Gbeto is a fast raiding unit, while TA is a Hand Cannoneer replacement.
Elephant Archer is tankier and does extra damage vs defenses while War Wagon deals more damage to units and costs Wood.
Woad Raider is a fast raiding unit that can tank a bit, while Shotel Warrior is a flash defense unit or protection against Huskarls and eagles, for your Archers.
Cataphract is an anti-counter unit, while Boyar is a Knight with more Armour.
Cheaper Upgrades ( 600g vs 1150g, no need of Blast Furnace and still higher attack)
Throwing Axeman :
More tankiness (70hp vs 45hp and +1 melee armor)
Cheaper Cost per Unit (25g vs 40g)
Less attack Delay (0.8 vs 1.0)
Keep in mind also they serve different roles. Gbeto is meant to raid and is not really key in the Malian army, meanwhile Throwing Axeman destroys anything that counters the Frank Paladin. It’s a very expensive and late unit to get, especially if you go for Paladin, but you almost never regret going for it.
The cataphract is an anti-infantry cavalry, but more in general, an anti-anti-cav. It have armor that negates 16 cav bonus damage, meaning that halbs deals hlaf of their bonus damage, and camels and GC deals none. Then it have an anti infantry bonus and trample damage, so they counter infantry even harder.
The boyar isn’t an anti infantry unit, it’s a mounted teutonic knight. It have high melee armor, that makes them good against other melee units, like champs or knights, but it doesn’t negate bonus damage, like the one of hlabs or Camels.
The gbeto have higher attack, range and speed, and it’s suited for being a fast raiding unit that can snipe units and buildings.
The TA is slower, but it cost less gold and have more HP and MA. It’s basically a champ that have range, and it’s used to kill trash units, like pikes, from the back of the franks paladins. But it can also be used as a front line unit, or with halbs. It’s effective against pikes, skirms, eagles, light cav and camels.
The WR is basically a champion, but with a bit more HP and speed, and it fits the same role of a champ.
The SW is a glass cannon instead, it have a crazy high attack and bonus damage vs buildings, but very low HP and armor. Basically you can train SW in 3 seconds each, spam a group in the enemy base and kill vills and buildings alike. WR can raid too, but they are also made as a frontline unit to protect celts siege.
Theoretically, they should fit the same role, but the WW simply it’s better…
As you can see, the only advantage of the EA is that they have more HP. WW have more PA, attack, range, speed and it cost less.
The EA attacks faster, but the WW higher attack more than compensate for that, on top of that, the WW is cheaper and it’s trained in less time.
Koreans also have 2 bonuses that directly affect the WW, the wood discount, and the free archer armors, making going for WW a really strong meta for them (but also probably the only one that they have…).
