Why do infantry feel useless compared to spearmen?

[Judeo-communism]

Infantry feel squishier while doing less damage than spearmen, while spearmen also have the benefit of being excellent against horses. Why should I ever use infantry over spearmen?

[Iskar]

My infantry do far more melee damage than most spearmen. Of course, if you're comparing heavy spears with light inf the spears will be better overall, but there is little reason not to hire heavy inf in my opinion.

[iche_bins]

I build exclusively spearmen. They are strong enough to hold the line against enemy infantry and can take down enemy commanders with ease (when they catch them)

[Judeo-communism]

I am comparing light infantry with light spearmen, with men at arms and heavy spearmen. Light infantry and men at arms feel useless compared to light spearmen and heavy spearmen.

Perhaps there's some sprint bonus or something with their mobility in battle I guess? Doesn't feel worth it at all.

My late game main army units are usually 2 men at arms, 2 heavy spearmen, 1 feudal knights and 3 longbowmen. I put a lot of value in the Archery Tradition as I play England. Early game units are the same, just their lower versions.

I think I'll just replace all the light infantry and men at arms with spearmen. They seem vastly more useful both in field battles and attacking/defending sieges. They're also way squishier than the spearmen, like their shield is worthless.

[redhongkong]

yea i like spearman as well, it give u time to let archer or cav to work on dmg.

[redhongkong]

they should reduce spearman's defense against arrow to balance it out ? XD

[zolobolo]

Archers are very effective (rightly so) as long as the enemy can be kept away from them so a defensive line of spearmen with archers behind them works extremely well yes. Infantry is not needed indeed in this combo: if enemy general charges in the spearmen will taken them out as well

When using infantry I would imagine different combo: like all infantry to counter the spears and break them ASAP. Or when defending a town they might be better on the wall then spears.

Alternately they might be useful as reserve in small numbers (1-2 unit) to hit an enemy formation at its weak point or counter enemy infantry or heavy infantry if they have any

For sure they seem to have less use cases: they are more expensive but take less levies and are a bit better at shock and siege but yes their price seems a but too steep for those small advantages

[DNLH]

I think it's the defense values, they start with more, so it scales up faster with percentage bonuses, making infantry increased attack matter little in the end, with their defense being much less by comparison.

And the spearmen are much more useful against heavy cav, that really tends to trump anything else in the game. I do agree that foot squads could use a rudimentary rock-paper-scissors-ish kind of thing, with Infantry having their defense way boosted against ranged, allowing them to fight under hail of arrows, and spearmen having their ranged defense way lowered, so that they can hold in melee, but not if the other side is peppering them with arrows. Some squads of both infantry and spearmen (like Roman Infantry and Pikemen, for example) already do something along those lines, but it's not enough.

Men-at-Arms are extreme case, because they're more expensive than heavy infantry, while being barely any better than it, and being slower on top of that (scratch that, I checked the stats and I was wrong, this didn't really change my opinion on Men-at-Arms, just made me value HI even less). But my extra disappointment is the Teutonic Knights, every battle I have them fight in they seem to take many losses without putting out any visible damage... game could really use a summary screen for battles, so we'd know what could be finetuned here, to be honest.

[Iskar]

Originally posted by DNLH:

I think it's the defense values, they start with more, so it scales up faster with percentage bonuses, making infantry increased attack matter little in the end, with their defense being much less by comparison.

And the spearmen are much more useful against heavy cav, that really tends to trump anything else in the game. I do agree that foot squads could use a rudimentary rock-paper-scissors-ish kind of thing, with Infantry having their defense way boosted against ranged, allowing them to fight under hail of arrows, and spearmen having their ranged defense way lowered, so that they can hold in melee, but not if the other side is peppering them with arrows. Some squads of both infantry and spearmen (like Roman Infantry and Pikemen, for example) already do something along those lines, but it's not enough.

Men-at-Arms are extreme case, because they're more expensive than heavy infantry, while being barely any better than it, and being slower on top of that. But my extra disappointment is the Teutonic Knights, every battle I have them fight in they seem to take many losses without putting out any visible damage... game could really use a summary screen for battles, so we'd know what could be finetuned here, to be honest.

I see. Maybe my positive assessment of infantry stems from my predominant use of Roman Infantry above all else. Their ranged def is awesome.

[Chompers]

The defense value of swordmen is like 10 but the defense value of spearmen is like 200. Its completely ridiculous but I stopped using swordsmen completely for this reason.

[Kazrim]

Yeahhhh with infantry in general unless it has a ranged weapon or a spear it's worthless trash

[Lateralus]

Has anyone tested how all of this applies to auto resolve battles rather than manual?

[ShadowFox]

I just use archers and cav personally but thats just me

[MainKiller7]

The spearmen are countered by the swordsmen. 1 to 1 swords will win.

[Etrusco]

Originally posted by MainKiller7:

The spearmen are countered by the swordsmen. 1 to 1 swords will win.

Sadly is never just a 1 vs 1, the problem is cav and archers are really powerful. Worst case scenario spears just need to hold the line against the swords, best case scenario they fight against cav.

[matlajs]

as i agree that spears are much more usefull than infantry and personaly swordsmith is the last upgrade i do( evne siegeworkshop i do earlier), i have run into many instances, where if cav jsut don't crush swordsmen in charge, in prolonged combat they will loose to infantry. That with 0-0 generals and( at least i think so) in open plain. Since game don¨t bother with some cursor tooltips, that your units get penalties for unpleasant terrain features, which are aside of forest hardly recognizable. Poor, small mini-icon below the main cursor would suffice( tree, marsh, highground, name it)