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.

[Reapo]

I like using pearl dragons as my front line backed up with some heavy spear guard for turtle. I normally have at least one trebuchet in the army and a mix of archers and crossbows (archers for the flame arrows to take out towers and crossbows cuz they dope AF). Then I normally round my army off with a couple medium or heavy cavalry.

I can normally take on a full stack, reinforced with another full stack with this comp. So, its definitely worth it. In my opinion when you hit the late game, you are going to be faced with tough battles, especially going up against Wu. The AI is going to have more armies than you, so having stacks with just better overall morale is going to help in the long run.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by tz7bandit:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

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

That's kind of annoying actually. I want an ai that's smart, but without the cheats in battle (at least in other total wars it kind of just made shock tactics suck and archers kill everything). This seems like now I'm forced to either have stupid ai or have cheating ai.

[Chris.T]

Defenders of Earth are the strongest unit in the game outside of them everyone else is meh. Lubus calv is the strongest calv unit in the game but it's slow and insanely expensive. Cao Caos is a good in between of price/performance. The archers you unlock in the tech tree are the best "Archery" unit in the game but not the best overall missle unit. In reality the expensive units are not super amazing for their price but goodluck ever stopping a full stack of Defenders of Earth/Heaven and Leo Calv + lets say sprinkle in some medium crossbowmen and yeah... pretty much a death stack.

But yeah trust me if you wanna win every battle easy just get like 2 units of defenders of earth. Everything else can be cheap units but those 2 things will win you every fight. We tested 6 units of DoE vs a full stack army with cav other archers everything... Guess who won in a 900vs4000 fight? DoE by a landslide. They counter everything. even if you walk ♥♥♥♥ at them in sheild wall or turtle they simply obliterate it in 2 volleys. Everyone out here complaining about trebs but its because they brain dead and don't use loose formation and break up their lines... Wait till you see how gross DoE are

[Brown]

Medium Shock Cavalry are easy to get to. Not too pricey either. I love when a good charge hits home in this game. Mega damage!

[LuNi]

Azure Dragons are great.

[ChrisKesterson]

Originally posted by TomAce:

Medium Shock Cavalry are easy to get to. Not too pricey either. I love when a good charge hits home in this game. Mega damage!

What are these called and what techs are they behind? I cannot seem to find them normally, because I am an idiot.

[Salty Nobody]

Playing on Records

Azure Dragons are my favorite unit in the game. They aren't the best at anything but they hold their own at range and against any infantry or cav unit. They are also tied to the food tree which is vital for upgrading cities and building my economy.

Trebs are good, I keep one in every army for sieges and softening up the enemy ranged units before their line reaches me. They are also the best hard counter to Defenders of Earth outside of cav + ambush battle....

Defenders of Earth are short range archers that shoot bombs. They get as many or more kills as trebs but focus it better so that individual enemy units are quickly obliterated instead of slowly taking chunks out of several at once.

Heavy spear guards with the tortoise formation are good at holding the line. The AI doesn't bother shooting them on harder difficulties but they will blob their infantry and sometimes cav on them so that your shooty units can go to work.

[Black Hole]

I've found just having a lot of range units and a handful of up close units to just distract them while your hero units kill their hero units and win easily since after that they just mass route.

I feel they need to buff the regular units more and nerf the hero units...especially lubu a tad. This is what I like about shogun 2 as your generals are more for keeping moral up while your units do the real damage. This game it's the opposite.

[Kuromiya]

Onyx Dragons and Artillery are awesome. Lothern Sea Guard are also pretty good, and the Emperor-tier archers can be amazing.

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Onyx dragons are locked behind trade techs, and there are never that many factions that want to trade with you late game.

Trade Techs boost your Commerce income, which includes passive income from ports, inns, and trade good factories. If you've got coastal or river-adjacent territory, snagging those trade techs will greatly improve your income even if you don't get trade agreements.

[Feix]

Originally posted by JCD3nton:

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.

Cheap units? Arm of the Supreme Peace will destroy them.
https://youtu.be/9iZATu7Y84A
Very vulnerable to arrows though.

[Too Much Salt]

You will definitely need to recruit more expensive units at the later stage of the game, depending on its difficulty. If you play Easy - Normal, you can win around 140-ish turn (depends on your faction and playstyle). AI also doesnt recruit heavy units in those difficulty (as far as my gameplay goes) and hence, you those heavy units are redundant.

However, at higher difficulty starting with Hard. The AI will spam armies lots of them and when 3K period starts, they WILL recruit heavy units like the azure dragons and protectors of heaven. By then, your militias or even infantry will not stand a chance.

I like to cycle charge using shock cavalry but I realize that the cheaper shock cavalry will do little damage to the heavier infantry even on their rear. Hence, you definitely need heavy shock cavs to make cycle charge effective against late tier units.

So, the late tier units served a purpose and are not just for show.

If the AI has some defenders of earth and a few protectors of heaven, your militia & even infantry will be crushed.

[tzeneth]

I will make a note about Ma Teng’s special units. If I remember correctly, they have fatigue immunity, the one giant weakness of cav. This makes them a lot stronger. Plus your Ma Teng in the top left of the map with 3/4 of the horse pastures. Go down the military tech and you have over a 60% reduction for recruitment and upkeep of cav. I just wish Ma Teng’s building didn’t kind of suck.

Also, the archers you unlock are awesome. 250 range and can use fire arrows. My only problem with the Defenders of the Earth are that 150 range which makes them a bit more micro intensive.

[Betelgeuse]

Just don't get Yuan Shu's tiger sword infantry. Even with high experience they basically do the same job as the sword militia for triple the price! Throughout my camapign they just held down the enemy got like 30 kills per unit, while archers, cav and halberdiers did the real killing. Just keep the rock-paper-scissor principle in mind. Cheap sword infantry can still deal with mid-tier spearman fairly effectively. In prolonged combat tiger infantry has the edge, but unlike in other parts of the series I feel like long melee fights aren't really something to pursue even with better units.

In my experience Saber cavalry is the real special unit whilst being accessible to everyone. One unit of them can easily get over 300 kills in one battle. Just keep outflanking the enemy, running down archers and crushing the enemy morale. Oh, and since they got shields they won't die as easily to archers as lancers do.

[ChaosKhan]

I have yet to use a dragon regiment because I finish my campaigns before unlocking them. There are just too many important techs, especially those which combat corruption, so there is just no way to unlock them without hampering your strategic progress severely. Furthermore, in the 3 kingdom stage you get access to the imperial guard units, which essentially whack the ♥♥♥♥ out of any comparable dragon regiments stat wise.

[Ason]

The 60 man exploding arrow arrow guys are wicked good. Just one or 2 units in an army used right can be devastating! Great for taking out heavy infantry.