Spearmen take far too long

col0005 wrote: Also time to make the resources..... this is only ever a problem for bows and spears when a player is very VERY small.

I disagree with this.  Unless you are militarily inactive for a very long time, you'll find plenty of cause to produce units 24/7.  With a top-level barracks, this does become quite difficult even with top-level common ground and other bottleneck structures.  That's before discovering the value of using more specialized (read, homogeneous) armies in larger multi-location battles.  (This is a factor even Harmless didn't encounter until the January tournament.)

Then factor in sovereignty, and you can have some cities producing a focus unit up to 3x faster in a single city.  You can bet your pants then that equipment supply becomes the real issue by a mile.


Now, if all you need is bows/spears/gold, then equipment production isn't a problem--which only means you have your huge benefit right there.  Because those aren't bottleneck resources, otherwise-focused cities will overproduce and even be able to supply the cities on unit production steroids.

They do only use 1 beer; whereas the other races need 1 leather aromour (which needs 1 cow) - so factoring in the time for the resources to make the unit - they are a bit faster and cheaper...