Two-hander fix?

[Ryanus]

Hello, I started playing M2TW just recently. I had long heard about various bugs with two-handed weapons and pikes and this seems to still be the case. I have vanilla M2TW with the 1.2 patch. Is there any updates that will fix these problems, say another patch or Kingdoms, or will I have to look to mods instead?

[Soul Reaver]

I have Kingdoms, haven't seen any improvement, it looks as though you'll have to go the mod route.

[Karl08]

I've heard a lot of talk about this as well, but have as yet only tried two-handers against pike in custom battles. Haven't encountered any bugs, though. What are they, exactly?

[Soul Reaver]

These are the 2 handed units, included a review by ForlornHope from 08/17/09. A bit harsh IMO but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Varangian Guard
Tabardariyya
Berdiche Axemen
Dismounted English Knights
Dismounted Noble Knights
Dismounted Portuguese Knights
All Billmen units
Norse Axemen
Free Company Men at Arms
And possibly:
Galloglaich
Woodsmen
Croatian Axemen
Mutatawwi'a
Religious Fanatics
"After the first patch they were sort of fixed, as in they could attack but they still were too slowly animated and since m2tw is based on actually hitting rather than number crunching they lose to just about anything. Things got even worse when the last patch was released, as that fixed the shield bug that has existed since the release version of Rome total war that caused shields to have a negative defence bonus instead of positive.
This means that all units with shields got a big increase to their defence from their now working shields and this made two handed units even more useless as their attack and defence was unchanged and as a result they became much, much weaker and can't beat anyone. You see things like the first and weakest knight easily beating Gothic Knights, a very expensive knight that the Holy Roman Empire gets at the very end of its tech tree. Horrible. This makes certain factions like Poland with its polearms and Turkey with its Janissary Heavy Infantry polearm troops useless as their best troops don't work."

[Wytchfynder]

Thats a long list of dodgy 2 handed units, and it was never fully fixed? i was under the impression that each succesive patch fixed em up better as fighting units?

the animations do still look iffy and it takes all day for a billman or similar to get his blow in whilst the sword and spear guys can get a couple or more strikes in.

maybe they were never fully fixed? which might explain why heavy billmen and stuff take ages to clobber some garbage spear militia?

i tend to avoid 2handed stuff and go with sword guys.

[anshuvio2]

It's not that they were ever "broken", it's just the way CA designed them was far too slow. ForlornHope has a...thing against 2 handers because of this. The purpose of 2 handers is NOT a frontal confrontation (or a prolonged one anyway) but really flanking duty and breaking up the enemy right before the main charge by your backbone troops. Though that being said, they do kind of suck.

[Ryanus]

Well all I know is that going by pure stats, dis. noble knights should beat dis. chivalric knights (I'm assuming that defense value is subtracted from attack value, and that armor piercing reduces the defense value from armor by half). But this is obviously not the case if you do a custom battle with these units. I could see the slower 2 handed animations being a "feature", after all, you would think it would take longer to swing a huge battle ax than a short sword. However, the fact that this disadvantage is mentioned no where in the game, not to mentioned it makes these units weaker than their tech level and costs would indicate they should be, leads me to believe its not fully intentional on the part of the game designers.