What is your go-to army composition?

**Sp4** · 11-20-2013, 16:56

Originally Posted by Myth

Have your pike boxes be thicker - more men behind the first line to get the bracing bonus. Spinning pikes thin like butter on bread won't work.

Have they changed pikes or are the Egyptians the only pike formation that have enough space between individual man that you can put like 3 units on top of each other and get something similar to what it was before/the Greeks have?

**Slaists** · 11-20-2013, 17:39

Originally Posted by Sp4

Have they changed pikes or are the Egyptians the only pike formation that have enough space between individual man that you can put like 3 units on top of each other and get something similar to what it was before/the Greeks have?

They've changed all pikes that way (I think)

**Bramborough** · 11-20-2013, 20:48

Regarding Pikemen:

I've run quite a few custom-battle tests this morning, on Patch 6 and then opted back into Patch 7 beta.

Pre-patch7beta, basic pikemen could stand up to just about anything. I pitted a line of 5 regular garden-variety pikemen (not thorax or high-end faction specific), with Thureos flank-protection units, against an equal-budget force of Roman plain legionaries (roughly equal cost/quality). The pikes of course won handily. Then I sent a superior force of Praetorians against the same line. The lower-cost/quality pikemen took more casualties, but held firm and still won.

With Patch7beta, however, things changed. Interestingly, I noticed little difference with pikemen-vs-legionaries. The pike line performed about as well as they had in the pre-7 test against these similar-quality troops. Against the superior Praetorian force, however, the pikemen suffered badly, took lots of casualties, and broke before the Praetorians did. I then lined up Royal Hellenic pikes against an equal-budget force of Praetorians. The Hellenics performed extremely well.

Based on this, my impression is that they've tweaked pike units so that they perform as expected against troops of similar quality, but no longer stand up as well to higher-quality opponents. Intelligently-used pike-centric armies continue to dominate under appropriate tactical conditions...as long as one continues to upgrade their quality. It is apparently no longer viable to just field basic pikemen and call it a day.

One thing I noticed is that with Patch7beta, Praetorians were able to close frontally with the basic pikemen units, and engage in melee. The usual gap created by the long sarissae collapsed. Pikemen could maintain this gap against legionaries, but not Praetorians. With Royal Hellenic pikes, however, they easily maintained this gap against Praetorians. So instead of some sort of morale tweak, somehow they've adjusted a melee unit's ability to overcome a lower-quality pike unit's standoff distance, but not an equal-quality pike unit's.

At least that's how it appears to me.

**Slaists** · 11-20-2013, 20:54

Well, in frontal melee, pikes should be able to withstand just about anything. Missiles, flank and rear attacks: that's a different matter.

One undocumented change of patch 7 beta is that "pikes", the unit that is one level higher than levy pikes now have higher hit points than levy pikes. Before the patch 7, levy pikes had higher hit-points. Probably was a bug.

**Kamakazi** · 11-21-2013, 19:58

I always use pike units better than levy... rarely do I have levy pikes.

**Myth** · 11-21-2013, 20:13

Originally Posted by Bramborough

Regarding Pikemen:

I've run quite a few custom-battle tests this morning, on Patch 6 and then opted back into Patch 7 beta.

Pre-patch7beta, basic pikemen could stand up to just about anything. I pitted a line of 5 regular garden-variety pikemen (not thorax or high-end faction specific), with Thureos flank-protection units, against an equal-budget force of Roman plain legionaries (roughly equal cost/quality). The pikes of course won handily. Then I sent a superior force of Praetorians against the same line. The lower-cost/quality pikemen took more casualties, but held firm and still won.

With Patch7beta, however, things changed. Interestingly, I noticed little difference with pikemen-vs-legionaries. The pike line performed about as well as they had in the pre-7 test against these similar-quality troops. Against the superior Praetorian force, however, the pikemen suffered badly, took lots of casualties, and broke before the Praetorians did. I then lined up Royal Hellenic pikes against an equal-budget force of Praetorians. The Hellenics performed extremely well.

Based on this, my impression is that they've tweaked pike units so that they perform as expected against troops of similar quality, but no longer stand up as well to higher-quality opponents. Intelligently-used pike-centric armies continue to dominate under appropriate tactical conditions...as long as one continues to upgrade their quality. It is apparently no longer viable to just field basic pikemen and call it a day.

One thing I noticed is that with Patch7beta, Praetorians were able to close frontally with the basic pikemen units, and engage in melee. The usual gap created by the long sarissae collapsed. Pikemen could maintain this gap against legionaries, but not Praetorians. With Royal Hellenic pikes, however, they easily maintained this gap against Praetorians. So instead of some sort of morale tweak, somehow they've adjusted a melee unit's ability to overcome a lower-quality pike unit's standoff distance, but not an equal-quality pike unit's.

At least that's how it appears to me.

Sounds about right. In Rome 1 you could charge Urban Cohorts right through Macedonian Royal Pikes and smash their faces in. My concern is with Sparta whom only get 20 Spartan Hoplites (which are equal tier to Thureos Pikes) and must otherwise use perioikoi pikes. Honestly Sparta needs some attention. Heroes of Sparta need to be more viable and the unit caps must be removed or at least tied to settlements having > 80% spartan culture.