The Swiss Cheese Experiment: No More Swordsmen Wannabes

[Musashi]

Heh, I'm nicer here, because I don't have senior member status like over there, so I can't flame with impunity ;)

[Carl]

LOL. Actually I didn't man nastiness. Just somthing about your style.

Take it I was easy to spot, (the name was probably a clue).

Be glad you never met me during my days on the Robot wars foorums, I was a right arse back then.

[Musashi]

Yes, the name was indeed a clue. Plus you were posting in the M2TW thread over there and mentioned you were posting here. And you keep talking about DoW and HW over here. So... ;)

[Carl]

LOL, good points.

[dopp]

I'm working on implementing the shield fix to my units file and testing the results. Please note that so far pikemen afflicted by the swordsmen syndrome are able to do okay against real swordsmen because the bugged shields really gimp the swordsmen. Once that is fixed the pikemen will be massacred every time they switch to swords.

Ironically, the shield fix has made dedicated 'linebreaker' infantry with 2-handers much weaker than the older sword and board infantry against the 'fixed' pikemen. Their plate armor gives nowhere near enough armor to cover the loss of 6 points of shield bonus and they are thus unable to batter their way past the pikes.

Halberds do not require fixing. The way it works for them is that the 'primary' weapon with the long_pike attribute is the halberd being used as a pike with stabbing animations. The 'secondary' weapon is the halberd being used with hacking animations to chop people up. The same graphic is used and the transition between the two is seamless. I suspect that the weapon-switching code was changed to facilitate halberds being used in this way, to the detriment of the pikemen who now also switch over to swords after receiving the charge.

[Carl]

Ironically, the shield fix has made dedicated 'linebreaker' infantry with 2-handers much weaker than the older sword and board infantry against the 'fixed' pikemen. Their plate armor gives nowhere near enough armor to cover the loss of 6 points of shield bonus and they are thus unable to batter their way past the pikes.

I've noticed this too. Unless you have more than about 20 defence, you just can't do enough damage to fixed Pikes. Mind you it does mean some things can beat them head on now, if at great cost.

[Kraggenmor]

"No swords for you wannabes! Get back to poking!

I can't believe this thread went to 5 pages and no one mentioned "Pokemen" or "Armored Pokemen."

[IvarrWolfsong]

Personally, I'd rather have CA put aside any new frills they hinted at being in the new patch and have them iron out all these foolish mistakes.

Halberds are faster than swords??? Shields give you less protection??? 2h can't attack horsemen at all??? Heavy Crossbows fire faster than Longbows??? Every pikemen drops their pike the second any one of their unit needs to melee??

This isn't just historically wrong but it goes against everyday common sense!

Balancing units against broken units just creates more broken units that non-broken units will have to be balanced against. The final result is that everything is broken...

[Musashi]

Crossbows absolutely DO NOT fire faster than longbows or any other archer unit. They're slower than archers. People are complaining that they're not enough slower.

But anyone claiming they're faster is just plain lying.

[Jambo]

Yeah, Pikemen are pretty bad if they are in Guard Mode. You need em out of it for them to do any good and i have no idea how to keep them out of it when the AI is in control. I'm sure somone can figure it out though.

Has anyone figured out how to make the AI any good with "fixed" pikes? I'd love to use this fix, but if it's only the human that benefits then it's maybe not worth it... :(

[pike master]

i agree that the default formations should be the best formation that unit can use.

i was fighting knights with zweihanders and they slaughtered the knights (mounted ) so some of the two handed units are taking down cavalry same with halberdiers but dont know about the others though.

[Musashi]

Halberdiers are supposed to take down cavalry.

[dopp]

Halberds are spears with AP, basically. In original MTW they had an attack of 1 or something and killed nothing, but had heavy armor. In M2TW, they have decent attack values, but lack armor. Strange reversal here.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, the vanilla ones, the best use for the special ones(Swiss and English ones) was to flank with them and hack the horsies to bits. They were intended to be swords that kill horses and armour and could get trampled by horses because they didnt' brace. I dunno if that stayed the same in M2:TW

[dopp]

Depends on faction. The Catholic ones can brace (and do it better than pikes). The Muslim and Orthodox ones can't, but are usually better fighters in melee (more JHI for me, thanks).

[pike master]

i know that halberdiers are supposed to be good against horses and armor what i was saying was that i read something somewhere that the two handed bug was keeping units from defeating cavalry. are all two handed units bugged or just certian ones?

[dopp]

Just certain ones. Normal halberds are fine.

[Jambo]

So, is it generally viewed that "fixing" pikes is better than leaving them alone? No doubt the answer is yes from the perspective of the human, but can the same be said for AI pike units?

[Foz]

Well I'd personally much rather have them at least trying to poke whatever comes their way. Most of the pikes in the game make terrible swordsmen, whoever is controlling them, so overall I'd just rather not see them try that. As it's really the only difference the change makes that I can see (i.e. the AI doesn't use them differently than it normally would, which in both cases is worse than a human does) I don't see any reason not to from the AI perspective.

[Jambo]

Yeah I've just had an opportunity to test and it's definitely better all round, AI included. Previously, the AI would just try to walk through my units and then draw their swords... Now that they're fixed however, they do seem rather tough for the cheap price. Maybe a slight stat reduction is in order?

I just had a thought. Instead of removing the second attack, what happens if you make the secondary attack also pike based, i.e. similar to the first and indeed similar to how the halberd units work? Does it work?

[pike master]

no reason to disbelieve that a pikemen might use a pike to slap someone sideways by swinging it.

[dopp]

@Jambo: No, it doesn't work. The sword is coded in the model files. You'd have to edit the weapon attachments to change it, and I'm not up to that sort of editing.

The AI takes a while to wake unit and realize it's being attacked, but when it does it will poke properly. A lot of my testing has been done on custom maps where the AI starts marching towards you almost immediately. In campaign the AI is usually a lot more defensive unless it has clear superiority of numbers or it has no other choice but to melee, so you are more likely to see pikes used 'properly'.

[Musashi]

However, nothing would stop you from making them better swordsmen by buffing their secondary stats.

[dopp]

I wanted to see poking and stabbing, not swordplay. Improving their combat effectiveness was not my real aim. A line of pikes pushing forward while the Spanish battle music plays has to be one of the best Total War experiences ever. I wanted to see it last longer than 3 seconds after initial contact.

[Foz]

Agreed. The guys have huge sticks that give them an advantage in combat for a reason. Besides, where the heck do they put them while they have swords out??? If I wanted them to be swordsmen, I'd have recruited a sword unit instead of a pike unit. They should do what pikemen are supposed to.

[pike master]

im personally trying to figure out what a guy is expected to do once he makes through a spear wall by himself while his buddies are getting butchered. if it is a moving pike block he will more than likely get pushed off his feet and trodden over and if he does the superman maneuvre of hitting the ground and rolling under the pikes to slash at some shins i figure the same thing would happen.

an aerial attack would also be out of the question.

if pikes are just defensive why dont they just stick em in the ground like stakes instead of hold them.

[WesW]

Was anything improved in the second patch regarding any of the issues raised here? I seem to recall reading that the 'bout-face issue with pikemen had been addressed, but was there anything done about formation cohesion or drawing swords unnecessarily?

[pike master]

they werent touched at all from what ive seen.

[WesW]

Ok, thanks. Good thing that the Problem Fixer mod addressed it then.