Anyone find (BI?) Roman spears worthless?

[econ21]

I like BI and particularly how it seems to have reduced the power of missiles and cavalry compared to RTW 1.0. But I still can't get much joy out of any of the Roman spear units - the foederati, the lanciarii and the auxilia palatina. I bring a couple or so along as anti-cav units but, on the few occasions they manage to catch AI cavalry, they don't seem to do very well. The always seem to come out of battles with the highest rate of casualties among my army. I think it's probably better to just use comitatenses or even better plumbatarii - use missiles to soften the enemy horse down and then prevail through a dense formation. Is anyone else finding Roman spears a bit pointless or is it just me?

I also found a similar thing with triarii and auxilia, so maybe it's not just a BI phenomenon.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The Auxilia are great in shieldwall, I've found the Foederati to be acceptable for recieving a charge but Sarmations are the Roman Cav killers. Spears are just for recieving the charge.

[KrooK]

auxilla palatina are great
they fight meele like heavy inf and got better morale - it's ideal units for flanks or agains heavy fire

[Oaty]

First of If I remember correctly 1 of the Roman spear units does'nt actually have a bonus vs cavalry. Right click on thier card and if it does'nt say bonus vs cavalry they are the same as using swordsmen vs cavalry.

The main bonus of infantry vs cavalry is to have the infantry stationary before they are charged by cavarly.

You have to remember here that cavalries big advantage here is it's mobility wich sometimes the A.I. can use to it's advantage.

I've personally found if the A.I. has outmaneuvered my infantry with thier cavarly, it's better not to move them unless they are threatened to be charged in the rear. I prefer stationary infantry to get hit in the flank than to have them marching towards the cavalry (or reforming) as charges on stationary infantry is less devastating (IMO) than a unit that is moving even if the infantry is counter charging cavalry. Once the cavarly loses it's charge I then either usually tell the infantry to counter attack or have them pin the cavarly for my cavalry to charge.

Sometimes you have to live with being outmaneuvered but it comes down to who made the decisive maneuver to disintegrate thier army.

[Slaists]

i believe, the spear (not phalanx) anti-cavalry attack bonus in rtw is only +2 or so and no rank bonus... so, given rather weak starting stats of the spear units, the anti-cavalry bonus does not make much of a difference... especially if played on higher difficulty levels, where the AI gets +4 attack on hard and +8 on very hard.

in my experince with the BI - no roman spears can stop enemy general units... they just smash through anything... i play on hard battlefield difficulty, btw. i am not sure, the difficulties have been fixed since 1.2 though.

[econ21]

Looking at the stats, I think Oaty probably hit the nail on the head, saying spears have to be stationary. I tend to charge them into cav as I am trying to catch the blighters (the AI cav not being stupid enough to want to charge into my stationary spears). I guess this invalidates the ability of spears to negate the cavalry charge bonus and of course, the cavalry charge bonus does now work, post-1.5.

All the 5 Roman spear units do have a pretty hefty +8 to attack vs cavalry (I think Oaty may have been thinking of the town watch, which don't). However, in the case of the foederati and lanciarii, their combined attack and defence is 8 lower than the Comitatenses, so there is no real advantage to using them against cav unless they are stationary. One other point - all spears have a lethality of 0.73 compared to 1 for the sword-armed troops, which sounds like quite a big difference and may go a long way to explaining the apparent weakness of Roman spears.

BTW, digging into the stats, I only just realised 1st cohort comitatenses are not just bigger units (like they are in RTW), they also have better stats than ordinary comitatenses (+2 better attack and defence). D'oh!