Help with phalanx fights

[Ice5643]

Does anyone have tips on how to break through the phalanx wall? Slash does too little damage and I cant get the stance down enough to chop.

[flori2412]

I think your character just needs to have a really good sword skill to break through the spearwall. In my last two playthroughs I managed to pull it off, but my legionaries were very powerful and had sword skills between 85 and 90 points when they faced the phalanx.

If you want to break through the spearwall, I recommend that you spend as many turns as possible on using chop or slash. Try a chop attack if the chance of success is more than 50%, otherwise go with the slash attack. If your stance drops so much that slash has a hit chance of less than 50%, you should recover before you attack again.

I think lowering the stance of the phalanx with decoy or the shield push attack only makes sense if your goal is to survive instead of trying to break through. Getting down the phalanx formation's stance effectively seems very difficult to me. Basically, with decoy and shield push you can stall the phalanx and buy yourself time, but if you want to break through chop and slash are better options imo.

Being a centurion also helps because it allows you to stay on the frontline for a longer period of time before the battle ends.

[Flav]

I've only played through the Macedon campaign once so far, and I just tried to survive the phalanx fights. Never took any damage from the phalanx, but I was pretty content with just surviving.

I did about 25% damage to the phalanx once, but then it regenerated it's health somehow? Not sure how that works, exactly, and it was pretty frustrating, but interesting.

[Propagating]

I had a sword skill of 89 with high-60s/70s for everything else, and while I sruvived to end game, I couldn't deal more than a handful of damage to any phalanx.

[whitejeudi]

if you are a centurion phalanx fights are much easier since the phalanx doesn't get much health back if you stay on the front, you should not try to lower its stance, it isn't worth it(like flori said just use chop when you can) when its health hit 0 you then fight againt swordsmen who should at this point be very outclassed by you.

[Flav]

Just fought the battle of the River Aous again and did much better this time. Still didn’t manage to weaken the phalanx enough to fight an individual phalangite, but did a lot better than just survive this time. Got it down to around half health just by slashing, with no feints or chops at all.

Edit: Should be noted my Legionary’s sword skill is in the low 70’s, STR is in the low 60’s, QCK is in the low 60’s, and I have the Seric Iron Gladius.

[flori2412]

Originally posted by FlaviusStilicho:

I've only played through the Macedon campaign once so far, and I just tried to survive the phalanx fights. Never took any damage from the phalanx, but I was pretty content with just surviving.

I did about 25% damage to the phalanx once, but then it regenerated it's health somehow? Not sure how that works, exactly, and it was pretty frustrating, but interesting.

It gets much easier once you have more than 8,000 enhancement points to spend in character creation. Higher starting attributes allow you to invest more time into weapons training and by the time you face the phalanx, you will be a much better fighter.

The phalanx can regenerate some of its health with an action called "rally". The way I imagine it this means that the phalangites spend a turn to regroup and reinforce their spearwall.

By the way, what exactly is the decoy action supposed to mean in terms of realism - what does your legionary actually do if you choose this? I guess chop and slash are both attempts to push away or damage the spears with your sword. Shield push makes sense to me as well, but I have no clue what a decoy is in this context.

[Elendil]

Managed to break the phalanx, my character was really op though (89 sword, almost 70 str, 6/4 sword). There is a trick that helps: use decoy on your first turn, it will reduce the phalanx's stance by 4-9 but the AI won't use recover unless stance is reduced by more than 10 points. May sound weird but this small stance deduction helps a lot. With full stance my chop had chance of 50-55%, with minus 4-9 stance it had chance about 65% or even more.

Another thing is that the phalanx may try to attack your health and if they miss (I had about 70 shield and they missed a lot) they lose 1/3 of stance. This allows just to spam chops until they manage to recover.

[shtanko]

I think the idea of fighting it is to wait until it gets a bit tired and then chopping it. But for me I only managed to cut in once at the battle where the game basically *allows* you to do that.

[Kodiak]

It does tell you that you need insanely high skills to break the phalanx! High awareness helps on top of crazy 90+ sword skill and the best weapons you can get. Even then it's basically doing not much damage until you crit and break through.

Once you do break through though, muhahaha, it's a slaughter

[Sertorius]

Originally posted by flori2412:

By the way, what exactly is the decoy action supposed to mean in terms of realism - what does your legionary actually do if you choose this? I guess chop and slash are both attempts to push away or damage the spears with your sword. Shield push makes sense to me as well, but I have no clue what a decoy is in this context.

Yeah, I recognize that's a bit cryptic. Decoy means that you try to lure the pikes slightly out of position.

[zgrssd]

Attacking a Phalanx from the front is insanely dangerous. Phalanxes are the meat grinders of the classical age. Think of it like running into a firing MG and you are close. Just surviving and holding is a feat in itself.

There are only a few things that can beat a phalanx:
- terrible terrain (wich a soldier has no control over). A moving phalanx has real issues with rough terrain.
- a better skilled phalanx
- a Sarissa Phalanx - because they are better at phalanxing
- the one in a thousand shoot that between exhaustion, and terrain, corpses, etc. someone manages to break through the front at some point. Maybe 5 enemy guys at the same time had a heart attack?
- some hilarious skill and armor gap. Think "Militia Phalanx attacked by heavy Elite infantery".
- the way more realistic outcome of someone else managing to flank the phalanx. Maybe the whole enemy unit rushing ahead, so some people at the edge found a gap? Maybe your sides cavalry beat their sides and now is free to move?

[Flav]

Originally posted by zgrssd:

Attacking a Phalanx from the front is insanely dangerous. Phalanxes are the meat grinders of the classical age. Think of it like running into a firing MG and you are close. Just surviving and holding is a feat in itself.

There are only a few things that can beat a phalanx:
- terrible terrain (wich a soldier has no control over). A moving phalanx has real issues with rough terrain.
- a better skilled phalanx
- a Sarissa Phalanx - because they are better at phalanxing
- the one in a thousand shoot that between exhaustion, and terrain, corpses, etc. someone manages to break through the front at some point. Maybe 5 enemy guys at the same time had a heart attack?
- some hilarious skill and armor gap. Think "Militia Phalanx attacked by heavy Elite infantery".
- the way more realistic outcome of someone else managing to flank the phalanx. Maybe the whole enemy unit rushing ahead, so some people at the edge found a gap? Maybe your sides cavalry beat their sides and now is free to move?

Yep. You're preaching to the choir, mate.

[Mr_MeGusta]

Yeah I'm having major issues too. The fight feels super unbalanced because if they fail their shield push no stance lost but if you fail your shield push you lose stance.

[flori2412]

Originally posted by Mr_MeGusta:

Yeah I'm having major issues too. The fight feels super unbalanced because if they fail their shield push no stance lost but if you fail your shield push you lose stance.

The phalanx doesn't shield push, it uses "spear push". In my imagination this means that the phalangites advance in a coordinated way to push back and unbalance the infantry in front of their spearwall. It feels realistic imo that this move can only lower your stance, not that of the phalanx.

Keep in mind that your legionary is standing in front of five layers of six-metre-long pikes which are wielded by well-trained infantry. You are clearly at a disadvantage, and the combat mechanics are supposed to reflect that.