Something that gives you a massive advantage over your opponent(s) with little effort on your part.
In the context of this game I like to think there are two types of advantages.
1. Winning (you'd call these "Massive") advantages, which mean that with enough effort a win can be FORCED.
2. Slight advantages, which puts pressure on the opponent to do something, however balance (via either a stalemate in defence, or a suitable counter-attack) can be restored with appropriate effort from the opponent. Slight advantages do nothing more than open doors for the opponent to make mistakes. They do not win games themselves.
The question is whether or not a 5% Juggerknight is a massive/winning advantage or just a slight advantage. Obviously we must take the rest of your definition, "with little effort on your part".
Therefore it could be interpreted that you think the Juggerknight > Spearton difference is justifiable because:
1. An extra 5% Juggerknight is only a slight advantage, and is not capable of affecting the outcome of an early-mid game battle. (You imply this below).
It was an example. An Archidon could most likely kill the Juggerknight at how low the health would be after an encounter with a Spearton. The point of me saying that, is because you continue to say, the Juggerknight is massively overpowered compared to the Spearton, and yet, as I just said, 1-2(maybe 3-4) shots from an Archidon could save the Spearton, and kill the Juggerknight. Also, I don't research rage.
Normally, they are building up a larger army at their base, or at the middle, while also building up their economy. It's a poker thing, why show everyone your entire hand, when you can show them one card, and let them guess?
See, now you're assuming the Order player is a lemon(why a lemon? Why not a lime or an apple?), he could easily have the Swordwrath attack once, run back, attack again, run back, or hand back for a while OR attack and when he gets too injured, retreat it?
a) It doesn't take much imagination to see how an extra Juggerknight, even at 5% health, could be utilized. You say that Order has suitable counters, but those counters cost gold and time, and
each of Order's responses can be efficiently nullified by Chaos' arsenal, whichever they choose to use.
b) Chaos' crawlers make them more suitable to scout. They can gain the information first, as they have the option of engage the swordwrath. And if they so choose to, that swordwrath must garrison to retain full efficiency, whilst the crawler is rapidly back in action.
OR
2. The massive/winning advantage this 5% Juggerknight has is justifiable because it requires more than "little effort on your part" to utilize.
a) This is a clear imbalance, as no side should have to lose if they have made no mistakes.
The effective range of the shield bash, is I believe(could be mistaken) just higher than that of the attacking range of the spearton. I believe you and I define defensive differently. I define it as, sit back and wait in a fortified position. Water against the rocks if you will. For this, the spearton not only serves this purpose, he does it painfully well.
As someone said, Chaos plays aggressively, order plays defensively. Chaos is to attack, while Order is to counter.
As was said, the shield bash attack is easily dodged.
The Juggerknights' charge can mimic the shield bash, and they can follow up quickly with strikes. Their charge effect also gives a significantly higher chance of hitting, and has little chance of being dodged.
The Speartons' shield bash leaves the Speartons still immobile, and they leave their "shield wall" animation too slow to be able to mimic the Juggerknights' damage efficiency, I.e.
In the case of the Spearton's ability, the support lines fire at the stunned units.
In the case of the Juggerknights' ability, the support lines fire at the stunned units, as well as the Juggerknights being able to contribute to this cause.
300 For an Castle Archer, and if the chaos player is stupid enough to let his units die, that would be 200 lost. With that being said, the effectiveness of the castle archer no matter the stage of the game, more than makes up for it.
Wrong. For the purposes of this debate, can we assume that both players are playing as optimally as possible? It's useless to say races are balanced if they are not being utilized to their full potential in the examples given as evidence.
Take your Castle Archer example. A Chaos player playing optimally would not keep on attacking. And a Chaos player would utilize the Castle Archer's disadvantages.
Optimal players will not look at the Castle Archer and cower (well, at least not in early game). They'll look at it and think, "That's another 2 miners I can afford to build", because I know he's wasted 300 gold on something that can't touch them.
I was giving an example with order vs order. Well, let's see, if you have the Speartons just a tiny bit being the wall(Yes, I said wall the first time) and the Juggerknight's charge will have no affect on the Speartons, while the Speartons are open to use shield-bash and stun them, then eat their faces(I'm a fan of zombies). WHY LEMONS AGAIN.
Walls, They can't go past the walls. The Speartons are only meant to be there sitting back for a few moments, while the Magikill & Archidons do some damage.
This is not an example of people playing optimally.
If you saw Speartons performing a shield wall just behind a wall, you would not charge them. The wall would get harassment via long range units, or Marrowkai.
Magikill are useless thanks to Medusa.