Spearmen vs Infantry

[Taleheart]

My heavy infantry just lost big time to heavy spearmen. Nearly the same manpower. Am I missing something here? Line formation, free to break formation, high morale... ?!?

[stun]

Spears are just better
edit:
To be more clear, there are very many reasons why defense troops are better (more things bonus them, more impact from some of the better bonuses, better total base stats, base stat distribution is more useful for their role, massive bonuses in certain all important matchups, etc.) but the #1 is this: vanilla heavy spears have the longest weapons in the game. This has a very significant impact on almost every melee matchup, and I'm pretty sure makes them something like twice as effective as heavy swords.
On top of this, KoH2 heavily favors winners with the morale and status systems, and once you're "losing" a fight and get the debuff and they're "winning" the fight, it'll swing even more precipitously in their favor.

[Taleheart]

shoudn't be

[stun]

should be the ♥♥♥♥ you talkin bout
Poleweapons DEFINED combat from the beginning of the iron age till the end of the war of the roses
Swords using PLEBS need not apply to medieval combat

[Taleheart]

Welp, the game clearly says that the infantry type (which includes axe troops, far better for armor, than any spear ever made), so the infantry type is strong against defense (those would be the spearmen you are so fond of), the inf are weak against archers. It also says that spears are strong against cavalry, and well armored to resisnt arrow fire. In any case, even light infantry should cause significant damage to heavy spearmen.
Besides, what are you trying to prove in bringing medieval combat arguments on a game? I know that this is a medieval game, but it is still a game... WTF, honestly?!?
Plebs or not (the medieval term is peon btw) swords Should Totally Beat any kind of spearmen!
How much hours you got in this game, honestly?!?!

[stun]

Game doesn't say anywhere that infantry are strong against defense troops
(because they're not)
skill issue

[Judeo-communism]

Spearmen are superior in every way except damage and speed. Infantry need significant buffs.

[-= Sk1F =-]

Cavalry also should be better when used against enemy flanks, but it is not.

[stun]

infantry don't need buffs, they're supposed to be cheap trash between peasants and real units
cavalry is ridiculously good other than lightcav in simulated battles (where you can't flank, anyway)

[Judeo-communism]

Originally posted by stun:

infantry don't need buffs, they're supposed to be cheap trash between peasants and real units
cavalry is ridiculously good other than lightcav in simulated battles (where you can't flank, anyway)

So when would you ever use them instead of peasants or "real units?"

[stun]

Originally posted by All glory to God:

So when would you ever use them instead of peasants or "real units?"

If I have a strong cultural variant that's available in the barracks tier, earlygame for attacker armies and all game for siege chaff
If I have a superelite cultural variant, all game for everything
If I don't have good cultural variants of any units then I'm not going to recruit them, I'm just going to use nothing but archers until I can get regional elites or mooch elites off merc stacks
I don't use peasants

[Judeo-communism]

The only time I use Peasants is super early game if I start on Very Hard in war, especially if they send early Spies in and start launching Rebellions. Then I'll recruit Peasants and Archers and war that way ASAP, since getting Infantry or Spearmen up takes too much time and Gold.

Once that's passed, then I get proper standing armies of 3 Spearmen, 2 Calvary, 3 Archers and win the game that way. Sometimes I do 1 Infantry and 2 Spearmen, but it's always infinitely worse than just 3 Spearmen. A benefit of Infantry is that if you didn't have any Spearmen or Archers, the Army Unit on the map screen would have a lot faster travel speed as travel speed is determined by the slowest unit in the Army. But they lose so much health and resilience compared to Spearmen, it's not worth it.

[Mr Can't Say]

You don't have to beat spearman with Infantry unless if they have higher stats

Spearman's melee attack can barely do ♥♥♥♥ to Infantry and other unless if they're fighting cavalry because that's they are meant to do duh, but in reality they can hold their own for as long as they need too because they can just simply shrug off anything almost

Archer and crossbow can chew spearman up because they can't withstand the amount of damage against those range unit due to their stats against range unit is low compare to Infantry

If you wanna beat spearman
Shoot them, flank on them, backflank on them.

Spearman has low melee attack stats, but has higher melee defense against melee attack.

[Judeo-communism]

Originally posted by Mr Can't Say:

Archer and crossbow can chew spearman up because they can't withstand the amount of damage against those range unit due to their stats against range unit is low compare to Infantry

If you wanna beat spearman
Shoot them, flank on them, backflank on them.

Spearmen have much higher health and defense against ranged than Infantry. In fact, Infantry's main counter isn't even Calvary, it's ranged.