did pike blocks really just fight with two ranks?

[Carl]

I wouldnt put good odds agianst them stopping most soldiers with decent armour, shields and swords. Pikes were more of a solid block, best used against cavalry but infantry with shields can knock the spears aside, and then the pikemen are in trouble.

I wouldn't put good money on it at all. That top picture is how NOT to use pikes. Although you can't see it in that second picture, (i've been to the place it's from. The royal Armouries in Leeds, UK), the Pike points at the other end are all fairly close together in spite of how far the men are standing apart, (the guy holding one to the ground actually has a horse impailed on the other end). The reality is that the guy holding it over his head could have 10 guys behind him doing exactly the same and the guy holding it at waist level in front of him. A sheild can knock aside a few pikes. but 10+? I doubt it myself, (Bear in mind the pike point of the guy holding it over his head is drooping towards the ground so it's lower at the other end by quite some margin, and I suspect those pikes are MUCH thicker and stiffer than the real thing, (look at the droop on those in the top picture)). Also, remeber how heavy those pikes are, they wouldn't be easy to deflect aside due to their weight.

On the flip side, not every pike formation would have had every man pointing his pike to the front. It all comes down to the exact pikemen in question. the good pikes who did actually keep as many pikes lowered towards the enemy as possibbile would easilly have created a very thick and impenitrable foprest of pike points. Those that only lowered 2-3 ranks would have been very vulnrable.

[pike master]

the point im getting to is how silly people keep trying to push super long pike lengths and claiming when a guy is working on a hernia keeping it in the fight proves that they were only good versus horses.

what people fail to understand is that the flemish and swiss pikemen started out using only 10 to 16 ft long pikes. and thats where they got their legendary reputation. i regular sized large rack on a deer is pretty effective to help it fight off another buck. when they reach the size of the ones irish elk had, the deer had problems just trying to keep its head up.

you give a man a 16 ft long pike he want have any troubles keeping it up because it is well lighter than the thicker pole required for a 21 ft pike. the reenactors push the pike lengths to rediculous proportions and then look like sops trying to use them.

i tend to agree with carl wholeheartily.

but what it does bring to light is how people are once again trying to change history despite medieval pictures and first accounts that state otherwise.

here is something i stumbled across in a quiet corner of the web pertaining to deep major modifications to romes game engine to make it workable in a medieval era game.

"QUOTE
The phalanx formation is so good though for the swiss! That's how they fought: in disciplined, compact, squares! I don't understand. We could make them expensive (very, and they should be available only as mercenaries) and they would be very accurate"

"Like I've already mentioned, it'll probably screw up the RPS values. The only real weakness that I see is a flanking attack, but that doesn't really fit into the RPS system. The AI won't think "Oh, we've got a phalanx here, let's do some flanking manouvres on them" so that's where we have our problem. All units, no matter their cost, should have some sort of weakness e.g late knights may be really strong, but they'll still be naturally worse off if they try and fight and type of spearmen.

Naturally swordsmen should beat them, but the RTW engine never incorporated this. Realistically they should charge the whole formation and try and break away the pikes, but instead they stand back a few metres, perfect targets for a phalanx.

We've got a new pike formation animation which looks like what you describe, so all you'll have to do is hit the guard button and it should act the way you want it"

thats sounds awfully familiar to what i think CA has attempted to do. basically make the game unrealistic so it will please a small elite minority and forget the rest.

furthermore a good spicy discussion like this might flush some wabbits.

also in the second picture notice how much thinner the pike shafts are compared to the ones the reenactors are using. i could almost swear those beams in the first picture look they have been oil treated. maybe they are gonna use them for electric poles after the battle.

when in guard mode standing still they do indeed lower 3 ranks in the game but in melee when they do use pikes only two ranks are used leaving a large gap that extra ranks pikes would cover if they fought from 3 to 5 ranks. even in mtw/vi the pikemen can clearly be seen fighting five ranks deep.

[R'as al Ghul]

Swiss and Landsknecht soldiers engage in the exceptionally-fierce hand to hand combat known as "bad war." The long spear shafts are their pikes, which became awkward to handle if the push of pike became too disorganized. In that case, halberds and swords became the deadliest weapons. Engraving by Hans Holbein the Younger. Albertina, Vienna.

I think this should be a quite accurate depiction of pike dimensions.
I'd love to see the AI use pikes and I'd love to see the pike push. The unit is in the game but the battle tactics are not.

[pike master]

i thought this one was an interesting picture. the interest is there for better pike performance. and it would be cool if you could hook up your halberds and pikes into the same spearwall on and march them and they would stay together.currently the halberds get outpaced easilly and the only way to keep them up is to turn off spearwall but even then they will lag way back then run to catch up then lag way back again 8(

[Frankenbeasley]

It doesn't really seem fair to compare the technique and physical prowess of the people in the first picture (who are, most likely, white collar workers who are not necessarily in peak physical condition) with real pikemen. I would assume that a lifetime of physical labour and months (if not years) of wielding a pike both in practice and for real, would have led to increased dexterity and confidence with the pike.

[bach01]

It doesn't really seem fair to compare the technique and physical prowess of the people in the first picture (who are, most likely, white collar workers who are not necessarily in peak physical condition) with real pikemen. I would assume that a lifetime of physical labour and months (if not years) of wielding a pike both in practice and for real, would have led to increased dexterity and confidence with the pike.

Definitely agree with that. The average physical fitness of a mercenary from that time period is many times greater then the average fitness of your average white collar officer worker, playing at reenactment on the weekends.

The main strengths of the pike formation (which IMHO are not handled very well by MTW2) is that it is cheap, easier to use and finally, the number of men in the formation.

The cites of the time were overflowing with unemployed men, that could be easily given a long stick made to march in formation, drill on it's rudimentary uses and placed in a large terico, or pike formation with minimum training time.

To be honest the elite sword and shield unit sizes especially for knights are too big. The pike unit formation size should be at least 8 to 10 times the size of the sword and shield units. Especially the knights, as the training for a knight to use sword shield and lance takes years.

As for saying that the sword and shield man would just duck or push the pike out of the way, the strength of the pike in the pike formation is magnified by the number of men in the formation and number of pikes that the sword and shield man would have to push away before one of them got him.

Definitely, would like to see if this could be modded into the game, so that the size of the armies grow through the years, based upon the type of unit, where knights are small elite units, and spear units slightly larger, with pike units being the largest.

Matt

[pike master]

in mtw/vi cavalry had 40 / reg infantry 60 and spear based infantry 100.

i think if you restored those numbers you would probably see an improvement. but there are still critical flaws in the mechanics that need to be addressed and are only going to get worse if the shield bug gets fixed.