sharp pointy sticks...pole arm debate

[t1mmie]

i didn't see any threads about pole arms, but didn't look to far back, tbh.

which do you prefer and why? pikes, order foot or goth/chiv srgts? or do you like a non xtian troop? or an off beat type, like billmen, sap shouldn't count, but if ya must... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

i personally go for the billmen, as i enjoy the unique units in the game. plus they do a good job of hacking and sticking. i dislike the small unit size, but appreciate the trade off between 'unique' unit and run of the mill. i also dislike halbs, not as good as billmen, imo. pikes are a close second for me, but more for reasons not worth discussing in honest debate. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Brutal DLX]

Well, I would say that depends on what's available to me, as well as what purpose you need them for. Pikemen are my pick against cavalry, militia seargents for flanking heavily armoured units. Those are my picks of the widely available units.
If I could get Billmen, I'd take those, but Gothic seargents are great in a line of battle, when teamed up with CMAA.
Halberdiers aren't my favourite, due to them being very slow and of low morale (sans valour upgrapde), but that's not to say they are bad

[econ21]

I don't get to play with many of the units you mention as I usually to play English/HRE in early campaigns, ending around the high period. I tend to rely on Chiv spears as the backbone of my army, as I tend to fight defensively - relying on archery and flanking attacks to win the day.

Billmen have usually disappointed me - they die too quick, I guess due to the lack of armour. But I still buy them as a tactical reserve and to attack tied down knights. Looking at the stats, the polearm is a very good weapon - as it should be - both AP and offensively anti-cav. The spear is mainly defensive and won't kill much, but can hold ground.

[A.Saturnus]

The best pole-arm unit is of course JHI, one hell of a unit

[pdoan8]

I use lots of the high end regular spear including Nubian Spear. These guy usually make up 1/4 of my army. IMO, Italian Inf is the best (I am not counting Order Foot since I can't train them in the regular basis).

Around 20% (2-3 units) of my army are polearm and other shock spear. Goth Ser, Muwahid, Billmen, UM, M Ser, Halb, Woodmen,...The best of these are JHI and Swiss Halb. I use Halb and Bill the most. IMO, those that have bonus against Cav and armed with AP weapon will kill Cav very fast. Next to that are those that have AP capability or bonus attacking Cav.

I don't use Pike very often, unless they are Swiss. Pike can hold Cav a little better than spears but they die too fast if they are under arrow fire.

[ShadesPanther]

JHI are very good cav killers but for some reason most people in MP dont actually know it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

[Michael the Great]

Quote[/b] (A.Saturnus @ April 03 2003,06:15)]The best pole-arm unit is of course JHI, one hell of a unit
Ummm..what kinda weapons do these use? seems like some sort of shorter polearm than bills or halberds.
I guess this favours more aggressive combat,making them more useful in melee than long poleaxes like Chivalric Foot Knights use,but of course,there comes the special status and training that JHI recieved http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Anyway,I think shorter polearms help in melee don't they?? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I am not sure about the purpose of the thread, but I assume we are speaking about anti cav weaponry.

3 'weapons' give bonus vs cav

- spear (+1 ATT / +4 DEF) easily available (spearmen, feu / chiv/gothic searg, saracen inf....)
- pike (+2 ATT / +6 DEF) as in Pikemen, Swiss Pikemen and SAP.
- polearm / halebard (+3 ATT / +1 DEF). For hallebardiers / billmen / G/CFK / JHI / Swiss Halebard. Stat wise, no big difference between foot knight and JHI

In addition spears / pike have a rank bonus. Polearms have Armor Piercing.

A major issue for anti cav units is low morale. Beside Swiss / FK and JHI, all the others units won't hold much when in trouble. Valor for spear is particularly important.

Favoring Turk, I put JHI on top of my list.

Louis,

[Polish Crusader]

I agree that morale is one of the biggest factors when choosing an anti-cav group. Especially in case they get mixed up in the melee on accident you dont want them running and then have the rest of your army follow. I attempt to give them at least decent valour for morale.

[Aelwyn]

I like regular spearmen because they have pool sticks for weapons http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Brutal DLX]

Heh.- yes, they are peasants with sticks, which is better than peasants with no sticks. And they are supposed to have nice shields to hide behind, so they aren't totally useless despite that rumour going around.

[MonkeyMan]

Chiv Foot Knights but thats more of a halberd/poleaxe. By far my favourites if they count. Otherwise Billmen, even more so than Jan heavies.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Quote[/b] (MonkeyMan @ April 25 2003,05:16)]Chiv Foot Knights but thats more of a halberd/poleaxe. By far my favourites if they count. Otherwise Billmen, even more so than Jan heavies.
I love billmen, they lways form the backbone of my army when I play as the English. Is there anyway to mod the game so that you can build foot knights, by the way?

[Brutal DLX]

Yes, there is. For example, I modded my game so that you can build footknights only in the provinces that are renowned for them so you can get the +1 valour bonus. But basically you can mod it so that you could build footknights anywhere, all you would have to do is specify the unit's availability and building requirements in the spreadsheet. Look or post in the dungeon forum for detailed info.

[MonkeyMan]

Heres an ancient one for you:

*********************
Everything you ever wanted to know about Foot Knights by A.MonkeyMan(but were afraid to ask, or maybe not I don?t know J)

Foot knights are not available to build in MTW. Foot knights currently only exist in the following circumstances-

1. A Rebel army, particularly faction re-emergences and sometimes catholic rebellions.
2. Gothic, Chivalric, Crusading and non early royal knights can dismount all the time, by right clicking on them in the phase before the battle when you are asked to choose a formation for your army.
3. Other mounted units including early royal knights, feudal knights and in fact any other mounted unit without exception; can dismount as the attacker or defender in a siege situation. Feudal knights and early royals give feudal foot knights, ghulams give Saracen inf., gendarmes give chivalric maa etc. (try a few yourself most give archers, spears or peasants).

Entries do exist on the map to +1 valour foot knight building areas, this is relevant to entries in crusaders_unit_prod11.txt in the MTW directory in program files and possibly links back to a development indecision on the building of foot knights themselves.

Regarding foot knights in history ? foot knights although for the most part less used than as mounted versions are a quite valid unit to exist in medieval warfare. Particularly with the advent of gunpowder and weapons like the billhook, halberd, poleaxe and pike that evened up the contest between heavy cavalry and foot troops foot knights became particularly heavily used and started to outnumber their mounted friends. Examples like the wars of the roses including the battle of Bosworth (1485 where Richard III died) knights were almost exclusively on foot with poleaxes, with a few exceptions. Also the 100 years war saw the English knights on foot by preference. Also to take into consideration is the impracticality of transporting horses over bodies of water (play the Hastings historic battle, most knights are foot mounted despite the Normans bringing as many horses as they no doubt could.

So given this you say ? I want to choose my own rules as to the build ability and use of foot knights. Well here for you is what I know about the modding of such units. Before you start, got to your MTW directory and copy the file crusaders_unit_prod11.txt to a nice safe place. Also do the same for crusader_build_prod13.txt.

1. I want to make feudal knights (or any other unit) dismountable all the time:

Go into crudaders_unit_prod11.txt open it in WordPad (or download a excel version of the files and use as they state in their read me, you can probably get one from www.totalwar.org but be aware that this may fail to work with a patched version of the game)

Search down the entries for the entry for the entry for feudal knights, each entry will probably take two lines and make sure you ignore the entry for feudal foot knights for the time being.

Once you have found it go right to the end (probably on the second line) and you will find the following ?

BerberCamel, bedouincamelwarriors FeudalFootKnights SWORD

add in the word YES before sword so you get

BerberCamel, bedouincamelwarriors FeudalFootKnightsn YES SWORD

note that this should be separated from the words around it by a TAB.

Now save this and start a game of MTW to test if it works. Note that if you get an error message this normally relates to the correctness of what you entered so either restore your backup version (you remembered to do that right) or go into the file again and amend the spacing between each item you edited, most items should have one tab between them, of the nature that each is an entry in a dataset, and two tabs are required if there is no entry for a particular value so pay careful attention to whats thes before you start.


2. I Want to be able to build Foot Knights as a separate unit because I think I should have the option and it will make the game more fun.

In crusader_unit_prod11.txt find the entry for the relevant foot unit you want to build for example purposes I will edit Chivalric Foot Knights.

Find the entry for ChivalricFootKnights and find the part that looks like-

CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT(108.5) DEFENDER, SPEAR, STRONG HIGH, LATE YES HEIGHT( 85 ),

Between ?Close to support? and ?defender spear?, two tabs after (108.5) (there are three) place the line

{ ROYAL_COURT3, ARMOURER3 }

you can do this by typing it as it is here or copying the relevant entry from the mounted knights and removing the need for a horse breeder.

You should have something like this ?

CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT(108.5) { ROYAL_COURT3, ARMOURER3 } DEFENDER, SPEAR, STRONG HIGH, LATE YES HEIGHT( 85 ),

Save the file and test in MTW. Other thing of note that you might want to change are the line

ORTH_ZEALOTS(5) FRENCH ILE_DE_FRANCE POVERTY_STRICKEN(17.5),

Relates to the faction that gets a valour bonus for this unit and the region that gets one. This can be changed but note that each province has only one speciality allowed, if two are given the first occurrence in the unit prod file takes precedence.

Also of note is the following at the start of the entry

ChivalricFootKnights INFANTRY 625 8 1 0 80 40 1 PREFERRED

The first number is the cost of a standard unit so 625 (different in patched version I think). The entry 40 is the standard unit size (ignore the 80 it?s nothing to do with it) this number is multiplied by the unit size in your game so huge 40 * 2 = 80 and the cost is hence multiplied by it too. So for example if you wanted units of 60 knights in standerd costing 1000

ChivalricFootKnights INFANTRY 1000 8 1 0 80 60 1 PREFERRED

These would be units of 120 costing 200 in Huge unit sizes.


3. I want to be able to build Gothic knights and foot knights even though I?m the English because we lack a cool high-tech unit.

Ok fine, go into crudader_build_prod13.txt. Find the entry for ROYAL_COURT and go to the part (open it with wordpad and it should be only 1 line long):

ARAGONESE, BURGUNDIAN, DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN, PAPIST, SICILIAN, SPANISH, SWISS},{ITALIAN, GERMAN_HRE}

Note that this is the end of the factions that can build each level of the royal_court, with each level having different availabilities, ending in level 4 with only german/hre and Italians. Either copy one of the entries for the lower levels and paste it over the final entry or add in ,ENGLISH. Such that you have:

ARAGONESE, BURGUNDIAN, DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN, PAPIST, SICILIAN, SPANISH, SWISS},{ITALIAN, GERMAN_HRE, ENGLISH}

Save this file and close.

Now go into crusader_unit_prod11.txt and find the entries for gothic knights and gothic foot knights (make these work as noted in no.2 first remembering they require level 4 buildings) and find the line(s)

FULLPLAR, YES, YES GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN Missile, Shocktroop, Spear, Cavalry

and either replace with ALL_FACTIONS (without s) or add in as before ,ENGLISH.

Save this file and test.
**********************
Actually in one of the stickys in the dungeon too

HERE (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=3150)

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Nice one Monkeyman (tosses Monkeyman some nuts http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif )

[SmokWawelski]

Why, oh why nobody voted for Order Foot Soldiers? I do not speak while looking into the txt file, but my gut tells me that they have pretty nice morale (valour)? Maybe not much of a cav-killer, but I have seen them take a lot of beating and still capable of going into attack vs giving up and going for a break outside of the map http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

My vote for OFS: too bad you cannot train them outside of the crusades...

[Aelwyn]

Has anyone used Gothic Sergeants a lot? I ask because I've used them a few times, and each time they are severely lacking the skills of even basic Spearmen. Each time I used them they were the first to route, causing me to lose most of the games I used them in. Hmm....from looking at their unit icon, maybe its the tooth picks they carry....

[Shahed]

Gothic Sarges, well they look neat with the toothpicks and all http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif but I have yet to use them effectively. I think being 60men îs an issue for this unit since everytime I used them they end up with like 4 men.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Any explanations or help would be welcome.

Nice post Monkeyman

[Rageagainst20]

I like billmen because im kinda a armoured pesent fan although there not really pesents in the days of agincourt they where