CandidClodhopper

That's fair. I guess the idea is to spam them. Sparta still seems to be lacking late game, at least stats wise. Best strategy I've found is to make 5 or 10 battering rams, load them up with Skiritai and basically use them as a wave of armored personnel carriers. Let the Skiritai out en masse to deal with enemy units while the battering rams go to work on buildings. On a slightly different note, I will say I think the Scythian archers the Athenians have access to might be the most underrated range unit in the game. 14 pierce attack, 60m range, and 1 sec attack interval out the gate. When I had them fully upgraded, it was something like 27 pierce damage... put on top of walls, their range went up by another 11 meters on average. Holy smokes.

The increased health plus the Leonidas bonus is pretty legit. Tested it out and IIRC the Spartiates ended up with like 14.9 hack and 11.9 pierce damage or something crazy like that for spearmen. (All armory upgrades, Will to Fight included - basic rank, no added experience) That's pretty dope.

Nice! These look like pretty significant upgrades. Can't wait! Any word on when A27 will be released?

The Spartiates/City Guard/Shieldbearers all have identical stats out the gate. The Skiritai are where I think it's really bad... They have 7.9 hack attack damage and 150 (157?) health vs 11 hack damage and 200 health of Athenian Marines. Lower defensive stats across the board, too. All the other good sword units (Macedonian black cloaks, Roman heavy infantry, etc.) all have stats identical to Athenian Marines. As far as swordsmen go, the Skiritai are actually pretty mediocre.

I've seen a lot of references to the Spartans being one of the better factions in the game, but to me they seem underpowered; though I think I may be missing some things, so I want to ask a few questions: One of the loading screens says that Spartiates are the strongest infantry unit in the game - but their stats are identical to Athenian City Guards and also, I believe, Macedonian Shieldbearers (and wouldn't the Silver Shield upgrade make the Macedonian Shieldbearers better than the Spartiates?). Am I missing something? I also see a lot of talk about Skiritai Commandos, but their stats are a lot worse than Athenian Marines, even though they both become available at P2. They're much cheaper than Athenian Marines, but the latter can also be trained in ports, on ships, and in gymnasiums. I know the Skiritai also come out of the barracks with Elite experience, but even so their stats are still lower than that of Marines. I'm also not sure about this, as their advertised health is 150, but mine come out with 157 health. I thought elite units had a 20% health bonus? Am I missing/misunderstanding some things? It kind of seems like the Spartans are just nerfed versions of the Athenians and Macedonians with far fewer units, and outmatched stats wise.