Which expensive units are worth it?

[Doctor Gitgud]

It seems like for the most part (especially with how generals work), you are better off fielding more stacks of cheap units instead of loading up your army with expensive stuff (180+ upkeep). One obvious exception is that unless you're playing Liu Bei, the small added cost of crossbows definitely beats archer militia due to the increased range and survivability. It's also pretty essential to bring a treb. I can also see mixing in a more expensive melee unit or two with really good arrow soaking capabilities, to run the enemy out of ammo so that your cheap units are not getting hit (although if I have a decent general, I usually just use them to draw all of the arrow fire).

Other than that, which mid to high tier units actually give you bang for your buck? Sometimes I keep them for vanity/flavor purposes, like Lu Bu's heavy xiliang calvary he starts with, but I'm ambivalent about whether they're really worth the money.

[Elliott]

Lothern Sea Gua- Er I mean Azure Dragons! having shooting power and being a fierce melle combatant justifies their cost I feel. You're paying for the versatility.

[Thalfang]

I don't have a good answer for you but I tend to judge if a unit is worth keeping based on their kills and ultimate utility. Ji Spear Militia is pretty cheap, the units with shields that are mid tier are not quite double their upkeep (?) but tend to kill waaaaay more than double so I deem them worth it.

If you're never really getting into melee combat because you have great range/trebuchets then keep a cheap front line and go for expensive ranged units. Even militia cavalry can wreck if used properly.

My two cent though I'm sure others can give a better answer.

[Notorious]

Spear Gaurds have been pretty reliable for me as far as holding the line, allowing shock cav, archers and artillery to handle most the heavy lifting.

[CoW_HuMPeR]

i only got for for the medium cross bows, medium spear guard and if i have a purple guy in my army i go for the medium spear infantry

something like 6 spear guard, 4 medium swords. 3 archers 2 crossbow 1 trebucet and then a couple horse. I play in records so i have a couple extra CAV with 2 of my generals and keep the blue guy behind the line to buff

[Cacomistle]

Depends on where you are in the game. Late game I just have the money so I'll take more expensive units. And doing something like spamming onyx dragons kind of ensures you won't lose an army.

Other than that I like peasant units. Spear guard are pretty good though cause they hold the line way better, and I think ranged gets affected a lot by the strategist so I'm willing to spend more money on them sometimes.

There's also stuff like for example if you've got a level 7 general, units in his army are probably more effective than a level 1 general. So you might want to stack value in his army. 2 elite retinues with high level generals can prove to be more effective than 3 peasant stacks where 1 of the generals is trash.

Oh and stuff like lu bu cav is definitely worth. Its so easy to get horse pastures on him. At least don't disband the ones you have, not worth the 1500 you'll pay to get 2 peasant cav as a replacement.

[McMurphy Man]

If you are lucky enough to get the follower that allows the turtle formation, then militia spearmen are all you need as far as melee infantry go. At King rank, the onyx dragons (archers) and the purple melee guys are the way to go. the purple guys have a decent missile block chance. the green dragon melee/archer guys are good too, but I dislike that they have a zero for missile block chance.

[RCMidas]

If you can secure the northern horse territories (three over by Han Sui and one by Gongsun Zan) and upgrade them fully (-20% recruitment and upkeep for all cavalry), then you can practically run all-cav armies all the time for next to no upkeep. You won't even care about spears since you'll have enough cav to run rings around them and keep smacking into the side that doesn't have the pointy bits braced against you. You'll become a micro master by doing that.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

If you can secure the northern horse territories (three over by Han Sui and one by Gongsun Zan) and upgrade them fully (-20% recruitment and upkeep for all cavalry), then you can practically run all-cav armies all the time for next to no upkeep. You won't even care about spears since you'll have enough cav to run rings around them and keep smacking into the side that doesn't have the pointy bits braced against you. You'll become a micro master by doing that.

Ai also often unbraces spears if you have cav near them, or if you go on their almost certainly unprotected archers. Then you just turn and charge the spears.

[Xal]

Originally posted by Elliott:

Lothern Sea Gua- Er I mean Azure Dragons! having shooting power and being a fierce melle combatant justifies their cost I feel. You're paying for the versatility.

Haha +1

The new Lother Sea Guard are awesome

[ACS36]

None of them are worth it until the late game.

They're locked behind a lot of useless tech' which hurt your early game-mid game economy. Not to mention the upkeep cost of advance units it to high for you to run more than a few of them in the mid game.

It's a shame the tech tree is so bad. Advance units shouldn't be locked behind a lot of bad techs. If you don't have economy techs then you can't even afford them.

[RCMidas]

That's what sacking more econ-minded factions is for...

[tz7bandit]

Once you play on a real difficulty the AI won't attack your general with archer fire, so you will want to blend your armies with inexpensive arrow fodder to distract them so they can't easily drop their load on your heavy hitters right out the gate. Also, you won't be able to field enough armies to simultaneously fend off the world and expand/plunder in the early/mid game with exclusively the most expensive units. If you are easily able to build an economy that can support multiple armies of the most expensive units at any stage of the game then go for it. But the game, at least on the very hard/legendary difficulty levels, makes the opportunity cost too high to make it feasible until you have snowballed out of control.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by ACS36:

None of them are worth it until the late game.

They're locked behind a lot of useless tech' which hurt your early game-mid game economy. Not to mention the upkeep cost of advance units it to high for you to run more than a few of them in the mid game.

It's a shame the tech tree is so bad. Advance units shouldn't be locked behind a lot of bad techs. If you don't have economy techs then you can't even afford them.

The sword infantry is under a tree that's pretty much entirely industry bonuses so I think they're fine. Then the azure dragons are behind food techs which can help eco (especially if you abuse diplomacy, then food is like the biggest income maker).

The other 3 I agree though. Onyx dragons are locked behind trade techs, and there are never that many factions that want to trade with you late game. The high tier cav are locked behind military techs that just don't seem to do a lot. Maybe if you get horse pastures cause then you can reduce cav costs a ton. And the worst is that axe infantry. How the hell are you supposed to get that? Its like 20 techs. And I always look over at the yellow tree and see like curruption reduction and public order, then I realize that's not part of the tree to get to the axe infantry.

So you can get some good units. 2 of them actually have ok requirements, and onyx dragons aren't terrible. The other 2 are definitely just flavor units, and the axe ones in particular I can't get cause I just win the campaign before I finally unlock them.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by tz7bandit:

Once you play on a real difficulty the AI won't attack your general with archer fire, so you will want to blend your armies with inexpensive arrow fodder to distract them so they can't easily drop their load on your heavy hitters right out the gate.

Are you sure about that? In every other total war, the ai doesn't change based on difficulty, so I just assumed it was the same here. I would be very surprised if you can't trick them into shooting your general with archers on legendary too (although I only played on hard battles). Especially since there actually are a lot of situations where you'd want to shoot a general with archer fire, and I highly doubt they wrote an ai capable of figuring this out.

[tz7bandit]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Originally posted by tz7bandit:

Once you play on a real difficulty the AI won't attack your general with archer fire, so you will want to blend your armies with inexpensive arrow fodder to distract them so they can't easily drop their load on your heavy hitters right out the gate.

Are you sure about that? In every other total war, the ai doesn't change based on difficulty, so I just assumed it was the same here. I would be very surprised if you can't trick them into shooting your general with archers on legendary too (although I only played on hard battles). Especially since there actually are a lot of situations where you'd want to shoot a general with archer fire, and I highly doubt they wrote an ai capable of figuring this out.

Just load up a custom battle on legendary and see they don't waste ammo on small targets.

You can also see this dudes review around minute 4 he goes over it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCA_mnonCHM