Militia Pikemen: Useless?

[Goofball]

So in my current Sicilian Campaign I finally get the highest level of armoury in one of my cities and am "rewarded" by now being able to produce the highest level of militia pikemen (I can't remember exactly what they are called, something like "Armoured Militia Pikemen"). Their icon looks very cool, as they appear to be wearing full plate armour, so I start getting all excited.

Then I look at their stats. Something like 3 Attack and 2 defence.

Am I missing something here? With those numbers, a unit of peasants would cut through them like swiss cheese. Sure, it says they get a bonus against cavalry, but unless that bonus is like, 15, then they are a totally useless unit.

Has anybody combat tested them? Are the stats misleading?

[Maizel]

Some stats are very misleading.

Jan. Heavy Infantry for example, will cut through virtually everything, while they have relative low stats.

Varangian Guards, have highes starts, but get their asses handed by almost anything.

I think it has to do with attack speed, reach, and the like.

[Husar]

I think the stats are somewhat misleading, for more info read this thread

[Merlin's Apprentice]

Was reading about how a certain line was commented out for levels of armor in the export unit descr file
It appears that the stat for how affective against cav is also commented out

This is the description for the commented out line
; stat_pri_ex Optional. attack bonus vs mounted, defence bonus vs mounted, armour penetration

and the line
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0

[Kobal2fr]

Stats are misleading. They are misleading across the board, but nowhere as glaringly as when pikes are concerned.

The point is that when the unit card says "very long spears", it doesn't f*ck about. Nothing will ever touch a formed-up, braced pike unit from the front, neither cav charge nor badass gothic footknight. It just doesn't happen. They all get a facefull of pike, while the pikemen are left unharmed.

The low stats are to even things out considering that huge advantage. They are to make sure pikemen don't kill too fast, that they're vulnerable to crossbows and (as I found out with glee while taking Bruges) ballista bolts, and that they get absolutely cheesed (it's like creamed, only longer ) when attacked from the flanks or sides.

In city defense, as long as you have 4 of them (to cover all entries to the city square and make sure no sneaky cav goes all the way around to charge their backs) they are almost invulnerable - to a point of course, and of course pike units with better stats fare better than basic 3/2 pike militia (Tercios and Swiss Pikemen come to mind), but even the militia is danged hardy to keep anyone pinned for ever while the towers & archers do their thing.

[Herkus]

Some stats are very misleading.

Jan. Heavy Infantry for example, will cut through virtually everything, while they have relative low stats.

Varangian Guards, have highes starts, but get their asses handed by almost anything.

I think it has to do with attack speed, reach, and the like.

Indeed. Seems stats don't show the actual strength of the unit, because for certain reasons the halbardiers are very strong while units with two handed weapons like billmen, Varangians, knights with pollaxes perform very badly though their stats are very good.
The is a quite big problems with pikemens, because they generally fight with swords instead of pikes. Their whole formation and the way they fight seem very bugged. Even in RTW pikemens worked lot better.

[Musashi]

They only fight with swords if the enemy breaks into their formation, or if you foolishly give them an attack order instead of just moving them close enough that they engage on their own.

They're defensive troops, not offensive troops.

[Herkus]

They only fight with swords if the enemy breaks into their formation, or if you foolishly give them an attack order instead of just moving them close enough that they engage on their own.

They're defensive troops, not offensive troops.

Even in defensive stance it is quite easy to brake their formation and to press them to fight with swords.
You would be quite surprised to realize that in reality for example Swiss used their pikes quite good in the attack, they even used to run while attacking enemy formation.

[Musashi]

Perhaps, but it's quite easy to realize they don't work that way in the game, and adjust your tactics.

They're actually really great if you use them right.

[Grimmy]

I only play on m/m and use the English mostly but I have found that even the basic entry level city militia spears are quite good at holding the line against just about anything, if you dont leave them hard pressed for too long.

I've gotten into the habit of forming my front line into shiltrons as soon as it becomes appearant that the enemy attends to be aggressive. I've had unenhanced spears take on cav and infantry combined assaults and hold long enough for my cav to sweep the line from the flank and break the entire attackline.

If I just leave them to their own efforts, they'll get swamped and overwhelmed eventually but they do hold long enough, even against better units and cav/inf combined assault if you support them quickly.

[BeeSting]

Stats are misleading. They are misleading across the board, but nowhere as glaringly as when pikes are concerned.

The point is that when the unit card says "very long spears", it doesn't f*ck about. Nothing will ever touch a formed-up, braced pike unit from the front, neither cav charge nor badass gothic footknight. It just doesn't happen. They all get a facefull of pike, while the pikemen are left unharmed.

The low stats are to even things out considering that huge advantage. They are to make sure pikemen don't kill too fast, that they're vulnerable to crossbows and (as I found out with glee while taking Bruges) ballista bolts, and that they get absolutely cheesed (it's like creamed, only longer ) when attacked from the flanks or sides.

In city defense, as long as you have 4 of them (to cover all entries to the city square and make sure no sneaky cav goes all the way around to charge their backs) they are almost invulnerable - to a point of course, and of course pike units with better stats fare better than basic 3/2 pike militia (Tercios and Swiss Pikemen come to mind), but even the militia is danged hardy to keep anyone pinned for ever while the towers & archers do their thing.

Yes, in Brave Heart the cavs get wasted, but you have to think about the fact that these spears are not fixed on stone walls but are carried by people. Many times the blunt of the impact and weight cause them to break and not penetrate armor.

[BeeSting]

Even in defensive stance it is quite easy to brake their formation and to press them to fight with swords.
You would be quite surprised to realize that in reality for example Swiss used their pikes quite good in the attack, they even used to run while attacking enemy formation.

only if they break the enemy formation and are in pursuit of routed troops. i think you have "push of pike" confused with running/charging attacks. in the end it is essential to maintain conhesive formation as pike men, that is to collide with the enemy in keeping with their drill, which is to slowly approach the target then "push of pike".

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

The problem with the stats system in the game is that it fails to factor in the 3D engine and the factors associated with it: weapon length, swing frequency, and distance. It tries to use stats to balance these features out, but it doesn't work too well in some cases.

For instance...Janissary Heavy Infantry have unimpressive stats, but will beat ANY infantry they face. This is because they use long halberds, which, once they kill the front wave of the unit they are fighting, will put distance between them and whatever they are fighting. If the Janissaries are fighting a sword unit, then the swords will be unable to get past the long halberds and won't even be able to touch the Janissaries, and thus will lose.

Varangian guards have excellent stats but lose to everything because they use a two-handed axe with a SUPER slow singing animation. They strike maybe once for every four or five sword slashes. So varangians do have a high attack, but it is delivered much slower than a normal unit, resulting in a loss.

Pikemen can beat most units head one because of the distance between them and they unit they are fighting. Infantry can't penetrate the pikes, and usually lose. Once they do get past the pikes, though, the pikes will lose. Low defense is likely attributed to them to make them vulnerable to missiles, and a low attack is given to them so their pikes don't instantly destroy anything that hits them, and probably helps to balance out the game by leaving time to flank the pikes.

There are some other oddities with the stats system that I don't quite understand yet. For instance, Gothic Knights, despite not being the best cavalry stat-wise, can beat pretty much any other heavy cavalry in the game one-on-one.

[BeeSting]

guys, missiles completely ignore defense skill, if you recall from rtw. it is either hit or miss. once a missile hits, it counts in the armor/shield factor.

i think people are reading into stats too much. they are misleading as many vets here have pointed out. whatever stats appear to us are there after testing countless hours for balancing issues.

[Kraxis]

There are some other oddities with the stats system that I don't quite understand yet. For instance, Gothic Knights, despite not being the best cavalry stat-wise, can beat pretty much any other heavy cavalry in the game one-on-one.

AP... They use maces, and maces cut armour in half, so suddenly the Gothics are on top rather substantially.

[Kobal2fr]

@IHaveAVeryLongAndFrameScrewingScreename : exactly, that's what I meant also. It definitely seems to me that stats only have meaning within the boundaries of a given unit/weapon type. Italian Spear militia will kill Town Militia, but will get killed by peasants with weaker stats. Varangian Guards will destroy Woodsmen, etc... out of the better stats alone, but whenever different unit types are matched, the weapon has more importance than the man behind it IMHO.

Oh, and the gothic thing is because they have barded horses (as do Lancers and Men-at-Arms. I believe Kataphracts are only mailed). So the horse is just as hard to kill as the rider. So they just won't fall :)

[dopp]

The mailed/barded horse entry doesn't affect the survivability of the rider, I think. It just tells the game what model to use. Ridden horses and camels do not have separate H/P or defense values from the rider. Only elephants and such do.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

AP... They use maces, and maces cut armour in half, so suddenly the Gothics are on top rather substantially.

I'm not so sure about that. Half the heavy cav in the game have maces, including some like Qapukulu, which have no AP ability. Do gothics say they have an AP attack on their description? It takes a lot of effort to start the game up and check for myself.

[dopp]

Yes, they have AP for their maces. Check the export_desc_units.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

Nifty. Is this a universal attribute applied to all mace-wielding cavalry, or is ti just arbitrarily given to gothics?

Also, there is no export_desc_units file...I'm pretty sure everything is packed.

[Kobal2fr]

The mailed/barded horse entry doesn't affect the survivability of the rider, I think. It just tells the game what model to use. Ridden horses and camels do not have separate H/P or defense values from the rider. Only elephants and such do.

I don't think so. Horse and rider are a single, solid model AFAIK.

And although knight+rider are indeed treated as a single entity, I believe that each connecting hit (or arrow) has a flat chance to insta-kill a horseman, and that chance is reduced by each level or horse armor (naked, mailed, barded). Which I believe is also why (at least the early ones, haven't used gothics/lancers/gendarmes yet) heavy cav dies so easily when pinned down : if it was all about the rider's stats and animations, they'd just wade through peasants, like dismounted knights do. Faster even, since the knight-slashing-footman animation is superfast.

Then again, haven't looked into the files myself yet, so all of this is just personnal conjectures.

It's easy to put it to the test though : pit gothics against danish battlepriests (who also have AP maces, but no barding), and see how it works out.

[dopp]

Not if they work like RTW. Horse and rider are separate, so you can mix n' match them. Some units reuse the rider graphics but swap the horse models to create new troop types.

I've let my heavy cav slug it out with peasants in melee several times and their kill rate is no poorer than the foot knights. There are just 50% less of them so you feel the losses more. Foot knights also get larger shields and +2 defense skill, so they tend to last much longer. Horse armor is not a factor at all. You will see in the desc_units file that mounts do not have a separate defense value (armor + skill + shield) and use the values of the rider.

It's actually quite funny how the heavy infantry are consistently better armored than the knights due to the bigger shields and defense skill bonus. A gendarme with advanced plate has defense 15. A feudal foot knight with heavy mail has defense 20. In RTW the really heavy cavalry could muster 27-33 total defense and be rather invulnerable. In M2TW they are maybe a little too fragile (although their charge, when they get if off right, is way more powerful). I'm thinking of modding all cavalry to 2 h/p to account for the horse, but that might be overkill.

The export_descr_unit was released unpacked by the developers two days ago on the modding forum. AP for maces seems pretty universal. Here's a list of stuff with AP maces:

Imperial Knights (HRE)
Gothic Knights (HRE)
Merc German Knights
Katatanks (Byz)
Teutonic Knights
Warpriests (Den)
Stradiots (Venice)
Albanian Cav
Longbowmen (Eng), the cheap gits get AP arrows and AP maces. Who needs billmen?
Flagellants
Quapukulu (Turks)
Mamluk Archers (Egypt), just the maces, not the arrows.
Royal Mamluks (Egypt)
All Late Muslim Bodyguards
Nubian Archers (Egypt)
Mongol Heavy Archers (Mongol)
Mongol Heavy Lancers (Mongol)
Khan's Guard (Mongol)
Mongol Bodyguards

There are also hordes of axe-armed troops that have AP as well. All javelins, guns and crossbows pierce armor. Unlike in MTW, there doesn't seem to be separate armor penetration values for the various weapons, thus all AP weapons are equally effective against armor (halve it basically). More deadly weapons (such as guns) basically have higher attack values to increase their killing power.

[JeffBag]

AP is not stated in unit description if it belongs to a secondary weapon. All maces and axes have the AP bonus. I'm too lazy to check the game now, but if I remember correctly,

Orthodox-
Kataphractoi
Druzhina
Dvor

Islamic-
Qapukulu
Royal Mamluks
Mamluks
Mamluk Archers

Catholic-
Gothic Knights
Imperial Knights
Teutonic Knights
English Knights
+almost every High age heavy cavalry that has the stats of 10-16; the other High age heavy cavalry is the Chivalric knight with stats of 13-17, but CK do not have AP secondary attacks.

Another advice is, don't bother looking at the unit stats; its a useless endeavor that would simply make you even more confused. Look at unit costs, and try them out in custom battle to get a feel of them.

[BigTex]

The mailed/barded horse entry doesn't affect the survivability of the rider, I think. It just tells the game what model to use. Ridden horses and camels do not have separate H/P or defense values from the rider. Only elephants and such do.

The horse does indeed affect the survivability of the rider. The rider and mount are one, if either die's they both are considered dead. The horses are armoured order in increasing strength is heavy(none), barded, mailed, armoured. Gothic knights ride armoured horses.

Militia spearmen are quite useful, they may not stop a full on lancer charge, but they will make it hurt severely. Considering the incredible price and maintenence difference thats really nice. Their also quite useful once they've been fully upgraded to go on campaigning with. The trick to have them offensively engage is click behind the lines of the enemy. Instead of attacking and destroying the formation they'll advance and push through with their pikes.

[dopp]

Not quite all axes and maces have AP. For example all the Aztecs use maces instead of swords and most do not have AP (unless you seriously want your expensive knights mauled by mace-armed Aztec peasants). My post above lists all the mace-armed troops confirmed to have the AP ability for their maces in their descr_units entry. Note that unlike in MTW, gothic knights come with lances as primary weapons rather than just their maces, so the AP property does not appear in their unit description. This applies to most of the units on the list, since they are knights and archers who carry maces as secondary weapons. Axe-armed troops are NOT included above.

One interesting thing I noticed: gunpowder troops actually have decent range now. Arquebusiers have 120 range, same as crossbows, while musketeers actually outrange even longbows at 180 vs 160. More Janissary muskets for me, thank you.

[JeffBag]

Yeah, Aztec stuff is seperate from the rest, but Aztec weapons are more like light clubs with sharpened obsidian on them rather than a armour defeating heavy metal mace, so I didn't categorize them as maces as well.

[Whacker]

Yeah, Aztec stuff is seperate from the rest, but Aztec weapons are more like light clubs with sharpened obsidian on them rather than a armour defeated heavy metal mace, so I didn't categorize them as maces as well.

Don't discount those obsidian-based weapons. They were, pound for pound, just as effective as their metallic opposites; relatively strong, razor sharp, and lighter. The drawback was that they weren't repairable once blade damage was done, one basically had put pull out the stone and replace it with a newer undamaged bit. If used properly, they could indeed penetrate armor. "Mace" is probably not the best descriptive term I'll agree though.

@ the OP and original topic

My experiences and views mirror the topic. Peasants do feel "overpowered" at this point in the game. If I my paraphrase, the point of peasants, as I see it, was to represent the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel deserate-for-warm-bodies unit that was only good at being cannon fodder and running screaming. The fact that in various situations they can beat units that are intended to be significantly better is a problem. As someone pointed out, it appears that unit stats don't tell the whole picture. It'll be interesting to see CA's take on this, and if/how they address it.

Cheers all!

[econ21]

Unlike in MTW, there doesn't seem to be separate armor penetration values for the various weapons, thus all AP weapons are equally effective against armor (halve it basically).

A little off-topic, but in MTW I don't think there were separate armour penetration values. Just like M2TW, all AP weapons reduced armour by the same amount (in MTW, it was something like [Armour-3]/2 - the Ludus Magna has the exact formula).

[R'as al Ghul]

The point is that when the unit card says "very long spears", it doesn't f*ck about. Nothing will ever touch a formed-up, braced pike unit from the front, neither cav charge nor badass gothic footknight. It just doesn't happen. They all get a facefull of pike, while the pikemen are left unharmed.

Is this from your experience in campaign battles?
I did a custom battle on VH. I took Venice with 4 Militia Pikemen, 4 Armoured Sergeants, 1 Heavy Cav General. I build up a line with Pikemen centered and Sergeants covering their flanks. The enemy was France and had he same amount of units but all Heavy Cav. Chivalric Knights, Lancers etc.

The AI set up its line parallel to mine and waited. I moved one Pike unit slightly forward, AI moves slightly but stops again. Our positions are almost unaltered. A center Pike is slightly advanced. Not before I move one of the flank sergeants to attack one of his flank Cav does he charge, but when the Cav charge finally thunders against my line the battle is over quite quickly without the expected horrendous losses for Cav.
I found this rather puzzling. The AI seemed reluctant to charge the line maybe fearing heavy losses but when it did it didn't even have to pull back and recharge, it just finished me off in melee.
I expected that at least those cav units charging the pikes would be annihilated or at least routed so that the pikes could go over to the flanks and finish the other cav. As it was, the Cav was quite unimpressed and destroyed me.

My bottom line is that I don't understand the unit matchups at all.

R'as

[JeffBag]

The pikes will annihilate the first row of cavalry, but when it is recovering, the rows from the back would usually get into the formation and force the pikes to draw swords. Pikemen only cost 150 though, so they definately destroy cavalry very cost-effectively.