Is Schiltrom Working For You?

[zaher]

Defended gate from mongols - 4 italian spear militia in shiltrom and behind - 1 halberd militia ( western ) - 3 whole mongol armies gone. no governor in city. LoL. Jerusalem forever !

[pike master]

i noticed that shiltrom was in the forest.

the only real guaranteed success i have found versus cavalry is to superimpose two spear schiltroms on top of each other. when this is done they can take down several uber cav units without heavy losses.

[Rozanov]

Playing as England (1.1 patch) no other mods.

I use spearmen in defensive mode in schiltrom formation but always doubled up, i.e. I put two units on top of each other - sometimes three. Makes for a very dense formation. (Even better behind longbow stakes of course!)

Usually holds the line when defending gaps in settlement / castle walls blown by AI artillery. (They can take fearsome losses though - often only a couple of ment left in some units.)

Wouldn't want to use them that way in open field of battle. Lack of manueverability counts against that. Also they take up less of the line in schiltrom formation and are very vulnerable to missile fire.

[Tiberius maximus]

i use this formation before the battle if im getting attacked, instead of lines and ranks i use lines of circles and stagger them out with heavy inf. in between. thats the only way ican use it effectively

[alpaca]

Note that the Schiltrom is likely to get better in 1.2, because the heavy cav mass will be reduced a lot.
I'm told heavy cavalry acts much more like in MTW1 with the patch aplied (i.e. it'll get stuck pretty soon in a formation and not simply charge through 3 units of spearmen :P)

[Afro Thunder]

As Carl pointed out, it makes a big difference whether you are using the shield fix or not.

Kind of off-topic, but do you think it might be a good idea to create a stickied topic that details the shield bug, and how to fix it, in order to raise awareness?

[Foz]

Kind of off-topic, but do you think it might be a good idea to create a stickied topic that details the shield bug, and how to fix it, in order to raise awareness?

Well, it would've been. I'm really surprised that the citadel mod never stickied it. Now, though, it's a bit late, since the patch will be including the actual fix of the game code.

[rvg]

With the shield fix applied, a single unit of Armored Sergeants in Schiltrom successfully stops the charge from Gothic Knights and subsequently slaughters them.

[sapi]

Kind of off-topic, but do you think it might be a good idea to create a stickied topic that details the shield bug, and how to fix it, in order to raise awareness?

It should be in the bug fixes thread, though I'm not sure if that has the exact method to deal with it.

The thread was never stickied as it generated enough interest to stay at the top of the forum anyway (until Carl moved into his own modding forum, when this became a moot point) and in my experience few people read the stickes.

As to the schiltrom formation itself, it works very effectively to have them sitting near the gate of a sieged city. Wait (with around 3 units in formation) for the enemy to breach it and attack through, then throw your infantry at the enemies attacking the gate and use all your cavalry to force a way out through one of the wall breaches the AI is so kind in creating. Once you get around the back of the enemy troops attacking through the gate, it's all over.

[pike master]

im sorry but i dont have him on my payroll. i would remember a name like that but ill recheck my employee list to make sure.

[wzup]

Schiltrom works great as a defensive stance (duh), i use it frequently and it doesnt let me down

[zaher]

He he , i also noticed that spears in shiltrom never rout. May be they cannot move well or something, but for example even berber spearmen with defence 10 holding position until last men die.

[sapi]

I have seen them rout, but you're right - it's much rarer than those in normal formation