Best mercenary units

[Jeskyre]

What and where are the best mercenary units? Also I know that the elephant mercs are pretty awesome, but they're extremely rare and difficult to actually find, so its kind've hard to actually use this in my strategy. So also what units are useful and reliably easy to find?

[nvm]

Balearic Slingers - Iberia(western part of map), islands next to it, Carthage and Numidia.

Cretan Archers - Greece

Sarmatian auxilla - Somewhere near Dacia and Thrace and even northern perpharps.

These are awesome mercenaries.

All mercenaries are useful until deep-in-game, as they help to quickly reinforce the army and the best of most-awesome-but-not-as-said-above would be Scythian mercenaries and mercenary hoplites(if your faction doesn`t have them)

[Comrade_Callum]

I wish you could retrain Mercs to get their troop numbers up, whenever i play as Rome i always get the urge to quit and play as the Greeks so keeping some Merc hoplites is fun time

[Sipahi of Rûm]

Cretan Archers

[Comrade_Callum]

Nah Scrutii

[A Demented Goldfish]

Merc hoplites

[Genius of the Restoration]

Aside from the Cretan's I think the largely overlooked Thracian Mercenaries are a steal at 330dn. That's a bargain. 10 attack, 6 charge plus an additional 10 attack from a warcry. Coupled with Fast Moving they are built for flanking and do their job wonderfully.

[Argeus the Paladin]

Baleric Slingers. You. Don't. Mess. With. Slingers. They will stone anyone up to and including elephants to death given the opportunity.

[Drakedeath]

Cretans: Long range missiles.
Mercenary Hoplites: Phalanxes for non-phalanx factions
Bastarnae: Two hitpoints, great attack.
Thracians: Bastarnae without hitpoints.
Spanish Mercenaries: Nice complimentary light infantry, kinda like weak legions.
Sarmatians: Awesome armor, great stats
Barbarian Mercenaries: Bog down and destroy chariots
Illyrians: Good skirmishers, just slightly weaker than Hastati
Balearic and Rhodian Slingers: Better range than other slingers
Scythians: Any horse archer is a good horse archer.

[Delta21]

Cretans: Long range missiles.
Mercenary Hoplites: Phalanxes for non-phalanx factions
Bastarnae: Two hitpoints, great attack.
Thracians: Bastarnae without hitpoints.
Spanish Mercenaries: Nice complimentary light infantry, kinda like weak legions.
Sarmatians: Awesome armor, great stats
Barbarian Mercenaries: Bog down and destroy chariots
Illyrians: Good skirmishers, just slightly weaker than Hastati
Balearic and Rhodian Slingers: Better range than other slingers
Scythians: Any horse archer is a good horse archer.

You said it buddy!

[leseras]

i like the scythian horse archers. Helped me take on sycthia with very few losses and i only sent two units of hastati plus general. The rest were horse archers.

[MortenJessen]

Hi there.
Balearic and Rhodian Slingers
Cretan archers
War elephants
and in a pinch Mercenary Hoplites.
Y.S.
M. Jessen

[vanity]

Basically what nvm said: mercenaries in RTW don't compare to the elite units of later games. BI is a different story though; mercenaries have the best units in the game! 1XP Bosphoran Infantry (10att, 23def), 3XP Graal Knights (15att, 31def), 2XP Sarmatian Armoured Archers (10att, 20def) - latter available throughout half the world.

[Delta21]

Basically what nvm said: mercenaries in RTW don't compare to the elite units of later games. BI is a different story though; mercenaries have the best units in the game! 1XP Bosphoran Infantry (10att, 23def), 3XP Graal Knights (15att, 31def), 2XP Sarmatian Armoured Archers (10att, 20def) - latter available throughout half the world.

You know the experience comes pretty random amongst mercenaries and it never exceeds 3 bronze chevrons, right? (If you recruit units from the same mercenary stack however, they will have exactly the same amount of XP)

[vanity]

I don't believe it's random, it just can vary from each pool. I have 17 2XP Mercenary Sarmatian Archers to prove it; either that, or insane luck.

[nvm]

Graal knights are still can`t stand chance aganist cibinarii or cataphracts!

[vanity]

Clibinarii or immortals? Clibinarii are great, but I'd still like to see them fight Graals. Immortals are uncomparable but kinda meh at smaller unit sizes. Cataphracts are nice, not so much after charge wears off. Graals just have that really nice attack.

[nvm]

Both of them! And cataphracts have a mace attack like Cibinarii, which makes them uber!

[vanity]

In BI they don't, they have a sword as secondary. (Actually I had forgot about that, it makes their attack a little better.)

[Shadow Dragon]

Cibinarii are probably better than cataphracts since they are armor peircing. They can beat any calvary and sword infantry.

Back on topic. I say Cretan Archers are the best. They are just about the best archer unit in the game. Combine that with the Macedons getting the temple of Artemis, you (as the Macedons or a conquering faction) makes them even better. And in BI the best are probably Graal knights. Aside from cataphracts and Cibinarii, they are some of the bets calvary in the game. Besides those specific ones, I usually will add a couple of local mercenary infantry betalions when facing a strong enemy.