'Elite' Units -- Against the AI, are they worth the cost?

[candew]

My title says it all.

In my current game, I have just created 4 elite Heavy Infrantry units and the moment I left my captital with them I was surprised to see my silver take a nose dive from over +300 silver to over -500 in short order. (I shouldn't have been, as the unit table on this site shows perfectly well their maintence cost in the field, but it was a shock at the time).

Mind you I had by this point over 30K in silver amassed, but if only 4 elite Heavy Infrantry units cost this much to have 'in the field' I stagger at what an entire army of elite units would cost to maintain, especially if you have to move them over a great distance to get to where the action is.

So far in my current game on Hard, all the AI is throwing at me is waves of 2nd class light infrantry and I fail to see the cost benifit of using Elite troops against cannon fodder.

So my question really boils down to this: would, playing against the AI, I be better served finacially utilizing 'Advanced' units (i.e. Hoplites, etc) as opposed to their more expensive elite models? Would I be at a severe disadvantage against the AI?

[joseph_kerr]

Personally if i have the option i like to use heavy cavalry if the AI is going with light infantry. The AI can throw out ungodly amounts of troops and it's surprising how just a few units of decent heavy cavalry can wipe out entire armies of light infantry all by themselves with few losses. They can cost a lot of food and silver but cover ground fast from city to city for the most part.

For me it also depends on what difficulty setting i'm playing on, if i'm playing on very hard i try to get my elite troops as fast as possible even when it stretches my resources to the breaking point because you can always bet the AI is getting there even faster, on hard or below i don't find it as important to have the elite troops.

[honvedseg]

It's like insurance, you pay for it and hope you never need it. I prefer to have one at the core of any serious affensive formation, but I'd balk at paying for en entire front line of them. Hoplites are more than sufficient in open terrain to engage almost anything else, and would make up the bulk of my battle line, with various light and missle troops in support, plus a cav unit for flanking maneuvers. Combined arms seems to work better than a full stack of almost anything.

[rural]

Elite units are really nice
but you got to place em correctly
by placing em correctly
Elite units pretty much overwhelm the AI's units (all kind)
16 elite squad can take down up to 5 x (16 elite squad owned by AI) and still left with 1/3 of the squads

[concreteboy2000]

If you don't have money, just train them. Takes a little bit of time to build training grounds, but it's far more effective and cheaper to recplace Elites...