What am I Missing About the Spartans?

[CandidClodhopper]

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.

[Gurken Khan]

I think you might be right. (I'm not delving for every stat detail.)

Maybe they were strong in an earlier stage but got overtook in the meantime.

[CandidClodhopper]

10 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I think you might be right. (I'm not delving for every stat detail.)

Maybe they were strong in an earlier stage but got overtook in the meantime.

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.

[Vantha]

Interesting. I actually think, the Skiritai are actually one of the best (and most underestimated) units in 0ad, especially for new players.

Not in terms of stats. But they are available as soon as reaching phase two, nearly twice as cheap as full champion units, and they can gather resources, champions can't. When reaching phase 2 at 100 pop, you can easily train 100 Skiritai before hitting the 300 pop cap, and that while sacrificing barely any booming speed. And the Skiritai are significantly stronger than basic citizen soldiers, especially spearman. 100 of them so early can give a huge advantage.

Athenian marines on the other hand require a gymnasion to be built and then the tech to be researched, can only be trained at the gymnasion itself (while Skiritai can be at the barracks), and cannot gather resources or build anything. It's simply impossible to train them at the speed that you can Skiritai. Ive tried several times but never managed to take advantage of the fact that Athenian marines are available in phase 2 already, at least not without significant drops in booming efficiency.

All in all, Skiritai can't compete with champions, but can replace your much weaker basic spearman in huge numbers, which can give you a bigger advantage than a few (but individually stronger) champion units.

Edited April 29 by Vantha

[Player of 0AD]

5 hours ago, CandidClodhopper said:

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.

You seem to miss that Spartans have a unique tech for their champs which gives them more health. So they might be even stronger than Macedonian ones. And then the Leonidas hero can make them even stronger.

Rank three units have (125%)^2 more health than rank 1 -->   157%

One more benefit of the spartans is their team bonus: 10% extra health for spearmen... One of the best team bonuses in the game.

Also, unlike Macedonians, they have citizen hoplites and the hoplite tradtion tech, this is quite powerful.

However, I don't like Spartans because they lack champion cavalry and some of the benefits which Athenians have.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

There are a lot of changes coming to sparta in a27, maybe you will be interested:

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha27

There is a section for "Differentiating Sparta," I might have missed a couple things btw, but these are the most impactful.

Edited April 29 by real_tabasco_sauce

[CandidClodhopper]

On 29/04/2024 at 7:20 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

There are a lot of changes coming to sparta in a27, maybe you will be interested:

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha27

There is a section for "Differentiating Sparta," I might have missed a couple things btw, but these are the most impactful.

Nice! These look like pretty significant upgrades. Can't wait!

Any word on when A27 will be released?

[CandidClodhopper]

On 29/04/2024 at 4:10 PM, Player of 0AD said:

You seem to miss that Spartans have a unique tech for their champs which gives them more health. So they might be even stronger than Macedonian ones. And then the Leonidas hero can make them even stronger.

Rank three units have (125%)^2 more health than rank 1 -->   157%

One more benefit of the spartans is their team bonus: 10% extra health for spearmen... One of the best team bonuses in the game.

Also, unlike Macedonians, they have citizen hoplites and the hoplite tradtion tech, this is quite powerful.

However, I don't like Spartans because they lack champion cavalry and some of the benefits which Athenians have.

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.

[CandidClodhopper]

On 29/04/2024 at 2:36 PM, Vantha said:

Interesting. I actually think, the Skiritai are actually one of the best (and most underestimated) units in 0ad, especially for new players.

Not in terms of stats. But they are available as soon as reaching phase two, nearly twice as cheap as full champion units, and they can gather resources, champions can't. When reaching phase 2 at 100 pop, you can easily train 100 Skiritai before hitting the 300 pop cap, and that while sacrificing barely any booming speed. And the Skiritai are significantly stronger than basic citizen soldiers, especially spearman. 100 of them so early can give a huge advantage.

Athenian marines on the other hand require a gymnasion to be built and then the tech to be researched, can only be trained at the gymnasion itself (while Skiritai can be at the barracks), and cannot gather resources or build anything. It's simply impossible to train them at the speed that you can Skiritai. Ive tried several times but never managed to take advantage of the fact that Athenian marines are available in phase 2 already, at least not without significant drops in booming efficiency.

All in all, Skiritai can't compete with champions, but can replace your much weaker basic spearman in huge numbers, which can give you a bigger advantage than a few (but individually stronger) champion units.

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.

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, CandidClodhopper said:

Any word on when A27 will be released?

May 2025. jk, it's not talked about*. After ten (?) years our project lead @Stan`has retired. I don't know if the devs are pursuing to elect a succession, there hasn't been communication with the community*. We're traditionally somewhat short on devs, so I'm feeling it's up in the air at the time being.

*as far as I'm aware

[Frederick_1]

I think some infoscreens while loading are outdated. For example the iberian fireship is only effective against ship, not against harbours, as ist was. But strongest Infantrie unit is true with the agape technology, which can be explored in the military cantine. Then they go to 250 health, with a penality in training time. Silver Shild only yield 220 health.
The spartanian hoplite with +10 health bonus is also pretty strong for citizen melee units. With rank they upgrade from 111 over 138 to 172. They also get stronger from 3,0/ 2,5 hack/pierce damage to 4,3/3,6. Their resistance increase from 5/5/15 to 7/7/15 (hack/pierce/crush). No forge upgrade. So they get really cavaly killers. With the hoplite tradition they are much more likely to reach a rank in gameplay compared to other melee.
Albeit the potolomies pikeman, when ever they get rank promoted with 157 health and the Ptolomy IV Champion bonus +40% health, they end up with 219 health having pretty good resistance, they become tough to fight in the champion aura.

What I do miss on the spartaniens is chamion cavalery, or a replacement. The Siritaki can gather, but like all promoted units their effectiveness goes down. Wood chopping rate of 0,37 for example is little more than half of woman wood chopping. So best they are used for building/repair.

When I started with 0.ad Version 0.24 spartans had two special buildings. The stoa and the royal stoa. When you look into the scenario "Laconia" you can still see them because player 1 is starting with each one of them. Albeit.... they are both called "stoa", and not much of use now (okey you can garnison any unit in the royal stoa, this is good when under attack, and they are pretty).
They were able to train Thracian Black Cloaks ( see Macedon), as soon as you get into phase two. I really liked that feature of the spartanians. The black Cloaks saved my ass serveral times when I was fighting computer AI on alpha 0.24.
Generally it seems to me units were more different those days. From my remembering their walking speed was like the naked fanatics of the gauls. Nowadays they are like all other chamion melee, except for fanatics.

[Emacz]

On 29/04/2024 at 4:10 PM, Player of 0AD said:

You seem to miss that Spartans have a unique tech for their champs which gives them more health. So they might be even stronger than Macedonian ones. And then the Leonidas hero can make them even stronger.

Rank three units have (125%)^2 more health than rank 1 -->   157%

One more benefit of the spartans is their team bonus: 10% extra health for spearmen... One of the best team bonuses in the game.

Also, unlike Macedonians, they have citizen hoplites and the hoplite tradtion tech, this is quite powerful.

However, I don't like Spartans because they lack champion cavalry and some of the benefits which Athenians have.

Macedonian shield bears own Spartiate's.... yes spartiates get more lvl 250 vs 220 with their tech, but the extra 3 dmg they get is enough to off set that.

Skiri can be OP mid game, if used well... but out side of that, its really brasidas and skrimishers with hoptlite meat shield... I am fine with spartans lacking some of the flexibility of other civs... but at least spartiates should be more effective since they were at the core of spartan life and success

[Frederick_1]

What are 3 dmg ??

They get 10% more attack...but it might depend on installed mods.