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If so people probably dislike them because they can be effective. See arty, slingers, etc.
In SP, perhaps some people do, but I doubt that's a lot of people. I remember some people used to think they were bad because they didn't understand how to advance pike formations and were running them into the enemy out of formation. Macedon pike centre for life tbh
Also, pike are pretty lovely in campaign because the AI is gracious enough to attack them from the front ^_^ (unlike Rome 1, where the AI refuses to except sometimes with their own - smarter, except they usually just sit there and get filleted by your archers)
They are somewhat vulnerable to range but if your using any decent number of them I find you tend to be using them to protect something that will fire back and since you don't need to be that deep of a formation to be effective their semi protected once they engage.
Also I don't get why outside sealing off streets in city battles you'd be sending a group off alone anyways where they can be easily flanked.
1) People are (usually) better at flanking pikes than the AI, and typically know that engaging them from the front should be avoided whenever possible.
2) Even if the opponent leaves a unit in front of them, they won't kill it as fast as a sword or spear unit.
3) They become useless if their formation derps out in combat.
4) Even the best pikemen can be made ineffective by a cheap unit like Levy Freemen chucking javelins at them (granted, this applies to a lot of other units too).
This is true, it was more a sign of the times - the nature of the enemies they faced and to an extent the ground they fought on that scaled back the offensive nature and dynamism of the pike line. They won an arms race, then the arms race overtook them.
They had been extremely capable hard-hitting offensive infantry given the right (fairly narrow) combinations of circumstances and commander - part of the effectiveness of the Macedonian army originally, and something they stamped on the cultural memory of the east as well as the military face of Hellas itself, was that their pike phalanx could, and would, advance very assertively if needed - like an enormous, unstoppable juggernaut.
Another lesser factor is that some (not all) of the important battles between large armies in both ancient Greece and Persia were done on chosen ground that would be flat, which served the pike phalanx very well indeed, thank you very much. Then the rest on rougher ground still had them at an advantage - if the earlier pike phalanx faced any disciplined armoured infantry at all rather than guys with wicker shields or light cavalry, it would be armoured infantry that had all the same problems as them, but slightly shorter pointy things. These things vanish in a puff of smoke by the timeframe of the game.
You are right that they were not good dynamic, flexible melee infantry though - and they became more and more of a defensive unit as the rest of the world fielded units that were dynamic, flexible melee infantry, and those enemy units iterate and improve with time while the Macedonian pike phalanx stays largely the same. It is a long while before people (eg: Swedes and so on) work out that you can pepper your pike phalanx with halberdiers etc. to counter this to some extent.
It seems doubtful that the most famous Macedonian general would have beaten legionaries - real men with decent kit and organisation, with his pike line clambering upwards out of a river bed as he did against his contemporary - although who knows, that kind of mania and opportunistic tactical foresight/insight would probably have shone through in any age.
Not really, they are dreadful melee troops (as they should be) and you will get caught in melee if you do this. The main exceptions (other than movement speed for repositioning as you say) would be if you're in a desperate situation and need to eg: turn some to screen the rear of the line or pin some troublesome unit, in which case any unit you have that can meet the enemy is better than nothing. Really though if you let it get to that point with pikes you have probably stuffed it, because a pike centre should always have the flanks protected and breaks/rear at least screened (if not fully protected)..
Pikes in this game are mostly an improvement on the other games. I say mostly, because anyone who has played this game much knows about the issues with tight infantry formations - although that does not hurt so much with pikes because that's kind of how it should be when they are not braced.
Properly used, they behave just how you'd expect - if you have interest in ancient Macedonia there is nothing in any other game that matches the feeling of playing the black death and marching out across a desert in a formation Alexander would have used, sun glinting on weapons and shields, dust kicking up a minor storm and eg: punching through with a hammer-like cavalry and melee offensive while that pike line chews up every bit of life force the enemy army ever had.
PS: Sorry for the long rambling post. This thread caught me during a coffee break and I really needed a distraction. :P
I think its worth mentioning that historical soldiers were not organized the way they are in strategy games. Macedonian infantry were not exclusively pikemen. In reality the same soldier could probably easily fight with pike, javelin, short spear, sling, or sword more-or-less effectively. The pike phalanx was used for pitched battles in the open field. It is highly unlikely, for instance, that Macedonian infantry would bother carrying pikes with them in an assault on a fortified city. Its more likely that they would have left their pikes behind and used other weapons instead. There is evidence from Alexander's time that this is precisely what happened. It is also mentioned in sources about Alexander that soldiers were often promoted from "pike" units to "spear" units (hypaspists) for a variety of reasons.
This suggests a certain amount of interchangeability of soldiers between different units/tactical roles. Which makes sense. The same basic pattern is suggested strongly about the Roman army, with legionaries mentioned fighting "ante-signani" as skirmishers with no mention of permanent units of the same designation. A legionary was still a legionary, even if you took away his body-armor and gave a few extra javelins. The same was probably true of phalangites, at least in Alexander's time, and probaly for a generation or two after him.
It wasn't the pikeman that went out of favor it was the pike. And in many ways the inablitiy of succesor kingdoms to deploy pikemen effectively says more about their discipline and organization than it does the obselescence of the tactical system itself. Remember, pike phalanxs came back into use during the renaissance, to say nothing of similar weapons used outside of Europe.
The point being we shouldn't assume an inherent inferiority/inflexability in the phalanx system. The poor performance of successor armies against the Romans (which actually wasn't always all that poor) was probably down to inferior discipline and organization in general rather than differences the respective tacticical models used. It doesn't matter what playbook you're using, if you haven't practiced it, you're probably going to lose the game.
When Phillip fought the Romans I believe he didn't use his Cav or there wasn't enough to even change the course of the battle. The Phalanx wasn't properly linned up and instead of withdrawing he commited. Which made gaps in the lines which the Romans exploited to get behind the Phalanx. While the Romans were infront of the Phalanx they did suffer heavy casualties.
Rome 2 however, has no was to represent this.
They should have made the little used "Step Forward" function default to a single rank forward per press. This would help alleviate the micro management nightmare that is controlling pikes in combat offensively. You could simply select the pike units that are engaged, and order them to step forward 1, 2, or 3 with a couple clicks and not have to baby sit them, they would then drive their pikes deeper into the enemy formation, increasing attrition, and making disengagement more painfull for the enemy.
Also, all pike units should have had "Rapid Advance" to make it more difficult for the enemy to simply skirt your pike line while it would also give a better charge bonus against the backs of enemies attempting to break and flee from your pikemen. Which I assume would be the real life side effects of attempting to turn away from an advancing pike line.