Which Units do you favor for Ancient Era Conquest?

[Thrawn05]

I play defensivly until the late industrial age, only because I'm a big builder and stuck in my ways. I will go on the offensive if I need to, usaly with my Legionaries, since they can hold ground pretty good with the extra defense.

[Panzer Elite]

I use both Swordsmen and Horsemen I make alot more Swordsmen though.

[Dom Pedro II]

I am like Thrawn in that I am a builder... well, that's partly it. The other thing is that I feel like being an Ancient warmonger is like being a professional gambler. It can pay off sometimes if you're lucky, but I wouldn't base my livelihood on it... I feel that railroads, blitzkrieg, and my beloved bombers are the only way to go for a war.

On the other hand, since I am a builder, if I get crammed on a tiny continent with another civilization, I feel the best thing to do is continue building on the ruins of their cities. Hey, its better that one of us should go on to be prosperous than have us stifle each other's growth, no? Survival of the fittest..

In those cases, I have to say that a Swordsmen are the key to an effective offensive. Horsemen are my economic weapon. Economic in the sense that they are useful for destroying iron and horse resources. They can be useful in cleaning up border-crossing warriors or archers, or pushing over that enemy Spearmen in a city down to his last hitpoint or two... In frontline combat, I never find them particularly useful, especially against fortified cities.

I almost never use archers, and the only time I would is if I had no iron. I doubt there's enough time to build an army of archers and move them to an enemy's territory before they have Spearmen.

And warriors... I keep them in their cities, and the only time they see action is either when some sneaky archer gets around into my heartland, or if they are standing on the bodies of my Spearmen as the enemy launches their final wave of swordsmen

[The_Hawk]

I've started to experiment with some new Civs. I usually play Egypt and France, but i've recently tried Rome and Persia. WOW!!! The Roman Legionary is great in the ancient era. Its an upgrade on the Swordsman and can double as a Pikeman and Swordsman. Its slower than I'm used to, since I usually have War Charriotts, but more powerful as well. They don't upgrade, which sucks, but they rock..... slowly. Immortals are a notch above as well. They're like slow moving knights! And getting them when the AI still mostly has spearman is almost...... too powerful.

But if we're talking non-AI, I like to push ahead swiftly from one front with my fastest units (starting with Horsemen, then Knights, then Cavalry) and use Swordsmen in combo with Catapults in a more deliberate, larger stack. I must say that although slower, swordsmen are pretty cool, especially against Spearman, with that extra attack point. But the Horseman's retreat ability and capability of traversing Mountain tiles is cool.

As for Warriors, I build them only as scouts and once they've done their duty, I garrison my elite Warriors in a city until I can upgrade them, or disband them for their shields.

[Dom Pedro II]

If you're on the other end of the Immortals, they are definitely too powerful. I was playing as the Babylonians once, and I was stuck on an island with the Persians... whew! Well, needless to say, I hit them before Iron Working. I got a city and destroyed another, but when I saw that first guy with a sword rear his ugly head from the depths of their empire, I said "Hold it!" and made peace. The next war, a few turns later, when they had a whole army of Immortals, well, that was quite an uphill battle. The only thing that really worked there was attacking the Immortals before they could attack me. Hitting an Immortal first puts you on somewhat of level ground again.