random info ( from birdofprey)

This is BirdofPrey. Scorpali82 is the handle I use almost everywhere except world10 because my original intention was to have a Klingon theme from Star Trek.

In this thread I'll post random useful information that may or may not help with somethingorother. There's no method to my madness in here - I'll post it whenever I think of it.

First bits of random info:

Swordmen:
Good against: Pikemen, Light Cavalry
Poor against: Archers, Sword-Dancers
Awful against: Lancers, Horse Archers

Cheap, reasonably fast and fairly well-rounded. Excellent unit for use while leveling up heroes and killing devil union armies. However, unit-for-unit they get killed by nearly everything, so they are not good units to use against other players or floating castles.

Shieldmen:
Good against: Archers, Swordmen, Sword-Dancers
Poor against: Pikemen and cavalry
Awful against: Lancers

Cheap and fairly strong but extremely slow. A good guard unit and a good floating castle unit, but pretty awful at anything that requires movement. This is the only unit type I never use.

Bowmen:
Good against: Swordmen, Pikemen
Poor against: Sword-Dancers and cavalry
Awful against: Longbowmen

Cheap and fast but fairly weak - they're only good against a couple types of units. I keep a few of these around for the speed but I generally only use them against pikemen because I use lancers against swordmen whenever I can.

Pikemen:
Good against: cavalry and Shieldmen
Poor against: archers
Awful against: Swordmen and Sword-Dancers

A very specialized unit most useful for action against other players - the only devil union armies they're any good against are dark knights and spellswords. They're also pretty useless at castles. However, since most players heavily favour cavalry units (for the speed), pikemen are brutally effective against these players.

Sword-Dancers:
Good against: infantry and archers
Poor against: Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry and Horse Archers
Awful against: Lancers

Cheap and slow but versatile, sword-dancers are probably the single best unit to use against floating castles. They're also effective against every single type of devil union army except dark knights, if you can handle waiting for them to reach their targets. These are my second most often-used units because they're fantastic against NPCs.

Longbowmen:
Good against: archers, Lancers, Horse Archers, Pikemen
Poor against: Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry
Awful against: Sword-Dancers, Shieldmen

Expensive and very specialized, they are nevertheless useful to have around because they're one of only two types of units (along with Pikemen) that can cost-efficiently counter Lancers and Horse Archers. These are my third most often-used units, most often used against other players because they cover the weaknesses of my primary unit.

Light Cavalry:
Good against: archers and Heavy Cavalry
Poor against: infantry, Horse Archers
Awful against: Pikemen, Lancers

Cheap and extremely fast but somewhat weak in combat. You'll probably want to keep at least one light-cav-spec hero around for doing your farming, but these things aren't all that useful in combat. When I played my dwarf I used a fair number of them but on my human I don't need the speed so I don't use many of them.

Heavy Cavalry:
Good against: archers and Sword-Dancers
Poor against: n/a
Awful against: Light Cavalry, Pikemen, Lancers, Horse Archers

A very popular unit but personally I don't like them much. They're fairly cheap, have decent speed and have large healthpools so you can sometimes get away with using them against their counter-units, but I prefer other types of units to counter the types that heavy cav are useful against.

Lancers:
Good against: infantry, Light cavalry, Heavy cavalry
Poor against: Horse Archers and other Lancers
Awful against: archers and Pikemen

Somewhat expensive and not very fast but very, very powerful. Very similar in design to Horse Archers but they trade speed for durability. These are my favourite units along with Longbowmen because a Lancer-Longbow combo can handle anything if configured properly. What I mean by this is theoretically a player could counter Lancer-Longbow with Pikeman-Dancer, but only if they can get the pikes to fight the Lancers and the dancers to fight the longbows. If the pikes fight the longbows and the dancers fight the Lancers, they get rocked. Configuration is everything, so level up that espionage center because you're gonna need it.

Horse Archers:
Good against: infantry, Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry
Poor against: Lancers and other Horse Archers
Awful against: archers and Pikemen

Essentially a faster but more fragile Lancer, Horse Archers are the most expensive units in the game. They have the same strengths and weaknesses as Lancers, with HAs being slightly better than Lancers against most types of infantry (except shieldmen) and Lancers being slightly better than HAs against all types of cavalry, but the difference isn't all that significant. If you need the speed, go with the Horse Archer; if not, go with the tougher and less expensive Lancer.