City defense vs Mongols: swordstaff militia

[mbrasher1]

I have been experimenting with different units used to defend Antioch vs the Mongols. The Mongols seem to come a bit before pike militia can be deployed in large numbers, so their cav heavy armies can cut through spears, DFKs, just about anything in that specific time frame.

As Sicily and HRE, you get halberd militia which seem to do the trick, but they take alot of losses, and you can be overcome by, say, 6 or 8 Mongol stacks.

Swordstaff militia have more armor and higher defense than the halberds, as well as better attack. Both are AP. SS militia seem to fend off any attack in cities pretty easily, better than other spearwall units. I did some tests vs other basic heavy infantry and they seem pretty solid.

Anyone else have any experience with them?

[Ramses II CP]

Swordstaff militia are excellent troops on the walls, some of my favorite infantry for field defense, and clearly one of the best price to performance units availble to the Danes. They can be a little hard to use effectively on offense, but in my experience they outperform the Danish halberd infantry who are so much more expensive (Obudshaer?) by a wide margin. In my Viking Migration AAR swordstaff militia became core units for all my armies by the time the Mongols and Timurids rolled around.

As I think I posted somewhere else, they're just one of those units that outperform expectations consistently. They can hold the line against almost anything and if you don't let them get badly flanked they won't rout until they're down to the last man. Pike performance in MTWII is singularly unimpressive, but swordstaff militia make up for it (For the Danes anyway).

:egypt:

[Slaists]

As I think I posted somewhere else, they're just one of those units that outperform expectations consistently. They can hold the line against almost anything and if you don't let them get badly flanked they won't rout until they're down to the last man. Pike performance in MTWII is singularly unimpressive, but swordstaff militia make up for it (For the Danes anyway).

:egypt:

Pikes perform very well, if one takes their secondary weapon away...