Best phalanx in game?

[Jeanne d'arc]

Seleucid silver shield pikemen are my favorite, large number of men in eich unit and longest spears amongs all the phalanxes.Not bad unit statistics to.Who thinks otherwhise?

[jimmyM]

If it wasn't for their terrible base armour values, i'd say spartans; in combat they generally eat through the opposition, otherwise i'd say silvershields have the advantage...

[Accounting Troll]

Macedonian Royal Pikemen for me. As with all Macedonian pikemen, you get more men per unit than Greek hoplites, and Royal Pikemen will still put up a good fight even after their formation gets flanked.

[Akka]

Armoured hoplites.

They just look good.

[Osbot]

I ran a test awhile ago 5 battles with all of the "elite" Phalanxes. At the time I had not correctly modded Royal Pikemen to have the longpike that they should have.

I forget the exact results but, it basically went like this.

Silver Shields 5 - Royal Pikes 0
Silver Shields 4 - Spartans 1 (Silver Shields shuffled their way to be facing away from the Spartans)
You can guess how other battles would have gone, being that these are the 3 best phalanx units in the game.

In general the long pike Phalanxes dominated everything else because the shorter spear equiped units were completely unable to close the distance, and if they tried they got mauled even harder.

[Dorkus]

a unit of levy pikemen in wide formation can beat spartans under ai control. the ai doesn't attempt to get to the flank. it just keeps walking straight at the pikes with its shorter spears, and the spartans will (very slowly) die.

I ran a test awhile ago 5 battles with all of the "elite" Phalanxes. At the time I had not correctly modded Royal Pikemen to have the longpike that they should have.

I forget the exact results but, it basically went like this.

Silver Shields 5 - Royal Pikes 0
Silver Shields 4 - Spartans 1 (Silver Shields shuffled their way to be facing away from the Spartans)
You can guess how other battles would have gone, being that these are the 3 best phalanx units in the game.

In general the long pike Phalanxes dominated everything else because the shorter spear equiped units were completely unable to close the distance, and if they tried they got mauled even harder.

[Colovion]

It depends on who's controlling them I think.

Spartans are the ones which will take the most units from you in the end though because they fight to the death. If you play custom battles you can probably win with almost any of the phalanx units, but will lose more or less depending on which one you choose.

[Soulflame]

You can guess how other battles would have gone, being that these are the 3 best phalanx units in the game.

Wrong!

Pontus' Bronze Shields have the same stats as Silver Shields, only are cheaper . The only thing that's different is their bonusses/penalties in the different environments.
Personally, I really love Pontus (the whole "opportunity" attitude the kingdom has is really nice), so I'd go for those.

It's a bit sad that Spartan Hoplites can be beaten by any unit with very long spears (like Levy Pikemen). But they are still nice.
Sacred Band isn't too shabby as well (but again, no very long spears means they'll most likely lose pikemen fights).

[Praylak]

Greek Armoured Hoplite. Not only do they look cool, as Akka modestly pointed out, but that armour has it's advantages. Spear vs pike is no contest, thats why these guys are nice. Forget the spears in this situation, run them around the flank and rear of the pikemen and engage with sword.

[Osbot]

In the tests I ran, I was not microing the units at all. I simple lined them up gave em a push and said go. This is why in that thread where I posted the results the Silver Shields lost some battles they otherwise should have won. They would shuffle themselves away from the guys they were fightin and end up getting smoked in the back ;p

[The_Emperor]

I ran a Silver Shields vs Spartan Hoplite battle, and the Spartans were winning acording to the tooltip.

But they were not, with their shorter spears they couldn't get much purchase on the Silver Shields, who with the superior length of their Pikes were able to get more kills...

But the Spartans slowly shuffled in closer and then they really started killling. Even with the superior numbers and longer Pikes, the Silver shields were then in a world of hurt.

The Spartans won that one.

I also had a costly battle storming a Greek cityas the Selucids, a unit of armoured Hoplites chewed through Two Units of Levy Pikemen, and weakened two others to below 50%, before they were routed and killed.

And the two surviving levy Pike units, attacked them from both the front and rear!!

Armoured Hoplites are tough.

[Husar]

I would say Greek Armoured Hoplites aswell, but only because of their general performance. As I played a greek campaign I once lost 4 units of Spartans to archers in a siege battle(I was attacking) against the Brutii. They are superior to Armoured Hoplites in close combat with swords on walls, but Armoured Hoplites are not that bad at it aswell, against AI controlled Sacred Band in a custom battle I lost with both(no tactics), but the Armoured Hoplites seemed to do better( I think that was their better defense). In my campaign I didn´t care that much about archers firing into my wall of armoured hoplites, because it didn´t do serious damage, I could wait and hunt them down after the legions or whatever were defeated in close combat.
And that´s why I would say greek armoured hoplites.

PS: I remember them defending my walls very well against all those units Pontus and others sent onto them.

[Bob the Insane]

Greek Armoured Hoplites...

Armour of 11 is nearly as good as elephants and the most advanced Roman units and better than everyone else (except Desert Axemen the *&^$ing mutants..).. Add good skills to that and not hugely expensive...

A solid unit....

[Ktonos]

GAH is the best all-around phalanx unit. Spartans are a Juggernaut if the enemy do not have missile units otherwise you must be carefull with them.

[Jeanne d'arc]

What about sacred band??Surely they would win vs GAH.....

[Oleander Ardens]

One should devide in two categories:

a) Long pikes

b) Short pikes

Anyway I like the Spartans for being brilliant heavy infantry too, using them on the wings and the rear of the GAH. A very high attack (16) with both spears and swords, the very_hardy and the two lifepoint makes them great wings. Agemas also shine as flankers, are well armored, have good stats and large shields and come in a large package, plus they are also able to fight as heavy infantry. They form also the flanks of the mainline of the long_pikes Phalanx. Same goes for the Sacred Band, only that they are fewer and heavier...

Cheers

OA

[Jeanne d'arc]

One should devide in two categories:

a) Long pikes

b) Short pikes

Anyway I like the Spartans for being brilliant heavy infantry too, using them on the wings and the rear of the GAH. A very high attack (16) with both spears and swords, the very_hardy and the two lifepoint makes them great wings. Agemas also shine as flankers, are well armored, have good stats and large shields and come in a large package, plus they are also able to fight as heavy infantry. They form also the flanks of the mainline of the long_pikes Phalanx. Same goes for the Sacred Band, only that they are fewer and heavier...

Cheers

OA

What are Agemas?

[hoof]

Greek Armored Hoplites, without a doubt.

However, you must do two *crucial* things to make them work:

1) Take them off of *guard* mode

2) Double-click their attack orders.

With the above two, the hopiltes will close to within *their* strike range, and their armor lets them take the hits.

At least that's been my experience (I haven't done any controlled tests yet)

[Ellesthyan]

Heh... Levy pikemen: cheap and they get the job done. Morale is good enough and they can easily replaced.

Purely tactically seen however I'd go for the Silver Shields. They rock.

[hoof]

I did some tests to test my armored hoplite theory. On medium difficulty, here are the results from 3 fights, Grassy Flatlands, Armored Hoplites vs Royal Pikemen:

The hoplites won all three fights, the first number is thre remaining hoplites (out of 82) the second the Pikemen (out of 122), all fights fought until one side broke:

51/8
51/11
41/7

One thing I noticed was these pikemen look like they use the shorter pike. So I tried Silver Shield pikemen, who are about the same cost, and they use pikes:

66/41 (Pikemen general died early)
52/20
44/20

The big difference with the pikemen was that when the battle was head-on, the pikemen were almost able to keep the hoplites at bay. Every time, however, the hoplites shuffled to the side and chewed up the pikemen (the pikemen wouldn't rotate to face the hoplites, while the hoplites kept themselves aimed at the pikemen the entire fight).

A *huge* difference in the way the hoplites fought happens when you turn guard mode off (all the above is with the guard mode off). I suspect the reason the pikemen didn't turn to face the hoplites as they shuffled to the side was because the AI probably leaves guard on. Someone would have to test this with a human to see if it's the case. When guard mode was off, both sides kept the other at spearpoint (spearpoint to spearpoint that was), and neither would rotate until the other completely shuffled to one side.

Without being sure whether the AI has guard mode on or off, I cannot be sure who would win the pikemen vs hoplite fight. But vs the AI, with guard mode off, a single armored hoplite unit can beat any other unit except maybe spartans (haven't tested them yet). Against a wall of pikemen units (so there is no flank to rotate around), I suspect the Pikemen would be much better.

[Jeanne d'arc]

I did some tests to test my armored hoplite theory. On medium difficulty, here are the results from 3 fights, Grassy Flatlands, Armored Hoplites vs Royal Pikemen:

The hoplites won all three fights, the first number is thre remaining hoplites (out of 82) the second the Pikemen (out of 122), all fights fought until one side broke:

51/8
51/11
41/7

One thing I noticed was these pikemen look like they use the shorter pike. So I tried Silver Shield pikemen, who are about the same cost, and they use pikes:

66/41 (Pikemen general died early)
52/20
44/20

The big difference with the pikemen was that when the battle was head-on, the pikemen were almost able to keep the hoplites at bay. Every time, however, the hoplites shuffled to the side and chewed up the pikemen (the pikemen wouldn't rotate to face the hoplites, while the hoplites kept themselves aimed at the pikemen the entire fight).

A *huge* difference in the way the hoplites fought happens when you turn guard mode off (all the above is with the guard mode off). I suspect the reason the pikemen didn't turn to face the hoplites as they shuffled to the side was because the AI probably leaves guard on. Someone would have to test this with a human to see if it's the case. When guard mode was off, both sides kept the other at spearpoint (spearpoint to spearpoint that was), and neither would rotate until the other completely shuffled to one side.

Without being sure whether the AI has guard mode on or off, I cannot be sure who would win the pikemen vs hoplite fight. But vs the AI, with guard mode off, a single armored hoplite unit can beat any other unit except maybe spartans (haven't tested them yet). Against a wall of pikemen units (so there is no flank to rotate around), I suspect the Pikemen would be much better.

It all depends on who is attacking or defending, if the AI was defending then most likely he had gaurd mode on.
I have had a war once vs a all GAH army, i was defending and most of my troops contained levy pikemen with weapon bonuses, the AI advanced to my troops also in phalanx formation.The long pikes of the levy's kept them at a distance unable to land a hit on my troops, the only casualties i made is when they started to crumble around my flanks and got in melee fights but thats easely countered by moving a few units into the right direction.This was on flat land and my levy's where pretty stretched out into 4 ranks making it hard to even flank my troops.The levy's have larger units also wich is a huge advantage over the GAH.