Why would anyone build Pikes...

[Doug-Thompson]

@anders

Check this thread. mad cat mech explains it. Basically, you have to leave spearwall on, turn the defend stance off, and order your unit to move through the enemy rather than attack.

Even then, it's not a real charge. Your guys don't drop their pikes, but have to walk because they are in spearwall.

=======

I'm very loathe to mod a game. I like posting on the forums, and believe that the vast majority of people who play the game — as opposed to posting on the forum — play the vanilla version. Therefore, I like to have experience relevant to their questions.

I've accepted a grand total of two mods in a Total War game, and I've played since MTW1. The first was a fix that stopped the absolutely silly special effect of horses hitting the enemy and sent sailing into the air in RTW. That was pure Hollywood. The second was a temporary fix when horse archers were broken in a patch of RTW. That was fixed later.

Taking away the swords of pikemen is about to become my third.

By the way, how do you do that?

[Kobal2fr]

By deleting (or commenting out, in case you want to be able to give'em back to them on Christmas if they've been good little boys) their "secondary attack" line in the export_descr_units.txt file

[anders]

Doug-Thompson, thanks for the link!

Now the italian wars will be a cakewalk.

speaking of italian wars, I wish the italian factions would train more broken lances, men-at-arms etc. so you got the good historical italain wars feel of fighting condottieri armies and not just city militias.

[Doug-Thompson]

(oops)

[John_Longarrow]

Didz,

As a question, why would you want Merc crossbows instead of Scottish archers?

I've found the archers ability to fall back a bit then charge into melee very useful. The pikes tend to die if you just leave them there, but they are so cheap thats not an issue for the most part. They keep the enemy where I want so my light cav and strong melee archers can do most of the dirty work. The swords at the ends tend to keep infantry from wrapping around and the light cav can keep heavy cav in place long enough for my archers to really hurt. As I tend to rely upon the melee of the archers, I'm wondering what advantage the crossbows bring that would be more useful.

[Didz]

As a question, why would you want Merc crossbows instead of Scottish archers?

Probably force of habit more than anything else. I've got used to hiring Mercenary Crossbow units during the opening turns of the game just to give me an quick advantage over rebel held garrisons and early faction armies.

I then keep the mercenaries in service until my faction begins to produce something better. My current Scottish campaign is now on turn 108 and I still have Mercenary Crossbowmen in my service (mostly gold cheveroned now) which suggests that so far at least I have not noticed any significant reason to replace them with Scottish Archers.

Not sure if this is a true reflection of their relative effectiveness or not, as I haven't formally tested them against each other or even paid a lot of attention to their performance battle. I just get the impression that my crossbowmen are doing far more damage than my archers and so I keep using them.

[TheSmokyPeatyOne]

I second (or third, or fourth) the "Missiles in front of Pikes" tactic. Especially hybrid archers that can handle themselves in melee. With France, I put a line of thin line of Aventuriers/Scots Guard in front of the plain Jane pikemen and turn skirmish off. There is no need for them to fall back. The pikes sticking out in front of the missile troops effectively stop cavalry charges, the hybrid archers can absorb an infantry charge and keep the pikes in good order (so they don't panic and pull out their swords).

It's a very solid anvil for the excellent French cavalry's hammer. And an anvil that rains death from afar!