Pike schiltrons ?

Passing thought : I dimly remember that Spanish Tercios and Napoleonian riflemen fought in squarish or rectangular formations, with soldiers facing all sides to ward off cavalry.

And it seems to me that in M2TW, a pike schiltron (the closest in-game formation to the real thing) would be very deadly to pretty much everything save for missiles, which would perhaps remove the need to delete their secondary weapons to make pikes worthwile (that, and the Scots historically fought in pike schiltrons, and since they are THE pike heavy faction in the game...). Plus, they wouldn't be overpowered either, or at least less overpowered than they are without secondary weapons, because schiltons are veeeery slow on the kill against anything but cav.

Of course, giving them the schiltron ability would take away the spearwall, but given that formation's low efficiency right now, plus the fact that it's also used by halberd units (meaning it's not a "pike priviledge" per se), I wonder : has anyone tried modding pikemen to use the schiltrom ? With what results ?

Tercio is actually a term for the formation/organization of troops rather than the soldiers' denomination. Tercios were large, rectangular formations of up to 3,000 men, about a third of them musketeers, the rest pikemen. The musketeers formed small squares at the corners and otherwise surrounded the pike block like a tight-fitting shell. The pikes gave immunity to cavalry charges, while the musketeers provided the real killing power of tercios. Nothing could stand up to a tercio except another tercio. It would be great if we could combine several units into one big formation like this.
Much the same goes for a combination of pikemen and crossbowmen, together with halberdiers, like in the swiss conscript armies. These formed a large front of pikes with halberdiers mixed in, crossbowmen in front and on the flanks. Crossbowmen shoot to lure the enemy's charge, then withdraw into the pike formation. The pikes stop the enemy, and out leap the halberdiers to pull cav from horses and deliver killing power.
Actually, schiltroms were larger and more squarish formations, too. It's a pity that we can't have several spearmen form a large schiltron together!

Agreed.

Group formations are something that I definitely want to see in the next TW game :yes: