I am pretty sure that the attack and defense will be completely equal against each other (eg. +1 defense is on average 1/2 a damage taken less per turn, while +1 attack is 1/2 extra damage dealt per turn).
I tested it with 50 battles between 1 swordsman and 1 pikemen, the pikemen won 29 times, the swordsmen won 21 times. Its not quite a scientific test, but it seems to show pikemen winning significantly more on average (the 2 health does make a fairly big difference it seems).
In 100 battles between 1 swordsmen and 1 lancers, the swordsmen would get crushed easily (since the lancers would get the first attack like 80% of the time).
On the other hand, in 100 battles between pikemen and lancers, the lancers would get lose the vast majority of the time (since the pikemen would get the first attack like 80% of the time in addition to their health bonus)..
Pikemen would also fair better against archers, since they would take less damage in the turns it takes to get into range, and would kill them in about the same time as swordsmen once they actually started to exchange melee attacks.
In addition, defending on a hill or stone walled city will grant a extra defense to pikemen over what it would grant to swordsmen, giving yet another advantage.
TL;DR
Pikemen are the best unit once you actually get in battle, and will win better then average against anything assuming equal conditions, while swordsmen have no real advantage against them.
Nah, Nirur can't realistically hope to stop you from taking both his cities in the next few turns, and Quin isn't close enough to you to mount a credible attack even if he had any units to do it with. Once you've taken Nirur's cities, you'll have way too much production capacity for him to deal with.
I disagree (mainly in that Nirur can probably defend his city just fine, but I don't think its very smart to talk about good tactics to defend against me in public.
I build a simple battlefield twenty spaces long and one space wide. Range lets archers attack at range.
So that means that (excluding archers), only a single unit can attack or defend at once in any battle?
That doesn't seem quite correct.