Spear formations vs Swords

[Simovek]

As we all know in MTW against spear units you use swordsman which cut through them fairly quickly. In MP this makes Spearman kind of obsolete, it seems no one uses them, anti cav duties can be put to your own cav. I am wondering if this is rightly so? Spears are useful against cavalry because of course, no horse and rider wants to charge full speed into a wall of spears. I am wondering if a footman would want to charge fullspeed into this same wall of spears also? I don't know for sure as I've (obviously) never been in that situation. What do you guys think about it?

[Medieval Assassin]

I would think the swordsmen could probably chop the spear up, they probably wernt made of metal ( correct me if you want) I still wouldnt want to charge.

[Sociopsychoactive]

It's more that a man is quite alot smaller than a man on horseback, and more is put into the charge of a horse. the spearwall formation, when correctly used, eliminates the charge. Swordsmen can hapily walk up, chop the spear out of the way to get in, and then engage in proper melee. Horsemen cannot, as the spear would be aimed at the horses underbelly. Thats primarily why spear get alot more of a bonus to defence against sword, the range of a spear gets you out of range of the rider when in melee, and the charge, which is the horsemans primary offensive is nullified by the spearwall.

Thats why charging into the flank or rear of spears is so darned effective, you still get your charge to ram home and when you have them out of formation horses will fare reasonably well, though not as well as sword still because of the spears range.

If charging in, especially with high attack/low defense/high charge swordsmen (highland clansmen, gallowglasses, beserker style units) then you will still lose several in the initial charge to the spearwall, and your charge bonus is all but nullified, but the next line of men can then engage the spearsmen in melee, the next line of horsemen can't as horses, no matter how well trained, are reluctant to charge into spearwalls.

[Simovek]

Hmm, yes that makes sense. I however would be walking up to the spears as I tend to become very clumsy when running, wouldn't want to trip and meet the wrong end of a spear ;)

[English assassin]

I'm not sure because vanilla infantry of almost all periods seem to have been spear armed. (including pikes and eventually muskets with bayonets) The only western exception I can immediately think of is Roman (not counting undrilled infantry such as the vikings or germanic tribes).

That suggests to me there is a pretty big advantage to a spear over a sword as a battlefield weapon. It could be cost, or ease of manufacture or use, but I suspect its that the assumption that cavalry will take on anti-cavalry duties isn't correct in fact. First that would tie your cavalry very closely to your infantry, negating the tactical advantage of speed, second, in the British army anyway, cavalry tended to be a lot "posher" than infantry and probably couldn't be trusted to keep an eye on them and hang around to protect them.

Also I suspect that although in principle swordsmen can cut the heads of spears/pikes and work their way into a formation, when you actually tried to do it against drilled spearmen busily counterattacking it would not be that easy.

[Simovek]

Well yes that was what I was thinking in my original post. The spear seemed to be a common weapon. Maybe it was just cheaper, much easier to train a group of guys to "stand here, point your spear in this direction" where as swordsmanship is something you have to put alot of time into training and what not.