Shamblers

[Renojustin]

Oh come on, 5 trials, that's practically a case study.

[Kuritza]

Not every troop has to be cost-effective, sometimes they just live there for flavour. Shamblers are old and they dont want to fight, so they are hard to enroll (unless its a thrall, admittedly). Seems logical.
And occasionally they are even useful. Shamblers are ok if you ask me.

[Rathar]

Shamblers at 30 gold suck but at 1 resource they rock. In almost every case I have come across from dom2 to now I can build a force capable of taking an indy water province in 1-2 turns with them as compared to uhh 3-6 turns with ichtyids.

Now, or soon after is better almost all the time

Again, yeah the 30 gold sucks but "sometimes" you just gotta get in there right now. Admittedly in MP games I never use them. Either I set myself up to Really Play in the water or I try to be meticulous with my diplomacy towards the water nations.

If I have a ginormous pile of gold then they also make rapidly formed speed bumps but are perhaps poor for that due to the 75% of total hp's lost routing rules. I am not one of those folks who scoffs at impossible AI though so grain of salt applies.

[BesucherXia]

As someone has stated, not every unit is supposed to be cost-effective, but the capability of rapidly-spam is also of value.

Shamblers can be useful if you are planing a blitz-landing for EA_Oceanaia. Some guides have also covered such an idea for MA_Atlantis. Ichtyids can not fit that strategy well, since they will take you about 3 times longer time for the recruitment.

Btw. I personally would also suggest considering a little discount for them. IMO, Atlantis is accepted to be the weakest underwater races, which can also benefit from it.

[Xietor]

I use shamblers when i need troops with darkvision, and i try to buff them with spells.

[Baalz]

Shamblers were key in my success in Evermore with Atlantis. Read my guide to MA Atlantis for more details, but short story is I was pressing an economic advantage and flooded R'yleh with shamblers. The hitpoints and claw attack were great against the low defense, low protection troops R'yleh frontlines, the numbers I was able to recruit them in due to their resource cost was great vs the mind blasters, and the fact that I could recruit from 4-5 provinces right on our border allowed me to hit him everywhere at once. Once R'yleh fell I used my swarms of amphibious troops to hit 11 provinces of Caelum in a sneak attack, capturing close to 20 of their provinces by the second turn of the war.

Cost effective is a relative term.

[Baalz]

Oh, forgot to mention, the reason they were so effective against Caelum was...drumroll....high hitpoints and low armor are the least effective thing to use AN lightning and cold attacks on and I sieged everything so fast he couldn't field (or afford) many archers.

[Xietor]

I used them in the Big Game as well against Lanka who typically had darkness up in battles. When i was using them, i buffed them with fog warriors, mass protection, and mass regeneration.