I think we all agree that Aserai is basically the weakest faction, but I think they just highlight some problems with the game's design overall rather than design problems with the Aserai.
3/7 of Aserai units are Archers (If you count bow-mams).
Lore says Aserai archers are supposed to be "the standard for other cultures to follow", but they just are not effective in combat. There's lots of reasons for this, chief among them being any experienced player is just going to exploit the archer's AI with Rambo or Solocaving. Spear Archers were able to deal with this, but we did not deserve spears.
Aserai are also meant to have the best Skirmishers in the game, and granted they definitely do have the best throwing loadout, but due to throwing angle calculation issues they are not as effective in combat as they need to be. Some people diagnose this as being an issue with the damage output of javs, but since 75% of javelins fall 2-3 meters behind your enemy it is impossible to say. (Captain's League has discussed this with
@AVRC, I believe)
So 4/7 of the Aserai's units aren't as playable as they should be.
I think Aserai is meant to be "Rate of Fire/Storm of Arrows" Archer faction, but that is just completely unplayable in this current game's design, so we're forced to use their actually kind of okay Light Infantry, their slightly sub-par Shock troops, and their pretty decent heavy cavalry.
Battanian archers have a similar problem, but Batt has a strong infantry segment, plentiful large shields and spears that can round this out, and generally survive longer than Aserai archers.
There is of course no reason to discuss Beduins. They are mostly a joke unit, I guess, as they get no love.
Aserai Recommendations:
-Guards are interesting because they have relatively high armor for shock troops, but have very few troops so much lower damage output potential than other Shocks. Just looking at the numbers, you'd think they are built to be Anti-Rabble shocks, but their slower attack rate and mid-tier armor means they just can't compete with the attack rate of rabbles. Lean into this by giving them additional armor overall, making them unique among Shock units by having a loadout for both Anti-Shock (They can't do this presently due to low troop counts, even with Swords, as their lower troop count means they can't keep up as they're one-shotted by almost all shock cutting weapons) and anti Sword rabble.
Their throwing weapons aren't really worth discussing, as their throwing weapons are intentionally useless in the current build of the game.
^None of these are going to happen, so I think we're probably stuck with the current design. A bit disappointing as they do just slightly underperform and are an interesting unit.
-Aserai Skirmishers are a well designed cool unit, but bugs in targeting make them less effective than they should be on paper. Requires programming to fix, might happen. If we're not going to fix targeting AI, give Skirmishers the option to take the sling perk, making them a unique anti-Skirmisher/Archer skirmisher by outranging other thrown weapons and having a large shield to protect from missiles.
-Same with Aserai Archers, not useful in competitive play due to AI exploiting and lack of ability to target fire. Requires changes to AI/Soloing game design to fix, probably not going to happen. Again kind of a shame, as low-damage high-troop count Archers are interesting, and high-tier well-armored sword+shield archers are interesting. No reason to use Veterans against any faction with glaive cav or lance cav, as any experienced player will solocav your few bots before you're able to do much, and Veterans move too slowly to do anything about it.
So Aserai is stuck as a just kind of broken faction.
