I have fallen many times to krush
TM players, and I was strugling to find good counters for the turma/cheiroballista armies taht they would make right outside my base. I knew axes were out of the question- 5% unupgraded peirce armor makes them die in, if unlucky, one cheiro hit. But, in my editor tests of ~equal rescource armies, I still included them. They did surprisingly well w/ cheiro's despite their peirce armor (this was primarily a simple, noobie stat test so I only tested one unit against annother at a time), but they generally lost unless put right next to them before playtesting scenario. Cheiro's generally killed spears, again unless they were placed right next to them. Slingers, on the other hand, did very well. Sometimes, with 6 cheiro's v 13.857142continuing slingers (took hp's off of 14th for closer accuracy)(note these are kronny cheiro's not oranos/gaia cheiro's so they cost 194 res instead of 215), 9 or 10 slings would remain after the fight.V turma's, spears won by far. Axes didn't stand a chance, I think. SLings broke kinda even with them/ lost by a bit to them due to slight number advantage but overall crappieness of the slinger.
Also, I would like to note that, in response to someone's point about the uselessness of spears in eggy v eggy classical fights. Turns out they kill slingers easily, making them necesary.
The normal flow chart is mainline inf> calv> archers> mainline inf. Well, since slings> archers, put them in place of calv. That is, them, peltasts, turmae(explaining above test) and i think norse TA's but I don't know much about norse since i dont play them much due to insanely weeeird eco.Hope this helps other n00bs too lazy or n00bish to do own tests.
SAVE THE WADJETS
I was on these forums before you were BORN!!!