Second @TastyBagel
I’ve also tried (and failed, mostly) using human infantry as my main damage dealers. My main success using Kingdoms of Men is using a mounted-knights-plus-flying-heroes army. This worked quite well, but fears phalanx.
I do love the view of massed infantry. Recently, I did a battle against a good friend both using a Kingdoms of Men army. Here we are facing each other and it looks so bloody good!
My army was a hodgepodge of both my human armies as I wanted to try out two hordes of riflemen and three hordes of halberdiers, which I dont have in my main army. Here’s the view from my side of the board:
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(Terraindisclaimer: the riflemen 2nd from the top are in a wood, I just removed the trees for easy gaming. The green area shows where it is.)
To come to my point: (I know, it took some time…) is that human infantry are lacking in the damage department. Granted, they don’t break the bank, but they fail to do he amount of damage needed to rout a serious hammer. This battle, I took hordes (as their damage output is much better), but still they fell short.
Some calculations to back this up:
-a horde of spearmen/pikemen (30 attacks) will do on average 5 wounds to a defense 5+ target (unhindered and without bane chant). With bane chant, this increases to 7,5.
-a horde of polearms (25 attacks, CS 1) will do 6-and-a-bit wounds to a defense 5+ unit, with bane chant, this increases to 8-and-a-bit.
For regiments, the numbers halve.
My “thresshold” for hammer units is 10 damage against defense 5+. (a 15/17 unit needs 10 wounds for a "7 " to rout it), but I prefer units that can do up to 12. This means, that even hordes need a double-charge to reliably rout most enemy hammers. For regiments, you’ll need a tripple-charge or even more.
For human infantry to pass this thresshold, you’ll need a foot guard horde with great weapons and bane chant. Fanatic-hordes reach this thresshold without.
This doesn’t mean that unit which don’t reach this thresshold (for instance, a unit of knights only reaches 8-two-thirds) are useless, but they need support, either from bane chant or (better) from support heroes. That’s where the brilliant general-on-winged-beast comes in. With his support (even without flanks) a horde from a unit of halberdiers becomes viable. Alternatively, one can try to field multiple small units (Fanatic troops come to mind) supported by the generals to create the same effect.
Much also depends on terrain. Our 4+ infantry loses a lot of effectivity in terrain and with hordes, these are hard to miss. That’s why I prefer hordes of pikemen in the front (these need to have IW since you dont want them wavered) supported by troops of fanatics or foot guard. If you need the unlocks, switch these out for regiments of fanatics or polearms.
A final observation: With the new update, our wizard-on-pegasus is a brilliant chaff piece. Most of the time, I “forget” to give him spells or I give him just a cheap hex. The role of these guys is to get in the way in a critical moment, preventing a double- or tripple charge against your key units.
I just remember I wrote a blog post about Kingdoms of Men in Clash 24. Here it is:
(the mounted dude should probably have the lute?)
