Scotts are weak... and here's why

[Carl]

All right, I'm an avid infantry fan, and thus love Scots.

First I'll address a point raised in a post just above this: If you apply a 2-Hander Fix you HAVE to make sure the Highland Noble are altered to fit the new 2-Hander balance, they where balanced to be competitive, (in relation to their price), with the bugged 2-handers and the shield bug in place. Fixing either of those requires a large power up of Highland Nobles to keep them in the same place in relation to other units in the other armies army. DEK will still win, but it will be a very close cut thing, AND the Highland Nobles are available a full 3 tiers earlier.


Onto The rest of it.

Another misconception is that the pikes are only good for pinning. Actually they are excellent fighters even without a Pike Fix if you put the micromanagement in. Do that and they will kill ANYTHING you put in front of them. The cheapest Scottish Pikes are Scots Pike Militia. They turn up a full 3 Tiers earlier than ordinary Pike Militia do in other armies and are identical in everything except name and models. Finally, Heavy Pike Militia and Noble Pikemen both have 8 defense vs. missiles, this is FAR more than any other pike, and partially eliminates the normal vulnerability of pikes to Missiles.


Highlanders are another excellent unit, effectively a slightly lower attack and much lower deference version of VHI. Not the bee's knees as it where, but still very impressive considering their tech level. Their sadly isn't a comparable unit in any other army. But they are loosely equivalent to some of the weaker 2-Handers that become available to some other factions at the 3rd or 4th tech level.

Next up is their archers. Are they especially good shooter? No. But thats because they aren't really archers at all, their basically a lower attack higher defense version of highlanders with the added advantage that they have a bow. Stop thinking of them as archers, and start thinking of them as defensive S&S infantry with AP and you are thinking of them in the right way.

Lastly, they actually have excellent heavy Cav for what they need. The DON'T NEED good Cav, they can get away with using their weaker Cav to pine the enemy in place and disrupt their charges whilst the Spear Militia/Highlanders move in. Border Horse are the best non-Muslim Light Cav and are excellent for attacking enemy archers and chasing down Cav that tries to run from your pinning Cav. If you have Light Cav as fast as Border Horse you simply don't need anything better than Mailed Knights 95% of the time.

edit:
not to mention the highland noble archers, they can stand their ground eaven against yeoman archers only with retinue longbowmen or Sherwood archers can you clearly defeat them...

Not to mention that they can outfight them in melee. In fact the only better composite Archer is the best russian one (Dismounted Dovor I think).