Just a topic for me to throw out impressions of various units as I try using them. I usually end up using spearmen, a few select low level units, and the top level units for whatever race and magic I'm controlling, along with whatever heroes come my way. I'm making an effort to use more of the list, especially summons.

Longbowmen - My first attempt at using these guys left me very, very unimpressed. I was locked onto a small peninsula with Sorcery magic as my primary and a sorcery node keeping me mostly penned in, and everything could reach them too quickly. I tried them again in a later game and I realized that a cluster of Longbowmen are actually pretty good after they get a few levels and as long as nothing attacks them; when attacked, they just sort of fold up and die.

War Bears - Seem alright for their cost. Moderately inexpensive, and roughly on par with a mid tier normal unit that has some experience. They can do damage, but they are going to take it, too.

Sprites - Pretty awesome for their level. Gather a flock of these and go to town on things that can't shoot back; they fold pretty quick against incoming fire though. A little slow to flock up early game because of the initial cost, but after they get moving they can start cracking some of the weaker nodes, taking cities, and generally pay for themselves.

Giant Spiders - They aren't really meant for fighting strong units; their attack and defense just isn't high enough (attack is lower than war bears!). More of a support unit with the web, though they can clear low resistance enemies pretty efficiently with their poison; I'll have to remember to send them against Klackons at some point. Rather reminds me of Tumu, actually.

Cockatrices - Didn't get much chance to use them before the game ended. The stone touch looks nasty, but they lost HP pretty quickly when I sent one 1v1 against an orc shaman. Won the fight, but were half dead. I suppose I shouldn't expect much sturdiness from a creature that is half chicken and half lizard.

Longbowmen get +1 to hit AND long range, which means their range penalty is negated. Everything they shoot at all over the board is the same as if it were 2 squares away. This is huge for a ranged unit, range penalties become severe at long range. -1 for 3-5 squares away, -2 for 6-8, -3 farther. As to-hit is only 30% anyway, this can be crippling. Longbowmen have 30% minimum. They're one of the best mid-range units in the game. They don't deal well with incoming fire, just like most ranged units.

I wanted to post links to illustrate this, but this stupid forum software thinks I'm a spammer when I do that, so you'll just have to search on the wiki yourself.

I personally love longbowmen as part of a team of castle defenders, for precisely the reasons chuser points out. Combined with paladins and some sort of mage, they make a pretty effective deterrent. Slingers also work fairly well, but not until they're at least elite and equipped with magical weaponry. (How does that work for them, exactly? Does loading a stone into an adamantium cup somehow imbue it with more hitting power? Inquiring minds want to know.)

Until you can afford better, upgrade at least some of your spearmen to halberdiers at the earliest opportunity.

If you happen to have both spells, combining Phantom Warriors with Stone Skin makes them a formidable opponent; especially since each individual figure gets the defensive bonus. The downside (besides their slow movement rate, especially for an intangible unit) is that Phantom Warriors are available in combat only and cannot be maintained; the only place you'll see them in numbers is when trying to crack a tower or a Sorcery node.

On a similar note, Air Elementals are awesome: their invisibility means they can't be targeted at range and are harder to hit, they have tons of immunities, and they are the fastest non-teleporting units available.

Oft-overlooked is the fact that Human magicians have six figures per unit, as opposed to the standard four. This puts them on a par with Dark Elven warlocks, without any of the issues of slow growth, insane per-unit cost and rampant xenophobia.

Hammerhands are solid if they can close to melee range. Problem is, too many units can attack them beyond melee range.

If you like Sprites, you'll love Shadow Demons! They're immune to almost everything, including webs, plus they regenerate! 'Course, they're expensive as hell (literally!) but hey, nobody's perfect.

War Mammoths are almost never worth it; they're the only Troll unit that doesn't regenerate. I also never met a catapult or steam cannon I liked: the theory is great, but in practice they rarely last long enough to do much damage. Also, after you take over the city, who do you think has to pay to repair that wall? Get your rep up to (IIRC) 7 over the course of the next few days, and you'll be able to post links like everyone else. In the meantime, I upvoted your post here to help you along; you also get +1 to your rep with each first post in a 24-hour period.

I believe you, and like I said, I really changed my tune after that second try using them. I think the first try just wasn't very good for a High Elf start; I was using Sorcery (not much support magic), I was in a really cramped area, and too many things could open up on the longbowmen before they had a chance to work their magic. I may not have gotten a Fighter's Guild up and running before trying to produce them, so I was also working with small squads of recruits. I think yet another part of the issue may also be that I'm used to sturdier archers, like javalineers and horsebowmen.

The big thing is to slap a level or two on them, cluster several of them together, and go after things that have to walk forward to engage. I really only use spearmen to guard cities in groups of two (for the rebel suppression) with magical support, and 1 spearman on each node I control (so a single magic spirit can't steal while without my knowing). I don't use them offensively for probably obvious reasons. I should try working more with swordsmen and maybe halberdiers, but they always seemed too fragile for the cost. Why use a halberdier when I could use a wolf rider/javalineer/longbowman/slinger/horsebowman/hell hound/sprite/ghoul/phantom warrior/naga/etc, and then the heroes and high end normal units usually come online. Part of what I'm slowly working on is actually trying some of these units to see how they work in practice.

I love using phantom warriors. It hadn't occurred to me to try and enchant them; I generally think of them as one (maybe two) swings of illusion damage, recast until enemy is dead or weak enough to finish off with my other units.

I like the human magicians, though generally I'd rather field paladins (magic immune, faster, more durable). Warlocks are especially awesome for Doom Bolt, though they suffer from the slow speed. I also like Shadow Demons, but I'm usually busy casting other things by the time they become available (and also slow move speed overland). Hammerhands are durable enough to take a few hits while they advance, especially if you have a bunch of them in the battle.

When a city switches to unit production, I favor Wolf Riders, Javalineers, Stag Beetles, Paladins, Slingers, Longbowmen/Pegasi, Rangers, Berserkers, Doom Drakes, Hammerhands, Nightmares, and War Trolls.
Orcs don't have a clear choice, and I haven't played Beastmen very much (I'd probably lean toward Centaurs, Priests, or Minotaurs).

I completely agree on War Mammoths; they are overshadowed by War Trolls in pretty much every single way. I haven't tried catapults or steam cannons, but I've never felt particularly threatened when I go up against them (which says something in and of itself).

And the most important point: the Slingers probably just use small chunks of adamantium in normal slings. Death by purple glowing pebbles! Maybe they chip small pieces off their adamantium daggers, and the daggers grow back each turn.

Started with Gnolls, and it turns out my capital is the only city of Gnolls on Arcanus. Looks like there is 1 neutral High Elf city, a couple of Klackons (probably all settled by an enemy wizard), and everything else is High Men. I have alchemy, which influences the results somewhat.

My starting spearmen did very well in fending off a few early attacks without much support even from the starting swordsmen. However, the Wolf Riders are once again the heroes of the hour for this race. I thought about trying some halberdiers, but the wolves are 3x faster and much more durable, so it didn't seem worth it even though I could get 2.5x halberdiers per wolf I built. The wolves could cover a lot of distance to trouble zones (especially after I started laying down roads), easily retreat to my cities for healing, rapidly close on enemy shooters in combat, and wipe out most normal units I ran into. Ghouls hurt (poison touch), and I didn't pit my wolves against enemy phantom warriors. The wolves did very well against Fire Giants (the giants were a LOT easier than I expected), 9 wolves against 6 giants + 3 sprites ended in a very handy victory for me (no losses of wolves, iirc). The chimeras were harder; I had web to pull them from the sky, but I needed to spread the chimera damage among several wolves to keep from losing anything and the chimeras soaked a good amount of damage too. High Elf halberdiers did a fair amount of damage before dying, but the wolves would win if at full health before attacking.

Sometimes the curses were a problem (mostly Black Sleep); my Phantom Warriors helped to fill in the gaps in a pinch. My wolves mowed down legions of spearmen and swordsmen (surprise, surprise) of high men, high elf, and klackon varieties, but the wolves soaked a lot of fire bolts and psionic blasts in the process (without dying!). Interestingly enough, when I tried buffing my wolves (flame blade, eldritch weapon, giant strength) before going after the more dangerous targets, I often ended up feeling like I was wasting mana. Maybe Stone Skin would have been more noticeable, if I'd had it. Walls of Fire hurt quite a bit; I had to minimize the number of times I went through those.

Biggest pros: Speed, attack strength. Biggest con: resistance. I haven't even bothered to try and tackle things like cockatrices and basilisks, and ghouls deal quite a bit of damage to wolves. The wolves do well against things that are geared towards straight combat though.

Thus far an enemy wizard on Myrror has been left unchecked. I look forward to seeing how my wolf hordes perform when I invade.

Yeah, Fire Giants are pretty weak, actually. I've tried using them in stacks before, and the result was disappointing. You can win battles with them, of course, but they're not really cost effective compared with say, Hellhounds. If your missile troops and spellcasters can survive their two ranged attacks they run out of boulders and then they're not all that fast and they seem to die rather quickly against any kind of good melee attack.

I was going to try Storm Giants, but never got around to it. Those seem more promising with Lightning Bolts instead of boulders, but they're also considerably more expensive IIRC.

I would argue that War Mammoths are the worst Troll unit there is, since they don't regenerate. Even Troll Spearmen are solid units because of Regeneration.

One unit I would love to like is the Doom Bat because they're so amazingly fast. Unfortunately they're also vastly overpriced.

I haven't done much with Storm Giants yet. Their attack is magic and they have 4 shots, so they should do better.

No argument from me about War Mammoths being the worst Troll unit.

Doom Bats make excellent scouts, and their immolation helps against multi-figure units. Not a great fighter overall, though.

Surprisingly, unicorns were able to tear through my wolves pretty fast. Thankfully I sent in a large stack, but the unicorns were each good for at least one wolf, possibly two with a little luck.

They seem like good off-the-wall units to use with the right wizard setup.

I have played Flying Invisible Longbowmen before (11 Sorc). It is pretty quick- a barracks, sawmill, and Flight spell and already there is ass to kick somewhere, but battles will sometimes take multiple turns. Sprites work sort of the same way but are cheaper in every way and about 17% as cool.

To use Wolf Riders I took 11 nature. Cast Gaia on the capital right away, and Path Finding on 1 wolf rider. That went pretty well too.

War Bears are good when starting Dwarf, for both the army and the engineers. Nature + Life for dwarves on myrror is about as reliable as you can possibly get. Endurance, Just Cause, Heroism, Earth Lore, War Bears.

That teleportation ability they have is pretty effective. I've never tried using unicorns myself though.

By the way, how many games have copied the idea of teleporting unicorns? Lots.

In fairness, they probably all took it from the same source material, D&D, which even in its very first edition (back in 1974) gave unicorns the ability to teleport (albeit by way of a Dimension Door spell, once per day). My guess is that it was the logical outgrowth of the idea that a unicorn, when summoned by the virgin maiden who had first tamed it, would always be instantly available to be by her side.

That's probably where it came from. I never looked close at the description of unicorns in my D&D games because I never used them in any of my campaigns.

Still, many games copied that idea. I don't remember seeing it in a computer game before MoM. It may have been, but I don't remember seeing it.

Last notes on the Wolf Riders: they tore through dwarves pretty efficiently, even the Hammerhands. Overall, the wolves are geared for speed and offense; they don't resist very well and they don't defend exceptionally well. Get to opponents and try to tear them apart before dying.

I faced down a bunch of Steam Cannons in the process, and I think I see the biggest issues with that unit: it has zero melee attack strength, and it does NOT have the Long Range ability. They were doing very little damage with their initial shots, and while they were surprisingly survivable in melee (usually requiring 2-3 attacks from my wolves before dying), they get exactly one attack per full battle round ("Haste" spell not considered). If they had the Long Range ability, they might actually be kind of scary; 2-3 of them seriously injure or kill a wolf once the wolf was in close range.

Tried to make a push for 0 mana cost Sky Drakes, but the last Myrran sorcery node betrayed me. It claimed to give me two sorcery spell books, but one of them was actually a nature book (that didn't give any nature spells, oddly enough), so I quit bothering and pushed for the end, overruning Ariel, Rjak, and Tauron on Arcanus in short order.

Draconian units are pretty awesome, even their spearmen and swordsmen are solid with that firebreath. I was pleasantly surprised at just how effective troll swordsmen were, though; they routinely killed raiders without help from the draconian backup I had in town. War Trolls and Doom Drakes were solid, as usual. Doom drakes are able to stall off Sky Drakes for a round (but they die without trading).

I've realized that my biggest issue with the seeming overwhelming power of Sky Drakes is that I almost always encounter them with a group of 6 heroes, and I want to get through the multi-drake battle without losing anyone. The drakes themselves aren't nearly so overwhelming if one is willing to lose units to take them out. Stag beetles did okay defending against my drakes, but paladins were the real menace, being able to routinely trade two pallys per drake even when my drake was doing all the attacking.

Air Elementals were disappointing. They are fast, flying, invisible, and flimsy. In most cases, a phantom beast was cheaper and more effective, with one of the few exceptions being when I needed a flyer to suicide bomb the last couple of hp on a sky drake. Their weapon immunity just doesn't cut it against the higher tier normal units.

Lastly, I've realized that except for Phantom Warriors and Phantom Beast, Sorcery just doesn't provide much in the way of combat support early on. Or any kind of support. Nagas are decent for their level, and Word of Recall can be down right amazing, but Sorcery just doesn't back up your units or towns in any appreciable way. It has a hard time dealing with Death creatures, and unless you are using the same or better sorcery units, sorcery doesn't deal well with Sorcery units either. It does have some truly amazing end game spells (Suppress Magic, Time Stop), but getting there is something of a slog.

Draconians are fun to play because of their flying units (which includes settlers).

I've never been overly fond of Doom Drakes. They're good, yes, and you can get them really early if you plan a little, but they just don't live up to their name: Doom Drakes. There's not much "doom" in them in my opinion. I wish they were just called Drakes or something.

You can see just how bad troll Mammoths are when even the spearmen and swordsmen are better.

Here's the thing about Air Elementals: they're invisible not just in combat, but on the overland map too. Several times I've had a stack of phantom warriors/beasts spawn at a sorcery node and head toward my cities. Usually it contains just warriors and beasts, but every once-in-a-awhile it contains a few Air Elementals too. That can be a real problem.

When you start a new game as Life+Warlord+Halflings, and you are just starting to settle two or three new cities, it almost feels like cheating to accept that unit of Paladins that just showed up at your door looking for work.