Odd behavior for phalanx...

Well not the phalanx itself, but it is part of it.

I have been playing merryly along with the Seleucids. Now that I have sent the Egyptians home to Egypt, the Parthians are a shadow of their former self, Pontus is wiped out and Armenia is hemmed in on all sides, I desided to deal with the innumerable Rebels sitting around in my lands. I did well can crushed most of them. But I noticed something interesting when I sent my Militia Hoplites against those pesky Eastern Infantry.

The approach was fine, the line up was fine, but the charge was odd.
My Mil Hops advanced slowly as usually while the Eastern Infantry charged headlong into the spearpoints. The unusual part was that Eastern Infantry, on impact, did that little jumping animation to give a powerful blow. Not all of course but some. That looked rather odd, but what was even more odd was the fact that 3-4 Mil Hops fell to the ground, despite having been protected by the spears... I was baffled. How could that happen? There was never any Eastern Infantry inside the spears yet after the fights there were usually about 4-5 dead Mil Hops, a few on the flanks but also a few in the frontlines in the middle.

How is that possible? The Eastern Infantry have much shorter spears and they are not strong enough to force their way into the formation. And it looks absolutely wrong when it happens.

Just did a number of tests with Mil Hops and Levies squaring off with Eastern Infantry on Grassy.
They confirmed my suspicion. The infantry charge obviously carries through the hedge of spears or pikes. While it looks odd and out of place with the Mil Hops it looks absolutely bad and almost hillarious when the same happens to pikemen.

I tested with both standing still and with the phalanx attacking, several times each, the same result happened in both scenarios. Each time 4-7 men got killed and another 3-4 got knocked down.
After the Eastern Infantry had fled I moved the phalanx to investigate the bodies. And in each case there were only those 4-7 men in the middle, the rest had died on the flanks.

Perhaps your troops cought the Eastern Flu and some men died of it.

The eastern infantrymen probably impale themselves on pikes with such a force that the shafts of the pikes run straight through their wielders sometimes. I think this is historically correct.

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Originally Posted by hrvojej

The eastern infantrymen probably impale themselves on pikes with such a force that the shafts of the pikes run straight through their wielders sometimes. I think this is historically correct.

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Well, that is a good point, but sadly it doen't mirror the game. The Mil Hop gets killed or knocked down, but the Eastern Infantryman doesn't die usually as the game only applies the chargebonus of the Eastern Infantry. When they charge the Mil Hops and other phalanx units don't have time to stab once before the enemy had carried out their charge. So to me it isn't because the poor infantryman has killed himself to hard that he also kills his enemy. Btw, how can you get killed by a man impaling himself on a pike that is next to you. At worst you would drop it or cling on to it as it snapped.

I tested this again, but this time with the Mil Hops out of Phalanx, this time an equal amount of men got killed and knocked down. So to me it has become obvious that the spearpoints are somehow connectors of the chargebonus going from the attacking infantry to the phalangite.

Kraxis,

I noticed the odd behaviour of charges vs. pikes fairly early with 1.2. The phalanx is taking a lot of charge casualties--particularly vs. horses. Realistic, no way! I'm not buying the concept of 5% of my force getting killed by butt spikes either. Especially since the front rows would easily plant their butt spikes in the ground to absorb the charge.

I can't tell that the long_pike has any advantage over the hoplite "spear" anymore.

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Originally Posted by hrvojej

The eastern infantrymen probably impale themselves on pikes with such a force that the shafts of the pikes run straight through their wielders sometimes. I think this is historically correct.

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a good explenaton cause they used a kind of two pointed spear.

Erm... My previous post was actually my attempt at some dry humor. I guess it didn't really work without the smilies. In any case, it's hard for me to imagine someone willingly impaling himself on a pike so forcefully as to injure the guy holding the spear. It's like the Kamikaze squads from "Life of Brian". Sorry for the confusion.

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Originally Posted by hrvojej

Erm... My previous post was actually my attempt at some dry humor. I guess it didn't really work without the smilies. In any case, it's hard for me to imagine someone willingly impaling himself on a pike so forcefully as to injure the guy holding the spear. It's like the Kamikaze squads from "Life of Brian". Sorry for the confusion.

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Please go edit it and put some smilies in! ~D I was a bit surprised in that comment coming from you... ~;) You sure had me going.

Actually, by what I've read, phalanxes did suffer casualties from troopers getting accidentally hit by the butt-spikes of the men in front of them. Those formations are awfully tichtly packed, after all, and the pike is actively stabbed with.

Apparently, depending on what the phalanx was up against, where, and how, such "friendly fire" casualties could well exceed the butcher's bill from enemy action...

But I very much doubt if they're trying to simulate that in the game. It's possible, but more likely some part of the code got faulty when they fixed the previous phalanx problems.

Yes, people did get injured and even died from those injuries, but it wasn't the guys in the first ranks. They died of enemy action normally.

It is silly when pikemen get killed by a unit charging them and that unit is never anywhere near the pikemen themselves.

Sometimes it did happen that soldiers could push all the way through the pikes in their momentum and so kill the person at the other end of the spear. Also, the butt end of the spear WAS sharp enough to be used as a secondary weapon if the pike/spear was snapped, and to top it all off the soil on the end of the tip would make it fatal for anyone stabbed with it (usually more soldiers died from the wounds themselves than being killed on the battlefield because of the prevalence of blood poisoning).

As for the flanks, isn't it plausable that since any soldier in phalanx mode is only facing the front, a sword swipe from the side could easily destroy the pike/spear and the hoplites on the side would be virtually defenseless against this - thus increasing the amount of casualties on the side.

Just forget that it is happenning in the first rank and pretend this is due to:
- "friendly stabbing" described before
- breaking legs due to stomping into a mole's hole
- turtle falling suddenly from the sky
...

Until someone comes up with a way to fix it (and I'm not holding my breath), let's just pretend it simulates the "friendly fire" issue. It's not like it's going to go away on its own, anyway, and there are more worthwhile issues to be irked about.

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Originally Posted by Shadar

Sometimes it did happen that soldiers could push all the way through the pikes in their momentum and so kill the person at the other end of the spear. Also, the butt end of the spear WAS sharp enough to be used as a secondary weapon if the pike/spear was snapped, and to top it all off the soil on the end of the tip would make it fatal for anyone stabbed with it (usually more soldiers died from the wounds themselves than being killed on the battlefield because of the prevalence of blood poisoning).

As for the flanks, isn't it plausable that since any soldier in phalanx mode is only facing the front, a sword swipe from the side could easily destroy the pike/spear and the hoplites on the side would be virtually defenseless against this - thus increasing the amount of casualties on the side.

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Should it happen that just one single man got in among the pikemen, the pikemen would be in great trouble. Not because this man was dangerous, but because all those around him would have to drop their pikes to defend themselves. That would make a very serious opening and more men could swarm in, forcing yet more pikemen to drop their pikes and so undo the entire formation.

The entire idea about the phalanx in this game is that they keep the enemy out of reach while they kill them. That has been nullified by this 'feature/bug'. I'm offto test this against a unit of more powerful charge but not cavalry. If they drop the entire first line of pikemen then it is seriously a bad thing.