Best Late Era Unit Roster

[PBI]

Aren't pikes useless? Unless cavalry charge them head on I genearally find them to be. Although I do usually take maybe 3 units in late period armies to mix in with my main infantry and take the cavalry charges for them, since even Dismounted Feudal Knights disappear like peasants when charged head on by decent cavalry.

Or are you playing a mod?

Or are they sorted in Kingdoms?

Bit of both. I always mod out the pikes' secondary weapons which makes them more powerful (but is what I would do in real life if my men were being stupid enough to drop their main weapons; I would have their hands nailed to the pikes if that's what it takes), and I'm playing Retrofit which I think boosts their stats a bit as well, so pikes are now very powerful in my current game. But I did my Portugal campaign in vanilla, and I still found Aventuriers pretty powerful. There is a big difference between elite pikes like Aventuriers and Tercios and rubbish like pike militia.

EDIT: I think possibly I mean Aventuros, whichever one is the Portuguese pike unit and not the French crossbow unit.