Race with the best units

[MrBiscuits]

I'm thinking it might be High Elves, with +1 to-hit and high resistance on all units and Longbowmen being excellent early units that are still useful towards the end of a game and Elven Lords which just seem to destroy everything without taking any damage. A couple of adamatium Elven Lords can kill 11 Hammerhands without taking any damage. Pegasai seem too fragile and weak to be much use though.

Trolls are excellent too, with regen, high attack and health on most units and War Mammoths one of the best late game units.

Gnolls seem quite bad, with their best unit Jackal Riders having far too low resistance making them almost useless in the end game and no interesting abilities other than lots of figures. It feels like they have a unit missing somewhere too for a war race that has a bad economy. I've just started razing Gnoll cities now.

Beastmen aren't great either with Minotaurs being clearly worse than War Mammoths and the rest of their units quite boring. Maybe give them a bit more defence and perhaps give Manticores another figure.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

The lack of responses may be because your question is a bit too vague. Best units for what? One race might have the best units for massive life boosting + warlord, but are useless without that boosting. One might be best late game, but lousy early game, and vice-versa. For some strategies, the racial units are unimportant. Huge map, tiny map; low minerals, rich minerals: all these choices can change which race and units are best.

An easier question might be: Which race has the units that are most difficult to make good use of?

[Seravy]

Exactly, various races are designed for various purposes.

Gnolls are the fastest early game race. They rely on expanding a lot using wolf riders or halberdiers then use that advantage to overcome their more limited mid and late options. Obviously that's not useful if you're not a Gnoll player and conquer them in the mid/late game so in that case even razing them can make sense.

Beastmen are the most versatile race on Myrran. They don't get outstanding units, but they get a bit of everything. They have extra health and attack but also produce power,grow quickly and can build everything. They get a flying unit, a heavy hitting low figure count unit and ranged cavalry on top of every generic unit type. Other races might have better units but are more specialized. Dwarves don't get magic buildings or power production. Draconians are fragile. Dark Elves grow slow, have no engineer and aren't good at melee combat. Trolls get a weak economy and their units have poor resistance.

High elves are the best late game race on Arcanus with both good units and economy. But their growth rate is the worst, they don't have the building speed of High Men nor the versatility and resistance of nomad units, and they get neither shaman/priest nor engineers so they pay a price for that.

Not every race is designed to be the one which has the strongest units. Not every race is designed to be equal in all phases of the game. A new Gnoll city will be more useful on turn 20 than a High Elf one but on turn 200 that's reversed.

[MrBiscuits]

Fair enough. I always wondered the advantage with gnolls, but I guess with just smithy and stables you can get wolf riders out very quickly. Although they will struggle against nature with sprites, death with black sleep and ghouls, chaos with shatter and sorcery with confusion as their resistance is so low. Perhaps because I play small maps I don't have the same need for fast expansion again neutral cities as there aren't really many.

Jackal riders seem to be too late to be used for fast expansion though.

Actually I've just realised there is a manual that explains the role of each race in the game which I'd never seen before.

[teelaurila]

Also, pegasai have amazing strategic options. The obvious one is scouts, but the better one is luring your enemy into wasting their mana in combat casting. With death you can even add in mana leak to it. Cheesy but powerful against many opponents who lack the tools to effectively dispose of the pegasai. Obviously you don't attack their strong stacks but those 2 halberdiers etc that usually litter the field at and after mid-game.