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!

[ThyrsaM]

Nice list. I ran into a couple of Ents early in the game. I like them so far, but only got two. They any good?

[stupidface]

I haven't seen a single Ent, so I wouldn't know.

Another good point that I'd like to add about the Shaman is that their special powers regenerate. So if you're lucky you can set up two or three totems of any one kind - or both. This is very helpful for boss fights when the boss summons lots of helpers, for example the Giant Spider in the Dwarven mines. With three healing Totems and three damage Totems all on the battlefield at once, not only were most of my units protected from attack, but I could almost completely ignore the summoned spiders and let my damage totems deal with them.

So for me the best unit I've gotten so far is the Orc Shaman.

[Swindley]

I actually disagree abit about the thorn hunters
Especially since I found a helm later that doubles their damage! Which is pretty cool

Also as a mage, I prefer having as much ranged units as possible so I can nuke the opponent while they slowly crawl towards me..

This also means I nuke off their ranged units first to minimize losses.

Shamans are great though, i love those totems I also use them to make the computer "waste" an attack to kill a totem instead of my troops.
I just wish there were more of them=/
________
buy easy vape

[Zhuangzi]

GOOD UNITS

Yep, the Orc Shaman is a kick ass unit. Not many units can do ranged attack AND melee, but this sucker can. Thumbs up.

In mid game I find myself unit whatever is available. I used to use Royal Snakes and Griffins a lot, but there's no supply in Kordor so I gave up on them eventually.

Pirates and especially Sea Dogs are pretty good in Western Islands if you have Mirabella.

Evil Beholders are great fun, especially their mind control trick.

Giants are okay too, especially if you've got 6-7 of them and plenty of mana for healing/defenses.

A big stack of Swordsmen or Guardsmen is nice, but after you sign the Dwarven peace treaty the main castle has a HORDE OF HORSEMEN! A stack of 70 of these is just mayhem on four legs.

CRAPPY UNITS

I didn't like the Canoneer for some reason, and Miner's really suck.

And don't get me started on Priests and Archmages. I guess you need a really high intellect for them to be worthwhile.

I never liked the Thorns or Peasants, although I hear that some people have made use of them.

In general I never go for the lowliest unit in a particular class, like the crappy snakes or crappy spiders.

[bman654]

I'm pretty early in the game but I am liking the priests and archmage.

The archmage is immune to those annoying wolf howls and I always use his defense spell on my melee units to cut down on attrition. He does reasonable damage when he uses his trance ability. I've even used the telekenisis ability now and then to push an enemy troop away from my units or towards their units so I can maximize my fireball effectiveness.

And the priests...now that I have some royal snakes I find the priest Bless spell useful as well as their healing spell (since the snakes have enough hp to make it worthwhile). I find that when I have the priests using those spells that frees me up to cast offensive spells on the enemy.

Perhaps when I get a little further I'll rethink this of course

[Quikpik]

I found in the early game that bears rock. You will normally have a few vendors that sell bears, so you don't have to worry about losing them since there is a plentiful supply. They take a good beating and when enraged can deal a bunch of damage. These work much better as cannon fodder units than swordsman.

The worst unit in the game imo is the arch mage. I just don't get these units, very expensive with a high leadership cost.

[Suporex]

I am lev 11 mage only but I have to say royal snakes are my favourite + I have added archmages guardsman inquisitors and priests to that + have max fireball so archmage "push" is definetly useful

but after reading your coments I have to find myself horsman and orc shamans

[travcm]

Marauders are extremely good for building up boatloads of money. Even weak stacks at the beginning of the game can be looted (twice per battle) for upwards of 800 gold each time.

[Sammual]

Here is my take on the units;

BEST:

Peasants: Until your leadership allows a stack of 300+ their ability to stack Attack bonuses make this your #1 melee damage stack. After your leadership gets high enough for 300+ in a stack it is time to move on.

Bowmen: Higher Damage than Thorn Hunters or Priests. Skills that decrease Leadership cost and give special abilites to make this unit last until you get Dwarven Cannoneers or Evil Beholders (Or even further if you are a Warrior).

Royal Snakes: Attacks cause no retaliation, good specials, low leadership cost for HP.

Swordsmen: The Damage Resistance makes them better then average. Use until something better comes along.

Cannoneers: Fast, Great damage, can melee.

Evil Beholders: High Ranged magic-damage, hypnotize alone makes them one of the three top Ranged units.

Orc Shamans: Hands down the best unit. Totems, Totems, Totems, Ranged, Melee. After you get sacrifice and Rez maxed I think you can break the game running around with 5 stacks of these guys.

A. Bears: Loads of HP and good damage make these guys your best early to mid game tanks.

Cyclops: These guys are tanks. They take almost NO ranged damage.

Giants: AoE Tanks.


Worst:

Thorn Hunters: Low HP.

Robbers: Neg morale.

Priests: Fast and Bless special is nice but low damage makes them almost useless.

Goblin Axe-Throwers: Low HP, they don't live long enough to show any potental.

Arch-Mage: HIGH Leadership cost makes them worthless unless you are a Mage that has maxed out the Arch-Mage skill and if you have done that then why haven't you replaced you Arch-Mages with Orc Shamans?

Polar Bears: WTF? A much higher Leadership cost then A. Bears and bearly higher stats.

Sammual

P.S. Does anyone have an excel spreadsheet of the units and thier stats?