Hoplites vs Pikes...

[RollingWave]

Is it just me? or has anyone else also seem to notice that pikemans (the long spear 120 men type) usually have a lot more problems and tend to function less effectively then their supposed inferior counterparts?

Several problems I noticed and also read some others complaining about..
1.phalanx behaviour: may be due to greater number, pikeman's phalanx often seem easier to fuction oddly than hoplits.. they more often raise spears when they aren't suppose to for example...

2.defense: their supposed offensive plus seems hard to notice when they obviously die faster.... now historically weren't the phalanx formation itself suppose to provide a great deal of defense against anything that's not hitting them from the flanks or rear? but in this game they die fast to arrows.... while hoplites espically better onces like armored/spartan/sacred band/pharoh can usually take a lot more heat...

3. moral: in terms of equal tier their moral is almost always lower than their hoplite counter part... Spartans aside... Hoplites vs Levy pike is a very obvious example... I've seen silvershields rout when only down by 1/4 or so but i've never seen sacred band rout until they are down to around 1/8 ... now a routing unit is usless no matter what it is...... (well acturally routing peasents may acturally be more useful for you than ur better units routing but that's not the point XD)

So... am i missing something here?

[Wishazu]

my favourite units are the phalanx`s so i spend alot of time using those civs that rely on them. in all my time playing ive found that macedonian pikemen, good as they are just cant compete with the regular greek hoplites etc. Granted the greeks have better armour and moral but they have much shorter pikes. Im not sure if this needs to be addressed in a historic context, as aside from the spartans being pretty much indestructible the macedonians pikes were supposed to be terrifying. Maybe u need to use more combined arms tactics, using your cav to get rouns the flanks of other enemy pikemen. also there a bug ive noticed when using phalanx units. When moving through a city, if i tell my phalanx(especially macedonian pikes) tries to move round corners they allways drop their pikes, also if i give an attack order whilst in the city they more often than not drop their pikes and use their swords, even when they havr room to move, i.e the town square. Most Perturbatory...

[RollingWave]

From a more historical and realistic point of view, the pike was suppose to be an advance from the hoplit, but in this game it really don't seem that way.

Historically the extra lenght would not only means apporaching them frontally was near impossible, it would also mean that many more arrows/javlins would be blocked or redirected in a less harmful way. however in this game pikeman not only dies much easier to arrows, they are also easily approached, strong cav charge often go right thorugh, although if the pikemans are in sufficent number and moral they will be able to eventrually slug out a win, in historical truth it should be a one way massacer if someone was stupid enough to do such thing even if they were cataphracts as they will just fly off their horse on impact (and more importantly, the horse would not even follow ur order to do such a sucicidal manuver.)

[Count Belisarius]

I agree: the game does not do a very good job of accounting for the extra reach, weight, and killing power of the sarissa. The standard hoplite spear was 2-3 meters (depending on who you believe) long, whereas the sarissa was over 4 or even as much as 6 meters in length (again, depending on who you believe). You can imagine how much kinetic energy such a horrendous weapon would have, especially since the Macedonians were well-trained enough to CHARGE in the last few meters, using their sarissas like battering rams. This is another aspect of the game that could use improvement, but I digress. One (of many) of the reasons for the Macedonians' success vs. the Greeks was the inability of the Greeks to get into killing range without forcing themselves through the hedge of sarissa points. The tradeoff is a more cumbersome formation, which I think the game accurately reflects.

As to the pikemen's vulnerability to missile troops, I think the game has it more or less right from an historical perspective. Many of Macedon's standard line-of-battle troops wore only leather armor (breastplate or jerkin and a kilt), a helmet, greaves (sometimes), and a small buckler strapped to the left arm. This minimal body armor rendered the phalangite vulnerable to missile fire. The idea that a pike formation provided adequate protection from arrows, javelins, darts and sling bullets has been WILDLY overblown. Certainly, having your friends behind you holding their pikes over your head is better than nothing . . . but it that's not saying much. Arrows, being much smaller in diameter than 5 meter pikes, would slip through the gaps quite easily. Not to mention that the formation was totally unprotected in the front, rear, and sides, or that the "protection" afforded by the pike canopy would decrease to virtually nil near the rear of the formation. The Macedonian army protected its phalanx from missile fire with good skirmishers and superior cavalry, not with its pikes.

[Red Harvest]

Archery is overblown in RTW. Had archery been half this effective, Alexander wouldn't have made it very far versus the Eastern archer heavy armies. He would have run out of phlangites quite rapidly.

[RollingWave]

Well Redharvest, i'm under the impression that Alexander ususally won't let he's men stand under arrow fires for very long... if he did do such a thing it was only to buy a little time for the flanking manuver...

As for he's success, military tactic was definately a great part of it... but many other important parts seem to be completely overlooked espically in forums such as these. (let's just say for example... why the Persian empire collasped on itself after just one major battle in persia?)

[Spino]

Well Redharvest, i'm under the impression that Alexander ususally won't let he's men stand under arrow fires for very long... if he did do such a thing it was only to buy a little time for the flanking manuver...

As for he's success, military tactic was definately a great part of it... but many other important parts seem to be completely overlooked espically in forums such as these. (let's just say for example... why the Persian empire collasped on itself after just one major battle in persia?)

It took more than one battle actually, the collapse of the Persian Empire was the culmination of successive battlefield losses and shrewd political decision making on the part of Alexander. The battles of Granicus & Issus and the subsequent loss of Asia Minor, Syria, Judea & especially Egypt all contributed to Persia's collapse. Furthermore Alexander enjoyed the reputation of being a liberator and tolerant ruler in many (certainly not all) of those territories since the Persians were known to be unusually heavy handed and intolerant of local religions and customs (this actually varied from ruler to ruler). Alexander not only made all the right moves but he had the wind in his back. Even if Alexander only managed a marginal victory at Gaugamela it was all over for Darius after that.

[Akka]

Well, I disagree with most posters, I find the pikemen to be really quite effective against phalanxes, precisely because of their longer spears.

I've had hoplites massacred by levy pikemen, and even armoured hoplites enduring severe losses and being pushed back with very little damages inflicted when fighting a head-on battle on the same levy pikemen.

Front-on-front, pikemen slaughter anything, up to the dreaded spartan hoplite.

But the thing is, even much more than the hoplites, pikemen are very vulnerable to anything that isn't at the front of their spears. They share the weaknesses of the phalanx, but it's magnified by them having lighter armor and smaller shields, which means that, while a hoplite can still gives a good account of himself in battle when the spear wall has been breached/avoided/overwhelmed (because of his good armor, fighting skill and shield), a pikemen is much weaker. So pikemen tends to fall quickly once you close in.

But as long as you don't, they can kill ANYTHING in front of them.

[Red Harvest]

Well Redharvest, i'm under the impression that Alexander ususally won't let he's men stand under arrow fires for very long... if he did do such a thing it was only to buy a little time for the flanking manuver...

As for he's success, military tactic was definately a great part of it... but many other important parts seem to be completely overlooked espically in forums such as these. (let's just say for example... why the Persian empire collasped on itself after just one major battle in persia?)

Considering the Persian forces vastly outnumbered Alexander's army it would have been quite easy to mow down first Alexander's short range skirmishers, then his infantry and/or cav if archery had been anywhere close to as effective as in RTW. But it wasn't, hence they didn't and couldn't.

And how long would the Spartans have lasted at Thermopylae vs. RTW archery? 5 minutes?

When archery was effective, it was *sustained* fire that did the work. Not single vollies killing 5 to 10% of a force as we have in RTW. Look at Carrhae, those horse archers were slowly killing the Romans. Yet, the Romans planned to weather the fire and wait, until they saw the archers periodically retiring to the camel caravans to resupply with arrows. The main terror of such weapons was that non-ranged units had to *endure* without being able to strike back. A series of harassing skirmishes would eventually set up conditions for defeat, because of the one sided nature of the losses.

From what I've read, even at Samarkand the ~800 phalangites were weathering the horse archers until they tried to move to cover and panicked while doing so.

[Red Harvest]

Well, I disagree with most posters, I find the pikemen to be really quite effective against phalanxes, precisely because of their longer spears.

I've had hoplites massacred by levy pikemen, and even armoured hoplites enduring severe losses and being pushed back with very little damages inflicted when fighting a head-on battle on the same levy pikemen.

Front-on-front, pikemen slaughter anything, up to the dreaded spartan hoplite.

But the thing is, even much more than the hoplites, pikemen are very vulnerable to anything that isn't at the front of their spears. They share the weaknesses of the phalanx, but it's magnified by them having lighter armor and smaller shields, which means that, while a hoplite can still gives a good account of himself in battle when the spear wall has been breached/avoided/overwhelmed (because of his good armor, fighting skill and shield), a pikemen is much weaker. So pikemen tends to fall quickly once you close in.

But as long as you don't, they can kill ANYTHING in front of them.

I totally disagree, 1.2 doesn't work like that. It worked more like this in 1.1, but it doesn't in 1.2. I just ran another set of tests and the levy pikes still lost handily despite having 50% more men than the standard greek hoplites. It wasn't only the 1vs.1 effect. I also did a 6v6. The greek hops were winning about 2:1.

That's not to say things can't go wrong. But in 1.2 the primary factor is not length of the weapon. Sorry, it just isn't. The primary factor is the sum of attack and defense, followed closely by push back (mass) and of course morale/stamina.

[hrvojej]

Could it be due to the supposed penalties vs infantry that spears and long spears have? They are supposed to have a bonus vs cavalry, and I assume that the bonus is greater for long spears. Maybe then long spears also have a larger malus vs infantry, even though it doesn't really make sense to have one?

[player1]

I totally disagree, 1.2 doesn't work like that. It worked more like this in 1.1, but it doesn't in 1.2. I just ran another set of tests and the levy pikes still lost handily despite having 50% more men than the standard greek hoplites. It wasn't only the 1vs.1 effect. I also did a 6v6. The greek hops were winning about 2:1.

That's not to say things can't go wrong. But in 1.2 the primary factor is not length of the weapon. Sorry, it just isn't. The primary factor is the sum of attack and defense, followed closely by push back (mass) and of course morale/stamina.

Well, Leavy Pikemen is still much cheaper then Hoplite after all.


And I just did few tests (1:1 leavy vs hoplite), and leavies obliterated hoplites with minimum losses.

But, trick is removing guard mode.
That way pikes retreat slowly, so Hoplites won't come closer.

EDIT:
Disregard my test. It was done at Macedonian ruins map, which benefited my side (higher ground).

Later tests gave usually narrow defeats for Leavys, but hey, thay are cheaper, and thus should be weaker unit then Hoplites, after all.

EDIT2:
Chaning default 8row fomation to 5row, increased Pikemen lethalitly a lot.
And all those previous defeat became victories.


So, guard off and 5row Pikemen for maximum effeiciency.

[professorspatula]

If you want to use the advantage of the long pike over the short hoplite spear, DON'T ATTACK.

If you make the Pikemen attack, the front rows will begin to attack immediately giving you a brief range benefit, but then the second and third ranks will try to get involved, and the two opposing formations will close together, allowing the hoplites to fight back. This defeats the point of the long pikes. Turning off guard mode makes this worse, although I've found the pikemen are slightly better at killing in this mode as they're more aggressive - but then their formation suffers for it (plus the Hoplites start to flank you and destroy the pikemen's flanks in sword combat).

If you don't force your Pikemen to attack, the front row of the phalanx will relentlessly batter the opposing enemy unit and the rest of your formation stays tight and pretty lifeless until called into action. The Hoplites are forced back out of spear range. Some will manage to break forward in retaliation, and this usually means some of the men in the second and third ranks of the pikemen can get involved too. But the phalanx holds. The Hoplites will attempt to flank you and this posses a significant risk, although the levies should be able to cope with it. If you use a wider formation (5 deep instead of default 7) the hoplites won't attempt to flank unless they have killed enough of your men to narrow the width of the pikemen formation. Therefore it's worthwhile having a wider formation against hoplites.


Anyway some stats:
-------------------
Levy Pikemen vs. Hoplites - Pikemen ordered to attack. Hoplites win with a 1.5:1 kill to death ratio.

I also tried turning guard mode off, changing the amount of ranks etc and the hoplites always won easily.

Levy Pikemen vs. Hoplites - Pikemen in guard mode, no orders. Pikemen comfortably with 1.6:1 kills/death ratio.

Conclusion:
----------
Ordering to attack makes your phalanx formation very vulnerable and less solid. The men will close in on the enemy, the lines will thin in places, men get out their swords unnecessarily, enemy will attempt to flank you etc. Thus do nothing when possible unless you are flanking the enemy or you want to kill faster.

[Red Harvest]

When I tried fighting with pikes in guard mode they lost more heavily than without. No surprise, guard mode is a mistake with every unit I've tried it on.

[professorspatula]

Guard mode can occasionally have its uses though. When I was testing various phalanx units fighting, on one occasion my phalanx pikemen were being rapidly pushed backwards by some armoured hoplites. I turned guard mode back on and the pikemen pushed forward to get back in formation, reversing the pushing process. I was impressed.

And in my test, keeping guard mode on and doing nothing is the only way to ensure the Pikemen kill the hoplites easily. Taking guard mode off is an instant invitation for the enemy to close in and start puncturing the poor pikemen.

The only other reason to use guard mode seems to be when you have other units ready to flank and the defending unit does its best to hold formation and keep the enemy pinned.

--

By the way - does anyone else find the officers in spear units annoying when you're carrying out one on one tests? The standard bearer and captains tend to destroy one flank, and with two identical units fighting, the effectiveness of those officers can determine which of the two sides wins the battle.

[Someone Stupid]

Yes, I found the officer and standard bearer annoying in testing as well. It contributed to a lopsided line (of the enemy), and generally when that line got lopsided by a solid rank of soldiers, the attacking phalanx started acting funny. From some stopping their attack, to backing up a step or two, to a complete halt of the attack in the worst case scenario.

I also found that having those two there though did allow for one side to take much less in losses if I paid close enough attention. Shows how even the smallest amount of protection on a phalanx flank can go a long way.

[Red Harvest]

I agree about the officers adversely effecting play testing. Too bad we can't do the test combat sans officers.

[professorspatula]

I suppose removing officers isn't too tricky (remove them from the unit.txt file) but the captain still causes havoc.


And I just tested Spartans versus Silver Shield Pikemen. I tested them earlier and found the silver shields lost whether in guard mode or not, and whether in many ranks or few. But then I reverted to the 'Do nothing whatsoever' tactic and it was a different story. After a not massively successful first effort, I made the Silvershield's have 6 ranks and then sat back and watched. Silvershields slaughtered the Spartans, the second time killing more than 4 for everyone they lost. So size does matter, although it's how you use it that counts.

[AntiochusIII]

You could delete them temporarily for a while, isn't it? In the descr_units.txt?

{EDIT} oh, professor answered the question already.

[Simetrical]

By the way - does anyone else find the officers in spear units annoying when you're carrying out one on one tests?

Yeah, we removed them from phalanx units some time ago in RTR.

-Simetrical

[AquaLurker]

Hi people,

This is what I had learnt after playing with phalanx mode for sometime.

Guard mode allows phalanx to hold the line much better than with 'guard mode switched off', your troops will suffer less casualties aganist non-phalanx units and will not pursue the enemy when they route, this way the formation will remain intact.
Downside, it don't kill alot of enemies this way.

With guard mode turned on, the phalanx fight much better and do more kills in a frontal engagement but they will also lose slightly more men this way, they also tend to break formation to pursue routing enemies.

Usually I will switch on guard mode for my phalanx units in the middle for holding the main line and those at the flanks with guard mode off for attacking the enemy flanks.

I have tried this tactics quite a couple of times using germania in multiplayer games and it has proven to be very effective even against rome's urban cohort charges.

[Red Harvest]

Yes, I know how to remove the junior officers, but for 1v1 testing the captain will still be assigned.

[Wishazu]

And how long would the Spartans have lasted at Thermopylae vs. RTW archery? 5 minutes?

ive played countless battles online and sp using spartans and can safely say, anybody who spends time shooting at these guys is wasting arrows, esp from the front, they just dont die :D

[Shadar]

Spartans ARE a bit hard to killl.. but the comparison isn't entirely accurate.

However, what kind of crazy commander would order his own archers to fire into his OWN men that had surrounded the Spartans+allies on that hill of theirs? Now, since the Spartans were on high ground.. and its completely unfeasable to have archers near the forefront of the battle so they can have a clear shot at the enemy... they would've had to be standing a little distance away.

Now, due to the mess on the top of the hill, you're obviously not going to let your archers shoot into the melee. No matter how good archers they are, they're going to shoot your troops. This means, since the greeks have the high ground and can't be shot at directly, the archers would have to curve their shots up... which is even more stupid. It would eventually end up with massive casualties on your side since you're shooting at your troops in the back, while the Spartans actually have decent metal armour and have good shields, not the cheap armour your levies have.

Plus, Unlike RTW - your men are NOT going to be unquestionably accepting this attrition from friendly-fire... They're probably going to be thinking along the lines of...

"why are we getting shot at...? why is my BACK getting shot at??? WHY DOES THE GENERAL WANT TO KILL US?????????" *routs and runs away*

Think of those ancient levies as pretty much the town watch/militia etc in RTW.. not exactly great troops. especially not compared to some the toughest and most well trained hoplites in all the Greek city states... i.e. Spartan Hoplites.

[Kraxis]

Shadar that was in fact how the last Spartans ended their lives. The little hillock is filled with arrowpoints.

But that was the very last part of the battle, what Red meant was the entire battle and not just the last stand. If the Persian archers had been anywhere near the effectiveness of the archers in RTW then Xerxes would never have sent in melee troops, just sat back and let the archers kill the greeks.
Now that did work did it, despite he had so 'many archers that their arrows could block out the sky'. He had to send in melee troops.
100,000 archers out of about 250,000 or 200,000 troops is not too extreme (if you think he Persians had fewer troops then just lower both figures), and given the greeks had at best 3000 troops at the fronlines (the others resting or guarding the pass), I would say that archery was nothing that was really that dangerous. 33 archers to every hoplite they were likely to face is a lot. Try to have that kind of difference in RTW and I will asure you that even 2HP Armoured Hoplites (ifyou mod them) will fall rather rapidly.

[Malachus]

Well, what would you guys say is an advisable missile attack for archers in RTW if you want them to be more realistic?

[Red Harvest]

And how long would the Spartans have lasted at Thermopylae vs. RTW archery? 5 minutes?

ive played countless battles online and sp using spartans and can safely say, anybody who spends time shooting at these guys is wasting arrows, esp from the front, they just dont die :D

Actually, the best way to kill them is with archery. They have low armour and essentially only their shield for protection. The best way to burn off that extra hit point is with archery. Even "highly nerfed" archery will chew them up. When I face Spartans I focus arrow fire on them, because missile fire is their achilles. The other hoplites have higher armour stats and lower melee...better to face them in melee than the Spartans.

I just ran a quick example using 1 Spartan vs. 8 base level Scythian foot archer units with my nerfed missile stat of 4 (vs. 7 in the game) and 100 range vs. 120 normal. I also have given the Spartans 4 armour vs. 3 original. By the time they reached my line they were about 50% depleted. They routed a few seconds later. So even with a 43% archery nerf, combined with a 20% range nerf, a reduction in archery velocity from 48 m/sec to 40 m/sec, and a 33% Spartan armour boost (although with shield only a 12.5% missile defense boost) the Spartans still became pincushions.

[player1]

I have some interesting results.

Using tactics mentioned in some posts above (guard, but don't attack), I was able to take out Spartans with stack of Silver Shields (on flat terrain).

On the other hand Armored Hoplites proved to be more difficult to take out, so I lost in battles against them.

It seems that those extra several defense points can be someitimes more worth then 2hp.

[player1]

Also, are difficuly sliders in Custom Battles buggy?

Very Hard game very fast battles, while easy gave very slow battles, Very Hard gave quick routing (both for you and AI), Easy gave very difficult routing.

Fast-Slow aspect can be easily tested if you just put simple 1:1 hoplite pikemen combat.

[Kraxis]

Well, what would you guys say is an advisable missile attack for archers in RTW if you want them to be more realistic?

I lowered the base attack to 5, and it still seems to be rather powerful. I still pack up on archers, and they do make a serious impact rather fast. And when I face archers I normally single them out first.
Those rebels in the middle east are normally heavy in archery and I really fear them in the early game as the Seleucids have litte in terms of cavalry and missile.

I begin to wonder about modding them down to 3, and weakening te elite archers even more. Slingers should follow them down to 3 and the elites would also get a nerf. But I'm certain that we will never get them to a point we actually like.