swords infantry vs. polearms infantry

[Shambles]

I always thought sword men beat pole arms and pole arms beat horses.
Both vulnerable to missiles and horses beat missiles.
But im a stw veteran, so I still use the same style of play in MTW.


But those viking huskerales or what ever there called are Like invincable or something,
but there ya go
thats my oppinion
ShambleS

[Mrlin]

I have to say that I totally agree with all of three replies that Kommodus gave.

In regards to battle formation, I never place swordsmen on the flanks. the best way is putting spearmen to intercept cavalry's flanking/charging. But i don't mind put A-P units on the flanks too.

One great adavantage is, lets say when I am attacking with spearmen on the flanks, as I slowly approach defending army, the flanking cavalry has 3 options, when seeing my spearmen drawing closer.

First, they charge into my spearmen, which would be stupid and almost never, becuase AI doesn't do that.

Second, they withdraw to the back of army, and waiting. I see all the time, that AI cavalry does nothing but standing and watching both side engaged in heated battle. then my spearmen would close on the cavalry and also on enemy ranged units.

Third, cavalry charged into the centre units, mostly likely swordmen. Yeah it is true my swordmen would suffer enormous loss, but not for long, quickly my spearmen flank the cavalry, as the cavalry flank my swordmen.

Also, I always put my cavalry on the side, so when my spearmen are dealing with enemy cavalry, my cavalry is free to flank and charge, without worrying about being flanked by enemy cavalry.

If i dont have spear on my flank, then I use A-P units the same way. This could even be better. Because the enemy cavalry are more likely to attack these A-P units than spearmen. As they engaged in battle, I would send my cavalry around to charge into enemy cavalry.

The way that A-P works means that with light-armoured units with armour from 3-4 , polearms would incur +1 attack bonus. Armour from 5-6 would incur +2 attack bonus, and so forth. The calculation of A-P does not include the armour of shields and horses. However, when u look at unit guides and unit comparative tool, the authors do not include shields and horse armour to unit's armour.

I think almost all units have armour euqal to or higher than 3.

This means that when polearms beat light-armoured units/swordmen, it is due light-armoured units/swordmen's higher defense, and shields, it is NOT however due to higher attack stats.

Spearmen are still very useful....yes they are vulnerable, but they have 100 men per unit. To overcome the formation problem, let your spearmen march close enough for enemy to lauch an attack, then pause and wait for them to come, as your spearmen regroup.

You can always upgrade units' moral by constructing buildings. I think military acedemy gives a discipline status to all units. It would not however as effective as regular discpline status that u see on parchment, and it would not appear on unit's discription.