Phalanx bug

[Antalis::]

Well the phalanx units are really nice, BUT they have a serious problem:

Very often when they are fighting they are walking continiously to the side: To the right side.
So if you want to defend a gate as example, they often will let the enemy in after a short time of fighting!

Why can´t they stick at the position where they were at the beginning of the fight?

[Ellesthyan]

Try setting of guard mode, when I do that they stop drifting and start fighting

[Magraev]

The right-step is a feature and not a bug. It seems this is historically accurate - they actually did sidestep (to stay behind the shield of the guy to theis right in the phalanx). To solve keep two units - one in front of the gate and the other behind and to the right to "pick up the slack".

On the other hand it seems a bit silly, that the phalanx will eventually be facing the wall next to the gate rather than the gate itself...

[The_Emperor]

This has been said many times and this is not a bug but a feature...

Historically a man in a Phalanx would be trying to get protection from the shield of the man to his right from missiles, so a Phalanx did have a natural tendancy to slide to the right as men bunched up.

This also helps explain why in ancient warfare a tradition was developed (from classical times) that the best units were always placed on the right, this is because in Hoplite warfare they would see combat with the enemy first.

[hoom]

A welcome historical feature yes, but like several others an overdone one.
30seconds & most of your phalanx is standing around doing nothing while the legion that hit you head on is rolling up your left flank

[The_Emperor]

True but thats only if you don't use the Phalanx with any other unit covering the flanks.

Also when your Phalanx sidesteps too far, it sometimes pays to move them into standard formation to continue the fight... Hoplites seem to be ok at this. You can always reform the Phalanx when your men are properly facing the enemy.

[R'as al Ghul]

The phalanx needs micromanaging like HA did in MTW.
But they respond quite good and seem to profit from rearrangements
during melee. This sounds odd, because in MTW it would be the safe death
of your unit.
What I occasionally do is to change/rotate the facing of the phalanx via "," and "." keys. The phalanx erects their spears (dissolves the phalanx), wheels around rather fast and puts the spears down again. If you're engaged in melee with cav , your phalanx will often crush those horses in the middle of the phalanx (that have jumped over) during this procedure. At the end of this your phalanx will be positioned better and grind down the last cav in front of you.
As the Emperor said, turning the phalanx off is a good option when already in melee and the enemy is closer than a spears length or when the enemy has disturbed your phalanx. No point in keeping the phalanx mode when it's already disordered. Switch to standard formation, wait a while and switch back to phalanx.

R'as


This phalanx-thread explains it all

[Longasc]

I wonder how people can dare to name this a "feature".

CA did not give much about historical accuracy or playability with Chariots, Cavalry and Spearmen/Phalanx unit types either.

Now this odd behaviour gets "explained" because someone found a true fact about the tendency of Hoplite-Formations shifting to the right.

There have been more blatant tries to defend bugs and name them features with other games, but this makes Hoplite units sliding right away from the door and letting the enemy in unhindered not better in any way.

Use guard mode, OK.

Still, the sitting duck Hoplites are bugged. Even Cavalry can charge them head-on and win. Not even the weak rear and sides are necessary to do so, and this would require at least a bit of thought from the player.

This unit is ridiculously misbalanced. An Army of Hoplites gets slaughtered by Cavalry, Archers and even pure foot Infantry-heavy Roman Armies butcher them.

Add in this nice "feature", and you really get the feeling "it is all historical correct".

Sorry for my sarcasm. But this cannot be right.

[Akka]

I wonder how people can dare to name this a "feature".

CA did not give much about historical accuracy or playability with Chariots, Cavalry and Spearmen/Phalanx unit types either.

Now this odd behaviour gets "explained" because someone found a true fact about the tendency of Hoplite-Formations shifting to the right.

Now, seriously...
Phalanxes are the ONLY units that do that in the game.
And it happens that it was PRECISELY what happened in history.

It takes a serious stretch of negative mind to consider that it's only coincidence...

[The_Emperor]

I wonder how people can dare to name this a "feature".

CA did not give much about historical accuracy or playability with Chariots, Cavalry and Spearmen/Phalanx unit types either.

They did, I have seen cavalry and chariots lose big time to spearmen. As the Britons charging your general's chariot into a mass of standard warbands tends to leave you with a very dead general... Also I have taken out Scythe chariots, Elephants and lots of cavalry with Phalanx before.

If your playing on Hard or Very Hard, then thatwould go some way to explain why your Phalanx gets slaughtered by cav from the front, because I have rarely seen it happen on Normal battle difficulty.

The Greeks pretty much have an All-Phalanx army with no heavy Cavalry at all except for the General's bodyguards (Greek Cav is light cav) and I have had no problems with them chewing up all in their path in my Greek campaign.

This unit is ridiculously misbalanced. An Army of Hoplites gets slaughtered by Cavalry, Archers and even pure foot Infantry-heavy Roman Armies butcher them.

I disagree, Hoplites losing to Cav only happens when the units get flanked, or charged when their formation is disordered (such as while turning) also if you notice Roman infantry does a very good job at naturally "wrapping around" the Phalanx and hitting the unit on the flanks... It only takes a handful of men to get on the flank for a Phalanx to feel the pain.

Archers are not so good against them. Armoured Hoplites take very few casualties from missile fire and can be very stubbon!

Also an army of hoplites can get slaughtered by cavalry if they hit the flanks and rear or manage to disrupt the formation... If they cannot do this then they will lose. I have seen people lose online when they decided to bring an all-cavalry army and faced a Hoplite army that formed a box as a means to prevent flanking.

[Slaists]

I believe, the H, VH difficulty explains cavalry winning straight on against phalanxes. The maximum anti-cavalry bonus a spear unit gets in RTW is +6 attack/defense (hoplites have it). The AI gets +4 attack on H and +7 attack on VH, effectively canceling out the spear anti-cavalry defense bonus... Pair that up with the fact that cavalry can "push people around" and "jump into formations" in RTW (disorderly formation is the death sentence to spears) and you've got your phalanxes slaughtered by head-on cavalry charges. IMHO, spears, if in good formation, should have thieir mass factor higher than the one of swords (the mass factor ratio determines how easy it is for one unit to push another one around).

Also, the AI frequently charges with its general: the general's unit usually has stats way above "average cavalry level", which probably is historically accurate. Hence, the terrible impact. As greeks, you'll probably be facing macedonian cavalry a lot: those weasels have insanely high charge: pair it with the difficulty level bonus and you've got a killer charger... Nonetheless, macedonian cavalry has very low defense (note, that CA stated: AI defense gets no boost on higher difficulty levels) and low base attack once they have been slowed down. Thus, they shouldn't be a problem after the initial charge has been stopped (which is hard to achieve on harder difficulty settings than normal).

[Antalis::]

Well, I don´t know if this is historically accurate, but its annoying and is killing the gameplay and fun playing with such units.

CA always tried to make RTW more playable, but this "feature" is really a bug in the way that it kills the advantage of such units.
Theire advantage is in the front and when they are drivting to the right, the left side is unprotected. And always to have another infantry unit there is odd.

[R'as al Ghul]

Even Cavalry can charge them head-on and win.

Could you tell us at which difficulty level this happens?
I heard this before but just haven't seen this.
I play at VH/H and my Hoplites repel Cav and chariots. Militia Hoplites have more difficulties, but they are also weaker.
Just yesterday my off-the-mill unit of hoplites met an enemy general of Seleucia. The battle was just between those two units on even terrain.
I had plenty of time to position the phalanx, their phalanx was deployed perfectly. The enemy charged right into it and evaporated in seconds.

R'as

[Bob the Insane]

Experience of playing against the greeks and their phalanx units is revealing...

To beat them you need to route them, period... Massed missile fire (pilum are very effective for this) to soften them up and hopefully start the route if possible which is the point you should sound the charge and move all units forward to widen the route...

If the missle fire is insufficient to start the route you will have to pin and flank, but you should expect heavy infantry casualties and will need to be very quick with the flanking manouver and again you will actually need to start a general route for any sort of clear victory...

My experience at using Phalanx units goes the other way... As long as you can protect your flanks and move your main line into contact with the enemyyou should be able to grind them down on your spear points... Cavalry can make an (unrealistic?) impact with their suicidal charges as (and I think Slaists has hint the nail on the head with the battle difficulty stuff) but this can be countered with reserve troops...

If you are fighting phalanx v phalanx battles then it really is all about the flanking, and good use of skirmishers...

All IMHO of course....

Could you tell us at which difficulty level this happens?

I most often see this when the enemy faction leader or heir is in the battle with their enlarge cavalry unit... You will have you line of phalanx units engaged with the enemy, doing well and holding the line when you hear a trumpet for a charge and scan up to see one of your units being over run by this large cavalry unit from square in front... What appears to happen is that the horse jump or crash into the formation penetrating deeply... Now in my experience this has not actually caused many casualties on either side and what happens next is dependant on how deep the phalnx unit formation is... If it is a bit shallow (say 4 ranks) then the cavarly will push on and charge through the unit and then start circling and slaughtering... But is the unit is deep (and especially if you pile reserves into that piece of the line) and cavalry will be caught in place and start to suffer...

I have seen this on both Hard and Very Hard battles... An additional element is this is the fact the General's bodyguards have 2 hp some may well be expending the first hp penerating the phalanx without any apparant casualties....

[LittleRaven]

I don't know if it's a bug or a feature, and honestly I don't really care. Right now, it's baggage the Phalanx doesn't need.

Speed is king in Rome. Flanking and charge bonuses so outpace everything else that it's already very, very hard to use infantry tactics effectively. No unit suffers from this more than the Phalanx. Slow to move, slow to turn, and very vulnerable from anything but the front, the Phalanx is the most vulnerable unit on the battlefield. Cavarly crush them. Archers rape them. Even other infantry units engaged from the front tend to bleed around the side and inflict hurt, because as currently implemented, the Phalanx is a defensive tool that doesn't serve as an offensive meatgrinder.

The deck is already massively stacked against the Phalanx. Their only hope is careful positioning. Is it really fair to take even that away from them via 'drift?'

[Red Harvest]

The drift is certainly too fast when it gets going. Every third step or so is to the right. It seems to happen worse in guard mode when they are less likely to engage when ordered. I use the "march through" attack with my phalanx so I don't have much trouble with it.

Kraxis has said he is not sure that the historical interpretation of phalanx drift to the right is accurate. A lot has been written saying it happened but from what he has read, he doesn't think it happened during actual engagement. I'm still sitting on the fence, however, the combination of shield effect, and the spear position would tend to force one to move a little to the right to engage and defend.) I don't think it fits with the character of RTW battles, so it should be either slowed dramatically, or eliminated.

[hoof]

One of the biggest issues I had with the sidestep was that the unit didn't change orientation to keep their "aim" at the enemy. Once I found out the wonders of the "guard" button, this went away. Phalanx units start the battle in "guard" mode, and one of the "features" of this is the unit will try to maintain facing. This is probably to allow automatic maintenance of infantry lines (if units rotated, they'd open up gaps in the line).

Turning Guard mode off causes the Phalanx to constantly change it's facing. And it does this *without* the annoying "raise your spear, turn, then lower it again" problem that can get your guys killed.

Try it in a custom battle. Send a phalanx against another phalanx, with the human phalanx having "guard" mode off. During the shuffle, the AI will keep its facing, but the human Phalanx will rotate as it slides, eventually positioning itself on the flank of the AI phalanx, with spears pointed at the flank. Very different behavior between guard "on" and "off.

[hoom]

The problem with the historical accuracy as far as I can see is that it is a thing which happened to all shield wall type units & thus Legions, Barbarian Warbands & all manner of other units should be doing it too.
The problem with the game play is that the effect is dramatic & requires significant micromanagement if you don't want your phalanx to present its left flank to the enemy.

I actually think its more likely that cav will win head on in medium difficulty than hard/v.hard.
So far as I can tell cav in general is stronger in medium.

[Slaists]

I actually think its more likely that cav will win head on in medium difficulty than hard/v.hard.
So far as I can tell cav in general is stronger in medium.

it depends WHOSE cavalry :) of course, your cavalry against AI's will be weaker on H/VH since the AI will be one getting the bonuses. just, in the case you were using cavalry against AI phalanx, the pike-men would get a wooping +13 bonus in terms of attack and +6 in terms of defense against your poor horsies :) it would be a different story if it was your phalanx against AI's cavalry though.

:)

[Red Harvest]

One of the biggest issues I had with the sidestep was that the unit didn't change orientation to keep their "aim" at the enemy. Once I found out the wonders of the "guard" button, this went away. Phalanx units start the battle in "guard" mode, and one of the "features" of this is the unit will try to maintain facing. This is probably to allow automatic maintenance of infantry lines (if units rotated, they'd open up gaps in the line).

Turning Guard mode off causes the Phalanx to constantly change it's facing. And it does this *without* the annoying "raise your spear, turn, then lower it again" problem that can get your guys killed.

Try it in a custom battle. Send a phalanx against another phalanx, with the human phalanx having "guard" mode off. During the shuffle, the AI will keep its facing, but the human Phalanx will rotate as it slides, eventually positioning itself on the flank of the AI phalanx, with spears pointed at the flank. Very different behavior between guard "on" and "off.

This sums it up pretty well. I was using guard mode with my spear warbands and ordering a "march past" style attack. With that I was not getting problematic side step. If I turn off guard mode, they do pivot (and turn to pursue if they rout someone, although they won't go far.) This exposes flanks if there is a 2nd line. So if you want to maintain a cohesive line, guard mode is preferable even if it kills slower. It is a problem though if you want to turn/pivot and attack. This is usually what you want unengaged units to do, so these particularl units need to be taken off of guard so that they will "get busy." This is what I have been doing in the "2nd phase" of the engagement.

[katar]

The problem with the historical accuracy as far as I can see is that it is a thing which happened to all shield wall type units & thus Legions, Barbarian Warbands & all manner of other units should be doing it too.

nope, a lot of it has to do that hoplite shields, while big, are not really the best shape to protect the hoplite.

a roman shield is nicely curved will protect an indivdual soldier well, but the hoplite shield doesn`t really protect the right side of the body, so to remedy this he gets closer to the man on his right... which leads to them all doing it and you eventually end up with the whole formation drifting off to the right.

in several real battles the formations on both sides swung round by 180 degrees.

so while the implimentation of this in the game might be a bit extreme to some, it is historically accurate.

source of information: "The Western Way Of War" by Victor Davis Hanson.

[hoom]

So why would the unshielded Pharoes Guards shuffle then?

[katar]

So why would the unshielded Pharoes Guards shuffle then?

buggered if i know man, ask CA.

[Akka]

Probably because the shifting is part of the "phalanx" code, and that they didn't felt like rewriting it for the only non-shielded phalanx unit in the game ^^

[katar]

Probably because the shifting is part of the "phalanx" code, and that they didn't felt like rewriting it for the only non-shielded phalanx unit in the game ^^

that sounds about right.

is that part of the code hardwired into the game? or can it be modded?

if it could be modded you could tone down the drift to the right, or remove it totally.

[Mori Gabriel Syme]

Kraxis has said he is not sure that the historical interpretation of phalanx drift to the right is accurate. A lot has been written saying it happened but from what he has read, he doesn't think it happened during actual engagement. I'm still sitting on the fence, however, the combination of shield effect, and the spear position would tend to force one to move a little to the right to engage and defend.) I don't think it fits with the character of RTW battles, so it should be either slowed dramatically, or eliminated.

As I've understood it from my reading, it tended to happen most extremely while engaging another phalanx. It would happen to some extent while engaging troops with missles, including the pilum, but engaging troops weilding swords wouldn't cause such defensive worries that you would be shifting so far to the right. When engaging troops whose spears are just as long as yours would be a different matter; being impaled would be a constant worry for both sides.

[Ulstan]

"It seems this is historically accurate - they actually did sidestep "

I disagree. Certainly to the extent to which they sidestep. It's ridiculously noticable. It should occur as the troops were marching to fight getting shot at by missiles, not once they were engaged. You just *couldn't* shuffle off to the right like that once two phalanxes were rammed together, with a press of men from behind you and spears on both sides.

"This also helps explain why in ancient warfare a tradition was developed (from classical times) that the best units were always placed on the right, this is because in Hoplite warfare they would see combat with the enemy first."

Actually, that would be a reason to put your best units on the left. The units on the right would be in combat for a very breif time then they'd shuffle off and be fighting no one!

If RTW mirrors history, then you would want your best units on the left, as they would get to slowly shuffle across the entire enemy line and do the most fighting.

I don't really see how rightward drift = the right side moving faster than the left.

I know some battles were fought where the lines were deliberately slanted, so that the right came into contact with the enemy first, but that's a separate issue from the rightward drift.

[Akka]

I disagree. Certainly to the extent to which they sidestep. It's ridiculously noticable. It should occur as the troops were marching to fight getting shot at by missiles, not once they were engaged. You just *couldn't* shuffle off to the right like that once two phalanxes were rammed together, with a press of men from behind you and spears on both sides.

In fact, no, it was precisely DURING the fight that the sidestepping happened.

Actually, that would be a reason to put your best units on the left. The units on the right would be in combat for a very breif time then they'd shuffle off and be fighting no one!

Wrong again. Soldiers sidestepped on the right to be better protected by the shield of their comrade. If the weakest soldiers are on the right, and the last one find no one on his side to protect him, then he would be prone to fall back, starting a chain reaction.
Veteran warriors would stay firm and not flee.

[noramis]

Your phalanx line may not be as wide as the charing cavalry, which would cause some cavalry to circle back around and hit your phalanx from behind.

Most if not all the battles I've played, anything charging into phalanx's from the front get completely annihilated.

[HopAlongBunny]

A seperate point is that phalanx never get to the battle.

Playing both Macedon and Greek factions, the phalanx adds almost nothing to the battle. 99% of battles are decided by archers and cav w/o the phalanx ever coming to grips with the enemy.

Exceptions might include bridge and castle battles; mainly as decoys to draw enemies to within bowshot.