Melee Power Rankings Chart

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The combat simulator tells me that the number of ulm guardians or knights I can get for the first two turns of gold/resource will do far better against indies than the same amount spent on pikeneer_1s. But in play, the pikeneers seem to do dramatically better.

This seems to be for three reasons:

1, Most important, the repel causes indies to rout sooner.
2. The greater size of the starting out army with pikeneers causes my army to be less likely to rout.
3. The guardians/knights get bunched up in the default starting forces and don't actually do as much. On the other hand, if two or three knights are deployed such that they engage by themselves, they have a too high chance of dying.