EA Arco's troops? Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

What troops should I recruit as EA Arco against players? From what I've experienced, all the troops besides the Cardaces and Slingers seem to be overpriced or extremely situational novelties. Mono blessed wind riders are pretty good, but are cap only. Overall, they seem to be rather lackluster in unit strength compared to the other EA nations except for maybe Caelum. Even Marveni has some pretty decent knights and infantry.
I must be missing something obvious, so I am asking for advice.

Edited by: amuys

You're basically correct. EA Arco is a nation of powerful mages and fast researchers. Their army isn't really there to do much except hold the line for your evokers or be a clotheshorse for buffs.

I would indeed make Cardaces my default unit in PvP. Slingers are good if you cast Flaming Arrows, and for their cheap siege value, but terrible otherwise. If you have Production scale, it's worth building a few myrmidons to hold the line, but you probably took sloth for your philosophers and thus essentially can't build any. Chariots expand well and do well against conventional armies, but die far too fast to giants and nuke mages. Icarids are there as backup for a flying mage raider, or to get Strength of Giants and Weapons of Sharpness cast on them and then dive the enemy back line.

EDIT: If you already have a large number of cardaces, stop building them and start building peltasts until your cardaces start getting killed off.

Edited by: Orionja

Chariot Archers for expansion, Peltasts for fodder, Icarids for specialty in mid/late. Although I guess in Dom4 I'd just go for a SC and jav expansion rather than the fixed chariots.

I kind of have bad luck with chariots. They'd run in, trample a few dudes and then get hacked to pieces.

Chariots are strange. If you have slightly too few, they get surrounded and hacked down. but if you have just enough, you can stop indies with essentially no losses.