Ironhold Empire fields five families of units. Each has an attack, defense, health, speed, and food upkeep profile, plus a role and hard counter.
Spearmen are the cheapest melee unit and the hard counter to cavalry. Every keep starts with a small spear garrison and most players build a spear core before anything else. Swordsmen unlock at Barracks level 5; they trade cost for raw attack and are the mainline PvP infantry.
Archers punish slow infantry with high attack and low defense. Stack them behind spearmen so the spears absorb the first exchange. Crossbowmen(Archery Range 8) deal siege-tier damage to armored targets but march slowly — pair them with cavalry for balanced march speed.
Light Horse is the fastest scouting and raiding unit; it shortens march time for the whole army. Heavy Cavalry (Stables 10) is the strongest anti-archer unit and the backbone of most late-game raid stacks — expensive to train and expensive to lose.
Rams and Trebuchets ignore a percentage of wall defense bonuses, making them essential for attacking high-tier keeps. They contribute little to open-field combat, so bring them only when you intend to break defenses.
Sappers are expensive specialists trained at the Siege Workshop. During a Sack mission, if the defender's army is wiped, Sappers destroy a random building — placing a 50% production penalty on it until the owner repairs it. Sappers march at −15% attack power, so they should ride behind a full army, never lead one.
The rock-paper-scissors triangle is Spearmen > Cavalry > Archers > Spearmen. Mixed armies always outperform mono-type stacks against a defender you cannot scout. Faction production buffs and weekly titles can shift these balances by up to 25%.
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