An important factor of barbarian factions is that they can not upgrade settlements after they reached large towns, meaning no stone walls or high level buildings. While it seems a strong disadvantage, and it actually is, in the case of Germania, which has a really strong army compared with other barbarians and can be a serious match for romans and other top tier armies, that means that Germania can have its strongest units pretty early on, as far as they reached a large town level of settlement, so they do not need to wait until late game to have good units. That is, Germania's army, one of the strongest in game, can be deployed before the Romans have access to Marian reforms, so in my opininon they deserved better than C tier.
Thanks for the comment. I can see your reasoning. I think, that also hampers them because when they gain access to bigger cities, the public order will become an issue, as they cannot change the culture too much, and cannot get high enough tier public order buildings. But I agree with you fully about army. E.g. Berserkers could be easily considered to be tier V units :)
Thanks for the comment. I pondered the same thing. However, the Greek cities have more opponents around them, which in my opinion put them into strong B tier.
@@qualityoldgames7721 they have only a few early game enemies with macedon and some of the romans. maybe carthage and the selucids...but thats not that common. their army and economy are more than capable of dealing with those. they got their best troops at tier 3, which is easy for them to reach. carthage has shit troops at tier 3, unlike them.
@@qualityoldgames7721 their cav and archers are shit...so thats a big negative as their only good unit is a basic phalanx unit, but its pretty good. they need to rely on mercs for any decent archers and cav. they also dont have chariots or elephants. the selucids literally got everything except good archers. sure their phalanxes are not as tough, but their pikes are extra long, and their cav, exotic units and even legionaries make up for this.
@@cobrazax Agreed that Seleucid roster is very good. The only problem is that usually the most of the campaign is done with Militia Hoplites and Levy Pikemen :) Thanks for the comment.
I'd put Pontus in A-tier because of their solid starting position. They can easily take all of Asia Minor, securing one of the most profitable regions in the entire game. They also have immediate access to some of the most powerful mercenaries like Cretan Archers. Taking Tarsus and Antioch from the Seleucids in the first couple of turns further solidifies your economy, with Antioch having a lot strategic value. It's a bigger town and you can start building barracks for Phalanx Pikemen after capturing it straight away. Armenia can be left alone, building forts on both sides of the bridge east of Sinope slows down any Armenian armies considerably, buying you enough time to hire a bunch of Scythed Chariots to deal with their annoying Horse Archers by autoresolving battles later. The Pontic roster might not have straight up OP units like Spartans Hoplites, but they have great synergy and versatility. Pontic Heavy Cav will reign supreme in mid game, with Phalanx Pikemen acting as the backbone of your army. They're inferior to other factions' Phalanx Pikemen, but are good enough to pin the enemy units down long enough for your cavalry to go on a rampage and massacre everyone. Scythed Chariot is a very powerful and often mishandled unit. They destroy cavalry and light infantry in a matter of seconds, including post-marian General Bodyguards. Chariots and their significant morale debuff, coupled with Phalanxes and Cappadocian Cav, make Pontus one of the factions that can hold their own against the post-marian reforms Romans. The best thing is, you can get most of their better units quite early into the campaign. Carthage, on the other hand, is just trash, imo. They can only get access to their elite units, the ones that are actually incredible, only when your city reaches like what, the fifth level? It's very unrealistic in an average campaign. Even if you can build Imperial Palaces in some parts of your empire, reinforcing them as you continue your conquests will be difficult. Outside of Sacred Band and Cavalry, the roster is underwhelming. I'd put Carthage in C at best. They are broken in online battles under certain rulesets, but you evidently counted the factions' starting positions and how they fare in Imperial Campaign when making the tierlist. In online battles you don't have to develop your towns to unlock anything and in this context they can easily be A-tier (with S-tier reserved for the Romans on the 31k ruleset). I think this game needs like three separate faction tierlists. One for the Imperial Campaign, and two for multiplayer battles with the two most popular rulesets.
Thank You for the detailed comment. I think after a couple of years of making R:TW content, my thoughts may have changed a bit. Good arguments. Imo it also depends on playstyle and preferences. That idea about different tierlists is great! I will add it to To-Do list :)
Carthage is a very underwhelming faction. Their barracks units, safe for Poeni infantry, are hot garbage. Their best infantry unit doesn't even come from barracks but from Baal's temple. Round and Long shield cav are mediocre, with only Sacred Band Cavalry being really good. Unfortunately, they are only avaible on the last tier of stables, so it's not a fast option. On top of that all, their lack of archers is a serious hit to their offensive capability. Carthage is a faction with very slow tempo. They are spread around and it gives opportunity to expand into different regions at one time, but they simply lack the force to do so effectively. All of their enemies, with the exception of Numidia, have better units at the start of the game. In theory Carthage is a good faction with some of the best units in the game and strong initial economy. But to reach those units one has to survive first, as the faction is exposed to attacks from practicaly any direction.
@@qualityoldgames7721 I think the best scenario for Carthage is cav spam. Round shield cav are not the best in the world, but they are better alternative to Iberian infantry. One can simply swarm enemy ranks with cavalry and kill off Romans early on. Without Romans around Carthage can actually thrive, build up to its best units and then dominate the world.
+, I think Carthage and Greece should be at the same tier. Both are surrounded by enemies, but Carthage has mediocre units. Elephants are fun but overall it’s not a competition to Greek units.
I'd put the Greek Cities and Seluecids at A tier since yeah, they're spread out and vulnerable, but several phalanx units are practically unbeatable when defending towns and cities against the AI and they have a good enough economy to support sicing one good offensive army against your primary opponent (Macedon and Ptolemy Egypt) and Seluecid's unit roster rocks. Probably would bump Germania and Iberia one level as well based on their unit rosters (German Spear Warband, Gothic Cavalry/Scutarii, Bull Warriors) and Iberia's gold mines. And Parthia...hmm, they're not noob friendly, but they start in a corner, poor starting regions, but have a killer roster if in the hands of a good cavalry + horse archer player though it does lack good melee cavalry in the early game...I'm torn, they'd either be a C+ or B- in my eyes. Oh, and yeah, I'd have to put Macedon at A, they're not spread out, have phalanxes, and will have killer cavalry later on. The plague sucks of course, but pike phalanxes>hoplites>pre-marian roman infantry, IMO (when up against AI). No other complaints though, list looks great!
I know this is late but thanks for putting the tierlist together. I’ve been playing RTW for almost 10 years and this channel and MELKOR’s are my favorite for RTW content. One of the best tierlists for factions, almost identical with my own. I don’t know how anyone can argue for Thracia, Dacia, or Gaul as they are just gangbanged by stronger factions with stronger units. When I want a struggle campaign those are my go-to factions along with Armenia and Numidia. Your channel is a verified library or content and just wanted to say thank you 🙏🏻 and there are many gamers here who appreciate your work 10/10
Thank You very much! I am actually considering of making an upgraded version after playing again through all of the campaigns but let's see :D. Which campaign you have going at the moment?
@@qualityoldgames7721 I’m playing as Armenia right now. 270-255 was expansions I had Seleucia and Rhodes by 260. 255-240 was contraction as I had scythia, Seleucids, Egypt, Greek cities, and even Thrace attacking me across the sea. My bloodline died out in battles and I only had three adopted members left but I held onto southeastern Anatolia and the causcuses down to Seleucia until I could pump out enough cata archers and heavy spearmen to make a counteroffensive. I’m now at 215 BC and have all of Asia. I crossed the hellespont and sacked byantium from Thrace and am moving on to Thessaloniki now and the Romans
@@qualityoldgames7721 I’ve played every faction except Scythia-I don’t like campaigns that don’t have an infantry roster. Parthia was tough for me to finish in this regard but I did it for historical reasons. Numidia I finished for the first time on VH/VH just to see what the fuss was and it was not as hard as some of my Armenia or Dacia campaigns have been. I just use the Nike temple in Sparta to get +3 on my Numidian legionnaires and then temple city of Horus for gold armor. I love using the temples of other cultures for upgrades
About Parthia (long comment) I struggled with the remake of this game, which is strange because I did so well in the original version. However, I broke out of a losing streak of getting attacked by every one of my neighboring factions as every faction (I only play on very hard). In every previous game, I was backstabbed by every ally I made as soon as I declared war on literally any faction. It didn't matter how high were our relations or my reputation, or that I had only occupied rebel cities and played as civilized as possible. As soon as they had an army on my border, every faction still attacked me, even with perfect relations and an alliance made recently. But then I played Parthia. I assumed right from the start that no agreement made with Egypt or Seleucids or Scythians or Pontus or Armenia was worth the parchment it was scribbled on. At most, I traded map information or offered it for money, and got trade rights for the small bonuses to my economy, however temporary, they provided. First, I captured the nearest Scythian settlement, to deny them the ability to wipe my northernmost settlement off the map. No backstab from them this time. After that, I put horse archers and regular archers on a bridge between that settlement and their next one, effectively walling them off from ever entering Parthian territory. I needed to focus on Armenia and Seleucids, so I did not conquer them further. They kept breaking my peace treaties and kept trying to attack me, but with the usage of watch towers over the vast steppes and the low tier missile-based army on the bridge, the Scythians had no real chance of invading me as the northernmost cities gained population and slaves and became stone wall settlements with access to tier 2 horse archers with longer range. At that point, nothing the Scythians can produce were remotely a threat. Next, I captured the first Armenian province as soon as their army moved away from one of them. I didn't care which one, and if they parked a full army in both settlements, they wouldn't be able to invade me at all, which they had done repeatedly in previous campaigns, often by taking ridiculous weird routes to get to my easternmost province, moving through the mountains of the south, or around the mountains and forests to the north, and bypassing the nearly empty town that was on our borders. They only seemed interested in taking my core settlements, and they liked to sneak attack me even while allied. They'd just randomly show up from a bizarre direction while we were allied and lay siege to my capital. So this time I built a ton of watchtowers everywhere to make sure they could not sneak attack, and I assigned a spy to follow their largest army around. I didn't care if they stayed at home, as long as they didn't attack me. However, once they moved more than a single turn's march away from their 2 starting provinces, I immediately declared war, built a bunch of rams, and took their city before they could return and defend. Using their backstab strategy against them. Next, I built forts preventing them from moving their army to defend the other settlement, and took that one as well 2 turns later, using my horse archers to prevent almost any losses to my own side, and rams to remove the walls. I took out this faction first and immediately built a ridiculous amount of watchtowers in the mountains of Asia Minor to prevent sneak attacks from Pontus or Seleucids, and then I immediately moved west to attack Pontus, which had already gotten ridiculously large by taking Seleucid settlements and almost all the settlements between them and Thrace. At the same time as I took over Armenia, I took the nearest Seleucid province and then used forts to wall off the bridge crossings of the rivers and put watch towers everywhere. Egypt would invade, so would the Seleucids no matter how badly they were getting beat on every other front, they would all suicidally attack me. So I just made sure when they did, they'd have to attack a fort next to a bridge, giving me a turn to move an army to the bridge itself, and then they'd have to fight a bridge battle, and then they'd need to have enough troops left over to take a stone walled city with archers on the walls and horse archers sallying out. In short, there wasn't a chance in hell that they could take a single one of those cities protected by rivers. I didn't advance here, deliberately, I wanted to make both of my southernmost cities into stone walled cities capable of producing my higher tier units, the good horse archers, the good infantry, the foot archers, and so forth. At that tier of technology, Egyptian chariots were zero threat whatsoever, they die to the tier 2 horse archers easily, and their foot units are not fast moving or well armored nor are they foot archer spam, nor do they have the range of the tier 2 horse archers. So I would outrange every unit Egypt produced, I had a mix of easily spammed tier 1 horse archers and a good core of tier 2 horse archers in every army, and some hillmen spears in case I needed to hold a river crossing, otherwise not even needed as the entire enemy army would rout before touching a single spearman of mine. So the defense of the river crossings prevented like five Egyptian stacks from invading my territory at the same time, and the Seleucids crumbled to Egypt and Pontus before I even had my higher tier units. (continued...)
I was stalling in the north and south, and invading like a madman throughout Asia Minor, conquering all the way to Thrace and taking the cities with wonders in the western coast of Asia Minor. At this point I was making 10,000 gold per turn, and I was facing a very powerful Egypt that had taken Antioch and was invading Asia Minor. I took Hatra and Antioch and started invading south, and even though I was facing concentrated stacks of Egyptian troops and a powerful Egyptian economy, my troops completely outclassed Egypt's in every battle. I'd destroy their whole army or rout the whole army and kill half of it while it was fleeing, while losing like 20 troops basically to friendly fire only. These weren't fights, they were always one sided slaughters. The more I beat them, the more I realized I didn't need to fight defensively any longer, so even though they had like 7 stacks of troops sitting near Damascus, I still invaded and took 4 of their provinces in a single turn, Dumatha and Damascus and the island one and another one on the coast. At this point, Thrace and the greek cities invaded Asia Minor in the west, and it was trivial to hold them off with basic horse archers and hillmen. Horse archers can sally out and prevent my cities from starving, and the hillmen are good enough that they can defend choke points and when my horse archers sally out and kill the enemy army and start the rout, the hillmen move faster than regular infantry and cause a lot of kills, they're infantry that performs the same function as light cavalry. I couldn't get starved out, and I would destroy the invader army whether they assaulted or not, and since horse archers and hillmen are all I needed, they're easy to replace even when I took casualties. The key was to only use Eastern Infantry as public order police in provinces that would never be invaded first, so I could direct all my tier 2 troops to border provinces. Basically, until some heavy infantry units mixed with spammed mercenary cretan archers come along, there wasn't an army on the planet that could actually counter Parthia. You needed to outrange me with missiles or at least have the same range, you needed foot archers to even have a chance of having more missiles firing than I did, and you needed heavy infantry to protect your foot archers and tank my missiles. Spearmen? Worthless. Cavalry? Worthless. No faction remained that had better horse archers than me. Heavy infantry like falxmen? Worse than useless, they didn't even have shields. Enemy generals? They'd take more arrows to die, but they'd die without inflicting any casualties at all. Any settlement that didn't have stone walls? Impossible to defend, I'd hit you over your own walls with cavalry archers while avoiding your own archer towers. I'd outrange your missile troops, like slingers and foot archers and javelins, who would all die to missile fire. Foot infantry had no hope of ever touching me. Foot missiles would be outranged and die en masse. Enemy generals could do nothing. Chariots were particularly pathetic because they don't move fast enough and are countered by missile fire. No artillery existed yet, this was only 50 turns into the campaign, so any settlement I made with stone walls was impossible to take with this strategy. Cavalry could chase me, and if they were fast enough, had a chance of accidentally causing me to friendly fire into my own horse archers while killing them, but they would die. They would all die, and since my armies were horse archer tier 1 and 2 spam, it was easy to merge units and find replacements. Now, I know once they hit proper late game high tier Roman units, they will have difficulties, in theory. It won't be as easy to repel Romans from attacking my walls with mere arrow fire from cavalry units alone. However, by the time they invade, I will have upgraded weapons and armor, stone walls, tons and tons of foot archers spammed mixed with hillmen on the walls, and I will be able to sally out and use my cataphracts (I never even made a third cataphract unit and barely used the 2 I was given... just not needed!) and tier 2 horse archers to take out their onagers and assassinate their general's bodyguard. I will own all of Asia Minor, the middle east, and Egypt. I will be by far the richest faction, with access to the best horse archers in the game with the longest range, the best armored cavalry in the east, war elephants which I haven't even used yet and I know for a fact wreak havoc on masses of infantry once they lack archer support, and the kind of late game hillmen and foot archers that are good enough to repel technically superior foot units due to the tactical advantages I enjoy of always being able to fight on a stone wall or choke point or bridge. While I will have the foot archers, artillery, and long range horse archers needed to repel any invader on a bridge or choke point. I won't need to, but I can always double up my armies, having one army made out of hillmen and mercenary infantry and another made out of horse archers is overkill and kills everything in the game. Set the infantry to AI controlled and kill the enemy general with my horse archers and weaken their infantry before mine make contact, and the fight is always over. Doesn't matter what kind of armor or morale or quality the troops have. Doesn't matter if they have armor piercing. Doesn't matter who or what they are, everything dies to that. The only counter to this army is being Parthia. But I'm Parthia. I don't even disagree with your tier list, if you don't have a strategy, Parthia's start is pretty bad. I got crushed several times just trying to break out, because I play on very hard, and everyone always attacked me simultaneously. Once I came up with a plan that counters their attack, and waited for them to move away from the defense of their own cities, the campaign was over. It was nothing but crushing everything in my path the moment I broke out and destroyed Armenia in 4 turns. There was nothing even remotely challenging to my armies after that point. I had the economy and defensive position and the best army in the east. Egypt wasn't able to attack me, or defend, or beat me in neutral battles on the field. Egypt has a nice army. Parthia absolutely counters their army, without question. It's not even a fight. There wasn't a single unit they fielded, nor army composition, that could even touch me.
Thanks for the detailed comment. The more I play the game (or M2 TW) the more powerful the missile cav seems to become - if controlled by a human player :)@@askthepizzaguy
@@qualityoldgames7721 They end up doing what archers on walls are supposed to be capable of doing: they cause casualties on the enemy while taking none in return. They put a pointy thing in the opposing soldiers' body without taking injuries themselves. It's just that the archers on the walls are defending a settlement and if the walls are breached, they don't do a lot to stop the army from marching through missile fire and sacking the city. They don't fight well in melee. But, horse archers can attack the enemy army that would be at your gates, before they're at your gates, when you still have time to retreat, go get more arrows or more horse archers, and attack them again and again. You can stall them at bridges and mountain passes and ambush them from forests near roads. You can march faster than any army that contains infantry. You can damage them and defeat them before they ever reach your gates. And if by some miracle they survived your assault, they get to your gates at one third of their original strength, and only now do they lay siege to your city and start cutting off your economy and ability to make units. At this point, your army of horse archers catches up to them again and attacks them again. Or you have more horse archers in the city to sally out and shoot them some more. Then they have to take your city center, while being fired upon constantly from archers that are always in range and you can't even damage them. If the horse archers are supported by literally any infantry, even trash tier eastern spearmen, the kinds of armies they can deflect are quite high quality and expensive and late game kinds of armies. With tier 1 horse archers. Now, imagine they survived the bridge assault, the ambush on the road to the city, the siege relief horse archer attack, all done by the same exact army of just tier 1 horse archers, AND they laid siege to the city AND they survived the sally of horse archers before the assault, as they're still building rams and siege towers. AND they survived the assault into the city, facing those same horse archers for a second battle in a row, and then they fought through whatever infantry is at the center, and finally captured my danged city, causing the army inside the city to dissolve due to the defeat. What happens now to this plucky band of elite troops that somehow survived being attacked by a horde of horse archers literally five times in order to take this city? Well, they killed the horse archers in the city. They didn't kill the full army of horse archers that I used to defend my territory leading up to the city. That army now lays siege to the city they just captured, whose walls and gates they just destroyed. They're trapped in enemy territory, alone, weakened. If they don't sally out, they will be destroyed by starvation and disease trapped inside the walls. They are forced to attack an army of horse archers and kill or rout all of them, or die from not doing so. There isn't really a worse tactical position to be in. If they sally out, and are still alive at this point, they are armored shielded infantry trying to chase down horse archers. They will literally never catch them. They will be exhausted just by moving, and taking damage the whole time. Basically, assaulting a human controlled faction that can make horse archers is like sticking your hand into a deep fat fryer full of 400 degree C oil, and needing to keep your hand in that oil no matter what happens. As soon as you remove your hand, you lose. The entire time you're "attacking" the horse archer faction, you are taking so much damage, while inflicting nearly none. It hurts the entire time. What can horse archers NOT do? Well.... Horse archers are not great for defending a city by fighting in melee combat. In fact, they might be the worst type of unit for this task. True, you need some melee units for that purpose. But not so many as you think. Even a few will do. What you do defensively with horse archers. They are superb at preventing an enemy army from ever setting foot inside your outermost border provinces, and making any prolonged invasion of your territory the worst decision they've ever made. If used properly, they are far more effective at defense than foot archers, or armored cavalry, or heavy armored infantry, or even phalanx pikemen. You just use them differently to defend. You make existing at all on any piece of land intolerable, and a sure ticket to being dead. And in order to attack your faction, they have to actually be in your territory for a prolonged period. Taking archer fire every turn, every battle, over and over again. There's no strategy that makes an army miserable like being attacked by horse archers that you can't even catch, every turn of the invasion, through every land obstacle, through every bridge obstacle, through every fort blocking every mountain pass, defending every walled city, and then surrounding it afterward. If you ever managed to get that far, all you will have done is put your invasion army inside of a box that absolutely will kill your army unless it leaves that box. What have you accomplished? And that's in theory, and on paper. In reality, the invasion army sometimes, if they're very lucky, makes it all the way to the walls of one of my cities. They don't get past it. They end up being the best defensive units in the game, and the ones that cause the most casualties, better than anything wearing armor, better than anything with any other kind of weapon. It's kinda crazy.
If they can do the same job as archers on walls, but better, or armored infantry in walls, but better, or cavalry charges, but better, and they can do it without taking damage, and they can do it over and over again, ANYWHERE, not needing to be behind walls to do it... they're the ultimate defensive unit. Now, if I have to take a heavily defended settlement, full of archers on stone walls and heavy infantry, I'm not going to directly try to assault and capture the thing only with horse archers. I'm going to have to starve them out. But it's easier to do, because I can begin starving them out with my horse archer armies. I can even split up the army and siege several nearby settlements at once, and put a small bit of infantry into a fort roughly halfway between each seiged city. If I need to retreat, I retreat back to my fort with infantry in it, and I can rally my horse archers together, and we can beat anything out in the field. If you can send relief forces in time at all, I still have a plan where my horse archers are alive, threatening several settlements, and you have to dislodge them from your territory by force, while I can retreat from every battle ad infinitum if I want. Once the settlement is starved and they're forced to sally, I can put the infantry troops in with my horse archers and make absolutely sure you cannot chase away the horse archer army. We're going to stand our ground and win that battle, and the garrison is never in any condition to fight that battle. You always win that battle and you did it without any losses, really. If you absolutely had to attack the walls today, and they're stone walls, okay, there are better units for attacking walls, for sure. But even in that example, where you don't want to actually attack because you're only packing horse archers, look at the situation: You're surrounding the enemy city, in their territory, they are forced to defend using units they cannot even sally out and attack with. Defensive infantry units do not chase down horse archers very well, if ever. If they try it, they die, and even if they somehow outnumbered you so severely that they can pin you to the edge of the map, force you to retreat, and drive you away, nothing stops you from turning around and laying siege again and causing more casualties the next time they sally out. Sallying is super ineffective, it just delays the inevitable, even in the very best case scenario. If you don't have horse archers, there isn't a thing you can do to horse archers except try to make them go away. They can just come back and lay siege again, and that position is extremely losing to be in, even if it doesn't kill the defender immediately, it slowly kills the defender completely without even damaging the invasion army. While laying siege, you're cutting off their economy and ability to produce troops in that city. You're inflicting damage just through starvation alone. You're building siege ladders and towers and rams for when your infantry shows up. And all this time, your enemy is paying for expensive amounts of troops that are doing absolutely nothing to attack your faction. I would much rather my enemy's army be trapped inside their own walls not harming me, slowly dying, than inside my walls. If they are starved out and forced to attack and have a successful sally, okay, by now I've put some amount of infantry on the field. I set them way, way back from the enemy walls so they have to travel a very long way to even attack my infantry, taking horse archer fire the entire time. Then they have to defeat my general's bodyguard surrounded by a sea of spearpoints while taking archer fire from their rear flank. I don't know of many units capable of doing that, armored or not, on horseback or not. And certainly not by the C to F tier units that are usually used as garrison troops. Imagine attacking that army with spearmen and peltasts or foot archers. You wouldn't even get to my infantry line before you've chain routed. You'd all be dead before you even got back inside your own walls. You need your general just to have the morale to put up a fight, that general has to march through half a map full of horse archer fire from both flanks and the rear(!!!) to even influence the fight against your infantry. They're not going to survive the journey unless they're a king with like 60 armored bodyguards, and end up with 20 by the time they get to your spears. The key with horse archers is to never, ever use them in melee. Not with enemy cavalry, not with enemy infantry, not even with enemy archers. Have a couple of units of infantry follow them around the campaign map for when you need to destroy walls or securely defeat a sally attempt, and some melee cavalry to defend your horse archers and to mop up routing units. these can be melee infantry and melee cavalry of the absolute trashiest quality. their quality doesn't matter at all. You pair them with horse archers, and your army spending and composition looks like this. 80 to 90 percent horse archer 5 percent infantry (any quality, bad is perfectly fine) 5 percent melee cavalry (any quality, again, bad is perfectly fine) The horse archers do 100 percent of the killing while the enemy army is still fighting. You keep the infantry and melee cavalry far away. Once the army starts to rout, that's when they attack. The remaining troops do most of the killing once the enemy army is fully routing. Usually your infantry won't kill anyone, but they can, especially fast moving infantry. You can also switch your horse archers to melee only mode and run down routing units. Once they're able to flee and are fleeing, as long as you don't surround them, you can kill them while taking no losses. The entire point of walls and armor and shields and long spear weapons is to kill the enemy without dying. There's no spear with longer range than a horse archer's arrow. There's no armor better than never getting hit by a sword or lance in the first place. There's no wall superior to the wall that is doing nothing but trapping the enemy defender troops behind it, starving them, while the defender is forced to pay for those troops that will NOT defeat the invaders at all, and never ever harm a single city in your home territory. That wall the defenders have built is your friend, if you are an invading horse archer. I make forts specifically for the enemy to capture, leaving trash units inside of them. They take them, and i immediately lay siege. What does the enemy do now? Even if they had a full stack of great assorted troops and I had a half stack of basic horse archers, what do you do? How do you sally out of a fort and destroy an army full of horse archers that are commanded by a human, if you do not possess horse archers of your own? What units could do the task? If the AI is trying to sally out, the AI will always lose that fight, it doesn't matter what units you give them if they aren't horse archers. The best they can hope for is that I run out of arrows, or they force me to the edge of the map, where I flee with my army intact. In either case, most or all of my arrows are sticking out of the corpses of the army that was forced to sally out from that fort or starve and be deleted from reality. That's not what I would call winning a battle. When those are the realistic outcomes, and the unrealistic but possible outcomes in your favor, and the end result is that almost all of the horse archers still survived, it's easy to see why the romans could not conquer Parthia even at their height and maximum strength with their absolute best units and best generals and strategists. If I were a human faction playing Rome and saw Parthia had conquered all of Asia minor, my invasion strategy would be to surround every horse archer army with 4 Roman armies, one line of heavy infantry on each side of the battlefield, and surround them, to stop them from retreating and force melee. That's the counter that actually works, and it's entirely unrealistic to expect the AI to do, and it is also unrealistic outside of the game. In real life, that horse archer army wouldn't allow itself to be surrounded like that by slow moving infantry in the first place, and if it happened one time, it would be so famous a defeat it wouldn't ever happen again. That's how I'd defeat Parthia if I didn't have horse archers. Line infantry spam and surround. Horse archers are broken. The sad part is, it's entirely realistic how broken they are. No one had an answer to horse archers for well over a thousand years. The longbow was really the first thing that came close, and then you had some solid plate armor that kept you alive but didn't actually kill the horse archer, and all those things ended up doing was made it less dominant to just have armies of barbarian archers on horseback. It didn't even eliminate them. You needed rifles to make horse archers go away, and all that did was make horsemen with rifles happen. I think the invention of the machine gun was the moment when horse based missile units finally stopped being a serious threat. that's a long period of dominance.
Thanks for the comment. Regarding Romans, I have found that Archer Auxilia work rather nicely vs. Horse Archers. Additionally, if they can be pressed to a corner, cav and even infantry should be able to deal with them :)@@askthepizzaguy
Great chart! Thracian location is boring but they deserve at least a B tier. They have fun and strong units from the start and decent later game units also. Love this faction.
Also, not quite understand how did Parthia ended up in C tier, along with Germania. Horse archers and Persian cavalry that Parthians have shred enemy to pieces. Their starting regions are quite poor and starting funds are low, but it's designed to force the player to be aggressive and not turtle in your starting region. Right over you lie Seleucid cities, very rich and light defended. Militia hoplites can do nothing against a swarm of arrows of your HA. Parthian game is focused on constant and swift expansion. In 10-15 turns you can have most of Asia under your rule if you push relentlesly. Although, Parthia has its own flaws. Some of the biggest are their lack of paved roads, as well as any health building. It means that you have less means to grow your cities and your armies move slower, especially if you have infantry in them for whatever reason. But their Eco can still be strong - level 3 ports, law enforcement buildings and caravans will fill up your coffers, once you reach the coast, since this is where real money can be made. Germania, on the other hand, has a very good and balanced roster of units that has an answer to everything they should face. Their longspeared units can deal with Briton chariots, axemen and especially chosen axemen tear up Romans, Macedonians and heavy Gaul infantry as their anti-armour bonus is honestly insane. Gothic cavalry is one of the best cavalry units in the game and can be acuired much quicker than Romans can get, say, Legionary cavalry. Even their archers are great, having long range and good attack/defense to pose a serious threat to anyone. The only flaw the Germania has is that it's a barbarian faction. They reach their limit quickly and their economy can never be on par with the rest of the world. They need to get out of their forests and fast it they want to be a real power in the world and realise their potential to the fullest.
I have a lot of disagreements with this list but my major problem is Dacia. It is one of the best barbarian factions if you play them properly because you can just go after Macedon immediately. Once you take Thessalonica, you gain access to endgame units while everyone else is still stuck on hastati and militia hoplites. Then you easily conquer Greece and Italy which makes you filthy rich. They also have access to Archer warbands instead of skirmishers and one of the best starting generals. The first ten turns are difficult but after that it's one big victory lap. Otherwise I would have placed Scythia on its own S+ tier as well as Macedon, Pontus and Germania a bit higher.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that Archer Warbands are just great and if one manages to gain control of Greece, the finances are secured. But Dacian infantry and cav are severely lacking imo :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 In a custom battle the mediocre unit roster will of course cause serious problems, but my comment was based on campaign mode. Sure, other factions will have slightly better armies if they get to their best units but if you start pumping out Chosen swords, archers and noble cav that early and play extremely aggressively, they won't get the chance. Even if they eventually do, you will have control of Greece and Italy (all the money in the world) by that time so you just full stack spam them into submission. I highly recommend trying a Dacian grand campaign with this strategy. I love playing it to this day for the sheer hilariousness.
@@bannedcommander2932 Thanks for the comment. I think it comes down somewhat to preferences. Imo your strategy there is sound and works really well. I might give Dacian campaign a try at some point. :)
Been playing Thracia recently and i think theyre only one unit short of being S tier... its really fun to bait and flank constantly on greek hoplites with Bastarnae/Generals Armoured Bodyguard and mixing some phalanx pikeman for defensive battles its really refreshing when your heavy infantry still has the fast movement and pretty top tier charge bonus for infantry, id say theyre only missing a long range missile troop or a recruitable heavy cav unit but i dont believe they would need both to be S tier i would take just one...their temples arent great either their Parthenon gives +4 morale bonus but i dont see a stat for morale in vanilla rome so i have no idea how good +4 morale is vs +4 xp..also any faction that has access to tier V settlement and paved roads is better than Barbarian/Middle Eastern settlements respectively in my opinion....totally understand why some players would choose other greek factions over them but still at least low B tier based off the parameters of this tier list
Thanks for the comprehensive comment. Valid points. Though, imo Bastarnae are quite bad for a unit of their tier and the starting position might be a bit difficult :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 true but they do have two hit points..so does that mean (in custom battle one less in campaign) with +12/+12 bastarnae would have 26/19 (+2) Hit Points? Meaning they have virtually a 38 defence instead?! Regardless they would have an attack of 32 with charge bonus and also in campaign they can only be +11/+11 and +4 morale with temple of ares! I doctor my campaigns anyway because I just like to play around with the AI at this point and have been playing the game on and off for 20 years now I just use the Rome sheet to be honest and roleplay lol but I'm really interested on your thoughts as well thanks for the chat and insight!
@@qualityoldgames7721 at the very least, Carthage is trash and Greek Cities is the head of S tier. I don't know enough to make a full classification with the rest of the factions. Then again, playing Greek Cities can get boring really fast after you dominate the game in up to 30 turns. You can then play around building Lycaeums (whatever it's called), I guess to see what you can do to make your cities shine and experiment instead of trying to win anything further. You already have over half of the best economic provinces on the map by that point and nothing can grant you defeats outside of major neglect on the part of the player.
Thanks for the comment. I guess quite a few of the factions are really powerful at the hands of a skilled player :) E.g. with Carthage it is possible to beat the game without suffering a single casualty in battles on VH/VH.@@Dan-uf2vh
It all depends on skill level, a starting position close to Italy can be challenging, but it is so much easier to knock out the romans early on, which is why the easiest starting position is Carthage, get a few elephants and take all of Italy in less than 20 years, pre marian reform the romans fare badly against elephants. Yes mostly everyone but romans and Egypt don't perform well if played by the AI but that should not impact the ranking. Personly I find selucids to be most entertaining, bit of a bumpy start, but good misile, phalanax and elephants, their unit roster is the most diverse in my oppinion.
Looking at your list I think you value economy and late game roster as the top priorities. Mine would look a bit different as for me the most important element is a powerful early unit to ease initial expansion. (edited for spelling mistake)
Can the Brutii take Rome and hold all of the Greek peninsula and seas as well as Sicily by turn 27? The Greeks and their Armored Hoplites can. You could argue the game becomes too boring. No other faction compares to them. It's easy to turtle up for a few turns to get things going and beat everything starting with the Macedonians even as early as turn 1, invade Italy after you control everything tangent to the Greek sea. Expand in all of Sicily after the Scipii have decimated themselves against Carthage. You can invade Rome with a full roster of Armored Hoplites and consider it gg.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that horse archers are great. In my opinion the faction lacks richer areas early on and their roster is not quite as good as e.g. Parthians, Seleucids or Armenia.
Scythian horse archers are far superior to Parthian and Armenian horse archers. Lower requirements aside, they are so badass that their bare chest counts as 3 armor, plus they have access to shrines of Kolaksay to start with 1-3 xp on top of it. They can start with up to 11 missile attack (same as Cretan archers or Forester Warband) and the 3 armor means they'll always beat other horse archers in a straight exchange of fire. Scythian noble archers are a nice upgrade that excels at clearing enemy ranged units (long range, good armor, decent melee) and melee nobles are a good alternative to cataphracts due to their speed and charge bonus (use them like light lancers). Add the head hunting maidens, who act as general sniping goddesses and speedy/punchy all-purpose light cavalry with armor piercing... the Scythian hordes are nigh untouchable by the AI. Seleucids aren't even part of the discussion because they don't have HAs and any faction with access to HAs will beat any faction without.
Dude, you put Parthia in C tier? They have horse archers, the best early-game unit, and cataphracts and elephants in the late game. Plus, their culture, religion, and buildings are all really strong. Also, their position is underrated. They have no enemies to the east and two crumbling kingdoms to their west for taking.
Carthage libyan spearmen are pretty shit, except vs cav. their infantry becomes ok only from poeni infantry at tier 4, which is HORRIBLE until then. u get sacred band at that tier anyway so its useless...their only decent infantry is literally their best late game unit. their missiles are SHIT with only javelins and slings. they only have decent cav and elephants. everything else is shit except infantry late game... i dont like them at all.
Armenia is A-S with the romans, Brutii is a bit higher than the other romans. Armenia only lacks medium cavalry. Carthage is B, bad ranged units Dacia is B, better than Gaul, closer to Greece too, tier 2 city has archer warband. WTF u talking about Germans have bad ranged units and cav:??? WHAT is the Gothic cav if not awesome?? Good infantry including phalanx, goodcav, and stong archers Clear A tier Macedon is A Numidia is B. It is as strong as Dacia. It's a rush faction. Tier 2 city with archers? Hell yeah! Spain is D only good unit is Long Shields, no opportunity to boom fast, bad terrain. 5/10 tier list, could be worse.
An important factor of barbarian factions is that they can not upgrade settlements after they reached large towns, meaning no stone walls or high level buildings. While it seems a strong disadvantage, and it actually is, in the case of Germania, which has a really strong army compared with other barbarians and can be a serious match for romans and other top tier armies, that means that Germania can have its strongest units pretty early on, as far as they reached a large town level of settlement, so they do not need to wait until late game to have good units. That is, Germania's army, one of the strongest in game, can be deployed before the Romans have access to Marian reforms, so in my opininon they deserved better than C tier.
Thanks for the comment. I can see your reasoning. I think, that also hampers them because when they gain access to bigger cities, the public order will become an issue, as they cannot change the culture too much, and cannot get high enough tier public order buildings. But I agree with you fully about army. E.g. Berserkers could be easily considered to be tier V units :)
I would put the Greek cities to A tier because Carthage is there as well. GCs start with rich cities and their armorwd hoplites are op.
Thanks for the comment. I pondered the same thing. However, the Greek cities have more opponents around them, which in my opinion put them into strong B tier.
@@qualityoldgames7721
they have only a few early game enemies with macedon and some of the romans. maybe carthage and the selucids...but thats not that common.
their army and economy are more than capable of dealing with those.
they got their best troops at tier 3, which is easy for them to reach. carthage has shit troops at tier 3, unlike them.
@@cobrazax True :) Thanks for the comment.
@@qualityoldgames7721
their cav and archers are shit...so thats a big negative as their only good unit is a basic phalanx unit, but its pretty good.
they need to rely on mercs for any decent archers and cav. they also dont have chariots or elephants.
the selucids literally got everything except good archers. sure their phalanxes are not as tough, but their pikes are extra long, and their cav, exotic units and even legionaries make up for this.
@@cobrazax Agreed that Seleucid roster is very good. The only problem is that usually the most of the campaign is done with Militia Hoplites and Levy Pikemen :) Thanks for the comment.
I'd put Pontus in A-tier because of their solid starting position. They can easily take all of Asia Minor, securing one of the most profitable regions in the entire game. They also have immediate access to some of the most powerful mercenaries like Cretan Archers. Taking Tarsus and Antioch from the Seleucids in the first couple of turns further solidifies your economy, with Antioch having a lot strategic value. It's a bigger town and you can start building barracks for Phalanx Pikemen after capturing it straight away. Armenia can be left alone, building forts on both sides of the bridge east of Sinope slows down any Armenian armies considerably, buying you enough time to hire a bunch of Scythed Chariots to deal with their annoying Horse Archers by autoresolving battles later. The Pontic roster might not have straight up OP units like Spartans Hoplites, but they have great synergy and versatility. Pontic Heavy Cav will reign supreme in mid game, with Phalanx Pikemen acting as the backbone of your army. They're inferior to other factions' Phalanx Pikemen, but are good enough to pin the enemy units down long enough for your cavalry to go on a rampage and massacre everyone. Scythed Chariot is a very powerful and often mishandled unit. They destroy cavalry and light infantry in a matter of seconds, including post-marian General Bodyguards. Chariots and their significant morale debuff, coupled with Phalanxes and Cappadocian Cav, make Pontus one of the factions that can hold their own against the post-marian reforms Romans. The best thing is, you can get most of their better units quite early into the campaign.
Carthage, on the other hand, is just trash, imo. They can only get access to their elite units, the ones that are actually incredible, only when your city reaches like what, the fifth level? It's very unrealistic in an average campaign. Even if you can build Imperial Palaces in some parts of your empire, reinforcing them as you continue your conquests will be difficult. Outside of Sacred Band and Cavalry, the roster is underwhelming. I'd put Carthage in C at best. They are broken in online battles under certain rulesets, but you evidently counted the factions' starting positions and how they fare in Imperial Campaign when making the tierlist. In online battles you don't have to develop your towns to unlock anything and in this context they can easily be A-tier (with S-tier reserved for the Romans on the 31k ruleset).
I think this game needs like three separate faction tierlists. One for the Imperial Campaign, and two for multiplayer battles with the two most popular rulesets.
Thank You for the detailed comment. I think after a couple of years of making R:TW content, my thoughts may have changed a bit. Good arguments. Imo it also depends on playstyle and preferences. That idea about different tierlists is great! I will add it to To-Do list :)
Carthage is a very underwhelming faction. Their barracks units, safe for Poeni infantry, are hot garbage. Their best infantry unit doesn't even come from barracks but from Baal's temple. Round and Long shield cav are mediocre, with only Sacred Band Cavalry being really good. Unfortunately, they are only avaible on the last tier of stables, so it's not a fast option. On top of that all, their lack of archers is a serious hit to their offensive capability. Carthage is a faction with very slow tempo. They are spread around and it gives opportunity to expand into different regions at one time, but they simply lack the force to do so effectively. All of their enemies, with the exception of Numidia, have better units at the start of the game. In theory Carthage is a good faction with some of the best units in the game and strong initial economy. But to reach those units one has to survive first, as the faction is exposed to attacks from practicaly any direction.
Thank you for an accurate analysis. I agree with you. I think that the Carhagian late game roster is pretty decent though.
@@qualityoldgames7721 I think the best scenario for Carthage is cav spam. Round shield cav are not the best in the world, but they are better alternative to Iberian infantry. One can simply swarm enemy ranks with cavalry and kill off Romans early on. Without Romans around Carthage can actually thrive, build up to its best units and then dominate the world.
@@VonKrauzer I think that sounds good. I would also try to take as many mercs as the treasury can handle. Thanks for the comment :)
+, I think Carthage and Greece should be at the same tier. Both are surrounded by enemies, but Carthage has mediocre units. Elephants are fun but overall it’s not a competition to Greek units.
I'd put the Greek Cities and Seluecids at A tier since yeah, they're spread out and vulnerable, but several phalanx units are practically unbeatable when defending towns and cities against the AI and they have a good enough economy to support sicing one good offensive army against your primary opponent (Macedon and Ptolemy Egypt) and Seluecid's unit roster rocks. Probably would bump Germania and Iberia one level as well based on their unit rosters (German Spear Warband, Gothic Cavalry/Scutarii, Bull Warriors) and Iberia's gold mines. And Parthia...hmm, they're not noob friendly, but they start in a corner, poor starting regions, but have a killer roster if in the hands of a good cavalry + horse archer player though it does lack good melee cavalry in the early game...I'm torn, they'd either be a C+ or B- in my eyes. Oh, and yeah, I'd have to put Macedon at A, they're not spread out, have phalanxes, and will have killer cavalry later on. The plague sucks of course, but pike phalanxes>hoplites>pre-marian roman infantry, IMO (when up against AI).
No other complaints though, list looks great!
Thank you. And thank you for sharing your well grounded opinion :)
I know this is late but thanks for putting the tierlist together. I’ve been playing RTW for almost 10 years and this channel and MELKOR’s are my favorite for RTW content. One of the best tierlists for factions, almost identical with my own. I don’t know how anyone can argue for Thracia, Dacia, or Gaul as they are just gangbanged by stronger factions with stronger units. When I want a struggle campaign those are my go-to factions along with Armenia and Numidia. Your channel is a verified library or content and just wanted to say thank you 🙏🏻 and there are many gamers here who appreciate your work 10/10
Thank You very much! I am actually considering of making an upgraded version after playing again through all of the campaigns but let's see :D. Which campaign you have going at the moment?
@@qualityoldgames7721 I’m playing as Armenia right now. 270-255 was expansions I had Seleucia and Rhodes by 260. 255-240 was contraction as I had scythia, Seleucids, Egypt, Greek cities, and even Thrace attacking me across the sea. My bloodline died out in battles and I only had three adopted members left but I held onto southeastern Anatolia and the causcuses down to Seleucia until I could pump out enough cata archers and heavy spearmen to make a counteroffensive. I’m now at 215 BC and have all of Asia. I crossed the hellespont and sacked byantium from Thrace and am moving on to Thessaloniki now and the Romans
@@qualityoldgames7721 I’ve played every faction except Scythia-I don’t like campaigns that don’t have an infantry roster. Parthia was tough for me to finish in this regard but I did it for historical reasons. Numidia I finished for the first time on VH/VH just to see what the fuss was and it was not as hard as some of my Armenia or Dacia campaigns have been. I just use the Nike temple in Sparta to get +3 on my Numidian legionnaires and then temple city of Horus for gold armor. I love using the temples of other cultures for upgrades
@@grantrobinson5046 Thanks for the comment. Yea, the temples can be surprisingly effective. Good luck in your Armenian campaign :)
About Parthia (long comment)
I struggled with the remake of this game, which is strange because I did so well in the original version. However, I broke out of a losing streak of getting attacked by every one of my neighboring factions as every faction (I only play on very hard). In every previous game, I was backstabbed by every ally I made as soon as I declared war on literally any faction. It didn't matter how high were our relations or my reputation, or that I had only occupied rebel cities and played as civilized as possible. As soon as they had an army on my border, every faction still attacked me, even with perfect relations and an alliance made recently.
But then I played Parthia. I assumed right from the start that no agreement made with Egypt or Seleucids or Scythians or Pontus or Armenia was worth the parchment it was scribbled on. At most, I traded map information or offered it for money, and got trade rights for the small bonuses to my economy, however temporary, they provided.
First, I captured the nearest Scythian settlement, to deny them the ability to wipe my northernmost settlement off the map. No backstab from them this time. After that, I put horse archers and regular archers on a bridge between that settlement and their next one, effectively walling them off from ever entering Parthian territory. I needed to focus on Armenia and Seleucids, so I did not conquer them further. They kept breaking my peace treaties and kept trying to attack me, but with the usage of watch towers over the vast steppes and the low tier missile-based army on the bridge, the Scythians had no real chance of invading me as the northernmost cities gained population and slaves and became stone wall settlements with access to tier 2 horse archers with longer range. At that point, nothing the Scythians can produce were remotely a threat.
Next, I captured the first Armenian province as soon as their army moved away from one of them. I didn't care which one, and if they parked a full army in both settlements, they wouldn't be able to invade me at all, which they had done repeatedly in previous campaigns, often by taking ridiculous weird routes to get to my easternmost province, moving through the mountains of the south, or around the mountains and forests to the north, and bypassing the nearly empty town that was on our borders. They only seemed interested in taking my core settlements, and they liked to sneak attack me even while allied. They'd just randomly show up from a bizarre direction while we were allied and lay siege to my capital.
So this time I built a ton of watchtowers everywhere to make sure they could not sneak attack, and I assigned a spy to follow their largest army around. I didn't care if they stayed at home, as long as they didn't attack me. However, once they moved more than a single turn's march away from their 2 starting provinces, I immediately declared war, built a bunch of rams, and took their city before they could return and defend. Using their backstab strategy against them.
Next, I built forts preventing them from moving their army to defend the other settlement, and took that one as well 2 turns later, using my horse archers to prevent almost any losses to my own side, and rams to remove the walls. I took out this faction first and immediately built a ridiculous amount of watchtowers in the mountains of Asia Minor to prevent sneak attacks from Pontus or Seleucids, and then I immediately moved west to attack Pontus, which had already gotten ridiculously large by taking Seleucid settlements and almost all the settlements between them and Thrace.
At the same time as I took over Armenia, I took the nearest Seleucid province and then used forts to wall off the bridge crossings of the rivers and put watch towers everywhere. Egypt would invade, so would the Seleucids no matter how badly they were getting beat on every other front, they would all suicidally attack me. So I just made sure when they did, they'd have to attack a fort next to a bridge, giving me a turn to move an army to the bridge itself, and then they'd have to fight a bridge battle, and then they'd need to have enough troops left over to take a stone walled city with archers on the walls and horse archers sallying out.
In short, there wasn't a chance in hell that they could take a single one of those cities protected by rivers. I didn't advance here, deliberately, I wanted to make both of my southernmost cities into stone walled cities capable of producing my higher tier units, the good horse archers, the good infantry, the foot archers, and so forth. At that tier of technology, Egyptian chariots were zero threat whatsoever, they die to the tier 2 horse archers easily, and their foot units are not fast moving or well armored nor are they foot archer spam, nor do they have the range of the tier 2 horse archers. So I would outrange every unit Egypt produced, I had a mix of easily spammed tier 1 horse archers and a good core of tier 2 horse archers in every army, and some hillmen spears in case I needed to hold a river crossing, otherwise not even needed as the entire enemy army would rout before touching a single spearman of mine.
So the defense of the river crossings prevented like five Egyptian stacks from invading my territory at the same time, and the Seleucids crumbled to Egypt and Pontus before I even had my higher tier units. (continued...)
I was stalling in the north and south, and invading like a madman throughout Asia Minor, conquering all the way to Thrace and taking the cities with wonders in the western coast of Asia Minor. At this point I was making 10,000 gold per turn, and I was facing a very powerful Egypt that had taken Antioch and was invading Asia Minor. I took Hatra and Antioch and started invading south, and even though I was facing concentrated stacks of Egyptian troops and a powerful Egyptian economy, my troops completely outclassed Egypt's in every battle. I'd destroy their whole army or rout the whole army and kill half of it while it was fleeing, while losing like 20 troops basically to friendly fire only.
These weren't fights, they were always one sided slaughters. The more I beat them, the more I realized I didn't need to fight defensively any longer, so even though they had like 7 stacks of troops sitting near Damascus, I still invaded and took 4 of their provinces in a single turn, Dumatha and Damascus and the island one and another one on the coast.
At this point, Thrace and the greek cities invaded Asia Minor in the west, and it was trivial to hold them off with basic horse archers and hillmen. Horse archers can sally out and prevent my cities from starving, and the hillmen are good enough that they can defend choke points and when my horse archers sally out and kill the enemy army and start the rout, the hillmen move faster than regular infantry and cause a lot of kills, they're infantry that performs the same function as light cavalry.
I couldn't get starved out, and I would destroy the invader army whether they assaulted or not, and since horse archers and hillmen are all I needed, they're easy to replace even when I took casualties. The key was to only use Eastern Infantry as public order police in provinces that would never be invaded first, so I could direct all my tier 2 troops to border provinces.
Basically, until some heavy infantry units mixed with spammed mercenary cretan archers come along, there wasn't an army on the planet that could actually counter Parthia. You needed to outrange me with missiles or at least have the same range, you needed foot archers to even have a chance of having more missiles firing than I did, and you needed heavy infantry to protect your foot archers and tank my missiles.
Spearmen? Worthless. Cavalry? Worthless. No faction remained that had better horse archers than me. Heavy infantry like falxmen? Worse than useless, they didn't even have shields. Enemy generals? They'd take more arrows to die, but they'd die without inflicting any casualties at all. Any settlement that didn't have stone walls? Impossible to defend, I'd hit you over your own walls with cavalry archers while avoiding your own archer towers. I'd outrange your missile troops, like slingers and foot archers and javelins, who would all die to missile fire.
Foot infantry had no hope of ever touching me. Foot missiles would be outranged and die en masse. Enemy generals could do nothing. Chariots were particularly pathetic because they don't move fast enough and are countered by missile fire. No artillery existed yet, this was only 50 turns into the campaign, so any settlement I made with stone walls was impossible to take with this strategy. Cavalry could chase me, and if they were fast enough, had a chance of accidentally causing me to friendly fire into my own horse archers while killing them, but they would die. They would all die, and since my armies were horse archer tier 1 and 2 spam, it was easy to merge units and find replacements.
Now, I know once they hit proper late game high tier Roman units, they will have difficulties, in theory. It won't be as easy to repel Romans from attacking my walls with mere arrow fire from cavalry units alone. However, by the time they invade, I will have upgraded weapons and armor, stone walls, tons and tons of foot archers spammed mixed with hillmen on the walls, and I will be able to sally out and use my cataphracts (I never even made a third cataphract unit and barely used the 2 I was given... just not needed!) and tier 2 horse archers to take out their onagers and assassinate their general's bodyguard.
I will own all of Asia Minor, the middle east, and Egypt. I will be by far the richest faction, with access to the best horse archers in the game with the longest range, the best armored cavalry in the east, war elephants which I haven't even used yet and I know for a fact wreak havoc on masses of infantry once they lack archer support, and the kind of late game hillmen and foot archers that are good enough to repel technically superior foot units due to the tactical advantages I enjoy of always being able to fight on a stone wall or choke point or bridge.
While I will have the foot archers, artillery, and long range horse archers needed to repel any invader on a bridge or choke point. I won't need to, but I can always double up my armies, having one army made out of hillmen and mercenary infantry and another made out of horse archers is overkill and kills everything in the game. Set the infantry to AI controlled and kill the enemy general with my horse archers and weaken their infantry before mine make contact, and the fight is always over.
Doesn't matter what kind of armor or morale or quality the troops have. Doesn't matter if they have armor piercing. Doesn't matter who or what they are, everything dies to that.
The only counter to this army is being Parthia. But I'm Parthia.
I don't even disagree with your tier list, if you don't have a strategy, Parthia's start is pretty bad. I got crushed several times just trying to break out, because I play on very hard, and everyone always attacked me simultaneously.
Once I came up with a plan that counters their attack, and waited for them to move away from the defense of their own cities, the campaign was over. It was nothing but crushing everything in my path the moment I broke out and destroyed Armenia in 4 turns.
There was nothing even remotely challenging to my armies after that point. I had the economy and defensive position and the best army in the east. Egypt wasn't able to attack me, or defend, or beat me in neutral battles on the field.
Egypt has a nice army. Parthia absolutely counters their army, without question. It's not even a fight. There wasn't a single unit they fielded, nor army composition, that could even touch me.
Thanks for the detailed comment. The more I play the game (or M2 TW) the more powerful the missile cav seems to become - if controlled by a human player :)@@askthepizzaguy
@@qualityoldgames7721 They end up doing what archers on walls are supposed to be capable of doing: they cause casualties on the enemy while taking none in return. They put a pointy thing in the opposing soldiers' body without taking injuries themselves.
It's just that the archers on the walls are defending a settlement and if the walls are breached, they don't do a lot to stop the army from marching through missile fire and sacking the city. They don't fight well in melee.
But, horse archers can attack the enemy army that would be at your gates, before they're at your gates, when you still have time to retreat, go get more arrows or more horse archers, and attack them again and again. You can stall them at bridges and mountain passes and ambush them from forests near roads. You can march faster than any army that contains infantry. You can damage them and defeat them before they ever reach your gates.
And if by some miracle they survived your assault, they get to your gates at one third of their original strength, and only now do they lay siege to your city and start cutting off your economy and ability to make units.
At this point, your army of horse archers catches up to them again and attacks them again. Or you have more horse archers in the city to sally out and shoot them some more.
Then they have to take your city center, while being fired upon constantly from archers that are always in range and you can't even damage them.
If the horse archers are supported by literally any infantry, even trash tier eastern spearmen, the kinds of armies they can deflect are quite high quality and expensive and late game kinds of armies. With tier 1 horse archers.
Now, imagine they survived the bridge assault, the ambush on the road to the city, the siege relief horse archer attack, all done by the same exact army of just tier 1 horse archers, AND they laid siege to the city AND they survived the sally of horse archers before the assault, as they're still building rams and siege towers. AND they survived the assault into the city, facing those same horse archers for a second battle in a row, and then they fought through whatever infantry is at the center, and finally captured my danged city, causing the army inside the city to dissolve due to the defeat.
What happens now to this plucky band of elite troops that somehow survived being attacked by a horde of horse archers literally five times in order to take this city? Well, they killed the horse archers in the city. They didn't kill the full army of horse archers that I used to defend my territory leading up to the city. That army now lays siege to the city they just captured, whose walls and gates they just destroyed. They're trapped in enemy territory, alone, weakened. If they don't sally out, they will be destroyed by starvation and disease trapped inside the walls.
They are forced to attack an army of horse archers and kill or rout all of them, or die from not doing so. There isn't really a worse tactical position to be in. If they sally out, and are still alive at this point, they are armored shielded infantry trying to chase down horse archers. They will literally never catch them. They will be exhausted just by moving, and taking damage the whole time.
Basically, assaulting a human controlled faction that can make horse archers is like sticking your hand into a deep fat fryer full of 400 degree C oil, and needing to keep your hand in that oil no matter what happens. As soon as you remove your hand, you lose. The entire time you're "attacking" the horse archer faction, you are taking so much damage, while inflicting nearly none. It hurts the entire time.
What can horse archers NOT do? Well....
Horse archers are not great for defending a city by fighting in melee combat. In fact, they might be the worst type of unit for this task. True, you need some melee units for that purpose. But not so many as you think. Even a few will do.
What you do defensively with horse archers. They are superb at preventing an enemy army from ever setting foot inside your outermost border provinces, and making any prolonged invasion of your territory the worst decision they've ever made. If used properly, they are far more effective at defense than foot archers, or armored cavalry, or heavy armored infantry, or even phalanx pikemen. You just use them differently to defend.
You make existing at all on any piece of land intolerable, and a sure ticket to being dead. And in order to attack your faction, they have to actually be in your territory for a prolonged period. Taking archer fire every turn, every battle, over and over again.
There's no strategy that makes an army miserable like being attacked by horse archers that you can't even catch, every turn of the invasion, through every land obstacle, through every bridge obstacle, through every fort blocking every mountain pass, defending every walled city, and then surrounding it afterward. If you ever managed to get that far, all you will have done is put your invasion army inside of a box that absolutely will kill your army unless it leaves that box.
What have you accomplished? And that's in theory, and on paper. In reality, the invasion army sometimes, if they're very lucky, makes it all the way to the walls of one of my cities. They don't get past it.
They end up being the best defensive units in the game, and the ones that cause the most casualties, better than anything wearing armor, better than anything with any other kind of weapon. It's kinda crazy.
If they can do the same job as archers on walls, but better, or armored infantry in walls, but better, or cavalry charges, but better, and they can do it without taking damage, and they can do it over and over again, ANYWHERE, not needing to be behind walls to do it... they're the ultimate defensive unit.
Now, if I have to take a heavily defended settlement, full of archers on stone walls and heavy infantry, I'm not going to directly try to assault and capture the thing only with horse archers. I'm going to have to starve them out.
But it's easier to do, because I can begin starving them out with my horse archer armies. I can even split up the army and siege several nearby settlements at once, and put a small bit of infantry into a fort roughly halfway between each seiged city. If I need to retreat, I retreat back to my fort with infantry in it, and I can rally my horse archers together, and we can beat anything out in the field. If you can send relief forces in time at all, I still have a plan where my horse archers are alive, threatening several settlements, and you have to dislodge them from your territory by force, while I can retreat from every battle ad infinitum if I want.
Once the settlement is starved and they're forced to sally, I can put the infantry troops in with my horse archers and make absolutely sure you cannot chase away the horse archer army. We're going to stand our ground and win that battle, and the garrison is never in any condition to fight that battle. You always win that battle and you did it without any losses, really.
If you absolutely had to attack the walls today, and they're stone walls, okay, there are better units for attacking walls, for sure. But even in that example, where you don't want to actually attack because you're only packing horse archers, look at the situation:
You're surrounding the enemy city, in their territory, they are forced to defend using units they cannot even sally out and attack with. Defensive infantry units do not chase down horse archers very well, if ever. If they try it, they die, and even if they somehow outnumbered you so severely that they can pin you to the edge of the map, force you to retreat, and drive you away, nothing stops you from turning around and laying siege again and causing more casualties the next time they sally out. Sallying is super ineffective, it just delays the inevitable, even in the very best case scenario. If you don't have horse archers, there isn't a thing you can do to horse archers except try to make them go away. They can just come back and lay siege again, and that position is extremely losing to be in, even if it doesn't kill the defender immediately, it slowly kills the defender completely without even damaging the invasion army.
While laying siege, you're cutting off their economy and ability to produce troops in that city. You're inflicting damage just through starvation alone. You're building siege ladders and towers and rams for when your infantry shows up. And all this time, your enemy is paying for expensive amounts of troops that are doing absolutely nothing to attack your faction. I would much rather my enemy's army be trapped inside their own walls not harming me, slowly dying, than inside my walls.
If they are starved out and forced to attack and have a successful sally, okay, by now I've put some amount of infantry on the field. I set them way, way back from the enemy walls so they have to travel a very long way to even attack my infantry, taking horse archer fire the entire time. Then they have to defeat my general's bodyguard surrounded by a sea of spearpoints while taking archer fire from their rear flank.
I don't know of many units capable of doing that, armored or not, on horseback or not. And certainly not by the C to F tier units that are usually used as garrison troops. Imagine attacking that army with spearmen and peltasts or foot archers. You wouldn't even get to my infantry line before you've chain routed. You'd all be dead before you even got back inside your own walls. You need your general just to have the morale to put up a fight, that general has to march through half a map full of horse archer fire from both flanks and the rear(!!!) to even influence the fight against your infantry. They're not going to survive the journey unless they're a king with like 60 armored bodyguards, and end up with 20 by the time they get to your spears.
The key with horse archers is to never, ever use them in melee. Not with enemy cavalry, not with enemy infantry, not even with enemy archers. Have a couple of units of infantry follow them around the campaign map for when you need to destroy walls or securely defeat a sally attempt, and some melee cavalry to defend your horse archers and to mop up routing units. these can be melee infantry and melee cavalry of the absolute trashiest quality. their quality doesn't matter at all. You pair them with horse archers, and your army spending and composition looks like this.
80 to 90 percent horse archer
5 percent infantry (any quality, bad is perfectly fine)
5 percent melee cavalry (any quality, again, bad is perfectly fine)
The horse archers do 100 percent of the killing while the enemy army is still fighting. You keep the infantry and melee cavalry far away. Once the army starts to rout, that's when they attack. The remaining troops do most of the killing once the enemy army is fully routing. Usually your infantry won't kill anyone, but they can, especially fast moving infantry. You can also switch your horse archers to melee only mode and run down routing units. Once they're able to flee and are fleeing, as long as you don't surround them, you can kill them while taking no losses.
The entire point of walls and armor and shields and long spear weapons is to kill the enemy without dying.
There's no spear with longer range than a horse archer's arrow. There's no armor better than never getting hit by a sword or lance in the first place. There's no wall superior to the wall that is doing nothing but trapping the enemy defender troops behind it, starving them, while the defender is forced to pay for those troops that will NOT defeat the invaders at all, and never ever harm a single city in your home territory. That wall the defenders have built is your friend, if you are an invading horse archer.
I make forts specifically for the enemy to capture, leaving trash units inside of them. They take them, and i immediately lay siege. What does the enemy do now?
Even if they had a full stack of great assorted troops and I had a half stack of basic horse archers, what do you do?
How do you sally out of a fort and destroy an army full of horse archers that are commanded by a human, if you do not possess horse archers of your own? What units could do the task? If the AI is trying to sally out, the AI will always lose that fight, it doesn't matter what units you give them if they aren't horse archers.
The best they can hope for is that I run out of arrows, or they force me to the edge of the map, where I flee with my army intact.
In either case, most or all of my arrows are sticking out of the corpses of the army that was forced to sally out from that fort or starve and be deleted from reality. That's not what I would call winning a battle.
When those are the realistic outcomes, and the unrealistic but possible outcomes in your favor, and the end result is that almost all of the horse archers still survived, it's easy to see why the romans could not conquer Parthia even at their height and maximum strength with their absolute best units and best generals and strategists.
If I were a human faction playing Rome and saw Parthia had conquered all of Asia minor, my invasion strategy would be to surround every horse archer army with 4 Roman armies, one line of heavy infantry on each side of the battlefield, and surround them, to stop them from retreating and force melee.
That's the counter that actually works, and it's entirely unrealistic to expect the AI to do, and it is also unrealistic outside of the game. In real life, that horse archer army wouldn't allow itself to be surrounded like that by slow moving infantry in the first place, and if it happened one time, it would be so famous a defeat it wouldn't ever happen again.
That's how I'd defeat Parthia if I didn't have horse archers. Line infantry spam and surround.
Horse archers are broken. The sad part is, it's entirely realistic how broken they are. No one had an answer to horse archers for well over a thousand years. The longbow was really the first thing that came close, and then you had some solid plate armor that kept you alive but didn't actually kill the horse archer, and all those things ended up doing was made it less dominant to just have armies of barbarian archers on horseback. It didn't even eliminate them. You needed rifles to make horse archers go away, and all that did was make horsemen with rifles happen.
I think the invention of the machine gun was the moment when horse based missile units finally stopped being a serious threat. that's a long period of dominance.
Thanks for the comment. Regarding Romans, I have found that Archer Auxilia work rather nicely vs. Horse Archers. Additionally, if they can be pressed to a corner, cav and even infantry should be able to deal with them :)@@askthepizzaguy
Great chart!
Thracian location is boring but they deserve at least a B tier. They have fun and strong units from the start and decent later game units also. Love this faction.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed that Thracia have decent enough starting cities and they can get to Macedon and Greece very fast, which is very good :)
Also, not quite understand how did Parthia ended up in C tier, along with Germania. Horse archers and Persian cavalry that Parthians have shred enemy to pieces. Their starting regions are quite poor and starting funds are low, but it's designed to force the player to be aggressive and not turtle in your starting region. Right over you lie Seleucid cities, very rich and light defended. Militia hoplites can do nothing against a swarm of arrows of your HA. Parthian game is focused on constant and swift expansion. In 10-15 turns you can have most of Asia under your rule if you push relentlesly. Although, Parthia has its own flaws. Some of the biggest are their lack of paved roads, as well as any health building. It means that you have less means to grow your cities and your armies move slower, especially if you have infantry in them for whatever reason. But their Eco can still be strong - level 3 ports, law enforcement buildings and caravans will fill up your coffers, once you reach the coast, since this is where real money can be made.
Germania, on the other hand, has a very good and balanced roster of units that has an answer to everything they should face. Their longspeared units can deal with Briton chariots, axemen and especially chosen axemen tear up Romans, Macedonians and heavy Gaul infantry as their anti-armour bonus is honestly insane. Gothic cavalry is one of the best cavalry units in the game and can be acuired much quicker than Romans can get, say, Legionary cavalry. Even their archers are great, having long range and good attack/defense to pose a serious threat to anyone. The only flaw the Germania has is that it's a barbarian faction. They reach their limit quickly and their economy can never be on par with the rest of the world. They need to get out of their forests and fast it they want to be a real power in the world and realise their potential to the fullest.
Thank you for your comment. I think there are many valid points in there. :)
Love to hear finish English! Really nice! Love it!
Thank You! :)
I have a lot of disagreements with this list but my major problem is Dacia. It is one of the best barbarian factions if you play them properly because you can just go after Macedon immediately. Once you take Thessalonica, you gain access to endgame units while everyone else is still stuck on hastati and militia hoplites. Then you easily conquer Greece and Italy which makes you filthy rich. They also have access to Archer warbands instead of skirmishers and one of the best starting generals. The first ten turns are difficult but after that it's one big victory lap.
Otherwise I would have placed Scythia on its own S+ tier as well as Macedon, Pontus and Germania a bit higher.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that Archer Warbands are just great and if one manages to gain control of Greece, the finances are secured. But Dacian infantry and cav are severely lacking imo :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 In a custom battle the mediocre unit roster will of course cause serious problems, but my comment was based on campaign mode. Sure, other factions will have slightly better armies if they get to their best units but if you start pumping out Chosen swords, archers and noble cav that early and play extremely aggressively, they won't get the chance. Even if they eventually do, you will have control of Greece and Italy (all the money in the world) by that time so you just full stack spam them into submission.
I highly recommend trying a Dacian grand campaign with this strategy. I love playing it to this day for the sheer hilariousness.
@@bannedcommander2932 Thanks for the comment. I think it comes down somewhat to preferences. Imo your strategy there is sound and works really well. I might give Dacian campaign a try at some point. :)
Been playing Thracia recently and i think theyre only one unit short of being S tier... its really fun to bait and flank constantly on greek hoplites with Bastarnae/Generals Armoured Bodyguard and mixing some phalanx pikeman for defensive battles its really refreshing when your heavy infantry still has the fast movement and pretty top tier charge bonus for infantry, id say theyre only missing a long range missile troop or a recruitable heavy cav unit but i dont believe they would need both to be S tier i would take just one...their temples arent great either their Parthenon gives +4 morale bonus but i dont see a stat for morale in vanilla rome so i have no idea how good +4 morale is vs +4 xp..also any faction that has access to tier V settlement and paved roads is better than Barbarian/Middle Eastern settlements respectively in my opinion....totally understand why some players would choose other greek factions over them but still at least low B tier based off the parameters of this tier list
Thanks for the comprehensive comment. Valid points. Though, imo Bastarnae are quite bad for a unit of their tier and the starting position might be a bit difficult :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 true but they do have two hit points..so does that mean (in custom battle one less in campaign) with +12/+12 bastarnae would have 26/19 (+2) Hit Points? Meaning they have virtually a 38 defence instead?! Regardless they would have an attack of 32 with charge bonus and also in campaign they can only be +11/+11 and +4 morale with temple of ares! I doctor my campaigns anyway because I just like to play around with the AI at this point and have been playing the game on and off for 20 years now I just use the Rome sheet to be honest and roleplay lol but I'm really interested on your thoughts as well thanks for the chat and insight!
Your Tier list is Inaccurate
Thanks for the comment. How would you make it differently? :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 at the very least, Carthage is trash and Greek Cities is the head of S tier. I don't know enough to make a full classification with the rest of the factions. Then again, playing Greek Cities can get boring really fast after you dominate the game in up to 30 turns. You can then play around building Lycaeums (whatever it's called), I guess to see what you can do to make your cities shine and experiment instead of trying to win anything further. You already have over half of the best economic provinces on the map by that point and nothing can grant you defeats outside of major neglect on the part of the player.
Thanks for the comment. I guess quite a few of the factions are really powerful at the hands of a skilled player :) E.g. with Carthage it is possible to beat the game without suffering a single casualty in battles on VH/VH.@@Dan-uf2vh
It all depends on skill level, a starting position close to Italy can be challenging, but it is so much easier to knock out the romans early on, which is why the easiest starting position is Carthage, get a few elephants and take all of Italy in less than 20 years, pre marian reform the romans fare badly against elephants. Yes mostly everyone but romans and Egypt don't perform well if played by the AI but that should not impact the ranking. Personly I find selucids to be most entertaining, bit of a bumpy start, but good misile, phalanax and elephants, their unit roster is the most diverse in my oppinion.
Thanks for the detailed analysis. Agreed on that :)
Loving the chapter names, lol.
Haha. Had to check what chapter names, I did not do any chapters in here but it seems UA-cam covered me up. :D Thanks for the comment.
Looking at your list I think you value economy and late game roster as the top priorities. Mine would look a bit different as for me the most important element is a powerful early unit to ease initial expansion. (edited for spelling mistake)
Thanks for the comment. I think you may be right. I also think that play style affects the tier list :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 I was thinking the same thing, it will vary from player to player depending on their own preferences, strengths and weaknesses.
All Roman factions and Egypt should be in S tier
Thanks for the comment. Perhaps they should be higher tier :)
Can the Brutii take Rome and hold all of the Greek peninsula and seas as well as Sicily by turn 27? The Greeks and their Armored Hoplites can. You could argue the game becomes too boring.
No other faction compares to them. It's easy to turtle up for a few turns to get things going and beat everything starting with the Macedonians even as early as turn 1, invade Italy after you control everything tangent to the Greek sea. Expand in all of Sicily after the Scipii have decimated themselves against Carthage.
You can invade Rome with a full roster of Armored Hoplites and consider it gg.
Thanks for the comment. Imo they could, if not the civil war special requirements. But I agree that Greeks can peak in power really fast :)
S= should be renamed as the R for Roman Tier.
I guess that would be pretty accurate in this case :D Thanks for the comment.
@@qualityoldgames7721 Yeah in this Game Rome was clearly the factions which got all the love from the developers.
@@RomanHistoryFan476AD Agreed on that. :)
How are scythians tier b?? Their first military building produces horse archers!
Thanks for the comment. I agree that horse archers are great. In my opinion the faction lacks richer areas early on and their roster is not quite as good as e.g. Parthians, Seleucids or Armenia.
Scythian horse archers are far superior to Parthian and Armenian horse archers. Lower requirements aside, they are so badass that their bare chest counts as 3 armor, plus they have access to shrines of Kolaksay to start with 1-3 xp on top of it. They can start with up to 11 missile attack (same as Cretan archers or Forester Warband) and the 3 armor means they'll always beat other horse archers in a straight exchange of fire. Scythian noble archers are a nice upgrade that excels at clearing enemy ranged units (long range, good armor, decent melee) and melee nobles are a good alternative to cataphracts due to their speed and charge bonus (use them like light lancers). Add the head hunting maidens, who act as general sniping goddesses and speedy/punchy all-purpose light cavalry with armor piercing... the Scythian hordes are nigh untouchable by the AI.
Seleucids aren't even part of the discussion because they don't have HAs and any faction with access to HAs will beat any faction without.
After seeing this, I seriously doubt that you were ever good at this game.
:D Wow! How would you rate them then? Thanks for the comment.
Dude, you put Parthia in C tier? They have horse archers, the best early-game unit, and cataphracts and elephants in the late game. Plus, their culture, religion, and buildings are all really strong. Also, their position is underrated. They have no enemies to the east and two crumbling kingdoms to their west for taking.
@@mehrdadb9789 Valid points but usually it is Egypt that dominates the East of the map. Imo most of the factions are good if player controlled :)
An interesting video. Nice!
Thanks :)
An Interesting video!
Thanks :)
Carthage libyan spearmen are pretty shit, except vs cav. their infantry becomes ok only from poeni infantry at tier 4, which is HORRIBLE until then. u get sacred band at that tier anyway so its useless...their only decent infantry is literally their best late game unit.
their missiles are SHIT with only javelins and slings. they only have decent cav and elephants. everything else is shit except infantry late game...
i dont like them at all.
Thanks for the comment. Good points. Additionally, they are quite rich and have access to decent enough mercs in the early game :)
Armenia is A-S with the romans, Brutii is a bit higher than the other romans. Armenia only lacks medium cavalry.
Carthage is B, bad ranged units
Dacia is B, better than Gaul, closer to Greece too, tier 2 city has archer warband.
WTF u talking about Germans have bad ranged units and cav:??? WHAT is the Gothic cav if not awesome?? Good infantry including phalanx, goodcav, and stong archers Clear A tier
Macedon is A
Numidia is B. It is as strong as Dacia. It's a rush faction. Tier 2 city with archers? Hell yeah!
Spain is D only good unit is Long Shields, no opportunity to boom fast, bad terrain.
5/10 tier list, could be worse.
Thanks for the comment and analysis :)