Schiltrom

[Scot's Pike General]

Over the past few days, I have been experimenting on scotlands spearmen in schiltrom formation,defending against cavalry. I have learned that by spacing out the formations, and letting cavalry squeeze its way through random formations spaced evenly apart, the cavalry gets anniahlated(sp). I apologize if a topic like this has already been posted.

[Xehh II]

I use schiltrom if my guys are surrounded, they can usually hold of until help arrives.

[Valdincan]

I use Schiltrom at times, usually if I'm surrounded by large groups of cavalry.

[sapi]

That's an interesting idea; I must try it in field battles at some stage.

To clarify, do you use one or two lines of schiltroms?

[pike master]

its probably has something to do with morale as well. and that the cavalry gets snagged up and ends up fighting in several directions.

[Scot's Pike General]

well, they are just multiple schiltroms scattered out at equal distance , allowing cavalry to get inside of the formation, but they become trapped inside my formation, formally known as " polka-dot death", and are massacared.

[Guyus Germanicus]

Interesting 'Scots'. I was trying out Scotland yesterday and was pleasantly surprised at how effective their pikemen were. I haven't tried using them in a Schiltrom formation yet. But when I'm facing a sally from the gates, I can march them straight into enemy trrops like a phalanx in RTW. They are very effective.

I had an absolutely amazing victory with three militia units and a general holding out in Canaervon (sp?) yesterday. I was surpised by a huge English stack of peasant archers, peasants, militia spearmen, and a regular spearmen. I couldn't get a relief force to them in time and had to fight it out on the walls. My tower's archers burned up their ram, so they had to come over the walls in ladders and siege tower. It was a long long fight, but I beat them off. My general earned four experience chevrons in that Heroic victory.

I just took Scotland on a whim. But they're tough hombres.

My game got bogged down because the Pope threatened me with excommunication if I attacked Britain, even though they attacked me first. Grrrr.

[Zasz1234]

This tactic reminds me of Wellington at Waterloo when resisting the French cavalry charge. Definitely a good idea

[Daveybaby]

I've been using schiltroms with great success against the mongols. As spain i've been using cheap and easily replacable stacks of militia spearmen and militia crossbows (3:2 ratio of spears to crossbows), with a couple of units of cav for disruption purposes.

Line the crossbows up in an easily defensible position, ideally somewhere rugged to break up mongol cav charges. Place the spears (already in schiltrom) along in front of the xbows, plus one at each end of the line.

Initially the mongol horse archers will close to duel with you. Your xbows should make mincemeat out of them. At the same time use your cav to disrupt the enemy footsoldiers as much as possible, while keeping themselves out of contact with the mongol heavy cav as much as possible.

Soon the mongol heavy cav will be attacking your spearmen. It will take them a while to wear them down, and they will take heavy losses to do so, both from your spears and from the xbows raining pointy death down on them.

Eventually your spears will rout, and you will lose the battle. This is pretty much inevitable since there will probably be at least 2 full stacks of elite units attacking your one stack of milita. This is perfectly fine, since the point of this battle is not to win, but to reduce the size of the mongol stacks in a battle of attrition. You are losing a lot of men, but they are expendable militia which can be built cheaply and quickly en-masse in pretty much any city. The mongols are losing irreplacable (as long as you havent allowed them to take a lot of cities) elite units.

A good thing to do is to try to withdraw your crossbows before the spears rout, while still leaving them in combat for long enough to inflict severe casualties. If your crossbows escape unscathed, you only have to replace 8 or so units of spears, which 3 cities can easily manage to accomplish every turn. By doing this successfully i find i can take out half a mongol stack, while losing about half a stack of cheap militia.

Once most of the mongol stacks are half depleted, send in full stacks of your own elite troops and you will make quick work of them.