Ashdod is worthless now

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by triqui

Actually is you the one that do not understand the issues. First, having encumbrance 7 is not really a problem. Having encumbrance 7 in a unit that cost 150g 88r, and thus is going to be horribly outnumbered in any situation, is.
Ashdod giants often are incredibly low number armies. To beat chaff (specially, but not only, undead chaff), they need a TON of turns.

There are other high encumbrance units in the game. Centaur Cataphracts have encumbrance 7 as well. However, for the price you have 1 single Annakite that 2 two attacks, Centaurs do *eight* attacks. So the amount of rounds both armies are going to be fighting is not even close. In a combat where Centaurs get say, 30 fatigue, the Annakite get one hundred and twenty.

I don't know what else can I do. I'll reiterate:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

Its not 7 effective encumbrance. What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless. You want to talk about strawmen, why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Regarding Berserk: they're still fatigue neutral until they berserk. Berserking isn't some automatic reaction to being in combat, it requires they take damage. Through protection 18 after E10 bless. And even after they berserk they're going to build up fatigue rather slowly. So yes, I'm well aware of the fatigue, my point is the benefits of berserking vastly outweigh, and it will probably be multiple rounds of combat before they even start berserking in the first place, and until they do they are in fact fatigue neutral.

Way to ignore that commanders are where Ashdod's game has always been, btw, which invalidates your entire side of the argument. The only reason Ashdod uses recruitable troops is expansion - a task for which its units, all its units, are still perfectly good.