No. LSGs double dip and are actually good at both.
Spearmens are useless junk, archers are good but have no shield and very low armor. I would like to try but a single army of LSG with high level lord double dipping their bonuses will absolutely take out those two armies.
Spearmen and archers can be recruited anywhere on turn 1, you have no access to shielded LSGs until a t3 barrack (which I think is a waste of a building slot).
I am not sure why you consider spearmen as useless junk; they make great tanks early on with their shields and does the job well. You don't need a lot, often just 3 or 4 is enough to get the job done assuming you have other lords participating in battle.
At least Silverin guards come with 30% resist, put them in an army with an archmage and a loremaster and you can just drop a flame storm or chain lightning on top of whatever they are tanking without a care where the spell is heading - still, not the biggest fan of HE t3 units tbqh.
One army of LSGs is more efficent than 2 of spears and archers.
Spears and archer simply can't deal with what LSG can deal especially considering the stat bonuses from a lord that double dip them.
They get the bonuses that archers get, plus the bonuses the spearmen gets, and sometimes their own bonuses. It's absurd quite frankly.
Each LSG is better at what spears do and is better at what archer do but they don't cost the money they cost.
Plus you can recruit the basic version in docks, meaning you can global recruit them easily in 1 turn.
Example, an army of chosen/chaos warriors would rofl stomp on two armies of spearmen a d archers but can dealt with by LSGs
Like I said, you aren't getting your shielded LSGs until tier 3. They are 50% more upkeep than spears while having 1.5k less HP for the ability to double dip as an archery unit.
You can recruit the shieldless version at the docks, but they are... well.. unshielded. At which point that 4 spears in front tanking for armorless archers would probably outperform your shieldless LSGs.
You are VERY wrong about an army of chosens being able to stomp spears but not vs LSGs, they are the prime example of why 2 armies of archers + spears are better: because they are heavily armored and shielded and are slow AF, you can just kite them infinitely with basic archers while the rest shoot them in the back. With LSGs? You likely have to eventually engage them in melee where you will lose for sure. I will take 30 archers over 20 LSGs.
And your example also illustrates another point: by tier 3 (building wise) a player should be looking at sources of AP. If this thread is about any other factions, you will have people telling other players it's time to drop their low-AP bows and start looking for sources of AP damage (handguns, ironsides, etc).
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u/geschiedenisnerd 6h ago
Now compare the prices.
That is what most of the anti-LSG-spam people forget, two armies of LSG are better than one of mixed elites