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

[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.

[Myth]

In the previous TW titles that used the RTW engine stacking units on top of each other was a bad idea generally as fewer men swung their weapons in such limited space. Not sure how it works here but I view it as an exploit so I wouldn't do it regardless.

[Sp4]

The problem is the limited space available in some situations, like assaults on settlements, where it actually makes a lot of sense when everything 'stacks' on top of each other whether you want it to or not.

[Kamakazi]

It may be a tad of an exploit but its not without merit. I only really use it when doing a settlement battle or if im really hard up on having to defend a lopsided battle



this is what im talking about. Also you can add more squares to the center if you want the full flank protected. I just didn't have the units for it in this defense.

total men killed by pikes 816.

[Slaists]

In the previous TW titles that used the RTW engine stacking units on top of each other was a bad idea generally as fewer men swung their weapons in such limited space. Not sure how it works here but I view it as an exploit so I wouldn't do it regardless.

In the older titles there supposedly was a melee penalty for units stacked on top of each other. Not sure it still applies in RTW 2.

[Sp4]

I'm not sure either, I'd like to know. It makes sense if there is though, at least there should be I guess but with this engine they're using since after M2, I'm not entirely certain. At least they put a good amount of effort into making the units in R2 'feel' as if they have some weight behind them. That was just lacking in Shogun 2.