Is it just me or does this game have a serious balancing problem?
I mean, is there any reason to not go for the troops provided by your class? Other then maybe low-level units in the early game.
They synergize with your spells, are pretty strong all around, and if you don't build them, what did you pick the class for...
I didn't play for too long, but I don't know what the point of so many units is if you aren't using even half of them.
Depends on the situation, really. I personally find myself building the racial units a lot. With the possible exception of the Warlord, class units tend to be pretty specialized, and aren't ideal in every situation. I feel like especially at T3, most class units lack the damage output and/or survivability of most racial units (again, Warlord excepted). As a result, racial units tend to form my front line, as it were, with class units hanging around to do their own thing. I mean offhand the only T3 (non-Warlord) class unit I can think of that is a straight combat unit is the Exalted, and those are definitely on the squishier side of things. Plus most classes have abilities that go really well with racial units. Being a Halfling Dreadnought whose Eagle Riders are outfitted with pistols, for example, is just plain awesome. And the fact that a Draconian Rogue's Flyers get Backstab is immensely powerful, and one of the reasons why Draconians are considered the race that synergizes most with the Rogue class.
Lower tiers this is perhaps less the case, but I still end up producing more racial units than class ones just because class units require more infrastructure. Plus I don't think there are any classes that have units for every role.
Finally, I like to play with research speed set to the slowest settings, as I enjoy being able to savour each new thing I research and apply it to its full potential, so racial units are often available a fair bit before class units of a similar tier.
And of course, there's always classes like Sorcerer and Arch Druid, who have few class units and tons of summons instead, if that's more your thing.
I think that the only class where I would even consider building purely class units is the Warlord, and even then, using Mounted Archers or Monster Hunters for city defense gets expensive.
Yeah, I'd even say it's much worse in the older games. With their rng driven combat and uber heroes the low level units were mostly cannon fodder with very few exceptions, like elven shamans.
Ohhh yeah. Flanking I've found is another big change there. Means that even low damage T1 units can lay some hurt on high defense T4 units. Actually the tier difference is way better in this game - I'd say that, roughly, it takes two units of one tier to beat a unit of the next tier. Six T1s can usually reliably defeat one T4, maybe more. Definitely more if they're particularly effective T1s (Elven Longbows, for example. Or Scoundrels after Cruel Backstab has been researched).
Anyway, the reason I came to this thread in the first place is that after my latest game I wanted to express surprise. I think that AoW 3 is the only fantasy strategy game I've ever played where I actually find the Humans exciting to play. Well, MoM too, I guess. But their class units get a lot of cool abilities. I especially like how Human Assassins all get Swimming and Water Concealment. Roaming killsquads of them on water-heavy maps is fantastic, especially in multiplayer.
