Deadly but fun army of Pikes

Read and learn about the fomrations you use, and about the power of the Tercio :). If i understand you correctly you use swiss typ pike squares/blocks to attack? This was beatin in history with Tercio formation and should be beaten by this in game.

This is a post i made in totalwar.com forum when they were discussing why knights phased out and conclduded that it was musket use. And i dont have the energi to edit it for this thread so bare with me. But here you can see the effectivnes of the diffrent formations had irl.

I was in the school library the outher day, and found a book named History around the thirty years war, made by multiple historians but edidted by Göran Rystad, swed.

In the book there is a episode that adress the tactics, and coer the tactics from medieval to the time in quiestion of the book.

Basicly what you guys have been ignoring while discusisong these thing here and in the med2 forum is that people don't always behave rationnally and that the firearms were part of a system, were the pike played a Large role. And that neither bows or firearms were responsibel for phasing out heavy cavalry, most victoryes won by longbow armies was becouse the outher general advanced his army first in bad terrain, and then attacked playing right in to the hands of the english. And how could anyone think that those guns that they have at the time could stop a cavalry charge soly, i mean they would only have one shoot at them to stop infinity much heavy cavalry coming right for them at high speed.

At first in the 1400 you got knight armies that can dominate infantry. Then the swiss developed the offensive use of the pike. The pike allows infantry to protect themselves against heavy cavalry and also allows them to make devestating charges, and gradually made knights (heavy cavalry) obslolete. Which means that non pike mele infantry came to a none existance. Thus the role of cavalry changed, sence its lance could not outrange or outfight the 18 foot pike and they were not that succefull against longbowmen either, becouse when the pistol was invented the cavalry gladly adopted it. The tactics was to slowly march to the enemy and then have one line fire their pistols and then roll back to the rear and then the next line did the same thing, this really didn't work becouse often the charge was neglected. So they were only good at ritual fight outher cavalry. Note that i'm taking this information from a history book.

And then we have the infantry, the swiss made the infantry powerfull and the queen of the battle field again (between 1470-1520 were the swiss way of fighting the norm), but then the Tercio with composed of a block of pike flanked by four blocks of firearms troops at its corners. It consisted of 1500-3000 men and was slow and cumbersome, inefficent use of men, but made it selfefficend it needn't support from outher units and could protect it self from flank attacks easy. But it was the first seriosly atempt to make a mutally support fomration between pike and gun troops but a notoriously bad one. Sence they could shoot down big blocks of pike units (read swiss type unit), close-combat was distanced and thus the increase of firearms armed troops increased. In the begining of 1600 the ration was 2 musket armed men against one pike armed. And with this tactic they didn't advance at each outher, only shoot mostly.

Now in 1580 the book says that by the influence of firearms it had managed to lead warfare in to two stops. It is the demoralisation of cavalry which i stated and the second the increase of firearms amred troops, and thus the lack of suffient numbers and use of pike tropps. This is bad sence you need melle to win a battle (The word he used was "avgörande" which litteraly means like "a desisive" like in you need melle to make a desisive, the translation to english make it sound bad), i'm still reading from the book.
Yust gathering Expensive mercenary trops to have them fire at each outher in a battle of exhaustion is a waste of resoureses.

But on the conratry thier was a great increase in effiency in siege battles, there the gun powerd had made a real change.

Which logically, althoug a false conclustion, meant that field battle became extinct, only a bad,low thought of and failed commander whould want a field battle. The strategie became to occupy territory, favoring the mercenaries sence now they could get longer contract, compeared to a field battle that changed the course of the war in one stroke.
So now in around 1590 warfare had come to a stand still, neither cavalry or infantry or general wanted a desisive close-combat battle. The Tercio was hard to manuevar in battle and slow, and its organic compostion of troops made smaller units self conflicting, note that a field army could compose of only three of these things making battle tactics sink down to a primitive level.

But in 1600 the dutch Morits made a new system, which compsed of units of 550 men, organised in shallow lines with 10 men deep and lines instead of collums. This meant great tactically manouverbillity and good use of troops and avaylabillity of tactical units, and also good reservs. In a 12000 men army, the Tercio system would have 4 tactically units, while the dutch would have 24. But the system was only good at defence, it had to small units. Later on the swedish king Gusta Adolf made the true change that revolutionaiced warfare. He made the lines only 6 lines deep, and the musket armed troops was for the first time in history orderd to fire in salvos, which greatly increased the impact. But while reloading they were very vonrable, the standard tactic was to use the pikemen as a barbed wire. But Gustav increased the numbers of pikemen and had them charged in after the first salvo had been shoot, and when they had realoaded the pikemen retreated to allow the to fire and the cycle reperated it. And this solved the proplem how both pikemen and musketmen could both be used best, a proplem wich military men had wrestled with for 200 years. But the real change was that he order them not to fire before "Seing the enemys whites in the eyses" (Bad translation) but that to only fire at a close range, and then follow up with the pike attak cycle that i said. This is the real gem, salvo fire at close range, it widly increas the numbers of bullets that hits and gives a nice morale damage.

He also changed the unit structures. The basic unit was the sqvadron with 500 men, wich then was organsied in a wedge formation of four sqvadrons this was called a brigade. And the sqvadron in the back acted a a reserv. Every regiment, two sqvadrons, was also issued thier own light artillery which could be hand moved.

The cavalry was orderd to charge in and fire the pistols in close combat, then draw swords. But also he gave up thier speed, he had musket armed troops follow them in the flanks to open up a hole before the cavalry charged; this was later solved with draggons, mounted musket men.