Do you ever use Swordsmen?

[couerdelion]

Any serious early war will be much easier with Swordsmen. Pre-Construction, your Axemen will have a tough time beating archer defenders while Swordsmen tend to cut through them with ease. If you’re worried about meeting Axemen then take one or two along with you and make them Medics. Chariots are OK but not very effective if the Axeman attacks you.

In the classical era, Swordsmen will be the most cost-effective way of capturing cities – except perhaps cats.

[Blake]

I like swords. For example one role I have for Swords is defending against Longbows, the Sword is equal to a Longbow but costs 10h less. Unlike Axemen, swords have better than even odds vs Catapults (for many of these tasks Horse archers are as good or better, but they are more expensive, require an expensive tech and sometimes there's no horses).

Swords win quite a bit more often than axes so tend to promote better, this makes them ideal to upgrade to Macemen.

Due to fairly high base strength Swords get good mileage out of Combat, I quite often use straight Combat swords for passive or active defense, with City Raider being the other main configuration. Sometimes I use Shock Swords (mainly if I'm short of Axemen) or Cover Swords (defense against longbows).

A lot of the time I figure "Why build Axemen when I can build Swords?", unless I'm fighting a melee heavy army I want swords every time.

Whether I use Swords or Axes (tech considerations aside) really depends on how highly promoted my swords are, if I have a solid core of veteran swords I tend to get just enough cats to remove defenses, but if I don't have good swords I tend to just get lots of cats, with a token escort (possibly containing combat swords).

[Arrian]

I will sometimes use swords. If I'm going to fight early but not ultra-early, I'll use swords/axes/catapults as my force composition. Ultra-early would be chariots*/axes or quecha (if inca, clearly).

Oftentimes I hit ultra early and then not again until Macemen/Trebs, in which case I don't use swords at all.

-Arrian

* - especially War Chariots or Immortals.