Why Use Anything But Raiders?

[=7CAV=SPC.Henson.K]

I used 6 stacks of maxed out raiders and ran the table. Why use anything else?

[shoobers]

You can be distant from enemies in which case there's no reason to use raiders.

[olarnser]

They can't be upgraded.

[Ryu.82]

Raiders are very strong and can basically win the game for you, if you can make use of them, but they also have some downsides.

The first one is, as @olarnser already mentioned, that they can´t be upgraded. This means that after some time they will become more and more useless because the more modern units are simply stronger.
Another problem of Raiders is, that they, as all line units, have a weakness to long range units. The bowman of age 2 are not too much of a problem, but a stack with two crossbowman in age 3 wipes out bands of raiders. You can of course use them in regular stacks with other units to counter that, but then they will loose one of their advantages, the high movement.
And Raiders can´t become leaders, so at the point when the other nations get better units they really will become completly useless and can´t even support other armies this way.

Another downside to Raiders is that they have no effect that benefits you on the long run. While most other paths have some things that remain useful until the end of the game Raiders don´t have that. Once they stop being useful in battle the path becomes completely useless too.


And then there is the point that it would be boring to always use Raiders, wouldn´t it? At least for me it would. What I like about Millennia is that there are so many paths and ways to play it and that you can freely choose those ways depending on the situation or what you want to do.

[shoobers]

The ability to heal after combat is gamebreaking. This lasts until ... age 5 or 6?

[Gundalf]

Raiders seem to be mainly relying on the AIs bad combat performance to snowball. I would imagine that they would be much worse in PVP, since the Raider National Spirit has bad scaling into the later ages and you have to conquer something to make it worth it.

[TheCollector]

How good are raiders on an island map? You can't travel that fast and barbarian canoes will sink your transport ships, so you can't expand quickly and will likely advance into later Ages with stronger units like Crossbow, Pike or Damascus Sword / Longsword ...

[shoobers]

I don't really see them as having bad combat performance, they do build competent stacks. What they have a hard time with is getting enough stacks to stage an effective attack.

[=7CAV=SPC.Henson.K]

They're great goon squads. You can clean up the map of those pesky barbarians very quickly.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

they really do die hilariously quickly to full stacks

imo the main reason the spirit is good is that its more generous about just giving you stuff than other spirits; no having to pay 50 points up front to obtain a 10-point discount on something, taking forever to actually pay off. Raiders just straight up spams raider bands for every pick.

[Amafrey]

Spartans are way better combatants. Why spam weak anti-calvary units when a single spartan (with far better stats than the raider, mind you) can spearhead the conquering of a Master AI player in Age 2? Just use your raiders to raid income - if you want strong early armies use Spartans. Even the passives are better, you can improve capital defenses and your spartan's combat stats. Even guarding units get passive XP, and you can combo that with the late game by increasing your maximum unit veterancy. No one can afford to attack you while your premium armies are out fighting. The fall off for raiders is far too soon. I did a multiplayer game competing with raiders and I wiped the floor with my Spartans while the raiders wasted stacks of units on simple barricades. Spartans litterally set you up for success. Barbarians and other empires cannot conqure your cities, and your city guards get max veterancy just by Idling. Hostiles cannot win against you, and you have the premium unit - dealing more damage and supporting more defense than the raider. A simple stack of veteran city guards wipes a full stack of newb raiders spawned from thin air while you send your archers and spartans to conquer their petty city. Why ruin those lovely tiles with raiding when it can be yours in a single turn.

[Xuande]

Spartans require use of the otherwise highly valuable Culture Power, making them one of the worst options in their age unless you need a panic button in Age 2. This likely still holds even with the nerf to Local Reforms.

Raiders can be outplayed, but the AI generally isn't capable of this. Normally, one would have to declare hostilities, then wait another few turns to declare war, giving their opponent some time to react. Since the only AI settings of any real challenge hate the player by default and start with a much larger army, they've often declared hostilities before the player even enters Raiders, which makes it all too easy to declare war and take a town on the same turn.

With AI improvements, I think Raiders will be fine, and they're probably no better than decent in a PvP meta (good luck with that, as a game this experimental is bound to have a terribly balanced PvP meta regardless.)

[Amafrey]

Originally posted by Xuande:

Spartans require use of the otherwise highly valuable Culture Power, making them one of the worst options in their age unless you need a panic button in Age 2.

It's not a warfare playthrough if you haven't conquered another nation by your first research in Age 2. I'm confused about your commitment to the play style. Why play warfare if you don't use your assets to win? Why a panic button? The Spartans are premium bronze age line units. They're far stronger than the Raiders, and cannot be matched in the 2nd age. What would you use these units for/ Guards?? They're excellent offensive units with a superb defense that negates the attack bonus that ranged units get, they counter-calvary, and they do the most attack dmg of all line units in Age 2.

[shoobers]

The ramp up for Raiders is strong and active. The goal isn't for them to take over a player, it's to slaughter barbarians until you have the full tree unlocked. Then start spamming raider archers to merge with your raiders or get proper armies if your raider numbers have faltered. Raider hp regeneration to all non-gunpowder units is quite broken once that is unlocked.

If you get hoplites in age 3.... dear god the world is burning.
Also heavily undervalued by Raider play.... you have a strong lack of leadership and tactics options. You can't upgrade either unit.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by SSG Henson USA ret.:

I used 6 stacks of maxed out raiders and ran the table. Why use anything else?

Roleplay reasons. The many combat and regeneration benefits of raiders are just too damned good to pass up, especially since you can just wipe out your AI neighbors and create a crap-ton of vassals to generate all the wealth you'll need to pay for chaos events.

edit: and as shoobers said, it's just too easy to get combat XP from barbarians while other empires have to crawl to get the domain XP they need to go up the tree.

On a more serious note:

1) You want your empire to be more productive instead of combative.
Raiders encourage you to go forth and conquer/pillage all around you. The other national spirits (barring Warriors and Olympians) are all about exploiting the tiles around you. Grassland = mound builders, water = seafarers, scrubland = wild hunters, hills = god-king dynasty, forests = naturalists. Warriors is essentially a hard counter to raiders with spartans and defensive bonuses blunting their advance. Olympians are all about diplomacy while generating a modest mix of culture, wealth, and knowledge--which would be great, if the 'open embassy' diplomatic action isn't bugged in the current beta build.

2) The AI will (hopefully) be reprogrammed to better manage its armies.
The AI currently loves sending its forces outside capitals and towns, even sending individual units ambling around to get picked off all on their lonesome. If the AI ever learns how to garrison its spears/archers/chariots behind city walls and town militias, raider bands are going to have a much harder time invading. When this happens, raider empires will rarely 'win' the battles they fight--nullifying the regeneration they get when winning battles. This will be even harder if the AI ever learns to attack without moving. This will allow them to inflict heavy damage on a besieging raider band without moving out of a capital/town.

3) Iron Age units will quickly eliminate raider bands.
Bronze Age Raiders only have around 20 to 30 turns before the world advances into the Iron Age. Once an empire advances into the iron age, crossbows and cavalry will kill three, even four times their number in raider bands.

[shoobers]

I will counter that Bronze Age Raiders only have 20-30 turns... it's probably closer to 30-45ish turns.