Pike handling in woods

[Peasant Phill]

https://img66.imageshack.us/img66/9574/1bp3.jpg

Look at the picture I saw in another thread. It says that pikemen get a bonus when fighting in the woods. I'm no expert by far but that just seems silly to me. Bear with me:

1) The pike is a 5m wooden pole, right. Now imagine wielding this in a forest, you will be lucky if you can rotate more than 90°.

2) Now imagine that you and your 60 or 80 buddies have to form a decent formation under the same circumstances. There is no way that this formation wouldn't be hindered or even broken in some places.

3) Now imagine this formation manoeuvring with their 5m poles in this forest without loosing cohesion (and thus being able to fight to best of the units abilities).

Is my logic wrong? Is it historically correct to place your pikemen in woods as they will fare better there?

[Furious Mental]

Pikes aren't supposed to rotate. The whole idea is to just point them forward so the enemy can't get past them.

[Maizel]

I think cavalry in general has problems manouvering and fighting in forests, add pikes to that, and i can imagine it being even worse

[econ21]

Pikes in woods seems a silly idea to me (spears would be fine). Hopefully it will be possible to edit that bonus into a minus.

[Bagpuss]

This does seem strange I can understand the defense bonus but not combat , :)

[Lord Adherbal]

maybe this "bonus" is a negative bonus? It makes no sense that they have a bonus in either snow or wood.

[Peasant Phill]

Pikes aren't supposed to rotate. The whole idea is to just point them forward so the enemy can't get past them.

I'm aware of that. However that doesn't render my other points invalid. There still has to be a decent formation because disordered pikemen can't hold on to long.

I can imagine that when a decently formed pike formation is immobile, it can still fight almost as good in as outside woods. Certainly against cavalry, which also have problems in forests. But the moment a pike formation starts to move inside woods, all cohesion would be lost due to their clumsy weapon getting stuck in/behind/on trees.

I just don't see the advantage of pikemen in woods against pikemen in the open. I very much doubt that historically pikemen performed better in the woods than in the open.



I would prefer the mechanism of MTW, where spears and pikes got penalties in woods (formation was lost) but they would still win against cav because the cav received bigger penalties when in the woods.

[DukeofSerbia]

Is my logic wrong? Is it historically correct to place your pikemen in woods as they will fare better there?

Your logic is ok. The problem is that CA don't create historical correct game which is ok, but it seems they make phisical impossible things.

[ElectricEel]

Although pikemen might get a bonus that causes them to be more effective in woods than, say, similarly equipped eastern infantry would be (though such a thing does not necessarily exist), keep in mind that the terrain also causes their formation to become disordered, meaning the net effect of placing them in the woods is negative. I see nothing wrong with this. The ability description may be a little misleading, though, since it seems to make people believe that placing the pikemen in the woods would actually make them more effective than if they were in the clear.

[LadyAnn]

Not sure I like the idea of faction-wide bonus, especially for MP balancing terms. So, this is an item to watch in the final evaluation. Pike/Spear losing rank bonus in woods + reduce maneuvrability is expected by me.
Annie

[CrackerJap]

It's probably a faction bonus

[Azog 150]

So my original thought was right, but I'm not sure that makes sense for France, or is that not France in that screenshot? Is France really so snowy that their men should actually receive a bonus from fighting in snow, rather than, say, just not be penalized? I'm no expert on European weather or geography, so I'm really just asking. I know there were some stretches in the middle ages that were cold enough to kill entire harvests in northern Europe and cause mass starvation, so maybe this is legitimate for that time period?

Well im not entirely sure with what i said, it was a logical guess

But it would make sense, but then you do bring up a good point, why would france have snow bonuses? Not sure

[Wilhelm The Mediocre]

Don't the blue and white faction colors indicate the Scottish faction?

[Martok]

I would prefer the mechanism of MTW, where spears and pikes got penalties in woods (formation was lost) but they would still win against cav because the cav received bigger penalties when in the woods.

I agree that would make a lot more sense. In MTW, woods didn't confer a bonus to anyone--in terms of penalties, it was infantry> spears/pikes> archers/xbows> cavalry. In other words, infantry received no penalty for fighting in trees, but neither did they receive a bonus. They simply performed the least poorly out of all unit types. I find it rather bizarre that pikes will get a bonus in M2 for fighting in the woods.

Don't the blue and white faction colors indicate the Scottish faction?

If it's a white diagonal cross on a blue background, then yes that would be the Scots.

[dcd111]

Don't the blue and white faction colors indicate the Scottish faction?

That makes a lot more sense, at quick glance I thought the screenshot was from the demo so I made a bad assumption.

[Oaty]

Perhaps it's for game balance. IMO woods have never given any great advantage for battle except for the AI, in wich case the player was hindered due to lack of sight. It'd be great to see cavalry getting slaughtered in forest by most infantry for a change.