heavy spearmen

[Vanc]

Real world history suggests that light troops should be useful.  Most armies in the middle ages and ancient world had some light troops.

Well, that's a fair enough point and in fact real-life armies were considerably more complicated than they are in most computer games. But computer games are simplified versions of real life, and I'm simply concerned with quality of gameplay. In this game, as in most others, there isn't actually that much detailed tactical planning involved. You don't sit around thinking "how many light troops will I send with this attack, and how many heavies/elites should I send so that I get the best outcome?" If it's a big battle you simply send everything you have (within reason, I mean normally you'd keep most of your archers at home and there are occasions when you'd, say, only use spears and cavalry in a field battle if you see the enemy is attacking you with swords and cav, but generally it's a case that you throw just about everything you have into a battle, or run away if you think you'll lose. There's not really that much need to consider light/heavy/elite ratios.)

I just think that having the standard levelling up system whereby all soldiers of that type get a slight bonus after you've done the right research makes for a more effective strategy. This way everyone has a motivation to push as hard as they can to get the research done because they know they'll get an advantage, rather than doing the research without really knowing if it's going to help you that much.

[Moonshadow]

In this game, as in most others, there isn't actually that much detailed tactical planning involved. You don't sit around thinking "how many light troops will I send with this attack, and how many heavies/elites should I send so that I get the best outcome?"

Well i dont know about the others but in small battles i do plan my army and for large attacks i send do not send everything I see his army first and then remove from from my army what i think will not be useful. For eg. if the enemy is having comparatively larger no. of paladins then why would i send archers?? Also I create my army bearing a certain ratio sometimes when you have prolonged conflict with a particular enemy you may create an army to counter his so there is still planning involved.

[fragmaster]

researches are considerably improving units .u get +1 on armor,or +1 on attack.u can say that 1 level isnt much,but other researches are weak too when consider 1 level.armor is not detectable =high potential. that eco research strength comes from 1.5y ago when v4a was invented ,and 6h was terminated.now farming is exploitable and system leaks .i hope v5 will fix it

[Kopator]

i hope v5 will fix it

cool 

[fragmaster]

cant say 

[PsYchOtiChiKen]

You don't sit around thinking "how many light troops will I send with this attack, and how many heavies/elites should I send so that I get the best outcome?"

Actually I do that. 
Especially because I have to send out a bunch of gold mine attacks in case the army comes back with 0 gold. 

We shouldn't even be having this kind of discussion because heavy units should be significantly better than light units, and elites should be better than heavies.

I thought about it and Imperiaonline is set up with a clear best unit.  Paladins are much better than any other unit in the field except flank paladins.  That gives you the one unit that smacks everything else off the field.  Treebuckets are the best fortress smashers.  Elite archers do much more damage in garrisons because of the early attack.  And since the garrison space is limited the elite archers are often more than 2X effective. 

The inversion only occurs with spears and less often swords.  The fact is that all spears are crap troops whether lite, heavy, or elite.  If you do not like the idea that lite spears might be useful then think of it as buying flank paladins.  You can also think of both lite swords and lite spears as treebucket crews.  A flank paladin in version 4a costs 160 iron, has 1600 hit points, and requires 5 villagers.  Damaged flank paladins can be "healed" in 6 hours and do not need to be home to start healing. 

[One-Eyed Man]

The inversion only occurs with spears and less often swords.  The fact is that all spears are crap troops whether lite, heavy, or elite.  If you do not like the idea that lite spears might be useful then think of it as buying flank paladins.  You can also think of both lite swords and lite spears as treebucket crews.  A flank paladin in version 4a costs 160 iron, has 1600 hit points, and requires 5 villagers.  Damaged flank paladins can be "healed" in 6 hours and do not need to be home to start healing. 

GREAT !!! GREATEST SYNTHESIS !!! ... by the way i applied this to classic realm 1, and the result (playing really quietly) was: TOP 3 IN HONOUR RANKING 3 ERAS IN AN ROW, TOP 10 IN MILITARY RANKING 3 ERAS IN A ROW ...

[fragmaster]

A flank paladin in version 4a costs 160 iron, has 1600 hit points, and requires 5 villagers. 

     .Lol they are not apple juice to be poured in same glass .Anyway summing their hitpoints may leads other forum users to wrong conclusion .Psycho, dont teach others wrong .I mean ,even if u managed to copycat what others do and observed good results dont try reverse engineering like that...u cant sum hit points with different resistances ,its like wrong adding fractions with different denominators...

[Vanc]

Well i dont know about the others but in small battles i do plan my army and for large attacks i send do not send everything I see his army first and then remove from from my army what i think will not be useful. For eg. if the enemy is having comparatively larger no. of paladins then why would i send archers?? Also I create my army bearing a certain ratio sometimes when you have prolonged conflict with a particular enemy you may create an army to counter his so there is still planning involved.

I agree with this, but this is a matter of unit type rather than unit level. Attackers generally favour swords+cav, which can be countered by cav+spears. But there's no tactical advantage to thinking about whether you'll only include your paladins, or whether to include any light or heavy cav you might still have. If you need cavalry you'll send all the cavalry you have. If you need spears, you'll send all the ones you have. It just seems a bit time consuming if you still have to hire a mix of lights, heavies and elites during the later stages of the game. Last time I played the game I hired elites only. This just made things simpler. But the question still remains whether heavies really are more cost effective than lights. Sometimes yes, and garrisoned archers are the best example of a clear bonus. But what about that other point that was made earlier: if you have, say, melee attack +14, is that bonus the same for light spears, heavies and phalanxes? If so, percentage-wise, the lights are getting a much better bonus.

[fragmaster]

vanc ,ur wrong .if u have 16k light spears,4k light cavalry 4k paladins,u would use all?run some tests ...and that sw+cav combo can be seen in low point mud ,which are mostly players with no exp ,and some on purpose low pointers.anyway players sw+cav are not worth attacking,its like beating blind guy in wheelchair..

[Vanc]

vanc ,ur wrong .if u have 16k light spears,4k light cavalry 4k paladins,u would use all?run some tests ...and that sw+cav combo can be seen in low point mud ,which are mostly players with no exp ,and some on purpose low pointers.anyway players sw+cav are not worth attacking,its like beating blind guy in wheelchair..

I'm not sure exactly what situation you're talking about, but let's say someone attacks me with 5,000 heavy swords + 5,000 HC. As I stated, spears + cav would be the best combination here. Whatever numbers I had, unless I chose to run I would add all of those spears + cav to the battle. Let's say I have 2,000 each of light, heavy and elite. Would I be saying "In this battle I should only use heavies+elites and leave the lights out?" No. I'd leave any archers out, and perhaps swords, but I can't see any advantage of leaving any spears or cav out. So I'd have 2,000 LS, 2,000 HS, 2,000 Ph, 2,000 LC, 2,000 HC and 2,000 Pa. Are you saying that some of these should not participate in the battle for some reason?

Of course this situation is just hypothetical - I wouldn't really have those numbers of those troops. I'm just saying that, although you may choose not to include a particular troop type, in most situations you'd use all the troops of a particular type no matter their level (light/heavy/elite), assuming that it's a large battle and not just some goldmine or something.

[fragmaster]

i talk about flank .First light cav goes to flank ,which means paladins cant if u fill it with l cav,and 50% dmg bonus difference of paladin (=60 dmg) is greater than whole flank l cav . Other than that having only paladins in flank can have moral disadvantage for enemy after round 5+

[Vanc]

i talk about flank .First light cav goes to flank ,which means paladins cant if u fill it with l cav,and 50% dmg bonus difference of paladin (=60 dmg) is greater than whole flank l cav . Other than that having only paladins in flank can have moral disadvantage for enemy after round 5+

OK, thanks, I didn't know that. So is this a rule that's only for cavalry? If I have a huge mix of all my troops, I could send in lights, heavies and elites of any other troop type, but I should only send in paladins and not heavy or light cav? (Unless I don't have enough paladins, I suppose.)

I feel that I'll gradually lose the lighter units anyway, but back to the specific topic of spearmen, is there really a cost advantage in upgrading to heavies and then elites? All the other troop types get some kind of advantage, but light spearmen seem better in a number of ways, including, as somebody said earlier, boosting your numbers so you can have a greater number of cavalry on the flanks.

[fragmaster]

yep just for cavalry ,other than that using all in most cases helps ,unless enemy have exotic combination ,or u can use rest of troops in other way.For example ,having 6400 spearman for several attacks on goldmines ,perventing goldmining stops coz of player attacking.

[Moonshadow]

I think all this talk about improvements benefiting lights more is wrong. In fact in think it is just the opposite.
Run a simple test 5000 heavy cav versus 100K at 0 attack armor and the 5000 heavy cav versus 1 million at say 18 attack and armor you'll know the difference.
In fact after a certain level of attack you wont be able to kill these 5000 heavy cavs no matter how many light spears you use. Evem with 10 million you'll lose.
The results will be more drastic if you use paladins.

Light units are crap and dont stand a chance against elites or heavy. Only light spears are awesome units because they are incredibly cheap they will swell your infantry flank your cavalry and give extra honor. And they can carry more load. Thats all!