Pikes: Any best practise yet?

Ok I've been playing M2tw since xmas and i'm still not clear what I should or shouldn't do with Pikes.

Before 1.2 I used the carl's pike fix. This was great for me as scots, as I didn't switch to sword but meant I was unstoppable.

Now in Kingdoms teutons i'm trying to use Burghers and they're rubbish.

I just want to knwo how to use my pointy sticks for a decent length of time before switching to blunt butter knives.

Now I've heard various theories - can someone remind me where we're at?

Do I turn off guard and spear, walk through unit then turn on spear and attack?

Or do I turn off guard, keep spearwall and click past enemy to move through them?

Or do I keep guard and spearwall on but charge enemy instead of waiting and bracing?

Go on, give us a clue....

p.s. I know comments for kingdoms - good against cav, not inf. But i even switch to swords when trying to skewer enemy generals and resist the eventual missile cav charges...

Someone posted this method here, I will try to find the original thread but here is the basic idea: during the fight you have to "remind" your pikes that they are pikes by swithcing off the spearwall function then -more or less- immediatly switching it on AND ordering them to attack.
As the OP of this method pointed out it works wonders, pikes pop up and they start to push with them.
In Kingdoms I just defended Riga with 3 pikes vs more than half stack of novgorodian troops (archers, militia spear, woodsmen, kazahs, milita cavs, boyar son, GB). My general' unit killed more than 130!!! They just pushed off all these kind of troops: milita spears, woodmen, kazahs, boyar sons were all dead at the end of the day.
TBH, I myself did not expect this kind of result but it works very well.

BTW, in case it is not clear: burger pikes are amazing!!! One of your best units in the Teutonic campaign (train them in cities, free upkeep, cheaper than order spears, etc), saved my lifes other times too.

Cheers for that,

Do you have to do this for every oponent or just once at the beginnning of the battle?

Every time you see they are pulling their swords out and turning their formation into a mess (i.e. not pushing any longer with pikes) ... yes it is very micro demaning but it worths the time.

Also when you have nothing else but 3 pikes you have all the time to micro them ... :laugh4:

I find pike in this game to be near utterly useless unless you set up more than four in one place, otherwise the enemy just closes and you lose out to crappy swords... I always take regular spearmen because I hate how bad teh pikes are.. By the way whats carls pike fix?

i've had some pikemen in the expansion work just fine, if you put guard mode on, let em take the initial blow (of whatever attacks em) then turn off guard mode, they seem to poke away a bit before they start going into 'suicide' mode with those dinky swords

Carl's pike fix edited out the secondary swords entirely so they never put teh pikes away.

He eventually reduced the stats too as they became uber units that could slaughter anything (especially when armoured. I had much fun with the scots heavy pike militia slaughtering the mongols!)

I think it's still in his "bugfixer" all in 1 fix (do a search), but I don't know if it's compatible with 1.2 (post kingdoms) so i'm not running it at the moment.

There's various other things in there - and before 1.2 it had shield and 2h fixes.

Pikes work wonderfully for me. they are usually the basis of my armies and I LOVE them. I usually lure them enemy in( dumb AI) engage with pikes, fire with archers, flank with heavy infantry, and perform a charge from behind, effectively routing them. personally, I dont have carls pike fix, but from what I hear, get it, and get it soon.

a row of pikemen with handgunners directly in front between the pikes. the danes send 2 full stacks (mostly norse axemen and war clerics at this army. easy victory ;-)

Oddly enough I was just going to post about my Scots noble pikemen dropping their pikes when charged by cavalry- no wonder they were not doing very well!

Question- I dont recall seeing this issue with other pikemen- is it just the scots?

out of interest, do try to manually line up your pike-men units. using the computer single-line arrangement result in some small gaps. in which the AI absolutely LOVES to pour units of horses and swordsmen into.

Pike units should really just be used for Garrison..

if u use them in the field they're main duty is just to hold the line.. keep them on defensive and make a line of them, with like heavy infantry (sword/axe, etc) right behind them.. when the enemy attacks ur pike, ur heavy infantry runs out and takes the flanks..
another way that i make a "line" is that spear units that can do schiltron are paired with halberd/pikes all in defensive.. keep them all close together so the spearwalls overlap the schiltrons a bit

ie...

Schiltron - Spearwall - Schiltron - Spearwall - schiltron

I'll have to try the suggestion in post #2. But it still seems annoying. Is there a pike fix (one that removes swords entirely) out for Kingdoms yet?