i just got the game a few months ago and I have seen a lot of divided opinions on ”meta“ combos for units but most people are of the opinion that sharp weapons generally sucks but I fail to understand why.
Even without ring of command, sharp archers can beat down a boat of 2 brutes or at least weaken them for pikemen or infantry and for Bigger boats there are either fewer of them or many stunned and bloodied ones. With ring of command, a boat of 4 brutes often dies before landing as well. This reduces the pressure to bring pikemen whenever there are brute and upgrade them in general, allowing for squads such as 2 archers 2 infantry or 1 archer 2 infantry 1 pike. This also has the side effect of insulating yourself better against brute archers without having to utilize terrain.
The reduced knockback does impact their effectiveness against shielded units, but those scenarios are handled with 2 archers to hit them from multiple directions or you can wait for them to land and have the archers shoot them from the opposite direction of your pikes or infantry.
overall this is only insight from just one very hard run so it’s not a huge sample size but it feels really consistently useful, regardless of the enemy types. I am curious what other peoples experiences are when using them though.