Are Ji units underperforming?

[BolzenHolz]

Being a fan of all kinds of halberd units, but for me it seems that the whole Ji line is a waste of ressources and unit slots (play many battles manually).

Considered as allround-infantry, they are just okay against enemy cavalry and spear units. Spear units outperform them by far against cavalry, saber units beat Ji in nearly most matchups (even when used as flanking unit or from rear sides).

Im not really sure if i use them "wrong" or if they are really just bad. Furthermore, i dont know what to do to improve them. A slight damage buff/bonus damage against infantry? Ignore them entirely and just use more spears/sabers?

[Tipsy]

Glaive, AxenShield and even some of those Melee-switch crowsbowmen outperform a lot of the Ji infantry, it's silly that the slightest melee block chance straight up outshines two handers without any block chances and low dodge stats.

[Emmental]

I generally only use them for early game cav defence, try to get the charge reflect on them. Other than that its sabre and archer spam.

[Jerroser]

To be honest I feel a lot of the unit balancing in the game is a little bit off. Ji units where likely intended to serve as the main counter to mounted units, the issue is that spear guard units which you can get right from the start can the job just as well and they're generally better all round with no weakness to arrow fire (in fact with formations they're basically invulnerable to it).

[Geroiko]

One of the recent patches made changes to morale of units and nerfed most of the green units due to them being very cost-efficient and good at being a meatshield and holding the line better than other units. Now they can rout more easily. They also buffed the saber + axe units to do more damage to spearmen/halberds because earlier there was no purpose getting any saber units as spearmen could do everything: hold the line, deal with cavalry, go head to head with axe-units and saber units etc etc. It was a good nerf. Now for your ji units, they are only effective if used against horses, nothing else so use them for that if you like them. They are cheap after all but have very niche role. In my opinion they are waste of gold because, as you noticed too, they are extremely weak in the current iteration of the game. You can use them effectively to crush rebel armies though if you need a cheap retinue for that purpose. They are decent at that.

If you want to hold the line for your archers/crossbows to do the damage, then use the green spear guards that have okay upkeep cost and can hold the line for a while as well as they can adopt advanced formations. If you are planning to focus on melee units and melee combat specifically instead of ranged, then consider purple units as they have received buffs to be able to be as effective and useful as green units. Before you would put a spear-guard green unit and an axe-men purple unit (or any green vs purple unit honestly) and they would fight for ages before one of them routed (the green one would rout but after many minutes, hence why green units used to be more effective at holding the line).

[BolzenHolz]

Thanks for your answers folks.

[GamerCH]

I had to test them out after reading this and indeed, they are very weak against even most basic Sabre Militia.

Even heavy Ji Infantry do not fair better against Sabre Milita. Until Sabre Militia morale breaks but still.

Yuan Shao special Ji infantry deals a bit better since they have better melee stats.

Spear infantry is a lot like hoplites in Rome 2. They hold the line very well but they barely kill.

Ji is basically a slightly weaker Saber Militia but with better morale and anti cavalry capability. At least as far as my tests go. So yeah I'd like to see them slightly buffed. I'd really want another stat. A bonus attack vs heroes. That would help melee cavalry too.