Best Units:

[FallLikeConimoes]

In your opinion what are the best units in SS?


Best Archer:
Best Light Cavalry:
Best Heavy Cavalry:
Best Light Infantry:
Best Heavy Infantry:
Best Horse Archers:
Best Spearmen:
Any other categories?

[SoulBlade]

Overmodded horse archer

[FallLikeConimoes]

hah I love horse archers as well, completely destroy anything

[Limskj]

Meneth's Archers firing cannon balls.

[kevindrosario]

I think archers firing ballista bolts are the best. Whenever I try bigger artillery shots for them like catapults or cannon balls, my game lags like crazy and the battle ends up taking forever.

[napoleonic]

In your opinion what are the best units in SS?



Any other categories?

Best Archer: Scots Guard ---> beats even Merguen due to high armor
Best Light Cavalry: Hussars ---> fast cavalry with attack that rivals feudal knights, a bit suck in defense though
Best Heavy Cavalry:
- for steamrolling infantry : Lancers ---> they are lancers indeed
- for steamrolling cavalry : Qapukulu ---> exceptional + 7 mace attack = bye2 enemy heavy cavalries + actually good against infantry too...!
Best Light Infantry: Almughavars ---> elite javelinmen with zero armor (that's why it's considered light) with an attack that rivals foot men at arms!
Best Heavy Infantry: Swiss Armored Pikemen ---> nuff said
Best Horse Archers: Iqtadar ---> scots guard on horse, scary
Best Spearmen: Kievan Palace Guard ---> elite high armored spearmen that can eat many cavalries for breakfast

[parallax7d]

napoleonic, that's a great list. For no apparant reason I decided to use it as a starting point to see if I could find "better" units. Please take no offense.

The deceptive thing about some of these elite units is that they often have a smaller number of soldiers per unit. Depending how you have your unit size set, I play on "Normal".

For instance Almughavars have 13 attack and 61 soldiers giving a volley attack output of 793.
Kurdish Javlinmen have 11 attack but 76 soldiers. This gives them a volley of 836. It's a small difference, but puts the Kurds on top. I believe they have better defense as well.

Likewise Heavy Archers have the same attack and defense as Scotts Guard, but they have a whopping 78 soldiers vs. 61 for the Scotts. That's almost 27% more damage output.


Hussars are solid, but pistoliers may be better at light cavalry duties, even though they are skirmishers.

Hussar Pros:
Charge Attack - Hussars 19, Pistoliers 15

Pistolier Pros:
Base (non charge) Attack - Hussars 7, Pistoliers 10
Number of Units - Hussars 31, Pistoliers 42
Defense - Hussars 13, Pistoliers 15
Speed - Slight advantage to Pistoliers, although Hussars are very fast as well
Form Up - Pistolier's form up ranks extremely quickly, actually it's shocking.
Endurance - Now this is the kicker. Pistolier's basically never get tired. They can go from Exhausted to FRESH in the same time Hussars go from Exhauasted to...very tired. Since Light cav basically run around the map endlessly, and lose attack/defense when they get tired, this is a killer advantage.

Add on top of that the ability to skirmish and dominate heavy cavalry, even pikes! Eek.

[Point Blank]

I'd agree with all those.

[napoleonic]

^ but (top cavalries like) lancers (maybe, well for me it is, I don't know in reality/history) is still overpowered (on 6.4) they easily beats swiss armored pike or kievan palace guard + cossack muskeeters combo (me being the defenders vs AI cavalries)

swiss pike spearwall or kiev guard schiltrom couldn't stop these tanks they just like walked through them.

are they still like that in RC 2.0?

[Gogolometro]

Best Archer: Pesante Archers of Venice. High armor, plenty for recruit them, very good in defence.
Best Light Cavalry: Stradiots of Venice, Stradiotes of Byzantium and Knetchen of Teutonic Order. All are great chargers, cheap, good armor, maybe byzantines cheat their light is like more medium cavalry. Still are great.
Best Heavy Cavalry: Here is only one winner, Scolari. Why, were, and dont forget gothic knights, lancers and gendarmes is irrelevant. You start with these guys from 1100 and if you are smart, you can kill anything in your path. A mace, a big armor and big numbers per unit is their success. Nothing will be the same when will meet this guys in combat.
Best Light Infantry: I tend to agree about Almuvagars and their mercenary counterpart, the catalans. I love how well they act in melee too. Any challanger? Acritae.
Best Heavy Infantry: Here we have lot of candidates, JHI, Rittenbrunders, but my favorite is and will remain forever the pavise gunners. Just look how they manage. If they fire, the damage to morale and armor is significant, if they come at melee, the armor, the good sword and the big shield make them very successfull versus janisaries and rittenbrunders.
Best Horse Archers: Here I think the mongols can claim the trone, sure all muslim nations, byzantines and cumans have their excellent HA, but mongols are just experts in this.
Best Spearmen: If we talk about spearmans, than we must split them, shield and short spear like kievean palace guard and novgorod counterparts and the pikes, all of them. Because well, the kievean guards are impresive, but if I must compare with one more less impresive unit like teutonic order spearmans, always I will choose the prusacs. The persians have good spears too, crusaders and byzantium who will trow to you stacks of scutatoi. But with all balance we can get, the swiss armored are the best of the best.
Any other categories?

[Ichon]

I do find the Lancers can often overwhelm just pikes with muskets but if you put halbders or any decent AP in the ranks they die quickly enough that your pikes don't lose too many. Also the direction the charge comes from is very key- total frontal attack and Swiss can hold even lancers off usually... even a bit to the side or totally flanked and its completely different.

Otherwise I agree with napoleonic's list except for the best heavy infantry. Swiss armored pikemen are great but not AP and in late game I think the best heavy infantry really should have AP to qualify. I'd probably put Tabardariyya up for consideration because of the AP infantry with high attack they are the best armored that are relatively easy to get. Dismounted St Lazarus, Huskarl axemen, and Mercenary German knights are also good.

Best Heavy Infantry: Here we have lot of candidates, JHI, Rittenbrunders, but my favorite is and will remain forever the pavise gunners. Just look how they manage. If they fire, the damage to morale and armor is significant, if they come at melee, the armor, the good sword and the big shield make them very successfull versus janisaries and rittenbrunders.

What are Pavise gunners?

Stradioits or Hussars are tough to choose between for light cavalry but I go Hussars due to speed and better charge. The melee is noticeably less but with the higher charge they usually kill more before it gets to melee.

[Gogolometro]

Add the varangians at that list too.

[Ichon]

I have never used Pistoliers because they aren't available until after 1550 but their stats and abilities do look better. Still by the time they become available and you have decent numbers you would have full armies of 9 XP Hussars. Although for "best" units they definitely quality just not very often will you ever play with them in a campaign.

I disagree about Kurdish javelinmen. You can't compare attack number of men in the unit as each javelin toss isn't a "hit" and that is where Almughavars 13 attack means roughly 30% better chance of penetrating higher armored units. Also I think Almughavars have slightly better accuracy. They have +1 defense and +4 melee attack which is also quite important. Kurdish javelinmen are also cheaper but once their javelins are expended they are worse than spear infantry in melee while Almughavars are about as capable as light men at arms after using their javelins which despite lower number in the unit will score more kills in almost all situations except perhaps vs peasants.

[parallax7d]

I have never used Pistoliers because they aren't available until after 1550 but their stats and abilities do look better. Still by the time they become available and you have decent numbers you would have full armies of 9 XP Hussars. Although for "best" units they definitely quality just not very often will you ever play with them in a campaign.

I disagree about Kurdish javelinmen. You can't compare attack number of men in the unit as each javelin toss isn't a "hit" and that is where Almughavars 13 attack means roughly 30% better chance of penetrating higher armored units. Also I think Almughavars have slightly better accuracy. They have +1 defense and +4 melee attack which is also quite important. Kurdish javelinmen are also cheaper but once their javelins are expended they are worse than spear infantry in melee while Almughavars are about as capable as light men at arms after using their javelins which despite lower number in the unit will score more kills in almost all situations except perhaps vs peasants.

Good points

[TheBard]

Lusitanian Javelinmen? I don't have the stats in front of me, but I've found that they are key to every battle in Spain in the 1100s. Good javelin damage, and decent in melee. Not sure how they compare to Almughavars, though.

And as for Lancers, are we talking Grenadine Lancers? Because the Moors used them to devastating effect against me for a long time. I was disappointed when I took Granada (as Portugal) and found that I couldn't recruit them.

[Point Blank]

HRE has Early Reiters, which are more or less Gothic Knights with the lance replaced by early pistols.

As Ichon says, pikes are not really melee weapons vs cavalry - pikes are for holding cavalry at a distance. To kill cavalry in melee polearms are best.

Otherwise RC 2.0 changes many of the mentioned factors which may lead to an altered result compared to current RC.

[napoleonic]

@Ichon
the thing about pikes is that their reach are long and almost all infantries are having troubles just to get into range to attack them, why bother with AP if you cannot attack your enemy?

more categories

best AP infantry?
best sword infantry?
best peasants?
naffattun vs shiponatores?
best price/performance infantry? missile infantry? cavalry? missile cavalry?
best gunpowder infantry?

[parallax7d]

I nominate peasant crossbowmen as best performance for the price. As does history I believe.

[Ichon]

I nominate peasant crossbowmen as best performance for the price. As does history I believe.

I nominate spies.

For actual units though peasant crossbowmen are difficult to beat. Levy archers before recent accuracy decreases almost... especially in sieges but in field battles rarely.

[napoleonic]

peasant crossbowmen win in 2 categories then : best peasants and best price/performances in missile infantry

what about various tribals javelinmen as main contender to beat peasant crossbowmen supremacy on those 2 categories?

best sword infantry I nominate foot ritterbruder