2-handed weapons bug, vanilla

[NUTCRACKER]

this was never fixed I can remember? I mean, the 2-hand guys were too slow to hit, yes?

ok. if still present, where does it affect?

I mean, the Swiss Guards without their formation fight 2-handed and swing the hellebard/poleaxe about the head.
or the scottish pikes, noble pikes

[Mekkermann]

No this has never been fixed, it basicly makes 2 handed units slower in attacks so they attack less often than one handed units and therefore lose the fight. Some mods work around this by higher attacks, more hitpoints or use the janissary halberd animation which seems not to be as worse but these are not always satisfying workarounds, there is an animation pack that changes some animations and looks promising ( and the video explains the problem also pretty well ) but I´m not aware of any mods that have implemented this.

This would be just an simple replace of the vanilla files when you want to use it but you would have to unpack your main files or better download the bare geomod, as its just vanilla with fixes, and replace the files there. https://www.moddb.com/mods/medieval-ii-animation-packs-for-improving-2-handers/videos/medieval-ii-i-fixed-the-two-handed-bug-kinda1 https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?352216-Creating-a-World-Bare-Geomod&p=7203913#post7203913

[NUTCRACKER]

ok, but affects this also pikes units if they fight not in formation like spear wall?

I tried to find out, like swiss guard in fights on wall or loose formation attack run on the battlefield. about the bonus against armor it looked very nice

[Mekkermann]

This should not affect pikes as far as I know. The oppinion on pikes is also divided, some say its perfectly fine the way they work as the pike and halberd formation is an very difficult formation and it should only work for stationary units, some mods remove just swords so they always use their pikes which makes them easier to manage as they work when moving, some mods also change how compact an pike formation is so its harder to break or increase the attack value of the pike. I usually prefer the last one but I´m not aware of an mod that does any of these solutions for vanilla so you will have to manually edit your files for this or just play mods that do this. Here is an video that describes the edits pretty well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecosXlvcwl0

[NUTCRACKER]

ah no, I have tried many mtw2 mods. especially with the geomod, it changes many data on vanilla game (campaign errrors, CTDs a lot). tried it to get hotseat in mtw base game.

I tried at last orient and occident, stainless steel... too many bugs.
then, GoT and Westeros, only CTDs... this problem is mainly the steam version of mt2. I have played GoT 4th age yet without any problems 10 years ago.

then EUB2, 100 hours but with 1x CTD at least per round :(
the final version too.

ok, back to the game.

just tried the pikes from scotland ... once the formation is broken ...holy :/
ok, but I wanted swiss guards... ways better.
I tried with and without spear wall against heavy sword knights (the ones after the dismounted feudal knights). with formation it was was a little bit better...but dont keep their formation like a phalanx. I tried with very large size of units.

so in mtw2 I still prefer schiltron (in english?). the masters are the papal guards. tried against full stack mongol heavy lancers and they can be used for open attacks too.
in crusades the crusaders have very good spears too, and in teutonic the spears of the order are fine, but exhausted fast.

btw
in ToB the 2-handed units are fine. so I wanted to check out some tactics in mtw2.
may be I will try it with the highlanders... 12 attack + armor piercing.
ah, how much bonus is armor piercing? ignores enemy's armor?

[Mekkermann]

When you think your problem with mods is the steam version or newer windows may try to set your medieval 2, kingdoms and mod exe to run in admin mode, windows 7 compability mode, fullscreen optimization deactivated and dpi settings set to application controlled, 4gb patch on medieval 2 and kingdoms exe might help the game to better use newer ram technology and not crash as often as well although this is mostly for battles. https://ntcore.com/4gb-patch/ . It could also be that you are using windows 11 and need to install the windows sdk june 2010 since the windows 11 update 2023 H2 removed some directx files necessary for the program although you would probably notice this also for vanilla.https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6812

Edit: forgot to mention that its best not to have the Medieval2 installation inside the programs x86 folder so move it to C:/ or so, the shorter the pathlength the better, you can also have multiple folders of Medieval 2 and they will all work, for example I have one in my normal steamfolder under C:/Steam/... for normal mods and one under D:/Medieval2 for DAC which changes an Francisca entry in the main files of the game.

Since I discovered a lot of checkers to find bugs last year and also hate ctds I can say the most backlog of mods doesn´t look very nice, there are often typos and such and I know from my own mod how hard it is to find all the problems but 1 ctd per turn is surely to much and sounds more like an setup issue.

I sadly cannot say much about europa barbarum II as I haven´t checked it yet, will probably wait till the next big update before I look at this but the EB 2 discord bug report channel would also look different if they had such breaking issues I guess.

I personally prefer "shield wall" an formation from rome 1 that can be used as it blocks enemies very well just a bit sad that the AI wouldn´t use it but I like when my pavise handgunners suddenly become very sturdy against all kinds of charges.

Amor piercing ignores half of the armor value, very large size of Units is a thing I would not recommend you will only mess up pathfinding and wall deployment for the AI in siege battles.

Here is my export_descr_unit and I think pikes are almost to strong although the other Unit stats have changed as well of course, so just as inspiration for stats editing. Ignore the berserker entries for the Units you would need to use the M2TWEOP tool to use it otherwise it will crash your game. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1geR0b3eAOXO-F7sersw_Rlo263xu9RJU/view?usp=drive_link

[Wizard of Woz]

Originally posted by NUTCRACKER:

ok, but affects this also pikes units if they fight not in formation like spear wall?

I tried to find out, like swiss guard in fights on wall or loose formation attack run on the battlefield. about the bonus against armor it looked very nice

If you are using pikes not in a spear wall, you are doing it wrong. They are purely a defensive unit.

[NUTCRACKER]

Originally posted by Wizard of Woz:

Originally posted by NUTCRACKER:

ok, but affects this also pikes units if they fight not in formation like spear wall?

I tried to find out, like swiss guard in fights on wall or loose formation attack run on the battlefield. about the bonus against armor it looked very nice

If you are using pikes not in a spear wall, you are doing it wrong. They are purely a defensive unit.

but not the papal swiss guards, also not the noble highlander pikes, they have too much attack value to waste them defensive.
especially the papal swiss guards have additional armor piercing

[NUTCRACKER]

@Mekkermann
thank you, I will check out your notes about

[Mekkermann]

For attacking with Pike Units I find the 0.70 movement modificator penalty ( move_speed_mod 0.70 ) relative good, its more a feeling but Pike Units move more cohesive over the Battlefield and keep formation better while moving. Without I feel they loose formation pretty quick. It will still not fix the issue that without guard mode active they will probably run into the enemy Unit whilst fighting but at least they are so always ready to fight while marching and I think it looks more immersive.

[NUTCRACKER]

yes,I agree with the moving.

ok, I mean it also with these: dismounted (english, portugese .... ) knights.
the ones without shield, with a ...warhammer?
are these units 2-handed guys with the bug?
usually I dont use them about the missing shield.

but, with the correct tactic ..like -> Oblique order
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_order
should work fine.

also, to check on walls.
usually I use there the solid units , dismounted feudal knights, but I ignored armor piercing so many years ;) so I want to try better

[Mekkermann]

I´m not quite sure about them being bugged, I know that some twohanded Units had their soldiers exchanged in my export_descr_units file for that reason like the Heavy Billmen that now use Janissary_Heavy_Inf Soldiers instead of the Heavy Billmen ones, as Janissary_Heavy_Inf is one of the few Vanilla Units that hadn´t that bug. You would never notice this as the skin is still that of an Heavy Billmen.

I see no Soldier change for the Portuguese Knights so maybe they where not affected by the 2 handed bug or simply their stats where buffed to make up for this. You will probably have to try out yourself and look if there combat performance is satisfying for you.

The usuall tactic for 2 handed Units I learned is to eat the charge of an enemy Unit with an cheap bait Unit ( peasants for example ) and then flank and charge the enemy with the 2 handed Unit, works pretty well.

There was also an anti-cavalry bonus given for most twohanded Units in my export_descr_units file to give them a bit more versatility on the Battlefield ( mount_effect horse +2, camel +2 ).