Recommended Early game infantry army compositions

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

What are recommended infantry unit compositions of the early game right after City Defense, Carpentry and later on, Bronze Working are researched? (Slot of four) choices that are useful to defend cities, forts or outposts?

Two melees (warriors OR spearmen, or respective replacement units) and Two archers or Three melees and one archer?
And in either case do you have reinforcing army nearby so they could join a fight if one army is attacked? In early games there are significant chance of getting attacked by either rivals or aggressive independent peoples which often comes with chariots and archer supports.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

This is something I've toyed with, but appears to mostly be a problem during early aggression.

My intuition is also two melee units and two archers; however, this only works on the attack. When defending in anything but an ideal bottleneck, the archers tend to die pretty quickly.

My goal is to defend cities with archer stacks and go on the offense with a mix of melee and archers in their own stacks. In the Ancient Era, it can be tough to have an adequate front to include archers, but with better melee units, I can skew more toward archers, and they can hold their own for a while.

The biggest issue for me with early armies is population. Without adequate tribal units from the Neolithic, it can be hard to generate adequate four-stacks.

 

[Forster]

I tend to use three melee and one archer. Once I get mounted/chariot units I replace on melee with the horse unit. If the horse unit is an archer I replace the foot archer. Once I get the 5 unit army I usually tun with three melee and two archer.

 

[DrCron]

Archers are insanely OP in this game. Therefore, you always want at least 2 archers in your early game armies (and btw you'll hardly ever want to upgrade them to crossbowmen).

The 2 melee units are there only to protect the archers or to take enemy cities later on. Most of the times you'll want warriors, since they're stronger than spearmen. If you are fighting assyrians, though, or even huns a bit later, you'll need spearmen.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ Actually crossbowmen in that game ain't anything better than archers because like in IRL. Crossbowmen can't do NLOS attack.