Overview
This guide is written out of anger from every team mate that doesn’t understand that a unit that costs 3x more will come in 3x less quantities. And doesn’t understand that “light infantry” are not pikes but more like cavalry.
“unusual units”
In the base game, these are archers. Unless they updated the base game to ease confusion. These are pseudo cavalry. Most of the time they can receive both infantry and cavalry bonuses, though not usually the ones marked for “infantry” rather “hand infantry” etc. The most common example would be are coyote runners. typically slower, weaker and cheaper than cav. They have a hidden bonus that every unit in this guide shares. People don’t understand them. Unfortunately in a team game, there is no guarantee your team does either and they may rage at you.
Light infantry:
Coyote runners, basically slightly slower cavalry. Can stealth with a home city card. Not recommended vs cannons due to their low hp, but better than nothing.
Eagle runners, basically dragoons.
Disciples, Chinese unit trained from their monk. Can turn enemy units into other disciples. Very funny vs massed low hp ranged infantry, like strelets and chu ku nu.
Rattatan shield, apparently they receive no damage bonus from goons. I haven’t tested this but it’s what I have been told.
Tiger claws, Ok these are almost as ridiculous as disciples. They are tagged as infantry. Meaning they get bonuses for infantry and cavalry. And like the rattatan shields they don’t take extra damage from goons. They are initially extremely weak though.
I’m going to skip hand resistance because few units have it in any real quantity and they are almost all heavy infantry, as in cav killers. Most are also slow and ill suited for that task.
People don’t understand resistance and tend to keep shooting your high resist units as they are scary. This makes them very useful meat shields.
Flame throwers, they resist the most ranged damage in the game. Enemies have trouble killing them and are usually afraid of them. Easily countered by kiting, but lethal when backed up by other units who will kill yours if you keep trying to kite the flame throwers. can quickly kill cavalry, but get killed faster usually.
Iron troops, high hp and ranged resistance, plus a decent ranged attack. These age 3 units are really op as long as your opponent doesn’t get spies or ninjas. They take so long to kill and most enemies just sot there shooting at them from range, confused as they have never seen iron troops before in their entire life.
Arsonist/Grenadier/chakram, all basically the same with a few stats moved around. They resist ranged attacks and deal splash damage, while having a decent siege attack. A few of these bad boys can take the bulk of the damage for your other units. But in high numbers aren’t terribly effective. Arsonists suck as they count as heavy infantry and get killed by both ranged infantry and cavalry. But their siege attack is amazing and are immune to goons.
Mantlet, both the huron and iroquois versions are moving walls with a decent attack. They soak up damage and do decent siege. Iroquois get a bunch of upgrade cards for them making them one of the strongest ranged units in the game.
Cassador, only included as most people dont understand that they have high ranged resistance.
Some units deal siege damage instead of normal ranged damage, other than cannons I mean. The only one that comes to mind is the abus gun however. Effective at killing all of the previously mentioned infantry as they ignore their armor.
Spies come in 3 varieties, ninjas in 2. There’s the standard, assassins and agents for spies and ninjas have regular plus the Japanese consulate “Ninjutsu-Zukai”. All can stealth and are strong vs heroes, mercenaries and native warriors. If your enemy spams mercs, get spies and laugh at them for being dumb.
All spies see stealth and have a decent line of sight, making them a good choice to counter stealthed enemies with.
Assasins have an increased damage. Not really useful as almost nobody uses mercs or natives.
Agents get a huge line of sight bonus. It is really impressive, with a small number you can see almost the entire map.
Ninjas and ninjitsu are basically the same, with the ninjitsu having slightly more hp. Stronger than spies vs everything. Still not exactly “strong” though.
I don’t know how to describe this. Aenna’s are fast archers. Great vs ranged cavalry/ They also have higher melee attack than most other ranged infantry. You can melee mode a few of them and run down most enemy archers like they are some lame version of cavalry. This works extremely well as they don’t take extra damage from heavy infantry.