CMAA vs. CS

[Knight Templar]

I've read here many times swords will badly defeat spears. In my campaign battles they usually do, but now I made about 10 custom battles- CMAA vs. saracen inf/CS (they have the same stats). My swordsmen won only in half of them, the other half looked like this (or worse):

https://img151.imageshack.us/img151/975/1038jx.jpg

As recommended, I set CMAA in two lines, while AI's saracen inf were in 4 lines, as usual.

https://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8818/1057wc.jpg

The end of the battle :dizzy2:

So, do you have simmilar experiences or have I done sth wrong?

[CBR]

No you havent done anything wrong. When just using standard formation swords do indeed have problems against the heavy spears. Two years ago I made some tests of sword using wedge against spears. Wedge will improve the performance against spears as they easily gets disordered and lose their ranks bonus.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=425962&postcount=1

Although I didnt do any tests without wedge my experience with CMAA v CS is that CS would win perhaps 60-70% of the fights but the CMAA will of course work better if you use a wider line so you get some men flanking the spear unit. That is just not always possible if facing a whole line of spears.


CBR

[Knight Templar]

Interesting, according to you tests, CMAA in wedge formation won every battle. I've just made 36 CMAA vs. CS tests, 12 with swordsmen in wedge formation, 12 with default formation and 12 with my swordsmen set in two lines.
Results:

1. CMAA in wedge: 11 won, 1 lost
As expected, swordsmen quickly broke CS line ruining their ranks bonus. CS fought till reduced to 35-50 men and started to flee. I lost about 10-25 swordsmen

2. CMAA in 2 lines: 11 won, 1 lost
Simillar to the first case, CS ran away when reduced to 35-50 men, while my swordsmen lost between 10-25 men.

3. CMAA in default 4 lines formation: 10 won, 2 lost

Well, CMAA also won most of battles in default formation, but it took them more time to break spearmen formation and win. CS even fought till reduced to 25-35 men, which caused more casaulties to CMAA; they lost, in average, 30 men.

[antisocialmunky]

Realistically, most players would use the first two comboed together. And what size are you using?

[Knight Templar]

Default size

[tigger_on_vrb]

When I play campaign I put my spears in 5 ranks, so they get the rank bonus longer, but of course this means it is easier to 'wrap-round' with swords eating away at the flanks, but I guess this would be the case anyway in 1v1 custom battles. In the campaign of course their flanks are protected by other units. Anyone tried the same test with 5 instead of 4 ranks?