Short spears for phalanxes?

[sleighr]

Are the long spears for phalanxes hardcoded? I know you get the extra-long pikes by adding "long_pike" in EDU. But is there a way to get the original spear in the model to be the one used? "Short_pike" doesn't work, I know.

It's been a while, I can't remember.

[Kuni]

deleting "long_pike" in the primary weapon attribute of you phalangist will give the unit normal length spears. substituting it with "short_pike" will give your phalangists short pikes, as well. A good way to check is that short pike units only attack with the front two rows, normal speared units can attack with the front three rows while long piked units can attack with four rows.

I just took a quick look-see with seleucids by giving the silvershield pikemen short_pikes, and the difference between the spears of the normal speared militia hoplite, long speared levy pikemen and the now short speared silver shileds is very noticeable.

...why do you ask?

[sleighr]

deleting "long_pike" in the primary weapon attribute of you phalangist will give the unit normal length spears. substituting it with "short_pike" will give your phalangists short pikes, as well. A good way to check is that short pike units only attack with the front two rows, normal speared units can attack with the front three rows while long piked units can attack with four rows.

I just took a quick look-see with seleucids by giving the silvershield pikemen short_pikes, and the difference between the spears of the normal speared militia hoplite, long speared levy pikemen and the now short speared silver shileds is very noticeable.

...why do you ask?

Well, the problems are that when using short_pike:
1) There is no way to take them out of phalanx, which screws up many things, like running.

and

2)From what I've heard, the offensive/defensive capability of short_pike doesn't work. Apparently, the game doesn't recognize it, so the spear bonuses don't work. Might as well not use phalanx at all, so I understand.

That's my main reasons why.

As well, just deleting "long_pike" doesn't give you normal spears. What it gives you are the slightly shorter pikes used by hoplites in vanilla RTW. The German Spear Warband, for example, doesn't use the long_pike signifier, and it's spears are huge compared to the one shown on the model in Max.

[Kuni]

ahh, I thought there was something more to why you were asking.

I did notice that when I deactivated phalanx formation on the silvershields with short_pike, they kept their spears positioned in phalanx but they could run. Didn't notice anything about turning.