Originally Posted by
noobium
the difference between orcs and humans is that human elites defend and resist ambush to a reasonable degree, which has an effect on both post-chain play (using elites to make up for lost defense) and pre-chain play (use of semi-turtling to prevent too many deep chains, while not sacrificing potential offense). regardless of that, the nw-efficiency that matters is troop-for-troop, not overall nw/a (which is affected by way too many variables). it is a given that human knights aren't made for nw-efficiency, just like dwarf, elf, faery, and halfling elites have a dramatic effect on how those races play.
the point remains that the mounts are reasonably nw-efficient for what they do.
if i were playing humans this age i would probably use a mix of elites and defense specialists anyway, since 7nw for 4 raw defense is pretty tough; that said, humans in kingdoms i've fought haven't run into too much trouble because of their elite nw. there is still the question of actually hitting them to exploit their bad nw/a fully, otherwise it's just a slight drag on their offensive output. i predicted humans would be better as counters to attacker types, whereas orcs are designed to tear down defensive types which they do as well as ever.