Unit Combat and Charging; Intuition vs. Testing vs. Animation

[Quillan]

Really? Interesting. I've seen swiss mercenaries as rebels before, but the date for them to be available for hire hasn't come yet. The impetuous bit is a game breaker, because pike don't attack worth crap in this game. They can't maintain formation when attacking and switch to swords. In fact, once I ordered a block of Tercios to march forward; I was just trying to move them close enough to an enemy unit so the pikes would reach. When they got close, the unit suddenly ceased to be a block and became a funnel, with men running in one at a time to melee. I lost half the unit in that fight.

[dopp]

Pikes suffer from cohesion problems I think, because you could attack with phalanxes in RTW. The trick there was to march your phalanx in contact with the enemy, whereupon they would commence poking. Here the stupid pikemen lift up their pikes to allow the enemy through or stand there immobile when they come into contact. Better still, they sometimes just walk straight into the enemy and die. Don't ever use them in sieges, they won't even attack.

Swiss pikes have morale 11 (Tercio/Land 9) and 14 attack (Tercio/Land 11). Okay swordsmen with 13 attack, but no armor makes them hopelessly outclassed.

[Quillan]

My Tercios have done really well in sieges, but the only way I use them is to run them into a street, spread out as far as they can, form spear wall, and wait for the enemy to charge. If the opponent has cavalry they do quite well. Taking Antwerp from the Danes, they had 5 units of Norse cleric horse in the city. 3 of them charged one unit of pikemen. I lost something like 20 men and killed over 100 in that street. In that battle, I was leapfrogging. When the enemy would retreat from the fight, the rear unit would run foward ahead of the foremost, form spear wall, and wait for the next attack. This continued until they stopped attacking, when I moved on to the square.

[dopp]

They had crossbowmen in my sieges. My Tercios all died. Without their pikes the Norman Foot Knights beat them up. They were not even attacking back, just marching forward to get chopped.

My army lineup is similar to yours, except no swordsmen and 4 units of those massively underpowered gendarmes to chase down routers. Sometimes if the cohesion bug hits and a pike block gets overwhelmed a quick cavalry charge swings the advantage back my way.

[JeffBag]

Whats wrong with the gendarmes? You can build them out of cities, and they have great armour. Remember that when cavalry charge in, they usually get surrounded, and attacked from the sides, so their shield and defense skill values are usually not factored in. Only armour really matters.

[dopp]

Nah, I like gendarmes. But losing the shield and 1 less defense for +2 armor over upgraded chivalrics is a poor trade. They are actually more vulnerable to missile fire as a result. They should get a defense BONUS since they don't have to carry shields, and their armor should be equal to partial plate plus shield (about 12 instead of 10 or 11), since that's why they didn't need to carry shields. Actually, chivalrics that upgrade to full plate should also lose their shields (and get more armor to compensate rather than a miserable +1), but the armor system doesn't even work properly, let alone include nifty features like that.

[locked_thread]

Given that Reapz's experiments involved cavalry charges into braced pikemen, it is no surprise that cavalry did better if they carefully edged into combat.

But against non-spear/pike infantry, charging is far better, and the flying body animation is indeed the correct way to gage success.