Cant defeat the Phalanx

[Topper]

Thanks for looking in! Am very new to RTW but loving it all the same. Problem is, the Greeks have taken a bit of dislike to me becuase I "ahem" blockaded one of thier ports. Anyway, I have fought two battles and lost both all I assume because of the phalanx. I have even tried outflanking them with heavy cavalry them hitting them in the rear once they are engaged with my infantry but they still seem to shrug it off. Is there any tactic that works well against them? I am playing as the Juli if that helps.

Many thanks for any advice.

[Antiochius]

DON`T ATTACK THE PHALANX WITH CAVALRY!!!!!

That is the biggest mistake you can do!
I always use archers. That helps a lot. Velites are also good.

Try to attack the Phalanx in front of them and behind them. this always helps. Either we must attack the units , which are in their back or the units coming in front of them.

[phred]

Try softening them up with archers and velites.
Velites can really do some damage if they are behind the phalanx.
Armoured hoplites and Spartans are very tough - you'll need your best infantry and lots of missles for them.
You have the basic idea right, though. Pin with infantry and flank with calvalry and velites. Your infantry will take a lot of casulaties, especially hastati.

Hope that helps.

[Watchman]

Playing as the Romans ? Massed pila volleys are a good start, especially if focused on a single unit. Shooting the slow things to pieces is a good start too - fast-moving javelineers should try to shoot from the phalangites' right side, where the shield doesn't help. Trying to lure the phalanx units away from each other so you can focus multiple faster-moving units against one is a good way too - units in deployed phalanx are rather slow moving, and outside it the Spartans are really the only ones who can fight worth a damn anyway.

Powerful shock cavalry can, in my experience, pretty much roll up a phalanx line if they can hit it in the flank more or less along its horizontal axis, especially if it's already pinned from the front. Simply sending a few units of semi-decent melee infantry to attack engaged phalanxes from behind tends to work wonders too. Any pilas or similar should naturally be thrown before engaging. In a pinch even skirmishers work - throw some javelins at their back and go in with the knives, even most elite phalangites are such crappy swordsmen even the lousy skirmishers ought to make a difference at the rear.

'Course, I only ever play at -/H difficulty so I don't really know how it goes on VH.

[TB666]

With the new patch a phalanx unit has become something to fear and that's just the greek states. I don't wanna imagine how tough it will be against units that have the long pikes.
Because of their big shields they can absorb missile fire pretty well but it is better then nothing and if you use fire arrows you will scare them abit.
Send a unit with good morale to engage the front and when they have been engaged and are busy send the best cavarly unit to hit their back.
Prepare to take casualties and whatever you do, do not let the cavalry get stuck in melee fighting. It is a death sentance.
When the shock is absorbed, pull out and hit them again and repeat process until they rout.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

When flanking with cavalry make sure you hit the narrow flank, not the rear, as the Greeks will just turn and drop spears, basically a double sided phalanx. Everything else here is also very good.

[Watchman]

I understand the phalanxes have a tendency to "butt spike" cavalry charges to their actual rear (ie. the horses take casualties almost as if they'd been hitting the front side of "set" spears) - I haven't actually tried if this really is so, but there's been a lot of talk about it in the forums and I've gotten some results in that direction in-game too.

If you can ram cavalry into the flank of enemy phalanx so that the phalangites start fighting back with their swords, daggers and such, you're okay excatly until the point they get their bearings back enough to redeploy the spears and pikes. At that point at the latest it's a good idea to bug the horses out to avoid casualties, unless the enemy formation is already at the brink of rout. In any case the sheer distruption caused is going to be a big help to whatever poor buggers you may have pinning the phalanx from the front - it seems to be a monumental pain for even infantry to get within sword- and axe-range of the pikemen in particular, and even plain Merc Hoplites have seemed quite capable of holding even Praetorians at an arms' lenght (although given the disparity between their attack and the Praes' defence values they'd certainly lose on the long term by their lonesome...).

[Zatoichi]

Also, when playing with pila armed infantry, always remember to set them to Fire At Will so they throw their pila before charging automatically - you'll dish out some decent casualties and disrupt their formation as they slowly advance towards you as well. If you want to just charge them without first throwing your pila, hold down the Alt key when ordering the attack (this activates the 'secondary' attack - in the case of pila armed troops, this is their sword).

The rest of the advice posted here is spot on - pinning and flanking after first wearing them down with archers/javs. You could also try hiring some mercenary hoplites to fight fire with fire - they will be better at pinning the enemy phalanx than your hastati.

[Topper]

Thx for the replys, very helpful! Well I did win a small battle yesterday but I'm not sure how as they really had me down to mostly archers and a few knackered infantry. i did split them up a bit so they were fighting somewhat independantly in places. I used more of the battlefield this time so maybe that contributed.

[Ciaran]

The Romans benefit from an infantry that does not need to keep formations that badly as the phalanx units do. Phalanxes are lethal if engaged from the front, but anything that gets past the points of their lances will kill them rather quickly. The first thing to do is to break up the battle line, that´s rather simple, send out some equites as a lure to the flanks and some of the phalanxes will turn. Once they´re no longer in their neat little line, they´re practically dead.
As for the butt spike, I´ve heard a lot about it, but never encountered it myself, and I use to crash my cavalry into the back of phalanxes quite a lot. Maybe it´s a 1.3/1.5 patch thing. Just pull the cav out imediately, since, as has been said, the phalanx can turn on the spot, slaughtering quite a lot of cavalrymen almost instantly. But if they (the phalanx) are already engaged, they´ll leave their rear to your infantry which will cut them to pieces.
All in all, fighting phalanxes, once you know the weaknesses, isn´t that hard, but fighting with them is.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Here's what I think the butspike thing is.

If you notice when you march a phalanx foward and then about turn them all the guys turn on the spot and drop spears, so in a second and a half you have a phalanx about turned. If they see your cav thats what they do, about turn drop, and its just like hitting the front, because it is the front.

[Cras]

if you fight...
- try to be uphill to the other team (increases range archers)
- place yourself to the back of where you are allowed to stand (make them walk farther, they get tired)
- place your archers on the outside of your formation, and make them fire diagonally on the falanx, they are quite resistant to frontal fire. (extra advantage is that archers do wel against cav. and they always try to outflank.
- if you fight, fight compact, if your units are closer together your formation tends to hold. they will be bigger (longer frontline). Their centre will crumble (usually with their general)

and... ONLY fight if you think you are going to win, so use your spies to scout armies, maybe even use your assassins to kill a general

[antisocialmunky]

If you're willing to try some experimenting. I've heard that in RTW 1.2, that if you walk a legionaire unit in testudo through a phalanx unit that's comperable to weaker that the legionaires will part the phalanx. But that's an exploit...

I wouldn't feel too bad, the Persians lost 3 major battles and was defeated because they couldn't effectively deal with the Greek and later Macedonian phalanxes. The best way to kill something is to exploit its weaknesses. And what are the weakpoints of the phalanxes?

1. It has to stay in formation. How do you knock them out of formation? Arrows and other missiles. Onagers can take out a good chunk of men if you hit them which shouldn't be too hard because...

2. They are really slow. So, you can make them run around by making them chase your. Horse archers around. What if you don't have horse archers? Fast peltests work too. Due to their slowness you can flank them fairly easily. You'll want to do this on their on the side, not the back.

3. They can't turn well. This makes flanking rather easy against the greek states as their cavalry suxorz-da-bomzorz and most of their infantry are slow hard to turn phalanx units. If the Macedonians use alot of horses, well... then... make the horses chase after something so the phalanx and the horses become isolated. Then its up to you to figure out what to fight first.

[hoof]

Historically, the Phalanx was very effective. After all, the Phalanx armies conquered huge swaths of land under Alexander.

As others have stated, the primary problem with the Phalanx is flexibility. A Phalanx is a highly optimized fighting force, optimized to be virtually unstoppable to hand-to-hand opponents from the front. In that sense, they were a success. The Romans defeated them because they had armies that were the epitome of flexibility, ranging from their soldiers training to the fact that unit leaders were trained to make quick decisions in the heat of battle to exploit some weakness that showed up. Individual decision-making for a phalanx is a good way to get your unit destroyed (look at the AI when it sends a phalanx unit charging after a light horse unit). Individual decision-making for a Roman unit was essential to their functionality.

A good phalanx army in RTW uses the phalanx units as a portable wall. Sure they can kill, but their primary purpose, IMO, is to provide impassable chunks of the battlefield that you can position to your advantage. They are the pick part of a basketball pick & roll maneuver. In the field, ensure you have cavalry (preferrably with some horse-archers if you can get them), and bowmen. The heavier hoplites can also function hand-to-hand, and are almost as effective as roman units in that respect, except without the pila. Just make sure to have them go out of phalanx mode before sending them up the ladders!

City fights show off phalanx capability in spades. Nothing can shut down a road like phalanxes, and several phalanx units can be set up to secure an area with no flanks exposed (especially in the middle of a street). Missile units have a harder time getting a shot in this situation. Often, in a Roman campaign, I'll hire some hoplites for use in city situations. Their major weakness when fighting in cities is going through doors (hard to maintain a formation), and often I'll have them draw swords to turn them into hastati mode for that duty. Oh, and if you have trouble getting them to go up on walls, turn off Phalanx mode.

Oh, and make sure you turn off "guard" mode unless you intend them to maintain a formation. "Guard" mode tells the unit to a) not turn unless absolutely necessary, and b) don't push forward (since it moves you out of position). With "guard" mode off, phalanxes will rotate to face the targetted enemy, and will automatically turn to keep the target in front w/o lifting their spears (unless it's a big turn). With "guard" mode off, phalanxes will push forward which makes them much more effective at killing things in front of them. With "guard" mode off, however, phalanx lines of multiple units will get disrupted upon contact with the enemy, so if you've got a wall of several phalanxes in formation, leave guard mode "on" if you don't want the wall to disintegrate.

[Kickius Buttius]

Good advice all over this page. I would add that, by the time of the Peloponesian War, the Greek phalanx was having major issues dealing with light infantry. Cavalry was never more than a way to pursue already fleeing hoplites.

Accordingly, if you are interested in playing with an eye toward history, an effective method is to load up on light infantry, such as (if you are Roman) velites. You really only need one cavalry unit. I have used this method on both h and vh, version 1.5

Position your heavy infantry as far away from the anticipated enemy position as possible. Position your velites as close to the enemy position as possible.

Make the phalanxes (phalanxi? phalanxen?) chase you all around the map and keep hitting them with missile fire. Whenever possible, seperate a single unit from the line by making it chase you, and then hit it with missiles from both the front and the rear at the same time.

Anytime a phalanx unit flees, immediately send cavalry to kill whatever is left of it.

Don't worry about the line advancing and meeting your heavy infantry. This will eventually happen, but in the meantime you can do significant damage with the velites.

When the velites run out of missiles, have them retreat either behind the infantry or withdraw completely off the map. If you handle the withdrawal carefully, you should be able to use each velite unit to lure a phalanx unit into chasing it. Just stay close to the phalanx, but don't engage. Done properly, you can ensure that when your velites withdraw from the map, the phalanxes meet your line of heavy infantry in uneven fashion rather than in a solid line.

Make sure your heavy infantry (again, if you are Roman), toss their pilas just prior to contact while the the phalanxes are still chasing the velites.

Hit each phalanx with two units of heavy infantry- one straight on and, about an instant later, one from the flank. The enemy line should have been broken up enough by the velite-chasing that you have enough units to do this (some phalanx units won't have reached you yet). If not, then do this to the phalanx units on the ends of their line and leave the ones in the center for later.

Again, when a unit breaks have cavalry hunt it down and kill what remains.

As each phalanx unit breaks, you should be able to continue to hit remaining units two for one. You will win.

There are a lot of ways to win, and a lot of people have posted good tactics on this page, but I like this one as it plays into history and does provide the AI with a chance to win (sometimes they don't take the bait during the chase and then its a hard fought close one that could go either way). Good luck and good hunting.

[Helgi]

For me, if playing the Samatians, my main force was 8 Horse Archers , 4 archers, 4 merc hoplites, 2 Samatian hvy cav. What I did was hit the phalanx's head on with my Archers and Horse Archers, the Archers used Fire arrows and the Horse Archers used the circle, flanked the phalanx's with my hvy cav but waited for the phalanx's to break and brought my merc hoplites up behind my archers.

[x-dANGEr]

Saramtians in R: TW? Or you mean Scythia?

[Ciaran]

He´s probably talking about the Mundus Magnus mod where Scythia is renamed Sarmatia.

[antisocialmunky]

phalanxi? phalanxen?

Phalangites.

[Watchman]

No, that's the soldiers. A phalangite, many phalangites. He was wondering about the plural form for the formation. I'm guessing it's "phalanxes", for what it's worth.

[Doug-Thompson]

You guessed correctly, watchman, according to my dictionary.

[Kickius Buttius]

Good to know.

I personally prefer phalanxen (like ox to oxen or fox to ..um, foxen)

[Watchman]

That sounds like German... as spelled by Monty Python...

[Helgi]

Saramtians in R: TW? Or you mean Scythia?

Scythia, depending on Vanilla and in Modded, Saramtians.

[Helgi]

He´s probably talking about the Mundus Magnus mod where Scythia is renamed Sarmatia.

I'm not talking about Mundus Magnus, I dislike that mod, I'm talking about RTR, Vanilla, XTM (before the BI editions, in which I tried and stoped using Mundus Magnus). And now doing EB and enjoying that, (trying to build up a Roman Army compossed of Triarii, Principes, Samatian Horse Archers and Samite Hvy Inf./Spearmen. And after playing the Roman's, I'm going to play the Samatians in EB.

[The historian]

Well the real thing you have to worry from the phalanx is any game wher the greeks or macedonians manage to become an empire and especially in rtr i f they do that they are quite hard to break ,in one of my games as the romans i even had to make some strategic withdrawl's due to high loses.and afterwards i simply coudn't break the stalemate i los t an army they lost 2 but still i coudn,t advance too much and the game was going at a very slow pace i finnaly abandoned it after 50 tur4ns of comand ing 2-3 battle s per turn i couldn't let the computer handle it even if he won he lost to many men.
however during this game i learned a lot about phalanx.My main tactic was to make an army of something like 40% archers,skirmishers(30,10) 30 light cav 30 infantry.
If you face a huge phalanx army than send the cavalry to lure them out to attack your line while being poundeed by skirmishers also if they don't break send the cavalry to their flanks.However this method is very time consuming and can stress you out after a few battles.
Depends on who your playing but personally the best units versus phalanxes are elephants followed by chariots ,catchapracths, othe phalanxes ,heavy infantry and archers.

[x-dANGEr]

Calm down eh.. It's easy to beat phalanx, espiecially in late eras, when Romans have their tough Urbans. The key is to have the same number of urbans as the number of their phalanx. Just engage each unit and flank with cavalry. And if you have less urbans, engage from front and from flank from one tail and forgetting about the other one. They are too slow that when they reach you you'd have already killed/routed the unit between your jaws. And so on.. Your javs are deadly to them as Romans, too. If you're Barbarian, arrows will do it. If you're Carthage, sacred band them from fron and flank, with both Sacred Band infantry and cav. And so it goes on..

[Watchman]

And if you happen to have longer pikes available, just skewer them. Only works against the Greeks, Eggies and Germans (not sure about Thracians) though - everyone else's higher-level phalanxes have the longer type of pike.

[Lanemerkel1]

I use infantry (anything will do but preferably Hastati family) to tie them up from the sides while my cavalry to charge them and put lances right up their behinds

[dkdnt]

best way to beat phalanx with one unit is to have one phalax that is better than one u fighting.
and what other phalanx is better than those seleucid have(i will glorify those until last of my days). very long spears will in most cases be enough to kill any other unit in face to face fight. i`m not speaking about situations where u have enough units to engage phalanx with cheap infantry from the front, and then flank them out. to be sure that is best tactic to beat them, in other cases when u have neither skirmirshers nor cavalry&heavyinfantry.
phalanx pikemas have long spears and their morale is good enough to fight even urban cohort, which is really strongest unit of type in the game.

im quite sure, that phalanx pikemans or silvershield pikemans are inevitable force when defending cities, only catch is to have them enough to secure every passage to the plaza. once i killed 1000 enemy soldiers(pontic infantry and some heavy cavalry) with single phalanx pikeman unit defending bridge. i thinke that fact that they have long spears makes them better even than spartan hoplites (and plus, they have option for +3 armour and weapon upgrade,which makes them even without any xp, very respectfull force).

in combination with some heavy cavalry(i prefer catapfracts, and companions) and some light and fast(high xp greeek cavalry or even militia cavalry) cavalry to catch routing enemies, and phalanx Seleukids have uberarmy. since phalanx are to slow u need those heavy cavalry to clear any threat of flanking your troops. i usualy send 2x 2 cataphracts behind enemy lines, to use them for back strike, which usualy ends in every enemy unit flee, and i leave some companions to guard my flanks, with some misslie unit in back, just to strike on any cavary archers or so, to make sure my front line is intact, when engage enemies.