Foot Javelins Ineffective

[Rhyfelwyr]

Playing as Spain right now, and I always find myself tempted to spam Jinetes. It seems to me that javelins on foot are simply ineffective. I've had plenty of experience with them before through Kerns, Afghan, and Kurdish Javs, and it seems to me they often do not fire properly. For a start, they take a few seconds to get their javs into throwing positions. Then they stand there for another few seconds looking like they are ready to fire, and then I find that 90% of the time they do not fire an effective volley in unison, and often half the men don't throw their javelins at all. The most annoying thing is that hilly terrain mucks up their ability to fire completely, which is slightly ironic considering that is where these troops are supposed to dominate.

Which is a shame, since on the occasions when they do work they are deadly, even the ones with only 6 missile attack. I seem to remember them working better in RTW, especially when the javelins were secondary weapons, eg Hastati.

Their mounted counterparts are deadly and I'm using them disproportionately.

I've not heard much talk about this before compared to other bugged units such as pikes, 2-handers etc, so is this just me?

[PrestigeX]

Definantly Agree with you,

i found that foot-javelin troops are only sometimes useful . If i was playing as Spain or Portugal, the only javelin troops i'd build would be Almughavar because they can double as Melee troops.
The way i normally try to use javelinmen would be to have them behind my infantry, so that when the melee starts they can get on the sides and chuck their missles into the 'fray'.
Javelins are also good on the walls during a siege.
but they are utterly useless to have infront of ur infantry to pepper the enemy before they engage.. they never fire and get completely slaughtered.
They need to be kept in the rear and deployed once the melee has started.

[Ramses II CP]

They're very inconsistant in vanilla MTW2, no doubt about it. I've had the best luck turning skirmish off and placing them directly behind a spear line. They often get a volley off right before enemy infantry engage that can do some decent damage. After that one volley, they're little more than poor man's reinforcements for the line. With skirmish on I've never gotten my money's worth.

In Broken Crescent, however, javelins can be quite good. I think the biggest change was just a tweak to their range, but whatever it is I love the mid-level javelin units in BC. There are a couple of types (Vishaps as Armenia) that do a very useful javelin toss and charge move that's quite effective against armoured enemy infantry.

[Ethelred Unread]

They're very inconsistant in vanilla MTW2, no doubt about it. I've had the best luck turning skirmish off and placing them directly behind a spear line. They often get a volley off right before enemy infantry engage that can do some decent damage. After that one volley, they're little more than poor man's reinforcements for the line. With skirmish on I've never gotten my money's worth.

This is what I always do. Playing h/vh on stainless steel 5.1 as Aragon and deploying your javelins behind your first line of infantry with skirmish off is the best use i've found for them. Just got almughavars though so might alter my tactics after a few battles if they are better for flanking. I play with huge unit sizes too so the old "javelin in the back" routine doesn't seem to happen too often which i remember with horror from RTW.