<3 swanherds. I don't have a good reason, but I do. I do have a good reason to love the Morvarc'h: they're just so cute! Squee? Squee.
To be honest, 2 swans per swanherd isn't the worse thing in the world. Sure they absolutely suck at combat, but swans have no upkeep, flying and Need not Eat. With 1.64 siege strength (attacking or defending) they are surprisingly good at defending or breaking fortresses. Every single of Ys's aboveground forts should have a bunch of swanherds just spamming swans until the end of time. The massive swarm of swans generated should be more than enough to keep them safe from besiegers.
All I know looking at it is that forget the rest of the forces, those no-need-to-eat swans are gorram amazing. Get coastal province, get fort, set swanherds to repeat, never look back. Look out reanimators, we got flying supply free chaff pouring out of our orifices.
Yeah. Swans are totally great. Even if they suck at doing anything useful in combat.
Also, those troops almost looked nice until I saw... their encumbrance. Holy gods, their armored underwater units have 7 and 9 encumbrance.
The encumbrance isn't all that surprising. Bronze seems to be fairly heavy and not as protective compared to its counterparts. The Merrow have 3 encumbrance just like every other regular human, so... It's not extraordinarily bad. Just the ordinary kind of bad that everyone else has to deal with.
Their land units seem a bit limited too. Can anyone else take a look at them? They seem like they'd have ok thugs right away maybe? Anything I'm missing about evaluating them?
The land units are alright. You have a 9 gold guy who has no actual disadvantages for costing 9 gold. He has 10 in all of the expected stats, passable protection (12 body, 16 head), shield, javelin and broadsword. The only obvious downside is his 18 resource cost, which makes him harder to mass. They also have a guy who is almost identical to the Marignon Man at Arms except for having -1 Morale, no Bodyguard, +1 HP, +1 Strength and costing -2 gold. They also have Medium Cavalry but they aren't terribly special because Medium Cavalry. For their land commanders they have a general (who isn't terribly special), the swanherd (who is) and the Kernou Druid. The Kernou Druid is basically the Maverni Druid (E1S1 + 100% WESN). Except it has MM2 instead of 1, and costs 10 gold less.
Really, the theme of Ys's land units seems to be that they are strangely undercost for what they are. Not in a way that makes them overpowered mind you. They're just cheaper when you compare them to similar units for absolutely no reason.
Having said that... I'm really not sure how they're supposed to work. Very cap-centric, and troops which aren't amazing. It seems like they'd have to thug, but even that's hard since their cavalry isn't stealthy. Odd bunch. I love the feel, but odd.
Honestly? They seem to be in the same boat as the rest of the glamour/elf nations. Expensive but good mages, passable troops and a great potential for thugging. Use the sacreds to expand (fire-breathing horses are great regardless of your bless), build up a sizable army and buff the shit out of them while your thugs do their thing. Throw in some big spells and call it a day. Worse comes to worse, you can always hide out underwater and try to rebuild.