal Snakes: Great melee units. Attacks cause no retaliation, plus they've got a short-range attack that does extra damage. Can command relatively large numbers, yet the unit still has good HP. Abundant supply in Swamps.

Swordsmen: The Damage-Resistance is great, and they've got enough speed to be very useful.

Peasants: Not the weakest unit in the game by a long shot, and their ability to stack Attack bonuses from having a large number of Peasants means that, for the early game, you're unlikely to have any unit at your disposal that can do more damage in any single attack than a full Peasant stack. Plus they're cheap!

Worst:

Thorn Hunters: They're cheap, one of the few ranged that you can recruit in the early game, and you can recruit a lot at any one time, but their very low HP combined with their short effective range means that you're likely to burn through the available supply very quickly. Ultimately it is probably better to replace them with melee animals like bears, or with Undead Archers if you can find them.

Robbers: In the early game, you pretty much NEED Peasants and Archers. Therefore the morale hit from recruiting robbers is too great a deterrent. By the time you have access to enough quality non-human troops, Robbers and Marauders are no longer attractive options when compared to Pirates and their ilk.

Priests: Their ranged attacks just aren't very damaging, and their utility in a fight is debatable. I think that about all that they're good for is fighting Undeads.

Middle Game:

Best:

Cannoneers: Great ranged damage and high initiative! The only problem is that there are so few to be found until you get pretty far into Dwarven lands. I would rate Cannoneers at least as good as Bowmen if not for the fact that they are so hard to find more to replace.

Evil Beholders: Ranged magic-damage that is much better than Priests or their ilk. Plus the ability to hypnotize an enemy stack into attacking its friends, or to force your own troop to attack a second time, is incredibly useful. These are my favorite ranged troop of all so far.

Orc Shamans: Their main use is by placing totems that distract the enemy, thus giving your ranged units more time to attack them and more time for your rage to build. Totems can even be used to stop an advancing enemy troop from being able to attack one of your own units for at least one turn. Their Axe Dance does pretty good damage that is comparable to what your Bowmen will be doing at that stage in the game. They are okay at melee, but personally I choose to keep them in the rear.


Worst:

Cyclops: Their price is just too high when compared against their staying power in a battle. By midgame you will routinely encounter enemies that can drop one cyclops per turn. Since you can only recruit about 4-8 at this time, and because they cost 5000, and are in short supply, you are likely to soon blow through both your available Cyclops troops as well as your stock of gold. They are fun to experiment with, but unless you have all the gold-boosting talents, they are not really viable. Maybe further into the game this will change though, when more are available and money is in bigger supply.

Goblin Axe-Throwers: Short supply, low HP, so soon you'll have a half-group of them that's ineffective in combat and cannot be replenished.

Peasants: By this stage in the game, the only thing they're really good for is distracting enemy troop. The bad part is that because your stack will be about 1000 strong and you'll lose at least half of that in many battles, replacing them starts actually to become expensive.



Ok, that's all I can think of for now, let me know which troops are working good for you. I'm curious whether Spectres are good troops, I just haven't tried them out much yet. Bye!