Screwy mechanics of sword&spear infantry

**Woreczko** · 06-27-2008, 20:20

Hi

After some battle tests with infantry armed with 2 types of melee weapons, I have discovered something disturbing:
1. If you right-click attack the enemy (AI uses only this command) the unit in question will begin fighting with it`s primary weapon. However men in the unit will gradually switch to secondary wepaons if they get struck by enemies. After a while, you will notice, that first line of warriors, who are doing the fighting, are all fighitng with their secondary weapons, while back rows still hold their primary weapons.
2. There is no way to force your men to use primary weapons again, unless you disengage.
3. If unit is standing ready, and gets charged ALL men will immediately switch to their secondary weapons. This is also true for cavalry.

The above mechanics works reasonably well with units, who have spear as their primary and sword as secondary weapon. However a lot of EB elite infantries have sword as primary and spear as secondary. This is no good, because:
1. They can`t brace themselves against cavalry charge with their spears.
2. In melee they will tend to use their spears more, which is no good vs infantry (considering their swords are 0.225 goodies)
3. It doesn`t make sense for men to begin engagments with swords and then switch to less handy spears.

So... should weapon order on elite footmen be considered a bug? Can this be fixed by switching sword and spears in edu file?

**Aper** · 06-28-2008, 20:31

No, it's not a bug, there's a reason (that I don't remember), but I agree with you: secondary spears are useless, because in melee elites are better than cavalry even using swords, but they got slaughtered easily by whatever good shock cavalry that charge them, and is absolutely frustrating have a spear in your pocket and can't use it for his purpose: defending you against charging horses...
AFAIK, you have to change the EDU, the animations, the skins and the models to have primary spears, and it is beyond my modding skill, so...
1) I switch the model, etc... with another who have spears as primary weapons, but doing so you lose the uniqueness of beautiful units like Hypaspistai or Baktrioi Agema....
2) I use them like swordsmans only, and I protect them with light spearmen like Thureophoroi, that have even some handy javelins...

**delra** · 06-28-2008, 21:06

I hope it's fixed in EB2?

**Megas Methuselah** · 06-29-2008, 04:28

It has something to do with the hard-coded AI being too damn stupid to utilize the secondary weapons of their units. As a consequence, the primary and secondary weapons have been switched around and the players must suffer for the sake of what should be a better combat-AI....

...I think.

**||Lz3||** · 06-29-2008, 05:19

well... I gues you would only need to change the EDU... but I could be wrong

**Woreczko** · 06-29-2008, 07:10

Originally Posted by Aper

2) I use them like swordsmans only, and I protect them with light spearmen like Thureophoroi, that have even some handy javelins...

Originally Posted by Methuselah

It has something to do with the hard-coded AI being too damn stupid to utilize the secondary weapons of their units. As a consequence, the primary and secondary weapons have been switched around and the players must suffer for the sake of what should be a better combat-AI....

...I think.

The problem is, I cannot really use elites as swordsmen (and neither can AI), because they will switch to spears during melee and there is no way to prevent it. Elites use swords only in the beginning of an engagment (and to receive the charge :/). As men get hit, they switch to secondary weapons. I guess, it`s the same mechanic, which is used for phalanxes.

Originally Posted by ||Lz3||

well... I gues you would only need to change the EDU... but I could be wrong

Change in edu does work in-game. Thing is, it won`t change the graphics. They will still look like using swords as primary weapons, even when those swords have attributes of a spear.

Originally Posted by Aper

1) I switch the model, etc... with another who have spears as primary weapons, but doing so you lose the uniqueness of beautiful units like Hypaspistai or Baktrioi Agema....

Yes, I wouldn`t like to do this... Perhaps removing spears completely would be a good move? Though on historical pics they use spears mainly, don`t they? Eh, I don`t know :/
Anyway, thanks for responses :)

**||Lz3||** · 06-29-2008, 07:24

there must be a way , but I'm not sure of having experienced this before..at least not with my units... I could be wrong again

but I'm sure there's a way , I mean there was a guy on vanilla RTW who managed to add swords to triari and make them fight in phalanx formation!

**mcantu** · 06-29-2008, 13:28

Originally Posted by ||Lz3||

there must be a way , but I'm not sure of having experienced this before..at least not with my units... I could be wrong again

but I'm sure there's a way , I mean there was a guy on vanilla RTW who managed to add swords to triari and make them fight in phalanx formation!

IIRC, phalanx units are the only ones that work properly with the spear/sword combo...

**Redmeth** · 06-29-2008, 17:08

The only way to change this is to go into MAX and edit the model switching the names of the weapons, the change will affect all units on the model, and the edu stat must reflect the change. Just switching in the EDU makes the game interpret the sword as a spear as far as stat goes (lethality etc).