So ... how are you supposed to use phalanxes?

I played the game for a couple of weeks now and I had a lot of fun, but the phalanxes are just beyond me. Playing as the Greek for the first time I simply cannot get them to work. I understand they are suppossed to crash into the enemy and hold the line until the cavalry crashes into their back, but they are are so slow that the battle is usually over before they even get to the enemy. Worse still, if they do make it to the front their line is completely broken up and just screaming for a nimbler enemy (e.g. legions) to crash through their lines and flank them.

How do you guys use them? And what does a standard Greek army consit of?

How to use phalanxes a short guide,

1.In the deployment phase turn off the phalanx special ability
2.Turn off defense mode ability aswell
3.Put light infantry or cavalry on the flanks of the phalanx lines
4.When advancing the line of hoplites or sarissafors (pikemen) don't turn on the phalanx ability until you close to about 4 meters (just after this the AI will makes it's infantry charge)
5.If you tell the hoplites or sarissafors to charge they will attack with their swords

This is how I try to use phalanx units. As for when you turn on the phalanx that is kind of tricky to pin down. The 4 meters thing was just where I usually turn it on.

the best use of phalanx has got to be using them to defend a town
my GOD do I love putting 2 units of armoured hoplites on a small street, completely blocking it, and watching cavalary and infantry crash into a wall of armoured spears... its beautiful

Mate take your guys out of phalanx mode, run them up close to your opposition and then put them back into phalanx.

Its also best if you do it as a whole line, for instance sending just one phalanx into an enemies lines isn't very bright, better to send a whole line of six or more with no gaps between them ploughing into the enemy battle line.

The AI at the momemnt isn't very smart and it has no idea how to deal with phalanxes.

And keep an eye on your phalanx units...they have a tendency to shuffle to the right while in combat. An obvious bug, but you must kinda micro-manage them to get them to work.

Phalanxes are the easiest infantry to use in a battle without taking too many losses. You need patience for they will not move quickly, and you have to think of them more as ships and mobile unites of fighters for they aren't ment to turn quick or charge an enemy. Line your phalanxes up, generally four ranks will suffice because you need that frontage more than the extra ranks. Advance as a wall will whatever more mobile units on the flanks. Move this wall to whatever part of the opposing force you want to pin down, probably the center of their infantry line, if you go chasing cavalry you will get nowhere. as you play with them you will come to the point where you can get your phalanxes in the way of the charging bodyguard of a general. But essentially the phalanxes are a movable wall which you should use to pin down opposing infantry.

Move them at normal pace and simply think out where they should be or where you want them, they aren't good at turning quickly but if you think of ship or a car always moving you should be able to navigate them through your battles.

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Originally Posted by Krusader

And keep an eye on your phalanx units...they have a tendency to shuffle to the right while in combat. An obvious bug, but you must kinda micro-manage them to get them to work.

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Duh, no, it's NOT an obvious bug. Phalanx did historically shift to the right as each man sought to protect his unprotected right side with the shield of the man to his right.

And the guys on the far right flank were trying to get the hell out of the way!

Oh yes, funnily enough I was planning to ask this as well. Playing as Macedonia, my phalanxes seldom seem to get into any straight on fights, especially if they're defending. Even the AI isn't dumb enough to charge into a forest of pikes, so everyone just flows round the sides and attacks them from the flanks. As a result, my cavalry has to deal with the enemy army while my pikes try to turn around. Am I doing something wrong?

Well the drift may be historical, but the way they depict it is highly exaggerated to the point of where it becomes a bug. I dont care how historical it is, if my phalanx wants to "historically" shift itself so that they are all smooshed against a wall and completely expose their left flank, then there is a problem with the programming.

I agree that the "shuffle"-effect is exaggerated. Also, it is unclear if the "shuffle" applied to all phalanx-style formations, or just the hoplites. The macedonian phalanx pikemen did not gain any protection from each others shields, as they were too small for that. If they also "shuffled", there must have been some other reason.

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Originally Posted by The Storyteller

Oh yes, funnily enough I was planning to ask this as well. Playing as Macedonia, my phalanxes seldom seem to get into any straight on fights, especially if they're defending. Even the AI isn't dumb enough to charge into a forest of pikes, so everyone just flows round the sides and attacks them from the flanks. As a result, my cavalry has to deal with the enemy army while my pikes try to turn around. Am I doing something wrong?

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Sounds like you're being too defensive, you're giving the enemy too much initiative and the time to outmanouver you. Take the fight to the enemy with a tight line of phalanx units. Pin them then flank them.

Remember though, flank protection is important for phalanxes (as it is for any army). You have to screen your flanks with cav, and dont let these tear off after the enemy until after you've engaged your inf, as it will leave the phalanxes vulnerable. As a last resort, you can get your phalanx line to refuse their flank, just angle the last couple of units on the threatened flank inwards slightly, towards the flanking enemy, I find this usually works well against flanking cav if you spot them incoming early enough.

Another good way of advancing and attacking with a line of phalanxes is to select the whole line and then either use right click and hold to drag the line out again at some point behind the enemy, or - and this is better - just right click where the centre of the line should be behind the enemy (hold the space bar to check whether they're going to go at some weird angle). Your phalanxes will just advance as if they're going to walk straight through the enemy and will engage them automatically. You should still take them out of phalanx mode while they're advancing though.

Don't try and match units up one-on-one, I almost never use right click to attack an enemy unit - phalanxes (phalanges?) tend to end up at all sorts of weird angles that way, much better just to order them to advance in an unbroken line to some point behind the enemy.

When in combat, but being flanked, the ',' () keys can be used to rotate the phalanx - they will lift their spears for a moment, but - at least with R:TR and the slower kill rates - they reform before any major harm can be done.

Oh, and if it looks like they've broken formation and are fighting with swords, hitting backspace can sometimes put them back into phalanx mode.

They are awkward, and the control does seem to be a little buggy, but you get used to it, and they do make awesome infantry, but you have to think a bit differently when you use them - you can use them to pin the enemy, but unlike the Roman infantry, they're probably not going to win the battle for you (if you're attacking), and you will need decent cavalry to then attack from the flanks and rear. That's why the Seleucids are so good (eventually); they have great phalanx infantry, but the best cavalry in the game as well to take advantage of them.

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Originally Posted by Darius

Well the drift may be historical, but the way they depict it is highly exaggerated to the point of where it becomes a bug. I dont care how historical it is, if my phalanx wants to "historically" shift itself so that they are all smooshed against a wall and completely expose their left flank, then there is a problem with the programming.

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Most certainly this isn't historically correct. First of all, the drift is absolutely insane in its amount. And oddly enough the deeper the phalanx the more profound it is. Try playing on Huge and set a unit of pikes up in a citystreet. They will be in about 10 ranks. Within a few seconds half the unit is bunched up on the right wall. In three ranks the drift is rather light and in two ranks it actually send them to the left.
So from this and the fact that wide phalanxes are near impossible to beat 1v1, we can easily argue that phalanxes are bugged. They are very much at their best in quite shallow formations, and not in their quite deep ones as history tells us.
Beyond that, the phalangites drift too... They never did such a thing, only hoplites did.
Lastly when hoplites DID drift it was during the march to the fight, during the fight we have absolutely no sources that tell us they drifted to the right. They were static in battle.

The drift during the march was also rather small, but enough for a small flanking if each side were equal in numbers. But here we talk about thousands of hoplites drifting perhaps 10 meters, not the absurd amounts we see.

My phalanx experience is mostly with the German spear warbands, which may be a little easier to use.

The way I use them depends a little on the nature of the battle. But, I think, as a rule if you're relying on phalanxs you want them to be at least half of your army.

Early on, they were my prime killing troops. They cut through anything the early barbarians have to offer like warm butter.

Against the Romans, they can still hold their own, but they are excellent protectors of Chosen Archer Warbands who do most of the killing.

In any case, you want to keep them moving as a spear wall. The primary concerns here are 1) that you don't want them out of rank at a time and point where the enemy could attack them and 2) that you want the center of your wall more or less aligned with the center of the enemy's army.

As a few others have mentioned, this requires patience. My approach to this is:

A) Pick a point that you know your spears can reach before the enemy
B) Drag and drop the whole formation to that point
C) Wait until they get there
D) repeat, moving closer each time and adjusting for any enemy repositioning

At some point, you're close enough that you or the enemy will attack and then you control individual units. But if you get close with your spear wall centered and in-tact you should be in good shape.

In most cases, the above procedure really only need to be applied those last few yards - and only in the cases where a) you're the attacker and b) the enemy picks a spot and waits for you. Other wise, just hold your ground.

In reality, I speed this process up a lot by setting my first drag most of the way across the map and using the 3X speed button. If the enemy moves, or if the camera reveals some key terrain features I want to use as it gets closer, I can refine my drag point if needed on the fly.

You can break formation and run them too, but the 3X speed button accom-plishes more or less the same thing without tiring them out.

Interestingly the AI don't seem to have the same problems with phalanxes as we do.
I'm playing a Scipii campaing now, and I fought a battle against a Greek army outside Syracuse (which I had just taken). If we disregard that I ruined most of his units from afar, it was a real pain to deal with the general's hoplites. He caught one of my Hastati as they chased some Peltasts about. I managed to turn them and get them into a fighting order before they got hit. So I had to march up another unit of Hastati to hit the the rear. But within quite a short time my first unit was halved and I only saved them by rushing in the other unit. His hoplites didn't seem to drift all that much, and they didn't seem to have any problems with some of the Hastati flanking him... It was rather annoying to watch when your own phalanxes never do what you want them to.

On huge unit scale I deploy the phalanx 16 ranks deep in a single line facing the enemy with defend and phalanx orders selected. As soon as the deployment stage ends, I immediately them order to march into the enemy army.

Most of the enemy units that encounter the spear wall typically rout on connact. Should an enemy unit not rout I order the whole phalanx block to halt. At this point I use flanker units to help remove the blockage.

The main thing is to maintain the line's coherence religiously, keep it marching implacably at the enemy whenever possible, and cover the flanks with more flexible units.

Sometimes an enemy army will split into two to ignore the phalanx and attack the flanks. Counter this by spliting the phalanx into two halfs and wheeling them outwards at the enemy, and fill the gap in the middle with skirmishers or something.

Aside from one occasion of Mercenary Hoplites first trying to shuffle through a building to their right and then getting butchered by enemy cavalry in a city battle, I've never noticed the infamous Phalanx Shuffle.

Maybe it's just because I keep the guard mode off.

Anyway, I've found it best to form all but two of the phalanx units into a single, solid line and march that close to the enemy line. Once I'm suitably close (about one screen-width, just to be safe) I put on the phalanx mode. These can then be crept within spitting range of the enemy and pointed at suitable targets - the fact that the enemy likes to run its units back and forth tends to get them a little confused and tangled up in each other, but all those spearheads normally maim everything readily enough.

But then, I'm not touching VH battle difficulty...

Oh, those two leftover phalanxes ? They're kept a little bit behind and to the side of the outermost units in the line as flank guards, just because the cavalry is often busy elsewhere and the skirmishers sort of lack staying power in a fight. They're a good enough reserve to throw at any trouble spots, too.