The good thing about Armored Swordsmen is that compared to the similar Dismounted Chivalric Knights, they have a cheaper upkeep (even cheaper than DFK's), and are earlier available to recruit.
Armoured swordsmen have an upkeep of only 150 while equivalent infantry usually is at 225. A massive advantage in campaigns. A high-tier defensive infantry costing the same as an unit of seegeants.
My army composition as England is simple: 6 dismounted feudal knights/armoured swordsmen, 8 retinue/yeoman longbows, 5 English knights/templar knights/hospitaller knights, 1 general. Sometimes I may add trebuchets/cannons at the cost of some cavalry, but I tend to avoid manually fighting attacks upon castles that are of the citadel tier.
Thank You! More of these coming, as I progress with the How Good Is tests (I checked that I need to make something like 7 with HRE to get all those units tested) :)
One of my favourite factions in the game. The longbows are amazing. On a side note, I'd like to say that peasants and town militias have their potential despite the low tier: given their low upkeep and quick accessibility, you can build a crapstack with those so you can either support a stronger army or defend a settlement in dire need (similarly to Skavenslaves in WH). They could also be an alternative to recruiting artillery since it slows you down while peasants and militias can get on top of the walls, buying you enough time to smash in with the better troops.
Great video as always. Agree with the Demi lancers but I believe they are available in cities which is a pretty big advantage. England is a top tier faction but doesn’t have great city or militia units. For the same reason I really like heavy bill militia.
Thanks for the comment. Yea, that city recruitment can be nice in later game. And in relation other Militias available for England, hvy Bill Militias are good :)
Mailed Knights are S tier for me, just a super solid and reliable unit all game long. Also much more easily available than Feudal or English knights, and they move almost as fast as light cavalry. Definitely won't 1v1 other heavy cavalry *SUPER* well, but they do heavy cavalry tasks excellently.
They are the same speed as hobilars. Cav has 4 speeds, light horse, heavy horse, camel and elephant. Mailed knights use the light cav speed. Easy S tier.
@@keymer91 There's 4 different cavalry speeds but it's tyed to the mount they use and only applies to the run speed, walking speed is the same across the board. Fast pony is the fastest and is exclusive to some horse archers and light cavalry. Pony and heavy horse is used for the rest of the light cavalry and horse archers as well as some heavy cavalry without armored horses this is the category mailed knights and hobilars are in. Barded horses, mailed horses, armored horses and eastern armored horses is for the majority of the heavy cavalry and dvor. Camels and elephants are in their own category being the slowest and they're roughly the same speed.
The real advantage Demi-Lancers is that are recruited in cities, not castles. Meaning you can easily spam them in the late game and ship them off to the America's and just ride over all the Aztecs.
I have to disagree on Billmen. In campaign, you can pretty much spam Bills & Bows and outperform whatever the enemy throws at you. Billmen and Longbowmen are extremely cost-efficient. Really good video!
Yeomen perform the same at range as retinues, but retinues are stronger in melee. So when upgrading to retinues, you can replace some of your infantry by more retinues, increasing your overall ranged power without being more vulnerable if some enemies come close.
Man, seeing entire rosters be tiered for me is so odd. If you've seen my other comments, you'd probably know that I'm not the most knowledgeable on Rome 1, but Medieval 2 is a game which I usually absolutely crush through, even on VH/VH difficulty. Since I can get most VH/VH campaigns done before the Mongol Invasion, anything except early game troops for me are basically overpriced D-tier, since I'm just focused on knights for field battles, ballistae for "conquering whole countries before excommunication", peasants for garrison, and *maybe* Dismounted Feudals for autoresolve/storming cities. Otherwise I'm going merc heavy. Don't have time for the "unit availability" system of M2TW at the pace I play at. BUT, England stuff. If I made my list, it'd be a wonky list that puts Mailed Knights in S, Longbows in S, all early game infantry except Peasants in A, Peasants and Ballistae in B. Hobilars also in B. Light cavalry is not useful in the western theater for VH blitz campaigns and the niche of checking ranged cavalry in the eastern theater isn't useful for England when the longbowman does that well. Too well, honestly. They fuck over ranged cav civs to an unfair degree in multiplayer, so you probably guess what a player vs. computer looks like. Still, they're not *terrible, I just don't agree with putting them in S, despite their availability and cheapness. Bill Militia are absolutely D-tier, I agree.. Only niche is defending cities, even then that's not great. Completely useless in the field, in siege attack, and autoresolve.
yep, in Medieval and rome you really need to hold back if you want the campaign to last till getting top tier units. btw: if you want to just never fear to be excommunicated, just send a diplomat to rome, as soon as you loose any reputation with the pope, just gift some money, or make alliance, I even gift them some useless cities I get in crusades, if your reputation is high enough, they only threat to lower reputation, never excommunicate, which you can always
Spear Militia arent D for me. They maintain public order and provide protection if someone sneaks up to the city and that for free upkeep. Sure, there re better units for that later on but thats the thing, later. Spear Militia are available early on and are key for building up a stable empire when your economy isnt strong yet. Together with Archer/Crossbow Militia and a General they easily crushed far superior armies who attacked my cities. Town Militia and Peasants are for D, but not Spear Militia.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed on Spear Militia, I put them on C. Levy Spearmen are clearly D imo :) And agreed also that militias are handy for city defense.
Dismounted English Knights really should go down 1 tier. Hard to get, hard to resuply, expensive, in field battle will be targeted and shredded by missiles because high tier and low defense, and will get bodied by lower tier armored sword units on walls. Replace and forget, never even once performed well for me. Levy spear men should go up 2 tiers. Easy to get, easy to resupply, easy to throw away on the flanks absorbing that cavalary charge or on a ram, cheap, and your only professional anti cavalry unit. Does well is siege, holds its own in a field, good trash tier unit, remains viable well into late game. Solid B tier.
@qualityoldgames7721 np, thanks for the video. But interesting, why militia spear men over levy's? My main argument would be convenience, so I can retrain all units in a singe city, or castle in this case. But my late game army's never have more than 3 spear units. They are mainly just cannon fodder to protect the swordsmen.
@@De_Wit Imo Militia is a bit better in battle and when in cities the free upkeep is rather nice. But agreed if one captures a Castle :) Thanks for the comment.
I disagree with your classification of Dismounted English Knights. Yes, they suffer from the animation issue, but that's mainly a problem against other infantry. From my recollections they are MONSTERS against cavalry, especially in defensive sieges. I remember one battle where I had one unit of these guys standing in a gate, I think they were on guard mode, and they mowed down pretty much an entire stack of mongol cavalry. I had put them forward inside of the gates to keep them open so that the cavalry would rush ahead of the infantry, so it was just the cavalry smashing itself into them. I was completely flabbergasted, since they killed like six units and barely took any casualties, so I put them through a few tests. They never did quite that well again, but they were always very solid against cavalry, much more so than armoured swordsmen. To me they are at least A-tier for that. I also disagree with your assessment of heavy bill militia. They are at least A-tier in the campaign, simply because they are the ONLY reasonably good militia unit available in the English roster. This makes them invaluable when garrisoning threatened cities, since in that situation you do want something that can be retrained in that city, so you don't have to move garrison units to a nearby castle. This is potentially very important when fighting on multiple fronts, and since you only have regular militia spears, archers and the regular bill militia, who are possibly the worst militia unit in the game, you really need that heavy armoured, high-attack option.
Dismounted English knights mowed down the cavalry cause they use a different animation when fighting cavalry, a much faster one, so one of their main disadvantages is gone. They can' t tank a direct charge though cause of low defense so the cavalry has to already be engaged or it has to be inside a city or it won't go nearly as well. Basically fighting cav in chokepoint where the cav can't charge is their ideal usecase. This also applies to bill units since they use the same animations, it actually applies to a lot of other 2 handers as well but not all of them, halberds and 2 handed swords have different issues.
@Killertron_2 yep, agreed, though they still do a LOT better tanking a charge than sword and board units do. for a faction that doesn't have a high-quality spear ir pike unit, this is their only real anti-cavalry infantry option.
@@gustavchambert7072 They don't do better at tanking a charge than a sword and shield unit, they have lower defense, no internal or hidden defense mechanism like spears and no better animations to tank a charge like pike walls, any favoreable differences is them killing more after the charge, wich tends to be a lot more tbf. If you had any experiences where they did better against cav charges those are very likely to have been luck or external factors not related to the units stats.
@Killertron_2 fair enough, it is probably six or seven years since I did those tests, so I might well be misremembering a bit. I do very distinctly remember watching them absolutely tear apart that Mongol army all by themselves, but when ut comes to the charge performance it is likely as you said and its simply down to them doing more damage in the ensuing fight.
The good thing about Armored Swordsmen is that compared to the similar Dismounted Chivalric Knights, they have a cheaper upkeep (even cheaper than DFK's), and are earlier available to recruit.
A good point :) Thanks for the comment.
havent played ina while... I thought you need max level barracks, dont you?
Armoured swordsmen have an upkeep of only 150 while equivalent infantry usually is at 225. A massive advantage in campaigns. A high-tier defensive infantry costing the same as an unit of seegeants.
True. A good point :) Thanks for the comment.
In Medieval II, you use what you've got. Aggression is everything.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed on the aggression. And that quite often means mercs :)
My army composition as England is simple: 6 dismounted feudal knights/armoured swordsmen, 8 retinue/yeoman longbows, 5 English knights/templar knights/hospitaller knights, 1 general. Sometimes I may add trebuchets/cannons at the cost of some cavalry, but I tend to avoid manually fighting attacks upon castles that are of the citadel tier.
Thanks for the comment. Sounds like a rather strong late-game composition :)
Good to see you making one of these again! I really enjoyed your Byzantine one and I've been hoping you'd make another.
Thank You! More of these coming, as I progress with the How Good Is tests (I checked that I need to make something like 7 with HRE to get all those units tested) :)
One of my favourite factions in the game. The longbows are amazing.
On a side note, I'd like to say that peasants and town militias have their potential despite the low tier: given their low upkeep and quick accessibility, you can build a crapstack with those so you can either support a stronger army or defend a settlement in dire need (similarly to Skavenslaves in WH).
They could also be an alternative to recruiting artillery since it slows you down while peasants and militias can get on top of the walls, buying you enough time to smash in with the better troops.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed. For quite a few of the units playstyle effects things quite a bit :)
Great video as always. Agree with the Demi lancers but I believe they are available in cities which is a pretty big advantage. England is a top tier faction but doesn’t have great city or militia units. For the same reason I really like heavy bill militia.
Thanks for the comment. Yea, that city recruitment can be nice in later game. And in relation other Militias available for England, hvy Bill Militias are good :)
Mailed Knights are S tier for me, just a super solid and reliable unit all game long. Also much more easily available than Feudal or English knights, and they move almost as fast as light cavalry. Definitely won't 1v1 other heavy cavalry *SUPER* well, but they do heavy cavalry tasks excellently.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed. They can be really useful and also retraining is rather easy. :)
also, since you have them soooo much earlier than any other cav, by the time you get better cav, they accumulated a lot of xp.
They are the same speed as hobilars. Cav has 4 speeds, light horse, heavy horse, camel and elephant. Mailed knights use the light cav speed. Easy S tier.
@@keymer91 sure about that?
I feel like some mercs like alan cavalry or arab light cav are much faster than normal
@@keymer91 There's 4 different cavalry speeds but it's tyed to the mount they use and only applies to the run speed, walking speed is the same across the board.
Fast pony is the fastest and is exclusive to some horse archers and light cavalry.
Pony and heavy horse is used for the rest of the light cavalry and horse archers as well as some heavy cavalry without armored horses this is the category mailed knights and hobilars are in.
Barded horses, mailed horses, armored horses and eastern armored horses is for the majority of the heavy cavalry and dvor.
Camels and elephants are in their own category being the slowest and they're roughly the same speed.
I like Demi-Lancers a lot as an option of city-trained cavalry. It's much more powerful than Merchant Cavalry at least.
Agreed on that, though every Cav unit is more powerful than Merc Cav ;D Thanks for the comment.
The real advantage Demi-Lancers is that are recruited in cities, not castles. Meaning you can easily spam them in the late game and ship them off to the America's and just ride over all the Aztecs.
Thanks for the comment. A valid point :)
I have to disagree on Billmen. In campaign, you can pretty much spam Bills & Bows and outperform whatever the enemy throws at you. Billmen and Longbowmen are extremely cost-efficient. Really good video!
Thank You! I fully agree with longbowmen. But based on my testing I have to disagree with Billmen ;)
Yeomen perform the same at range as retinues, but retinues are stronger in melee. So when upgrading to retinues, you can replace some of your infantry by more retinues, increasing your overall ranged power without being more vulnerable if some enemies come close.
Agreed on that, though upgrading the archery building hurts (and costs) quite a bit :) Thanks for the comment.
Man, seeing entire rosters be tiered for me is so odd.
If you've seen my other comments, you'd probably know that I'm not the most knowledgeable on Rome 1, but Medieval 2 is a game which I usually absolutely crush through, even on VH/VH difficulty.
Since I can get most VH/VH campaigns done before the Mongol Invasion, anything except early game troops for me are basically overpriced D-tier, since I'm just focused on knights for field battles, ballistae for "conquering whole countries before excommunication", peasants for garrison, and *maybe* Dismounted Feudals for autoresolve/storming cities. Otherwise I'm going merc heavy. Don't have time for the "unit availability" system of M2TW at the pace I play at.
BUT, England stuff. If I made my list, it'd be a wonky list that puts Mailed Knights in S, Longbows in S, all early game infantry except Peasants in A, Peasants and Ballistae in B. Hobilars also in B.
Light cavalry is not useful in the western theater for VH blitz campaigns and the niche of checking ranged cavalry in the eastern theater isn't useful for England when the longbowman does that well. Too well, honestly. They fuck over ranged cav civs to an unfair degree in multiplayer, so you probably guess what a player vs. computer looks like. Still, they're not *terrible, I just don't agree with putting them in S, despite their availability and cheapness.
Bill Militia are absolutely D-tier, I agree.. Only niche is defending cities, even then that's not great. Completely useless in the field, in siege attack, and autoresolve.
Thanks for the comment. Good points. Imo playstyle affects things quite a bit as well :)
yep, in Medieval and rome you really need to hold back if you want the campaign to last till getting top tier units.
btw: if you want to just never fear to be excommunicated, just send a diplomat to rome, as soon as you loose any reputation with the pope, just gift some money, or make alliance, I even gift them some useless cities I get in crusades, if your reputation is high enough, they only threat to lower reputation, never excommunicate, which you can always
The worst weakness for England imo is lacking good militia archers. No longbowmen militian, no crossbowmen militia. Nothing.
Ah, a good point. Agreed :) Thanks for the comment.
I think that the English Knights have AP as second weapon, giving them some boost as they can kill other armored cavalry
True. Thanks for the comment :)
Spear Militia arent D for me. They maintain public order and provide protection if someone sneaks up to the city and that for free upkeep. Sure, there re better units for that later on but thats the thing, later. Spear Militia are available early on and are key for building up a stable empire when your economy isnt strong yet. Together with Archer/Crossbow Militia and a General they easily crushed far superior armies who attacked my cities.
Town Militia and Peasants are for D, but not Spear Militia.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed on Spear Militia, I put them on C. Levy Spearmen are clearly D imo :) And agreed also that militias are handy for city defense.
You have not played enough of the game if you never sniped a General with a canon ball.
I guess I have once or twice but imo that is still quite rare :) Thanks for the comment.
Dismounted English Knights really should go down 1 tier. Hard to get, hard to resuply, expensive, in field battle will be targeted and shredded by missiles because high tier and low defense, and will get bodied by lower tier armored sword units on walls. Replace and forget, never even once performed well for me.
Levy spear men should go up 2 tiers. Easy to get, easy to resupply, easy to throw away on the flanks absorbing that cavalary charge or on a ram, cheap, and your only professional anti cavalry unit. Does well is siege, holds its own in a field, good trash tier unit, remains viable well into late game. Solid B tier.
Thanks for the comment. Interesting and good points. I would probably take Spear Militia over Levy Spears though :)
@qualityoldgames7721 np, thanks for the video.
But interesting, why militia spear men over levy's?
My main argument would be convenience, so I can retrain all units in a singe city, or castle in this case.
But my late game army's never have more than 3 spear units. They are mainly just cannon fodder to protect the swordsmen.
@@De_Wit Imo Militia is a bit better in battle and when in cities the free upkeep is rather nice. But agreed if one captures a Castle :) Thanks for the comment.
I disagree with your classification of Dismounted English Knights.
Yes, they suffer from the animation issue, but that's mainly a problem against other infantry.
From my recollections they are MONSTERS against cavalry, especially in defensive sieges. I remember one battle where I had one unit of these guys standing in a gate, I think they were on guard mode, and they mowed down pretty much an entire stack of mongol cavalry. I had put them forward inside of the gates to keep them open so that the cavalry would rush ahead of the infantry, so it was just the cavalry smashing itself into them.
I was completely flabbergasted, since they killed like six units and barely took any casualties, so I put them through a few tests. They never did quite that well again, but they were always very solid against cavalry, much more so than armoured swordsmen. To me they are at least A-tier for that.
I also disagree with your assessment of heavy bill militia. They are at least A-tier in the campaign, simply because they are the ONLY reasonably good militia unit available in the English roster. This makes them invaluable when garrisoning threatened cities, since in that situation you do want something that can be retrained in that city, so you don't have to move garrison units to a nearby castle. This is potentially very important when fighting on multiple fronts, and since you only have regular militia spears, archers and the regular bill militia, who are possibly the worst militia unit in the game, you really need that heavy armoured, high-attack option.
Dismounted English knights mowed down the cavalry cause they use a different animation when fighting cavalry, a much faster one, so one of their main disadvantages is gone. They can' t tank a direct charge though cause of low defense so the cavalry has to already be engaged or it has to be inside a city or it won't go nearly as well. Basically fighting cav in chokepoint where the cav can't charge is their ideal usecase. This also applies to bill units since they use the same animations, it actually applies to a lot of other 2 handers as well but not all of them, halberds and 2 handed swords have different issues.
@Killertron_2 yep, agreed, though they still do a LOT better tanking a charge than sword and board units do. for a faction that doesn't have a high-quality spear ir pike unit, this is their only real anti-cavalry infantry option.
@@gustavchambert7072 They don't do better at tanking a charge than a sword and shield unit, they have lower defense, no internal or hidden defense mechanism like spears and no better animations to tank a charge like pike walls, any favoreable differences is them killing more after the charge, wich tends to be a lot more tbf. If you had any experiences where they did better against cav charges those are very likely to have been luck or external factors not related to the units stats.
Thanks for the comment. These evaluations are always subject to playstyle. What you describe sounds impressive though :)
@Killertron_2 fair enough, it is probably six or seven years since I did those tests, so I might well be misremembering a bit. I do very distinctly remember watching them absolutely tear apart that Mongol army all by themselves, but when ut comes to the charge performance it is likely as you said and its simply down to them doing more damage in the ensuing fight.
Literally just started playing this game few days ago. Been using cheats for cannon elephants.... 🤷♂️😂
Well, that increases their score quite a bit in terms of requirements ;D Have fun! Thanks for the comment.