Is Schiltrom Working For You?

[PseRamesses]

Was playing France and had a small force of 4 militia, 4 archers and 2 knights standing on the bridge outside Metz when HRE attacked me with a full stack of a general, mostly militia, a couple of archers and some peasants.
My armies where far away holding off the Milanese in the Marseilles region so no reinforcements was to be obtained in several turns. In order to protect Rheims and most importantly Paris I decided to make a death defying stand.

I placed my 4 archers in loose formation on the left bank of the river. One militia at the entrance to the bridge and the other three a bit back out of enemy fire. My two knight units I hid in the woods to the right of the bridge.

The HRE army advanced, reached the bridge and certain of victory they all rushed onto the bridge, hell even their archers was in on it. Then it just hit me: I rushed my milita by the bridge some 5m onto the bridge, stopped and hit "shiltrom" formation. The German general died on impact with the shilted militia on the bridge.
Since none of the enemy archers fired on me I advanced my other three militia close to the bridge and positioned them like a V and hit schiltrom formation. My archers was peppering the bridge and my initial militia on the bridge was soon to loose so I brooke formation and retreated, unfortunately they now panicked and routed.
The entire HRE army now sensed victory and plunged into my remaining militia at the bridgehead. Now, they where really taking casualities. My archers was running out of missiles so I repositioned them some 50m up the hill straight above the bridge entrance. My militia was down to around 25-30 man each. I broke formation and runned to the left bank of the river.
The enemy was certain I was fleeing so they pursued me en mass along the river. When most of their troops had crossed and following my milita I stopped and shilted them and attacked with my 240 archers in their side while my hidden knights charged out of hiding and in full force hitting the enemys rear. Bam! Massrout, it was a slaughter.

France 1628 kills vs HRE 162 kills.

[Steph]

Interesting post. I never cared about using shiltrom formation, but I will reconsider it.

Stéphane

[Slaists]

Hmm. My general's unit (English) is able to rout even armored spearmen units in schiltrom formation charging straight on. And, I have applied the shield fix... So, I guess, the formation is not working as intended.

Basically, in my experience, spearmen cause the biggest damage to cavalry if they manage to interrupt the charge. And... ironically, this is achieved by disrupting the spearmen formation itself: charging against charging cavalry. Loose formation works even better...