Mini guide for Rome 2 Total War: Pikemen vs. Hoplites

[Myth]

What's the difference between hoplites and spear armed troops besides the lack of phalanx ability?

They are genrally of lower quality, sepcifically in the regions of melee damage, armour and morale. Think of them as the Spear Militia line from Medieval 2. Good arrow fodder, good when used in a square or similar formation but overall they are nothing to write home about.

[Kamakazi]

Ive been incorporating pikes into my armies now that this guide is up. They work decently for me. The right click and drag works but they do like to wrap around and lose cohesion at times. A great defensive tactic I learned was when you set a unit in square formation and then put the pikes inside that square they just sit there racking up kills. Might be something yall could test for yourselves

[Slaists]

Ive been incorporating pikes into my armies now that this guide is up. They work decently for me. The right click and drag works but they do like to wrap around and lose cohesion at times. A great defensive tactic I learned was when you set a unit in square formation and then put the pikes inside that square they just sit there racking up kills. Might be something yall could test for yourselves

m? Piked do not get square formation. At least mine don't. Hoplites do though and some other spear units.

[MadKow]

I think Kamakazi means you overlap two units, one with the square ability and one of pikes, maybe? While not realistic, this could cancel some of the vulnerabilities to flanking and rear attacks of the phalanx formation...

[Kamakazi]

I think Kamakazi means you overlap two units, one with the square ability and one of pikes, maybe? While not realistic, this could cancel some of the vulnerabilities to flanking and rear attacks of the phalanx formation...

think of it like a shiskabob Easterns spears in a square with a pike phalanx through them. If no one can get to the pikes flanks or rear they don't get skittish and bolt. It works like a dream.

heres an AAR screen shot of the effects of this process

[Sp4]

I think Kamakazi means you overlap two units, one with the square ability and one of pikes, maybe? While not realistic, this could cancel some of the vulnerabilities to flanking and rear attacks of the phalanx formation...

Yes, overlapping pikemen with any other melee unit (well, not any but any sort of defensive unit that's a bit better at responding to threats from different directions than front) is great and a fun thing to do. I like hoplites presonally or thureos spears. It's impossible to get through or past or to outflank and the pikes murder anything in front of them for as long as it holds together. Moving around like that is a bit annoying cause the game wont let you march two units 'inside' each other but it's little things like this that are the reason why battles may end up being boring (and I am not necessarily saying it's a bad thing, it's just a thing that probably can't be changed). The AI can't deal with things like that. If they ever do it, they do it by accident, which is still great but yeah...

[Bramborough]

I've been under the possibly erroneous impression that mixing units together like this would break their rank integrity and cohesion...leading to a big morale and defensive effectiveness hit. Apparently not the case?

I've always tried pretty hard to keep units separate, not letting them march through each others' ranks, etc? Pretty annoying for skirmishers...wish they'd just flow around my heavy units as they retreat in skirmish mode, rather than just stomp straight through. I certainly leave them big enough gaps to do so, at least in Roman deployments. Maybe I've been worrying needlessly...

[Sp4]

I don't see why you'd think that. Making huge dense blobs of units makes it hard to get through them, if not impossible, they get morale bonuses from being close to friendlies. The only downside I can see is that it isn't very mobile (unless you take the time to micro it, which might require quite a lot of pausing) and that it's very vulnerable to artillery and missile fire in general.