Top 5 Units in Rome: Total War 

Since Rome Total War is a videogame, and the main purpose of a videogame is having fun rather than just "winning battles", then I think pink pajamas deserved at least a honorable mention for being such a meme unit Think about it. Yeah, Scyth horse archers may have helped you win some battles. But did you have more fun chasing horse archers around the whole battlemap for 10 minutes or painting that bridge near Seleucia pink with only 2 militia hoplites and a cretan archer against 5000 pajamas?

One of the things that makes Thrace's starting position so abysmal is they start right next to the Scythians and have weak cavalry. Of course the saving grace is they have an opportunity to march into the steppes early and get rid of them before the horse archer spam can start in earnest... while turning their backs to the Macedonians and Dacians of course.

Nice vid. I agree with the Armoured hoplites at 2. Very solid and you can get them so early. Forester warband deserve an honourable mention imo but Gaul isn’t a good faction overall

To Rome Total War - Barbarians Invasion was like this : ERE 5th Eastern Archers 4th Equites Auxilia 3rd Equites Catapharacii 2nd Equites Clibinarii 1st Comitetanses First Cohort WRE 5th Carriage Ballista 4th Auxilia Palatina 3rd Comitetanses First Cohort 2nd Bucellarii 1st Samaritian Auxilia

To me , Five top units in Rome Total War was this : 5th Legionary Cohort 4th Archers Auxilia 3rd Legionary Cavalry 2nd Legionary First Cohort 1st Urban Cohort

A very good list. Glad to see catapracts getting the attention they deserve. 1)I personally wouldn't put the armored hoplites on place 2, but lower (maybe place 5). Yes, they have very good stats, but their tactical value on the battlefield is very limited. They are a good defensive unit and can hold the ground... and that's pretty much it. Phalangites perform much better. They unit size is bigger, so you can stretch their lines to form a longer line (if needed), they have longer spears and overall they work much better with cavalry and skirmishers of their respective faction. The unit roster of TGC is pisspoor, so even infantry has no problem flanking the main line (as shown in the video) - ironically, in the video, the match with the armoured hoplites and their uber stats is closest to a defeat. I take silver shields over armoured hoplites any day. 2)A unit worth mentioning are war dogs. They perform good against any enemy units (even underrunning phalanx formations), frighten the enemy and are practically undying - they respawn immediately after the battle as long their masters are still alive, which can very easy be obtained when you order the retreat after releasing the dogs (...a strategy even cheesier than corner camping). From early to late game they are a force to reckon with. 3) My first place on the list would go to the generals (bodyguard). Yes, you can't recruit them (on the other hand they replenish automatically very fast and everywhere on the map), but they are a unit in the game and units like elephants, camels or mercenaries like cretan archers, which you listed ;-), are more limited than generals. In my opinion, it's one of the biggest features of rome, that you can move retainers from general to general and choose your heir by yourself (not like an MTW2). With the possibility to train the skills of the generals and gain retainers via academies etc. you can have some einsteins to govern your empire and some super chads to conquer the world in mid and end game. With 2 hitpoints and top stats they can trampel pretty much everything (especially in early game) and thanks to the ability to blow the horn before the charge, you can keep your general out of the turmoil to use his bodyguards without risking to much (not like in MTW2). Easily the best unit in the game.

One thing that makes cheaper, larger units even better in campaign is upgrades. if you measure it as pure raw stats added to a unit, a +1 weapon upgrade on a 240 man unit adds 240 attack, while on an 80 man unit it adds 80. if you measure it in percentage, +1 attack to unit with 20 is a 5% upgrade, but to a unit with 5 attack it's a 20% upgrade. Cost effectiveness is king, and late-game, while it may be tempting to use a stack of your elites, you can often field two stacks of low tier units for the same cost, almost the same strength, and far easier retraining.

Good list. When you consider all the factors, turns to recruit, cost, and upkeep, it's a solid list. Good job.

Urban cohort, spartans, creten archers, cataphracts and elephants is my guess

Love your tierlist and "top..." videos...such an awesome format. Would you be able to do a top 5 factions that YOU enjoy playing? I'm curious

I don't think I've ever actually recruited a unit of cataphracts as parthia. They just don't seem to work well with the persian cavalry doomstacks that parthia are most powerful with and slow the mobility of the army down on the battlefield. I quite like how you didn't include urban cohort though since at least with my armies, the archers and cav do most the skilling and so urbans are often not needed and two legionaries are better than 1 urban

Light Lancers are my favorites...once they rack up XP they be like 16/14with a 9 charge bonus and fast moving/good morale perk..best flanking unit in RTW honorable mention in my book mainly for nostalgia lol

from a multiplayer perspective (cost efficiency wise) 5. Praetorian cav 4. Cataphracts 3. Melee chariots (any really) 2. Archers (regular/cretan/phar bows) 1. Mounted archers (especially chariot archers)

Very good tier list, I love that the top troops are usually the ones I hate facing the most. Granted I recently played through a campaign as Gaul and made death archer stacks and nothing compares to Foresters fully maxed. They start with 11 damage, highest base archer attack in the game, can be upgraded to gold missiles and level 3 experience through using 2 temples which bring a base troop you can make in 3 turns have long range missiles, hide anywhere, missiles do 17 damage… annihilates anything. I usually hate storming stone walls without siege artillery as being able to ignore walls lets my horses shine, but foresters will wipe out all troops on the walls without using half their ammo. They are a cracked troop who gets +4 attack when it’s snowing or they’re in woods.

It's a pretty damn good list. Although I think that some units should have deserved a mention. Bull Warriors. Bit biased here but they definitely deserve attention. Available at Tier 3, good upkeep cost and competes with late game Roman heavy infantry. Very versatile due to it's 2hp and 17 missile attack so even cavalry has to be wary about charging into them. Numidian Camel Riders are one of the most cost effective anti-cav units in the game. They got average stats but because they are Camels they trade very effectively against horse cav and can still operate as standard cav against infantry. Also easily acquirable as they are a tier 2 unit. Desert Cavalry. Cheap tier 2 cav unit with good stats, combat bonus in desert and has armor piercing. Camel Cataphracts. Very much deserve a mention. Like the regular Cataphracts this unit also possesses a melee AP weapon which is rare outside of Rome. Because they are camels no Horse cav can beat them in a fight including Cataphracts. With their very high armor they can eat up standard archer fire without much worry. Only counters are ranged AP and spears. Only real downside is replenishing the unit but they are so effective and versatile that they are worth the trouble. Balearic Slingers. Essentially the ap counterpart to Cretan Archers. Cretan Archers will have more range but will deal less damage against armored targets while Balearic Slingers are the opposite though they have the downside of no arc so you can't shoot over allies as well but they have way more ammo.

Legionaries and Cataphracts might be impressive, but it takes quite some time in the campaign to unlock them. The Greeks can build a tier III barrack in Sparta within four rounds from the start of the game, so one can get Armored Hoplites as early as Winter 268 BC and start to crush everything. Long before they will ever encounter any high tier opponent. Same with Sacred Band (who use the same model as Armored Hoplites in game, just with white colour). Carthage can be rushed to level IV and pump them out. Also the Impressive temple of Baal gives a nice public order bonus.

Parthia's Persian cavalry, the long range tier 2 horse archer unit, while not armored like cataphracts, I find them to be fast enough, with a devastating missile attack, which outranges most missile units in the game, and counters scythian horse archers well due to outranging them. They counter every unit including horse archers due to range, I think they may struggle with damaging certain well armored units enough on the first battle and may need to withdraw and fight again with more arrows, but they're killing the general and all the non cataphract cavalry and decimating any missile unit, so the second battle is easy as heck. And theyre escaping at basically full strength because nothing is hitting them. Horse archers are good, but when they have long range and are medium tier in melee due to their swords and armor, they counter stuff like archer chariots and elephants and usually can still whittle down cataphracts just due to sheer number of missiles.... it's worth the investment. They are also not some late game unit, they can be accessed rather quickly in the campaign. If you make 10 of these units youve won the campaign, since they will expand your empire fast enough to afford another 10. And then another 10.... and you won't run into anything that is a hard counter. Stuff that resists their arrows can't move fast enough to catch them or be produced in the numbers required to take them on 1 on 1. Even the hardest counter you can find to this unit will not actually win against them, even if you spam it, in my opinion. Which means there isn't a hard counter, and it's the one unit to win them all. Parthia is a faction with access to cataphracts and war elephants and I don't even build them because there is no need and persian cavalry kills faster and moves faster and outranges everything. Any other faction would love to have those units and they are surplus to requirement. I don't have a use for them, really.

Scythain horse archers lol OP. Warband spear Germans are op as well.

*Armoured War Elephants, Berserkers, Cataphract Horse Archers, Spartan Hoplites, Urban Cohort.*

I wouldn't place Armoured Hoplites as number 2. Not because they are not the best infantry unit in the game... they probably are. But because as the Greek City States, you will not get to pair them with even decent cavalry for some hammer an anvil tactics. You will have to rely on mercenaries to get some decent heavy cavalry and that is not great at all. If Greek City states had something akin to Macedonian Cavalry or Companion Cavalry, I'd agree 100 % with AH being 2nd best unit overall and best infantry. But IMO, Carthages SB is better because while it takes 2 turns to train, it does have slighty better stats, but muuuuuch more importantly; you can pair it with better cavalry like SB Cavalry or even Round shield cavalry (which are fast to train, and got decent charge). I mean, yeah, the Carthigian army is more expensive and takes longer to train, but it will be a much higher quality army. Egypt mid game can be pretty tough as Greeks IMO because your army isn't versatile. Carthage is in a better position with a larger and better roster overall. The only thing the greeks got on Carthage is the Spartans, but I would submit that SB have much more armor and a cheaper, so i would ultimately go with SB.

When I have to play a barbarian campaign, I like to use the war dogs, they are very useful and when I face horse archers, the war dogs make them miserable, literally only the loose ones and they do the rest, they don't let them in peace to the horse archers.

1. Why dont you play Rome Remastered version? Is it worse? 2. What does it mean Hastati has Armour - piercing ( primary weapon ) and other roman infantry. Is it for their sword or for the pilum?

Why no one ever mentions the besties : Long shield cav ? (Tier 3 so easy to get in Carthage, high morale, great stats, cheap as fuck, and combine well with everything Carthage has.) IMO it's by far a better cav unit than cataphracts, which by the time you get them I hope your campaign is finished.

Egypt heavy archers are very good to

Imagine you have access to every single unit in the game (except oliphaunts ofc). How would your army be like? Mine would be something similar to this: General's Bodyguard First Legionary Cohort x6 Warband x2 Foresters Warband x4 Camel Cataphracts x2 Pontic Light Cavalry x2 Amazon Chariots Wardogs x2

@ 5:43 Phractically the best unit in the game.