Every couple of years I manage to get sucked back into this game and I constantly find myself re-evaluating unit quality - when different soldiers are worth building and why. As a result I'm offering this list as a guide, to an extent, but also hoping I'll be corrected so that my own knowledge of the game increases.


Peasant: 1/5 stars. Generally not worth getting. They're way too weak to be of any value. They really have two uses: As a meat shield for Archers if you're desperate and don't have anything better to put there, and filling in the moat of a castle that doesn't have any ranged defenders. Otherwise they're better off staying in your county to work.

Macemen: 3.5/5 stars: Macemen are the Zerglings of LotR. They're cheap, allowing you to get large numbers of them quickly, they're fast, they hit very hard, and they die very quickly. They are incredibly strong early game and spending your starting gold on Maces can allow you to blitz a few counties or even an enemy county, but I find their usefulness rapidly falls off as the game goes on. This makes them hard to rate because they're kind of a 5/5 early game 3/5 mid game 1/5 late game unit.

Archers: 4.5/5 stars. Archers excel in both field battles and sieges, and their rapid rate of fire allows them to shred oncoming armies. Many battles boil down to whoever has the most Archers as having the stronger Archer force effectively allows you to set the terms of the engagement. These guys are likely to be the backbone of your armies for most of the game. Their one weakness is that they struggle against heavily armoured enemies: Pikemen, Swordsmen, and Knights. Knights in particular are the bane of Archers everywhere (except for the ones on castle walls, of course).

Pikemen: 4/5 stars. The opposite of Macemen, Pikes are slow moving, low damage units with a ton of armour. This makes them ideal for taking a spot and holding it, because even a superior enemy will take a long time to break through them. They're excellent for keeping enemy melee units off your Archers and holding gates, breaches, and siege towers in a siege. Their high armour also means they're probably the best choice for moat digging. Pikes and Archers is a potent combination that you can use to easily win most games.

Swordsmen: 2/5 stars. Swordsmen occupy the spot in between Macemen and Pikemen, but that's of questionable value. It's very rare that I find a situation where these guys are useful, and their equipment is just too expensive for what they bring to the table. I generally don't use them at all aside from any I get from starting weapons and if they pop up as mercs and I'm desperate. They aren't *bad,* they just aren't good, and you're almost always better off producing a different weapon.

Crossbowmen: 3/5 stars: A very niche unit. Compared to Archers, Xbows have much less range and a much slower rate of fire, but they punch through armour like nobody's business. Unlike Archers, Xbows excel against Pikemen, Swordsmen, and Knights, but struggle against Maces and Archers. Even Peasants can pose a problem for these guys. As a result, they tend to be most effective late game, when the enemies (especially the Baron) are fielding large swathes of high-end units. I find it sometimes worthwhile to mix a few in with a standard Pike/Archer formation.

Knights: 3/5 stars: Think of a slightly stronger, much faster Swordsman. They aren't very cost-efficient and lose a lot of their edge in sieges, but man for man they're very strong. Having them circle around and crush Archers can be very effective. It's just a shame they cost so much relative to what you get.

Incidentally, most of these apply to LotR 1, as well.

Peasants are garbage combatants. I can think of several uses for making an army with peasants, and none of them involve actually fighting in battle. If you're seriously using them for defense, then something has gone wrong. If your county is large enough to spare peasants for the army, then it should be large enough to produce weapons to equip those peasants.

Archers are the backbone of the army. It isn't really possible to have too many archers loyal to you, though a given army shouldn't have more than about 1300. Leave some space for 100-200 pikemen to act as a wall in front of them, and maybe some space for a few hundred mace men to handle special tasks in battle. Love them, protect them, watch them drown your foes in blood.

Pikemen are mostly good for blocking enemy units from getting at your archers, or for giving enemy archers something to shoot at besides your archers. Units attacking heavily armored pikes are not attacking OR distracting lightly armored archers. They make good arrow absorbers, keeping enemy archers from killing your archers.

Maces are the third part of the grand trifecta of units. They are insanely cheap, move quickly, hit decently hard, and are expendable. A force consisting solely of maces can overrun an enemy force, sometimes catching pieces of it out of position and demolishing them before the rest of the army can react. They also serve well as a special tasks force in a combined arms army, able to flank an enemy force to engage and murder their archers after your Pikes meet their front line, able to draw out enemy burning oil (whether convincing it to spill or just knocking it over directly), or make suicide runs on a castle flag or other objective.

Knights are stupidly fast, but far more expensive than maces for little extra gain. Skip them, unless you are mopping up and have an excess of gold to buy mercenary Knights, and even then it probably isn't worth it.

Swordsmen occupy a middle ground that isn't worth bothering with. If I want an offensive unit, I'll use the faster and cheaper maces. If I want a defensive unit, I'll use the more heavily armored pikes.

Crossbows are interesting, being able to kill an enemy unit with each shot (2 units, for some of the more lightly armored guys), but they have three drawbacks: significantly shorter range than archers, slower move speed than archers, and slower attack speed than archers. I'd rather keep the much larger range of a stack of archers, which lets me start a fight from much farther away and gives me a LOT more arrows in the air to kill the charging enemies. Also, archers can fire on units behind castle walls much more effectively and with much less risk than crossbows (use pikes to distract enemy archers).

I think this list concentrates solely on battlefield, not on all the stages of the game. There is no single unit I dont use at some point or another save peasants. But even they have some use if you are using them for razing. Swordsmen are peerless on melee castle defense and macemen/knights are used throughout the game. Its not that I disagree with these ratings per say, its more i disagree with the "end game" comment. As there is no technology advancement, its pretty much the same throughout the campaign. Macemen never fall off in value as archers never get better armor. Knights dont lose impact because no one ever gets faster, yadda yadda.

I've already given my thoughts on Knights and Swordsmen, and I have nothing further to add.

I'm not very clear on when or why you'd use peasants for razing.
-If you are too poor to afford weapons, it seems like those peasants should be working in your economy.
-If you are about to conquer a county, then razing the fields means you have more work to do in rebuilding.
-If you aren't about to conquer a county, then use those guys with weapons who aren't conquering to go pillaging.

It's true that there's no tech tree, but there's still distinct phases of the game - early game you're mostly fighting against county defenses so units like Xbows and Knights don't really serve any purpose. Also, more expensive weapons require more substantial resource investment, which depending on the map and settings can often mean delaying them until later on. And then of course it will take the AI longer to ramp up to larger armies of more elite units, which makes Xbows in particular a decidedly late game unit. Meanwhile I've never had very much luck using Macemen against Stone and Royal Castles, so if you reach a point in the game where those crop up Macemen start to fall off a little bit.

you don't give enough credits to crossbows. they do kill 2 peasants with 1 arrow, meaning they clean every army up faster then your beloved archers. A Royal Castle filled with only xbows is IMPOSSIBLE to take in multiplayer. alos in ressource cost they are not far behind bows, so why bother about bows at all. Pikemen + Xbows is the strongest army constellation there is by cost effecitveness.

And the swordsmen have value but only in man to man fights with pikemen and peasants, proofing only to be effective against the Bishop in single player. But pikemen themselves with enough artillery is even more effeictive.

Fun Fact: in skirmish battles the peasant is the strongest unit, as you can build over 4000 of them on easy and they crush EVERY, even wehn they are blocking bridges and have archers.

Hi, here's my take on unit stats against the AI. For PvP, it may be different...

- Each unit has a different offensive potential based on the unit size, which can be 4, 8, 16, or 32. For example, archers are more effective at smaller unit sizes, while pikemen are more effective at larger unit sizes.

ORDER OF IMPORTANCE:

- Macemen: This is the overall best unit. It's dirt cheap from the cart, and you can speed through the campaign by massing maces. They lose hard to pikemen and sustained archer fire. But the AI doesn't really build pikes, and you can deal with archer fire by attacking the archers. Want to beat the first campaign map ASAP? Build a 178 macemen army on turn 1 and march straight to The Knight's palisade.

- Archers: Building a Motte gives you 150 archers as long as you have a population of 400, which is incidentally how many builders it takes to build a Motte in 1 turn. This is the cheapest per-unit build in the game (.53 stone/5.33 wood per archer) and will not drop your happiness. Once you get 3 counties, the 450 archers you get from building 3 Mottes provides a very solid foundation for your eventual 1500-man army. But you shouldn't need more than 450 archers, so don't build bows from the blacksmith.

- Pikemen: The best defensive unit in the game. Against enemy armies of 500+, you may win while losing less than 100 pikemen if they're positioned properly and backed up with enough archers/xbows. Not only are they light on material requirements, They're also inexpensive if you need to purchase some in a pinch.

- Crossbowmen: They're the most powerful offensive unit in the game, more so than knights. But they're miserable if they're out of position or attacked. On a no weapons, weak status, impossible difficulty custom game, it's possible to get a 2nd county on turn 2 by building 5 xbows on turn 1. A 5 xbow, 46 peasant army will defeat the 118 peasant army defending the 2nd county. (It must be exactly 5 so that you get 2 physical xbow units.)

- Peasants: They play an important role in increasing unit size to 32. Always try to get as close to the 1500-man army if possible, even if means filling it up with peasants. You'll always have a good number of peasants once you suicide your counties by mass conscripting and setting 50% tax.

DON'T BUILD:

- Swordsmen: You shouldn't ever build these. If you want an offensive rush unit, choose macemen. If you want a defensive tank to protect your archers/xbows, choose pikemen. The only time these should be used is the starter 25 swordsmen in campaign maps, or in a custom game with weapons set to few.

- Knights: Don't build these against the AI. They're too expensive. Seriously, they're not worth it.

WHEN TO MASS CONSCRIPT:

The magic population is 750 in 3 counties, assuming 100 happiness. For each county, build a ~350 man army, making sure that there are at least 400 people remaining, and build a Motte. This lets you extract 500 people from each county. Then sell off as much as you can and set tax to 50%. Buy maces with your windfall and replace lost troops with macemen after defeating each noble.

It's possible to do it with 2 counties, but the population must be 1000, assuming 100 happiness. For each county, build a ~600 man army, then build a Motte.

Quick disclaimer:
First, I am going to necro this post, well, because. Its been years since I played this game with the fervor I used to, but I cant sit idly by while my men at arms are slandered! Second, lets all come to the agreement that this is all splitting hairs and at no point should any reasonably knowledgeable player every be at risk of losing a campaign map. Take longer, quit in frustration and not wanting to do something over again, lose a territory, all absolutes. But the AI will never in recorded history, defeat someone outright who has the required pulse. That said....

Many years ago someone asked about campaign map peasants... This is useful on impossible level for a number of reasons. The most basic of which is to buy time. Several 50 man peasant armies can tie up a 1500 man death stack of any combination indefinitely. Finish your walls, calmly recruit, wait for a cart, whatever. Give me a 800-1000 man county and I can lock down a unit for the rest of the game. Regarding razing., serves two purposes. One, its really fun. Two, occasionally on impossible you may wish to be proactive and send peasant Delta Teams to far flung territory's you wont be anywhere near for years to burn as much as they can.

Swordsman. Leave the economic cost out of this for a moment. Your 300/300 Pike archer army wont stand a chance against my 300/300 sword/archer army. Your pikes will melt like butter. Why dont you know this? Because you play only against the AI. the AI doesnt do anything that you cant compensate for easily. See disclaimer. You can try it easy enough, set up your own skirmish. Now, specific to the campaign and economy. Do they have the same "value" as pikes? No. Pikes get you further for less.

Knights. Basically, faster Maces. If your argument is that Maces are good because they are faster.... I win! Go Logic! If your argument is they are better because they are faster and cheaper, well then it comes down to what you can afford. A Camery will get you from place to place, earn you a living and help you provide for yourself and a family cheaply and effectively. Suppose that you are lucky enough to have a good amount of cash to your name. Do you always drive a Camery? Some of us do. Others go for the more expensive option that inarguably gets us there faster for more expense. Oh, and they dont die to Range in a heart beat like maces.