As an Odin player, I struggled for a long time to overcome Classical forces of Greeks ( Powerful ) and Egyptians ( Quickly produced Counters, and CHEAP )

At first, I followed the Guides I’d read, and used large amount of raiding cavalry as my first produced unit, raiding enemy gold and Woodies, a house when there was nothing else, this was not in-effective, but any good Egyptian or Greek ( or Norse for the matter ) can easily overcome this if they Age Classical in a timely manner and place a few Counters within their Villy piles, which means you just run through... Your Odin advantage of being fastest to classical is all but wasted when this happens, and there’s a noticeable weakness during this time for Odin, Egyptian units train quicker, and cheaper, and confrontation with a like-sized Greek force will end in your loss.

It left me scrambling around the map, raiding more to keep my enemy chasing me, and away from my forward base and economy, than to actually damage him, Stopping to fight would mean losing my raiders, and when that happened I found myself un-able to recover and defend myself in classical. This strategy became in-effective with players 1800+, and difficult even below that, Players wiser would find and make a straight march for my forward, forcing me into a fight that always seemed uphill, or would send small raiding parties of their own at my mining and hunting groups.

Every Guide I read listed the Ulfsark as an easily countered and all but obsolete unit, and my first experiences using the unit affirmed this, Raiding cavalry cost the same raw resources, for a faster unit, with more hitpoints, and great pierce armor for the raiding I knew I needed to Slow, and occupy my enemy as I made my bid to heroic, and vie for map Control.

All my attempts at raiding and attacking with Ulfsarks were pretty ugly, they dropped like flys under arrow fire, and so I never thought to make them in favor of raiding cavalry.

But I knew something was missing in Classical, because a good player CAN all-together defend himself from raiding cavalry stabs after 6 minutes, and when he does, your left the weakling in Classical.

An army of Raiding cavalry and Throwing axemen are more expensive, and much slower to produce, than an equal population army of Egyptian Slingers and Spearmen, and they lose to them.

An army of Raiding cavalry and Throwing Axemen of equal population take longer to produce, are comparably expensive, and once again, Lose to an equal population force of Greek Hoplites and Toxotes.

I knew my early game was missing something, at least I hoped it was, or my Civ seemed a bit hopeless. So I tried something new...

My same early classical, 5 Hunter/Hunting dogs build ( You Odin players know what I'm talking about )

But this time I'd pump out Ulfsarks non-stop from my 2 barracks immediately after hitting classical, and I raided with them, anything outside of arrow range. I found I had a larger force, faster, than when I produced Raiding cavalry, my enemy could not produce a like-sized force for awhile to confront me, and I was free to raid for before anyone showed real resistance outside range of their TC, and take out key buildings before many players had arrow-firing towers.

6-8 ulfsarks at the enemy base before most players hit classical, and I was in a comfortable position to pump villies, and dwarves, non-stop. As well as get my upgrades, Wood first, and later mining.

This was the hole in Classical I'd so long wondered how to fill , Our classical armys will get crushed by alike-massed eggys or greeks, Our counter? Early numbers, and hitting first! Welcome to the Ulfsark. The earliest army in the game.