Helvetti phalanx

I was fighting one of those scripted northern barbarian armies that are way too strong and decided to send my Helvetti phalanx against a unit of Neitos. Since I'm pretty sure spearmen are usually weak against swordsmen I had the Helvetians fight with their swords rather than as a phalanx, in the end they were completely owned and only killed like 10 enemies despite the fact that I had a unit of Hastati attack the Neitos' rear. I wasn't sure if this happened because I made a poor choice in having a phalanx (albeit an elite one) use their secondary weapons or if it was simply because the unit of Neitos had like 2 gold chevrons.

Both. Stupendous amounts of experience make even levies killing machines, not to mention professional heavy infantry like the Neitos. Fighting toe-to-toe with the likes of them is never a good idea. Having your Mori Gaesum in phalanx would've kept the Neitos at a distance for a while, giving you the time to get rid of other nuisances and then concentrate solely on the Neitos, throwing spears, rocks, arrows and small children at 'em.

Edit: Just for the sake of it, Helvetti is Finnish and means Hell. [/Pedantic]

Damn, this caught my eye. Sadly, not a new unit.

I'd fancy a Hell Phalanx. To balance things we'd need a potestates cohort as well to deal out some divine punishment.

Didn't flambe pigs have some special ability in vanilla? Could that be added to a phalanx unit?

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Originally Posted by Thaatu

Didn't flambe pigs have some special ability in vanilla? Could that be added to a phalanx unit?

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Wait, are you suggesting a phalanx unit that can set itself on fire at will? Please say I am misunderstanding you.

Hey, just a suggestion...

I think that'd overlap with the 'form phalanx' special ability, and I doubt we could add that ability to soldiers (and the flaming soldiers would burn to death after a while :( ). Good suggestion, though. I think it could be possible to add suitably re-modeled pigs to the Hell Phalanx; and even if it overlapped removing the ability to set the pigs on fire, the "pigs" could still run amok, though I don't know if they would ignite then.

Perhaps we could have a naked incendary fanatic with 2 HP of warm flaming goodness.

Flaming pigs... :laugh4: talk about the most asinine unit ever.

"What is it?"
"It's a bunch of pigs."
"What do you do with them?"
"You set them on fire."
"...And then what?"
"Um... make a plate of chopped BBQ?"

Well, elephants don't like little things running around them and most animals are detered by fire so its not THAT insane. It may have a practical use as short term area denile and psy-ops things if they were ever employed in that fashion.

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Originally Posted by Diamondj

Since I'm pretty sure spearmen are usually weak against swordsmen

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I'm pretty sure this statement is incorrect; they aren't usually weak. Phalanx units can just jab at them all day without taking a casualty, and non-phalanx spears have boni to their attack to compensate for penalties to it.

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Well, elephants don't like little things running around them and most animals are detered by fire so its not THAT insane. It may have a practical use as short term area denile and psy-ops things if they were ever employed in that fashion.

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IIRC the Romans did use them once or twice. They weren't even the most silly anti-elephant measure in history. For example: Perseus attempted to repel the Roman elephants by dressing up a unit of soldiers in spiky armour. I've always imagined flaming pigs being a symbolic representation of such exotic tactics: they may work, or they make backfire.