Thank you Space. I am glad I will have access to a unit with 4mov and 4 attack range.
It's a real shame that we can't beat Mistwalker's initiative. Sometimes I want to scout a map and "pay" in archers for doing since the Mistwalkers kill them.
Rangers (the 4-move, 4-attack Unit) can be highly situationally useful at only 1* level, most notably to pick off those infuriating one/two Enemy Mage Units which often accompany other types of Enemy Units but are standing just out of Archer/Dryad reach on your first move, and Rangers' Initiative, at 20, is very good, too. However, Rangers, like many if not most of the non-Barracks Troop Units, are vulnerable to being one-shotted at the 1* level - firstly due to all Units' low HP at that stage, and also because Enemy Units will commonly target either/or the highest-Initiative and/or most mobile Player Units, which are often your own Light Ranged and/or Mage Units (there are exceptions, where certain Enemy Units will reliably always target a particular Player Unit - so you can kite them around if you like, amongst other tricks to even the Player-AI odds a bit!).
Another reason to conserve your Rangers is because Mercenary Camp Units take a lot longer to train than Barracks Units. I myself used my 1* Rangers very sparingly indeed, largely just stockpiling them until they acquired their 2* Promotion - which was only this week, as it happens (I'm at the end of the Halflings Chapter). Even at 2*, though, they are low in HP compared with Archers (Initiative 18) and Dryads (19), so where I can - i.e. where the terrain or the Enemy combination, or both, aren't healthy for Rangers - I still substitute Archers and/or Dryads. By the time you get your 2* Rangers, your Archers will be at 3* (in fact, I think they may already be - in Fairies, if you still are? - or near enough), and they're tough enough to withstand being one-shotted by anything other than e.g. Enemy Heavy Ranged Units (esp. Orc Deserters) at 2* or 3* level.
And yes, MistWalkers - don'tcha just hate 'em?! I know I do, and in fact many players, self included, consider them to be rather OP - not only the 8-total strike range, so they can hit most of your Units on their first turn, but ALSO high in HP, with a pretty good debuff at their 3* level, AND the Strikeback ability, too. All they're missing, really, to become the game's Combat Overlords Without Compare, is a tactical nuke or two...
Scouting most Provinces above the first few trivial-difficulty Tournament Provinces (those below 6th Tent/Round - Rounds 1-5 all have only 1* Enemy Units, 6-10 are 2*, and 11+ all-3* with debuffs) is pretty much necessary unless you're facing easy combinations such as all-Mage/Light Ranged or, even better, all-Heavy Melee/Heavy Ranged. I usually use a Golem Squad to scout Provinces where there are MistWalkers - yes, you'll lose a few, but they're very tank-y, so most survive. In the very high Provinces I'll use one Squad of Orc Strategists - if I have any to spare, which isn't often, since they cost Orcs, not Supplies, to build - because they have a better Defence against Light Ranged and they also have Strikeback, unlike the Golems... not that the O.Strat's 3-space strike range can even hit those dratted M.Walkers, but hey, it's nice to see them trying! Haha.
Once you have both 2* Rangers
and 2* Blossom Mages (the Elf Player's only way to catch up with the Barracks Priests which Humans start out with...), with their 2-move and 5-strike range, you really are laughing, and can finally put the Combat-related woes of the Orcs and Goblins Chapter behind you (in fact,
all Combat pre-2* Blossoms, especially, can be tricky for Elf Players)... and if you're not there yet, here's something to be aware of: when you open the Advanced Scouts Tech of O&G, the Enemy Units in the Spire will ALL become 3* level, meaning they ALL have debuffs (but no more HP - that's how the 1-3* system works on both sides). That was a horrible shock to me, for sure, when I got that far...!
Good luck in devising strategies to outwit the Enemy Units - it's actually a lot of fun, once you get used to their AI patterns, and especially once you're armed with some actually dangerous - and
especially long-move/long-strike range Mage and Light Ranged - Units of your own, too!
PS : If I may say so, your City build is excellent. If you're Tourney/Spire-focused at all, or even think you may become so in future, my only bit of advice would be to keep the Expansions down, if you can - whether Premium or Standard Expansions. You can just store them in Inventory if you do need them, but you can't
un-place them, and they DO very strongly affect the dreaded Spire/Tourney Formula. It's too late to regret mid-game decisions once the truly enormous Squad Sizes start appearing... as in 10K Enemy Squads vs your 5K Squads (training size varying according to AW level), which I now see in mid-Tourney! While I have few AWs, most are high-Levelled, so I now have 12 Expansions in Inventory.
The Tourney/Spire Formula never causes a 'difficulty spike', as such, so you'll barely notice your Squad Size creeping up and up... it's incrementally very effective, though, since it comprises four factors
which all multiply each other, as I'm sure you will see if I just provide it, here:
Max. Relic Boost % × Expansions Placed × No. of Mandatory Researches Completed × Total Ancient Wonder Levels
NB : Premium Expansions are 'worth' 60% of Standard Expansions; unplaced Expansions and Optional Research Techs are both ignored.
This Formula has never been officially released by Inno, but was reverse-engineered from crowd-sourced Player data by an excellent maths and stats expert called MinMax Gamer (now sadly no longer on the Forums), and his very detailed maths, as well as his Spire and Tournament Squad Size Calculator (incredibly useful if you want to see how future changes in the Formula's variables will affect YOUR particular City - it varies, often dramatically, from City to City) - can both be found on his own personal website (NOT AFFILIATED TO INNOGAMES), here:
... I hope some, any, or all of this post will be of some use to you!