Re: Xl
Yes, but the thing is, vanilla Halbardiers in XL aren't marked Slow anymore. They're heavily armoured, very good defence, bonus attacking cavalry and bonus vs. armoured units, that's it. That aside, on paper yes, their stats indicate a defensive nature but in practice, the staying capacity of the Halberdiers plus their major morale boost in XL make them take fewer morale hits and cause more casualties. If it really is an issue (it isn't in XL since everything has good morale) their lasting power gives you time to fix things if they can't do it on their own. As for flanking with Halbards, it's not hard to do. Just remember the longer the distance your flanking force is away from where it needs to be, the more pronounced a speed advantage or disadvantage is. Flanking with a slow unit lends itself to certain kinds of formation (either narrower ones, or checkerboards) but I personally would much rather flank with a slow unit than a wide unit so I don't think it's that much of an issue.
On the other hand, let me assure you from experience that Kazanchi's do not under reasonable circumstances, continue to fight while surrounded. They'll get killed even if they don't rout unless absolutely everything that's doing the surrounding is a Slav Warrior. Nor do they do any better than Halbards when caught alone in unfavorable circumstances. In practice, the main difference is that Halbardiers do decently in most head-on collisions whereas Kazanchis will in most cases take significant casualties. It's not a matter of being able to flank, one of them has to do it because they'll take severe losses otherwise.
The comparison between the two aside, it's utterly irrelevant to the Volga Bulgars and irrelevant to any faction that doesn't have a choice of more than one type of polearm. Like I said, Kazanchis is all they got. Either they use Kazanchi's or else they're forced to use a combination of Kazanchis and Curse Berries.
As for my view of units, I simply do not distinguish polearms along such fine lines. My strategy when I must war is to eliminate the enemy's capability to conduct war at minimal cost. This does mean I prefer heavy halberds because the majority of battles I fight are defensive but due to the Volga Bulgar situation in High, I have also taken Kazanchi's onto the offense. Their speed is not that much of an asset when the meaningful portions of the enemy is on a horse (and sometimes also a hill) and shooting arrows whereas their greater physical vulnerability is a liability.
Anyhow, I simply categorize infantry by their abilities, the key ones here being armour piercing and anti-cavalry. It's limiting to think of any unit in a given role. There are many factors that are (under very ideal circumstances) considered before taking a unit into battle; the florin cost and production time (vs available provinces) of replacing it, the immediate morale impact of it losing and routing if it's not suited to last out the job, the impact on the composition of the army as a whole post-battle and whether you can or will need to replace it. Whether or not the unit is supposed to be doing what you send it to do just isn't one of them.
Heuristically, polearms are there to kill things. Some of them I can trust to do fairly well on their own, others I need to babysit. As for DCK's I've never used them in mass numbers or even teched to JHI, I'm just using them as a comparison. The point is, when your army demands polearms, you have to build whatever's available and what decides that isn't the role of the specific kind of polearm, it's simply the (usually one) kind of polearm you have buildable in that province. Instead of having access to DCK's, Halbardiers, or JHI, the Volga Bulgars are stuck with Kazanchi's.
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