Phalanx testing--please respond

[Ibrahim]

Hi All,

OK, so myself and QuintusSertorius are working on the phalanx right now (as can be seen in the latest EDU uploaded for testing). We are receiving news that each behaves differently, but we need details, recommendations, etc.

Which units are doing best? what are all of them doing? Some will clearly be "wrong", I am using these as a "control" of sorts, to compare to.

[Saigrin]

Well, I've been playing as Arche Seleukeia, and I've had a funny time watching the Pantodapoi Phalanx crushing units of greek Pehzetairoi, while having minor stats. I have the feeling that the reason for this is the secondary weapon switch:

Pehzetairoi switch weapons like having no trust in their primary weapon, as soon as they face an enemy unit, so they become vulnerable. On the other side, Pantodapoi phalanx don't have this feature "activated", and they never switch weapons; that, in game statistics, give them more survivability, but it looks pretty ridiculous to watch a broken formation with pikes pointing everywhere.

My feeling is that if it where possible to make Pehzetairoi less anxious to switch weapons, the experience would be better. If not possible, i would propose the Pantodapoi option, at least, a pike unit uses pikes.

On other news, I've noted that mercenary phalangites have really minor stats compared to national Pehzetairoi phalanxes.

When I earn more free time to test the game, I'll give more feedback if I think it can be useful, as I intend to be with this.

Keep on fighting, team!

[QuintusSertorius]

There have been a number of comments about the new speed of phalangitai. I know the move_speed_mod of 0.5 before caused problems for the AI, but 0.8 is possibly too fast. Perhaps 0.6 would be more appropriate?

[Tux]

Would suggest to ask this on the TWC forums too, if it hasn't been done already.

[Chap]

Peltephoroi and Pantodapoi have no secondary weapon (or they do not switch) and do well against both scutari spears and secondary enable phalanx.

Machimoi, Pehzetairoi and Mistophoroi fight their battles with the secondary weapon. When defending most of the charging enemy is held back with the second line doing most of the attacking. When held back the front and third lines rarely do anything. This lasts for a few seconds, when a few of the enemy reaches the front line they switch allowing more to pass through which starts a chain reaction until the front line is fighting with their swords.

Against phalanx vs phalanx with secondary weapons it is better to have guard mode off when attacking or defending. This will decrease your deaths. I don't know why but that's how it works.

It is strange when they fight one on one. First they both fight with sarrisa then the front lines all switch. Then all player phalanx switch to secondary while the cpu phalanx has the rest of the unit still with sarrisa. The cpu holding sarrisa face away from the fighting and reverse into the player like truck. This pushes the player away until the whole unit surrounds the cpu phalanx. When they are surrounded the soldiers in the center start to dance the waltz with their sarrisa all in unison. With fighting all around them they take one step in every direction anti clockwise its a nice square dance. Then they scared and run away.

When fighting with other units of phalanx it does not happen too much but the front lines are wavy. Even while defending in guard mode the cpu phalanx is able to push deep into formation. They dont need to reverse they can still push facing the front. When attacking in free mode the lines hold slightly better.

[Chap]

I don't know how to do the spoiler here so ill just give this as an attachment. It is my recordings so you can have a browse.phalanx test.txt
Also how should i continue? what specifically do you want to know?

[Ibrahim]

I don't know how to do the spoiler here so ill just give this as an attachment. It is my recordings so you can have a browse.phalanx test.txt
Also how should i continue? what specifically do you want to know?

That's actually what I need, as is Mike Golf's report. very handy.

[Project_Mewler]

Hi! Some quick observations I had on my latest Baktria play-through was that the Phalanx units had no cohesion and no secondary weapon. They seemed to respond equally effectively to threats from the front, flank and rear. This was especially noticeable against the Saka cavalry as they could charge headlong and still trade 1 for 1 with my phalanxes. Also the units seem to only attack 1v1 and second and third rank rarely engage when in formation.

Phalanxes seem to do well against enemy infantry even though they break cohesion they still seem to get sizable combat bonuses and unit mass bonuses. I think a lot of the problems with infantry vs infantry is unit mass related actually as they often displace opponents quite quickly.

I cannot really speak to unit balancing as units in EBI were overpowered compared to EBII, and I kind of like that phalanxes are not so formidable, but that said I think with improved cohesion they could serve as they did historically as a tool primarily to pin enemy units down rather than simply massacre them.

With that said, this mod is still incredible and I really appreciate any work being done to improve it! I will look for other strange interactions on my next play-through and post them here.

[QuintusSertorius]

Project_Mewler, were you using the newest EDU that came out a couple of days ago, or the one before that?

Which units, specifically, were you observing, because in the previous iteration they were all different.

[QuintusSertorius]

Does anyone have observations on the latest EDU (no more secondary weapons and standardisation of stats for phalanxes) they'd like to share?

[Vilkku92]

Does anyone have observations on the latest EDU (no more secondary weapons and standardisation of stats for phalanxes) they'd like to share?

Playing as Pergamon, using those basic phalanxes (phlangitai?) for my faction. Limited experiences with them so far, mostly against Pontus. So far I've noticed that when I keep their flanks secured and keep them pointed at the enemy, they take almost no casualties. As in, I've had maybe 2-3 battles against respectably sized armies, and lost about 10-30 men total for each unit. They weren't cakewalks either: units positioned on the flanks lost over half or so of their manpower, same with cavalry and missiles. Phalanxes stopped, killed or routed anything from Pontic Spearmen to Kinsmen Cavalry, no sweat. However, I didn't see my phalanxes get outflanked, nor did I get much experience engaging enemies with broken formations. I also didn't face any phalanxes myself. So far they seem to be nigh-invulnerable against frontal assaults by cavalry and ordinary infantry, and almost unstoppable if not flanked, but I need to play some more to be sure.

[Chap]

I have had the same experience as Vilkku except i'm playing as Carthage so i encounter the phalanx. The AI leaves them behind when they march towards me. So when they finally reach the front lines, half of the enemy has routed.

They are a tough unit to face head on so i treat them carefully. Elite units can push into their formation from the sides but in front the phalanx remains solid. They are still capable units when their formation is scattered so i prefer to rout them instead. However by the time i'm fighting them the rest of their army is running away so its not that hard to do.

[Baharr]

I don't know if this is redundant to mention, but pikes underperforming terribly in Medieval 2 has been a problem pretty much since launch. The standard fix that many mods (Stainless Steel, TATW, etc.) use is the removal of pike units' secondary weapons, since they switch to them way too frequently and generally fail to behave like actual pikemen if they have a secondary weapon. If they only have their pikes they tend to maintain formation and fight in a manner closer to Rome 1 phalanxes.

It's been mentioned in the thread before that the lack of a secondary weapon is why pantodapoi can beat pezhetairoi - I just wanted to add that it's been a Med2 engine issue from day one.

(I'd add a link to a bunch of threads discussing the problem but apparently I'm not allowed yet. Quickly googling "medieval 2 pike fix" should throw up more than enough info, though)

[Ibrahim]

I don't know if this is redundant to mention, but pikes underperforming terribly in Medieval 2 has been a problem pretty much since launch. The standard fix that many mods (Stainless Steel, TATW, etc.) use is the removal of pike units' secondary weapons, since they switch to them way too frequently and generally fail to behave like actual pikemen if they have a secondary weapon. If they only have their pikes they tend to maintain formation and fight in a manner closer to Rome 1 phalanxes.

It's been mentioned in the thread before that the lack of a secondary weapon is why pantodapoi can beat pezhetairoi - I just wanted to add that it's been a Med2 engine issue from day one.

(I'd add a link to a bunch of threads discussing the problem but apparently I'm not allowed yet. Quickly googling "medieval 2 pike fix" should throw up more than enough info, though)

we're aware of the fact that this has been an issue from day one. We were hoping for a possible way round it, or failing that, a way to ensure that the phalangites don't just turn around.

As it is, we seem to be making progress, though other feedback is needed.