Cataphract Archers

[Kalle3004]

What purpose do they serve? They don't have the speed of regular horse archers and they don't have the strength of Cataphracts either. They also cost a LOT more (about 1200 denarii I believe), you can almost get a unit of cataphract + a unit of horse archers for that.

[|Sith| Max]

No remotely intelligent player uses those lumbering monstrocities...

[Kalle3004]

No remotely intelligent player uses those lumbering monstrocities...

Sounds good enough to me I think you could almost fill a book with the amount of (near) useless units in this game.

[Plant]

I find the Parthian long range horse archer useful sometimes.

Sounds good enough to me I think you could almost fill a book with the amount of (near) useless units in this game.

Excluding rome, there isn't that many useless units. Most units are used in some useful role. Most of the useless units are either skirmishers or mid-tier units (of which rome has absolutely tons of) or onagers. I do rate camel archers as one of the most pointless units ever though.

[|Sith| Max]

I would say that at least 50 % of the units available to a faction are rarely selected and at least 10% should not be bought under most circumstances.

[Plant]

Which means that 90% are brought under some circumstances.

[Kalle3004]

Which means that 90% are brought under some circumstances.

90%?????????? Seriously?

P.S. another question which I am going to put here so I won't have to start another thread: what determines if a unit is good or not? Cost? stats? Troop type (cavalry being more useful than infantry most of the time)?

[Lancy]

Its cost relative to usefulness. For example, chariots are pretty cheap for the damage they reap upon cavalry units. Archers are also cheap and if you skirmish the enemy well will shoot up many far more expensive enemy units. Another point is that a unit of Praetorian cav and an urban cost roughly the same upgraded g/g, but generally the cav unit is more useful. For instance in a 15k cwb Rome v Rome bringing at least 6 g/g cav is advisable rather than g/g infantry.

An example of a bad unit cost to effectiveness is bull warriors. They may have fairly good stats but compared with their extortionate price that doesn't really mean much.

[Kalle3004]

I guess the same could be said for spartans; they're just too expensive at 1190 denarii. For 6 spartans(7140) you can get 6 armoured hoplites(3840), 6 archers(1140) and 6 militia cav(2040), and you would still have 120 denarii left.

[|Sith| Max]

how much money you have left depends on the host settings but yeah spartans are a trap card most of the time. In fact its a reasonable argument that its best not to pick greece unless you are facing egypt or brits. If you can play well and team up with carthage you might be able to rape them inf-arch style vs select other factions but i doubt you'd get a lot of successes vs the finer players.. i dont recommend it.

[Plant]

I got 90% from deleting 10% from 100%. It's not accurate, but in the rules commonly played, elephants and artillery aren't allowed, the highest costing and the second highest costing infantry are useful, peasants and town watch are used, (though I prefer peasants), militia hoplite and levy pikemen are used as protection and anit-chariot, dogs are useful for chasing ha, all archers/slingers are useful, light cavalry whether jav cav or "normal" are used, I've seen roman cav and long sheilds used in very specific roles curiously, highest cost cav are useful, all chariots except perhaps the Egyptian chariot gen are cost-effective. I think the only units which aren't useful under some sort of circumstance would be pigs(because of no elephants rules), camel archers and skirmishers and middle cost units. I take spartan gens sometimes. They seem to have an oddly good resistance to cav charges, perhaps because they have 2 hp.

[Lancy]

Skirmishers can be useful sometimes. For instance, Pontus v Greece, could bring a bunch of cappas, archers, CA and then six skirmishers. It's pretty mobile and can work nicely if you skirmish well.

[|Sith| Max]

yeh peltasts can be usefull. got a thracian army with 6 GG illyrian pelts as the infantry. due to the sick ammount of upgrades on all the troops( fully upgraded mostly) i was able to kill a clanny whos name i wont mention with it while he was using a proper greek army.

[Kalle3004]

yeh peltasts can be usefull. got a thracian army with 6 GG illyrian pelts as the infantry. due to the sick ammount of upgrades on all the troops( fully upgraded mostly) i was able to kill a clanny whos name i wont mention with it while he was using a proper greek army.

Now I'm curious. What was your exact army composition?

[Plant]

The list of pointless units grows ever shorter then.

[Ronin04]

Cataphract archers are very good in higher money.

[|Sith| Max]

Anything over 30 K is for noobs

[Ronin04]

Anything over 30 K is for noobs

Did you play the online ? archers and horse archers are useless in 31k and over.

[Letigre]

I usually go for 10k or 12.5-15k games maximum... When the person you are fighting has infantry with near 30 defense, battles tend to drag on and get really boring

[Ronin04]

I usually go for 10k or 12.5-15k games maximum... When the person you are fighting has infantry with near 30 defense, battles tend to drag on and get really boring

You can use a cata archer in 15k but in lower dinarii its not a good idea.