Correct use of Pikemen?

No, I do not find them overpowered. They seem to be fighting as they should. I still see some strange things happen at times, like when the AI charged with some cavalry and the horses stopped at the spearpoints but several of the pikemen in the front rank just fell over dead (from fright?). So I still am not convinced that the animations reflect all the combat that is taking place. The AI will wisely bring up archers and pelt the pikemen and make them advance or be killed. They can be flanked and desrtroyed as it should be, but it takes a good infantry unit to do much to them in frontal assault. The noble pikemen have better staying power due to the heavier armor and get more kills due to better attack strength. Without this "fix" of removing the pikes' secondary weapon when playing as the Scots I just rented mercenary spearmen or recruited crusader spearmen and pretended they were pikes and just left the pikemen at home.

I wonder if removing their secondary weapon has any effect on the battle results when auto resolving battles.

I am still unable to get the modified pikes to work in my Britania Campaign. I copied the export_descr_unit file from the retrofit which was working properly with the changes into the british_isles mod data file then remembered to delete the 2 geography files when the game CTD upon entering the battle. After that didn't work I tried putting the io batch file in the mod folder and in the british_isle folder, but still no success. I am at work now and will have to check and make sure the entries in the io batch file are all correct and replace it. Does it go in the Mod folder or do I need one in the british_isle folder (or somewhere else)?

My io batch file is correct (same as the one in the medieval2 file which does work to effect the changes in the export_descr_unit file) and the changes still won't take effect even though I put the batch file in the Mod folder, the british_isle folder, and in the british_isle data folder.

I can only surmise that I have to modify the io batch file to refer to a different exe file in the british_isle folder. Anybody have any suggestions?

I think the batch file needs to point to the kingdoms.exe file in the main M2TW directory, and should be in this directory. To get it to run britannia you need to add an extra bit in the batch file, after it says "kingdoms.exe" you need to add something like "--britannia". Not sure of the exact wording, I just copied and pasted from the command line in the properties section of the britannia desktop shortcut.

Also, you say you copied the EDU from the retrofit directory. Do you mean you copied the whole file, or that you copied just the pikemen bits into Britannia's own EDU? You need to make the changes in the Britannia EDU for it to affect the Britannia campaign.

By the way, I am by no means an expert on this, I'm just recalling what I did to set up Crusades for modding, but it seemed to work for me. I would strongly recommend checking out the tutorial on setting up kingdoms for modding in the modding forums; I would agree that most of the chat is Greek to me but the tutorials are normally very clear and relatively jargon-free.

Thank you PBI. Yes the changes to the EDU are in the Britania mod (I copied them from the changes I made in the original file); they just are not being implemented. I'll just check to see what exe is in the Britania mod and insert it in the batch file for that mod (in the british_isle mod folder). (I checked over at the com forum and someone had asked the same question in October but apparently as far as I can tell never got a reply.)

OK, the exact wording of the bat file I am using is:

"kingdoms.exe --io.file_first --features.mod=mods/british_isles"

It is definitely in the base M2TW folder, not the britannia folder.

Just tried setting it up for Highland pikemen and seems to work fine (pikemen don't switch to swords)

Sir, you are truly a prince! I have been reading all the posts back into September and was not able to find a definitive clear explanation. I was under the impression that it would have to go in the british_isles folder but that seemed odd, since LTC doesn't have one and the changes made to the pikes work fine with it.

No problem, glad I could help.