Almogavers
| “Aur! Aur! Desperta ferro!” | |
In game[edit | edit source]
 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Heavy javelin mercenary infantry, doesn't train as fast as Daylamiyan (has 33% reduction training time as opposed to 50%) but can be used as anti-cavalry missile infantry.
| |||||||
| Prereq: | Build time | HP | LOS | Attack | Attack speed | Movement speed
| ||
|
12.5s (188t) |
145 | 8 | 15 | 2.1s (32t) |
22
| ||
| Cost | Created from | Armour | Weapon range | Specialty | ||||
| Base | Ramp | Pop | ||||||
|
|
1 | 
|
4 | Melee |
| ||
|
| ||||||||
Overall strategy[edit | edit source]
Arguably the best Castle Age mercenary unit in existence, the Almogavers are a variant of heavy javelin men, trained and drilled in the same way as the Daylami Infantry, although they are faster to create and also quicker on the march. These troops, while easy to kill from close up, are however high lethal against cavalry, and as a skirmishing force can rain woe upon your foes. As mercenaries, they also share the two hallmarks of such units: relatively fast training time and their exorbitant cost in wealth.
Unit summary[edit | edit source]
- Meeting Their Match — Almogavers are best used against cavalry and slow-moving infantry - light infantry that is fast or capable of outranging them are highly lethal.
History[edit | edit source]
The Almogavers (possibly from Spanish Arabic, "raiders" or "troublemakers") could trace their origins back to poor soldiers fighting as light infantry throughout the Middle Ages. Islamic sources of the period mentioned that several cities in Spain had begun raising warriors named as such as early as the 10th century. Initially of Aragonese origin in eastern Spain, Almogavers soon included even those not of Catalan extraction, and soon became a racially heterogenous crew including peoples such as Basques, Franks, Spaniards and even Orthodox Greeks and Muslim Turks. Despite being armed only with rudimentary armour and bearing nothing but spears, javelins and daggers, the ferocity and spiritedness of these men made them highly fearsome foes to deal with and made them notorious throughout Southern Europe as mercenaries, where they helped in creating the Latin Kingdoms of the Levant in the wake of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
