Phalanx bug

[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....