The winner of last week's Atlantean MU poll (although it was close) was the Satyr. Like the Stymphalian Bird, I was interested in learning more about, and more importantly, TESTING out this unit.

Because they're available to Oranos and Kronos, you would have thought they would be talked about a lot, like the Prometheans. But they're not, and why is that?

As we've seen earlier, The Stymphalian Bird is a very strong MU, and the Hespiredes Tree is useful. And although Traitor isn't as powerful as some Heroic GPs, Behemoths are pretty strong. This would mean Kronos and Oranos players were more likely to worship Rheia or Theia, instead of Hyperion.

Or maybe that's not it. Maybe we don't se Satyr because they're weak units.

Let's look at their stats:

Cost: 225 Wood, 18 Favour, 3 Pop
HP: 400
Speed: 3.75
Range: 16
Hack armour: 50%
Pierce armour: 50%
Pierce damage: 12

Special attack: Throws 3 javelins at enemies instead of 1.
Upgrades available: Gemino: Doubles number of javelins thrown by Satyr (see further information on special attack and upgrades later)

So in general, expensive in terms of wood, but quite cheap in terms of favour and pop.
Surprisingly low HP, slow, reasonable armour, but very weak attack.

To really test out a unit, we need to use it against another unit.

NOTE: All human and hero units used in the tests have Medium upgrades, Heavy upgrades, Copper armoury upgrades and Bronze armoury upgrades. MU' upgrades will be stated.
All attack rates are tested per hit, not second. However, Satyr attacks approximately every 1 second.

Test 1: 1 Satyr (no upgrades) vs 1 Zeus Hoplite

Hoplite stats:
HP: 143
Speed: 4.70
Hack armour: 47%
Pierce armour: 31%
Hack damage: 11

Satyr's special attack does approximately 15 damage to Hoplite (2 spears)
Satyr does approximately 8 damage per regular hit to Hoplite.

Hoplite does approximately 5 damage to Satyr per hit.

Satyr kills Hoplite in 17 seconds, with 321HP left.

I was atually quite surprised to see how little the special, and normal attack did to the Hoplite. For a Heroic Myth Unit, you would have thought it would do quite well against a standard human unit like the Hoplite.

Perhaps it was because the hoplite moved as it came to attack the Satyr, and so a few javelins missed their target.

In that case, how does a Satyr do against a ranged unit?

Test 2: 1 Satyr (no upgrades) vs 1 Isis Chariot Archer

CA stats:
HP: 135
Speed: 5.00
Range: 20
Hack armour: 43%
Pierce armour: 35%
Pierce damage: 14

Satyr's special attack does approximately 15 damage to Chariot Archer (2 spears)
Satyr does approximately 8 damage per regular hit to Chariot Archer.

CA does approximately 9 damage per hit
Satyr takes 17 seconds to kill CA with 278 HP left.

This really is bad news for Satyr fans, not only does it take over 15 seconds for an MU to kill a human unit, but the Satyr actually has a weaker regular attack than the CA.

How could a Heroic myth unit peform worse than a human unit which has no bonus against MUs?
The only thing that works in the Satyr's favour here is the special attack which deals 15, possibly 20-22 if all javelins had hit, but even that is not great for a Heroic MU. Compared to the Manticore and it's super-splash damage, or the Petsuchos uber-attack, and there's no contest.

Speaking of splash damage, it certainly looks as if the Satyr does splash damage from it's special; by looking at the graphics, he throws 3 javelins, often 1 or 2 of them does not hit the unit intended.

Surely against a group of archers if would do well.

Test 3: 1 Satyr (no upgrades) vs 5 Kronos Arcus

Arcus stats:
HP: 72
Range: 20
Hack armour: 31%
Pierce armour: 31%
Pierce damage: 8

Satyr rarely hits 3 arci with special attack, occasionally hits 2, but usually hits 1.

Satyr dies after 21 seconds, but has only killed 2 arci.

Pretty poor performance for the Satyr. Maybe more than one would make a big difference?

Test 4: 3 Satyrs (no upgrades) vs 12 Kronos arci

All Satyrs die - 5 arci left.

Yet MORE disappointment.
Even against Norse, it has trouble with Ulsarks and RCs. The only Norse unit it can really stand up to is the TA, but by the time it's killed a few units, Jarls or Hersir would have swept round and taken them out.

Surely the Gemino upgrade will turn the tide and make Satyrs worth using.

Gemino: Doubles number of javelins thrown..........in the special attack only.
I was under the impression that the Gemino upgrade doubled the regular attack of the Satyr: it doesn't

Gemino increases the number of javelins thrown by the Satyr in its special attack from 3 to 6

There is NO difference in the Satyr's regular attack

Wow, 6x the regular attack, 72! Now that's something....or is it?

No not really, most of the javelins still miss. Even against a group of 20 TAs closely packed into a wall jail, the maximum number of javelins the Satyr managed to throw at one unit was 2, and the maximum amount of units that were attacked by the splash damage was 4.

VERY disappointing indeed.

Further Notes: The only other Heroic Myth Unit the Satyr defeats one on one is the Manticore, although one thing the Satyrs have going for them is that they do quite well against other MUs, just not one on one.
Also, they defeat every human unit up to the Heroic age 1 on 1 except for the Jarl and heroes, for obvious reasons.

The Satyr appears to be affected by the Burning Pitch technology - however, this is just for show, and no extra damage is done to buildings.

The Satyr's special attack does work on villagers.

Like the Stymphalian Bird, the Satyr cannot hit units faster than 5.00

Satyr's are affected by:
Medusa Stone Gaze
Perseus Stone Gaze
Mummy's Minion Change
Argus' Toxic Acid
Lampades' Chaos

Suggested Usage

I would actually suggest you don't bother using Satyr's at all unless you have TONS of wood and favour which you don't know what to do with. Obviously, they're better when massed, but even then, you should probably spend the resources or Arci, Turmae or Cheiros.
But if you ARE going to use them, use them as army support against infantry and weaker archers like slings and peltasts. Don't bother using them to defend against raiders, as seige or to raid themselves; they're too slow.

Conclusion:

I feel that the Satyr is the worst Heroic MU in the game, even more so than the Manticore. It's poor HP, slow speed and pathetic attack makes it one of the worst ranged MUs, even worse than the Wadjet IMO.
Saying that, it can defeat some MUs, and if it doesn't kill them, then it will certainly inflict quite a bit of damage.

Against Greece: Maybe against Hyps and Pelts, just watch out for heroes.
Against Egypt: Maybe against weak rax units, definitely not against Migdol units.
Against Norse: For once, I have found a unit that is bad against the Norse. Jarls will tear them apart, and they do pretty poor against Huskarl. Only really worth using against TAs, but Cheiros and Arci will do that much better
Against Alantis: Maybe against Turmae and Katas, but really not worth the resources.

No wonder Hyperion isn't liked much: pretty weak GP, only strong when used right, ok hero tech, great water MU, but terrible land MU and MU tech.

It's the extremely low attack that let's the Satyr down, and the fact that it has bad accuracy, and even worse splash damage. They're just not worth the cost in my opinion.

Thanks for reading guys, please vote for the MU guide I should do next week from the following MUs

Promethean
Caladria
Servant
Carnivora
Automaton
Nereid
Behemoth
Dryad
Argus
Heka-Gigantes
Man-O-War
Lampades

[This message has been edited by ArtemisChimera (edited 01-24-2004 @ 08:33 PM).]