Have you spotted any Pike & Shot armies?

[R'as al Ghul]

Well, I haven't.
In my past campaigns the AI has only build gunpowder artillery and perhaps the odd Handgunner but none of the Musketeers or Arquebusiers. I've also not seen a single Pike unit apart from my own.
Has anybody seen any and when are they to be expected?
Some factions field almost the same armies on turn 150 as on turn 20.

R'as

[Drunkin General]

I've seen the Russian AI field cossack musketeers but they are much easiar to get. One of the problems i've noticed is that the AI can't afford to upgrade its large cities to huge cities. In my last russian campaign I came across a whole load of large cities with 30k pops all belonging to various impoverished AI's.

[R'as al Ghul]

One of the problems i've noticed is that the AI can't afford to upgrade its large cities to huge cities. In my last russian campaign I came across a whole load of large cities with 30k pops all belonging to various impoverished AI's.

Yes, okay that's a problem. The AI still needs to learn how to keep the ecomomy up.
But when you capture cities from Milan around turn 140 and they have Royal Barracks but don't produce any units from them it's a different problem, right?

[pike master]

the ai will hire mercenaries which is a first as far as i know for tw games

[Drunkin General]

Well army composition has always been a prob in TW games & I think its at its worst in this game due to a number of factors. I think one of the reasons that we aren't seeing a lot of musketeers is because stat wise they probably don't appear like a good unit choice when they could probably produce lets say a unit of dismounted broken lances or genoese xbow. One of the ways you could look at this problem is switching to autobuild units in one of your campaigns & see if the auto build goes for musketeers over the much stronger(stat wise) units. Now that I think about it, i'm pretty sure that the auto build unit could be the problem here(or a blessing if you don't have musketeers). This would also explain why when ever I bump into the russians in a late game they always have loads of cossack musketeers since statwise they are the best unit available to the russkies from a city. This might also affect militia pike who have pretty weak stats.

[Drunkin General]

the ai will hire mercenaries which is a first as far as i know for tw games

The AI hired mercs in RTW but not in MTW or STW. Tbh aside from crusades/jihads this is more of a hinderance to the AI since it can't distinguish between good buys & bad buys & it also can't disband

[Von Nanega]

I have seen the AI hire mercs many times! I checked on merc availability one turn. In the next turn I decided to hire them and they where gone. I sent my my spy for a second look at a French army, and they had them!

[napoleon526]

I've never seen the AI build pike units in large amounts, which is too bad since i'd like to try a pike and musket vs. pike and musket battle. I have many times had the AI send entire stacks comprised of almost all handgunners, which are ridiculously easy to beat.

[King Bob VI]

The Scots can be overly pike-happy at times.

[KHPike]

The AI doesn't really know how to upgrade its armies as time progresses, but I've seen AI that captures my citadels build them.

[Lorenzo_H]

I personally haven't seen many enemy gunpowder units apart from handgunners. I personally think the combination of Arquebusiers/Pikemen is too effective to let pass. Its a formation used in real life and it certainly works in the game.

[TevashSzat]

Yep, all I see in the mid to late game is either tons of low level militia armies or 1 or 2 decent armies with good mercs and feudal knights or something like that.

The thing is here that I have seen the ai have ctiadels that can produce elite units, but they just dont have enough money to get the buildings to produce those units which is why u often see feudal knights since they come from the walls

[Quillan]

I've seen a couple of dozen armies composed of pike and muskets. The trouble is, they were all mine. I've seen a number of cannons, mortars, bombards, rocket launchers and the like, and several units of hand gunners, but I've never seen the AI field arquebusiers or musketeers at all. The only pike I've seen them field is mercenaries or in rebel armies, although I have yet to face the Scots in the field.

[napoleon526]

I've also noticed that factions that can make them love to mix lots of mortars in with crappy militia units, which is not a recipe for success. Often times i'll see armies consisting of 6 or 7 mortars and the rest spear and town militia. If you engage them frontally and hit their rear with cavalry, not a single one will escape, but all the mortars will be able to fire at least 2 or 3 times before you reach them and odds are they'll inflict an irritating number of casualties before you slaughter them all.

[Laconic]

I personally haven't seen many enemy gunpowder units apart from handgunners. I personally think the combination of Arquebusiers/Pikemen is too effective to let pass. Its a formation used in real life and it certainly works in the game.

I just tried an army of Arquebusiers and Forlorn Hope (granted, not pikemen). I deployed them in a checkerboard, with two units of swords at each corner of the gunners and backup gunners to sweep around the flanks once the lines were engaged. I got crushed on a big cavalry charge :tomato: I'll try it with pikes and see what happens next time.