Pikes, pikes and pikes... Useful or not?

[Warriog]

Hi... I´ve often played with lot of heavy infantry, but few days ago I tried in America campaign to build pike army... They are amazing, but it's hard to contol pike army and it's hard to attack with them. Fighting against knight is big risk. But I found tutorial how to fix breaking phalanx in front attack: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/32922-pike-spacing-mod-II
What do you think Should be pikes with this fix really OP?

[Noob2Pro]

Spearmen is Better Than P
ikemen

[Inardesco]

Tercio Pikemen, Aventuros and other specialised pike units will rek any spear infantry.

Pike Militia are the pikes that are rubbish.

[FriedAss (Squid/Ward)]

A double stacked professional pike unit will hold siege chokepoints for days and I've tested double stacked noble pikemen vs elephants. The elephants die immediately when they charge.

[kekkuli]

If i remember right, even the best pikes in this game couldnt even nearly handle a direct assault from dismounted feudal knights. And that was of course with the formation on.

So no, i don't find them useful. I prefer good sword infantry as a main line and strong spear units like armoured sergeants covering the flanks. gives you way more flexibility and killing power.

[Inardesco]

Then you haven't fought the best pikes in the game. I fought a Portugese army with 80% Tercio Pikemen (arguably the best in the game) and they rekt my feudal knights. In melee, they can't be beaten so you NEED to kill 'm with archers/crossbows.

Pike militia, again, not an issue.

[kekkuli]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Then you haven't fought the best pikes in the game. I fought a Portugese army with 80% Tercio Pikemen (arguably the best in the game) and they rekt my feudal knights. In melee, they can't be beaten so you NEED to kill 'm with archers/crossbows.

Pike militia, again, not an issue.

http://prntscr.com/elhkpt

Just had to test it again now. This is aventuros vs dismounted feudal knights. Medium difficulty so either side gets no advantages., I didnt't flank them. Attacked in narrow formation to prevent flanking. Straight in charge and this is what happened, just as i said :) Scots have even more durable pikemen, but result is about the same.

As a side note, i have modded some unit stats and pikes were among them. They got higher attack AND defence than in vanilla. Didn't touch the knights. And still the result is this.

Can't see how you people find them useful.

[Preacher]

2 year old discussion...

[kekkuli]

Originally posted by Blackout7491 - Deus Vult:

2 year old discussion...

10 year old game, why are you playing it?

[Khorps]

LET'S GIVE EM A DOSE OF IMPERIAL PIKE AND SHOT!

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by kekkuli:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Then you haven't fought the best pikes in the game. I fought a Portugese army with 80% Tercio Pikemen (arguably the best in the game) and they rekt my feudal knights. In melee, they can't be beaten so you NEED to kill 'm with archers/crossbows.

Pike militia, again, not an issue.

http://prntscr.com/elhkpt

Just had to test it again now. This is aventuros vs dismounted feudal knights. Medium difficulty so either side gets no advantages., I didnt't flank them. Attacked in narrow formation to prevent flanking. Straight in charge and this is what happened, just as i said :) Scots have even more durable pikemen, but result is about the same.

As a side note, i have modded some unit stats and pikes were among them. They got higher attack AND defence than in vanilla. Didn't touch the knights. And still the result is this.

Can't see how you people find them useful.

If you look near the top of the thread you'll see what we mean by useful.

If you just leave them in their default formation they are not very useful. They are bugged.

To be useful, you need at least 2 pike units working in tandem to overcome the bugs.

It's not about their attack value or weapon damage, which is why modding them still leaves them lacking.

The bugged nature of pikes in vanilla manifests as two primary things: 1) only the first 2 ranks of a pike formation actually fight and 2) they almost always switch to swords and matched/choreographed combat when enemies get within a certain distance.

The main advantages with pikes is supposed to be the standoff nature of their weapon, and that the weapon allows many men to engage the front of the enemy formation simultaneously. This means that a cheap unit like Pike Militia can hold off equal or greater numbers of much more expensive and rare troops. So their main advantage is it allows you to use numbers to take out stacks of elites, because you can, roughly, maintain 3 stacks of pike based for the equivalent cost of 1 all elite army.

The bugged nature of pikes in vanilla totally takes away both the standoff advantage and the economy of force advantage (i.e. having 3 or 4 pikemen fighting 1 oncoming enemy knight).

So people tend to conclude that pikes are useless. And then they try modding attack values, which doesn't address the underlying problem, so they conclude that they are even more useless.

But it's about formation bugs, not weapons or attack values.

So instead of arranging 3 pike units six men deep adjacent to each other, take those 3 units and stretch them into two men deep; then "layer" these 3 units on top of each other.

You now have the same frontage, and are still six ranks deep, but the crucial difference is that all six ranks will be engaging, instead of just the first two, and the pikes will be much more dense than if you kept each pike unit separated from the adjacent one. Pikes formed like this can stop triple gold chevron foot knights even when they get a full charge: they'll just be stuck at the ends of the pikes, unable to engage, and will start getting picked off.

Then you can order the rearmost pike unit to attack or move directly forward, and they will start advancing while thrusting their pikes; once they get up to the front, you order them to halt and then the formerly 2nd rank pike unit (which is now rearmost) is ordered to do the same thing, and you will literally be rolling over the enemy knights.


If you combine this with hammer and anvil tactics, like heavy heavy cav charge into the rear and flanks of the enemy foot knights, you will totally massacre them.

Pikes that are formed "correctly," combined with heavy cav and either arquebusiers, musketeers or aventuriers, are the most deadly force you can make in Med 2. Online against human opponents, the only army more deadly is arguably a horse archer army.

[kekkuli]

Even if it really works like that, it looks stupid and is very unrealistic. In rome 1 (and 2) pikes have this "push" value which allows them to keep enemies at bay. In med 2 infantry just pushes through that formation like nothing. I'd rather find some way to boost that value a bit, than start stacking my units. Sounds even more of a bug to me than the way that pikes currently work. And i ain't gonna bug abuse, it's like cheating :/

Or maybe the game devs just wanted pikes to be useful vs cavalry.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by kekkuli:

Even if it really works like that, it looks stupid and is very unrealistic. In rome 1 (and 2) pikes have this "push" value which allows them to keep enemies at bay. In med 2 infantry just pushes through that formation like nothing. I'd rather find some way to boost that value a bit, than start stacking my units. Sounds even more of a bug to me than the way that pikes currently work. And i ain't gonna bug abuse, it's like cheating :/

Or maybe the game devs just wanted pikes to be useful vs cavalry.

It doesn't look stupid or unrealistic at all: it just looks like the pikes are doing what they are suppossed to do. I have replays from multiplayer doing it, if anyone cares to see it in action.

And it's not bug abuse: it's simply overcoming the bugs that actually exist. Like I said, the pikes have bugged formations, and arranging them differently simply overcomes this formation bug. Instead of having only 2 ranks actually fighting and 4 sitting there doing nothing, you actually get 6 ranks thrusting with their pikes, or you can have the first rank with grounded pikes and the remaining 4 or 5 fighting.

[kekkuli]

Well, i tested your way and it kinda works, but still i lost over half of my men. So i'd say pikes are still not worth it overall. Only when defending towns really, but not very useful at all in field battles. Defending towns in this game is a joke anyways, just defend the town center and its a win. Your troops cant rout there but enemies can. Remember repelling like 3 mongol armies at same time once with just 1 army defending, and pretty easily too. One of the things i like more in rome 2 and newer tw games tbh <.<

[FriedAss (Squid/Ward)]

Put them in the 3-ranks deep double-stacked formation and put at least one of the units in double formation in guard mode. Try not to give them attack orders vs. full strength enemy units, let them come to you if you can.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Lieutenant Dan:

Put them in the 3-ranks deep double-stacked formation and put at least one of the units in double formation in guard mode. Try not to give them attack orders vs. full strength enemy units, let them come to you if you can.

Yeah that's a very important point: this works best when the whole formation is stationary and has had time for all the guys to get into position.

Here is nice little clip that shows the difference with the overlapped vs. standard formations:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s5qRGkUbjhA