Phalanxes Overpowered?

First, let me say what an amazing mod this is. It really got me back into RTW after messing around with M2TW and Broken Crescent. For the most part, the units look beautiful and are balanced.

However, I do have one complaint. Why do all phalanxes have insane attack (16+?) and .17 lethality? Combined with their ridiculous reach, they massacre everything one on one. When I use them, every battle I have against the AI turns into a heroic victory, just because nothing kills them besides more phalanxes.

I recently started a game with the Romans, and the AI uses some truly brain dead tactics with their phalanxes, exposing their flanks constantly. Still, when I try to flank them with principes, the phalanxes just turn to face the flankers, sweeping their sarissas around like a baseball bat and swatting everyone unlucky enough to be in the way. Often, even when I have basic phalanxes outnumbered and surrounded, they still inflict horrific casualties on the one unit they are poking (assuming they don't rout).

When I fight against hoplite units (without phalanx) and surround them, my casulties are far far lower.

My question is, wasn't the historical weakness of phalanxes the fact that they collapse quickly when flanked? Why is it that flanked phalanxes can still hold out much better than Roman legions that are flanked? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Maybe the morale for the phalanxes can be lowered?

It really makes fighting as the successor states too easy (at least playing as Egypt), since oftentimes you don't even need to guard your flanks with other units. For the time being, I'm just playing as the Romans for some decent challenging battles.

This is in the wrong forum...

Don't use Principes to flank.

Or wait, do, but attack them in the rear with cavalry. Cavalry is your friend.

You've got to hold them first. that means put some cheap unit in guard mode right in front of the phalanx and advance them slowly until the phalanx actually starts fighting and engaging. When they do, they will never swing around their spears like that....you can ram them in the back with cavalry and follow it up ith infantry and they won't do anything as long as the unit they originally began to engage is still right in front of them. Yes, the 'holding unit' will take a few casualties (putting them in guard mode helps a little bit) but you should be able to crack the phalanx in a rear attack fast enough to avoid large losses.

He's not saying he's having problems cracking the phalanx, but that the AI is useless against his own phalangites. Which is true of course.

Don't let the attack value fool you. It has the "spear" attribute, which means it has a penalty against infantry. As a result, they were up-stated to compensate for that.

Why in the world is there a -4 penalty when using spears against infantry?

I'm pretty sure spears were good against infantry.

Just the fact that if an swordsman got past the striking distance of the spearman, the spearman will find it hard to win that fight. Though in this game it's generally about formations and spearmen work well in formation, but the developers didn't think so I guess.

They get +8 against cavalry though, so it's alright.

~:mecry: no no ........no more ..........!!! :laugh4: The phalanxes are very well ballanced....

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Originally Posted by The Wicked

~:mecry: no no ........no more ..........!!! :laugh4: The phalanxes are very well ballanced....

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Hell no, they are often equal in skill against infantry when flanked or attacked from behind by them.

the problem lies in the great flexibility that the RTW engine gives to phalanxes...real life phalanxes couldn't run and change the direction of the pikes so easily

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Originally Posted by eggthief

Hell no, they are often equal in skill against infantry when flanked or attacked from behind by them.

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well in my mac campaing my deuteroi and mercenary phalanxes are very easy to beat in hand to hand combat .... not to mention the frontal attacks by other phalanxes ..... they fall like flies

Rhomphaiaphoroi > Phalanx in hand to hand combat in all my battles.

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Originally Posted by abou

Don't let the attack value fool you. It has the "spear" attribute, which means it has a penalty against infantry. As a result, they were up-stated to compensate for that.

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...except that spear was replaced with light_spear starting with 1.0 (replacing the -4 attack vs infantry with -4 defense vs infantry) but the increased spear attack values were not lowered back.

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Originally Posted by Ayce

Rhomphaiaphoroi > Phalanx in hand to hand combat in all my battles.

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Seconded. Armor-piercing weapons seem to do really well against pretty much anything hellenic.

Its probably their armour. And the fact that they are generally placed in tight formations.

Foot

Yeah the problem comes from the basic RWT engine that allows phalanx units to do instant about faces when attacked from behind.

That and your tactics are making it worse it seems.

You have one unit engage the phalanx and once they are fighting you have your principes unload all their pila into the phalanx from behind which will kill dozens if not half of the unit.

Then after they finish throwing you charge in and clean up the rest.


Now to add realism it should be modded so that a phalanx can do an about face and once you hit the "go out of phalanx" button you should lose the ability for the rest of the battle since basically your soldiers just had to drop the spears and a unit will not be picking them back up in battle easily.

Yeah the problem comes from the basic RWT engine that allows phalanx units to do instant about faces when attacked from behind.

That and your tactics are making it worse it seems.

You have one unit engage the phalanx and once they are fighting you have your principes unload all their pila into the phalanx from behind which will kill dozens if not half of the unit.

Then after they finish throwing you charge in and clean up the rest.


Now to add realism it should be modded so that a phalanx can do an about face and once you hit the "go out of phalanx" button you should lose the ability for the rest of the battle since basically your soldiers just had to drop the spears and a unit will not be picking them back up in battle easily.

Has anybody noticed that thureophoroi and similar spear troops get mauled attacking a phalanx from the rear? I think that's because rear soldiers switch to swords and get the bonus. Non-spear infantry do better in flanking.

The other real annoying thing about phalanxes is they can't fight another phalanx on level ground without killing each other in 5 minutes.

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Originally Posted by mcantu

...except that spear was replaced with light_spear starting with 1.0 (replacing the -4 attack vs infantry with -4 defense vs infantry) but the increased spear attack values were not lowered back.

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Can someone else confirm if that's true? Would modding down the attack and increasing defense skill of all light_spear units solve this?