Slavic Raiders

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"If it were not for the discord among them, no other people would equal them.”

— Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, 10th century Andalusian merchant and diplomat

In game[edit | edit source]

Slavmercs.png
Slavic Raiders — Vital statistics
Slavic Raiders

Fast-training but weak light melee mercenary unit, good only for cannon fodder.

Prereq: Build time HP LOS Attack Attack speed Movement
speed
Upgrades to
Level 2: Mercenaries Military
10s
(150t)
105 8 16 2.1s
(32t)
29

Smoors icon.png | Halberdier rkc.png | Sword elite icon.png | Armmilit icon.png

Cost Created from Armour Weapon range Specialty
Base Ramp Pop
Wealth.jpg: 90
Wealth.jpg: 2
1 Outpost.jpg 1 Melee

Small defensive bonus versus missile infantry.

Sicily Venice.jpg Portugal.jpg Papal States.jpg Serbians.jpg Moors.jpg Saracens.jpg Turks.jpg Russians

Overall strategy[edit | edit source]

Hailing from the Balkans, Slavic Raiders have somewhat more hitpoints than most other contemporary mercenary infantry, making them slightly more efficient in battle. Even so, their hitpoint ratings are still fairly poor, and the best that these units can do would be to fill your ranks and to stall incoming enemies. Don't expect them to perform well at their task, though: heavy infantry and heavy cavalry will destroy them fairly quickly if given the chance.

Slavic Raiders are of some interest to the Moors, because they can be upgraded. Once Darul Islam is researched and a decentralised state is chosen by selecting Republic as your mid-tier government, Slavic Raiders can then be upgraded to become Thaghri Footmen, who are mercenary infantry. Although they take a little longer to train and are a tad pricier, they are considerably more solid and can be used to hold a line or frontier, viz thaghr in Spanish Arabic. In contrast, however, the Venetian army will lose the ability to recruit these men once Centralisation is initialised — but those Slavic Raiders that have survived until then will instantly upgrade to Espadachines.

Unit summary[edit | edit source]

  • Money Can't Buy You Love — Slavic Raiders are not as good as locally raised Militia: they suffer from having less than half half the armour and toughness of normal Militia, but train 3 times faster.
  • Spam It Like Starcraft — The quick training speed of Slavic Raiders can sometimes be used as a psychological impact weapon if sufficient wealth can be obtained to pay for them. 
  • Thaghri Footmen — Slavic Raiders raised by the Moors can then be upgraded to become Thaghri Footmen. These units take longer to train and are costlier, but have substantially more hitpoints, as well as improved damage and armour.

History[edit | edit source]

The Slavs were thought to have originally came from somewhere in eastern Europe, particularly in the lands between the Danube and the Vistula rivers, and eventually made their presence felt in the Byzantine and Frankish empires by the mid-7th century, eventually settling down and forming what would be the "Slavic" kingdoms of Bohemia, Poland, Croatia, Serbia and Russia. Contrary to popular belief that the word "Slav" meant "Slave", the demonym "Slav" may mean either "glory" or "word" in many Slavic languages today — the word "slave" only came into existence during the Middle Ages when there was a thriving market in Slavic slaves thanks to Turkic, Arab, and Mongol raiders.