How useful do you find spears after 1.02?

[Skott]

I find spear units very useful still.

[Betito]

With the turks, i have used fair amounts of spear militia, dismounted sipahis and saracens with reasonable success. I was able to use spearmen the same way i used them in MTW1: stand still, recieve charge, hold their ground till some sort of assistance comes. Worked very nicely with missile support, naffatun preferred.

Always with guard mode on. They did hold their ground long enough

The morale of the spear militia was a bothersome issue, the did rout significantly faster than the others

[Doug-Thompson]

My favorite infantry units are spears, the five units that share the same traits:

• Good resistance to missiles, which helps most in siege battles.

• good attack/defense against knights.

• Can survive attacks by good infantry long enough for my missiles to do the killing, and,

• low cost and building requirements.

These are:

Saracen Militia
Pavise Spearmen
Mercenary Spearmen
Crusader Sergeants
Armored Sergeants

Of those, my favorite are Saracen Infantry because they are a free-upkeep unit in cities.

[Kobal2fr]

Doug : you forget Italian Infantry in that list. Not only do they have the same stats as Armored Sarges except for the -1 in armor, they can also get 2 armor upgrades compared to the sarges' 1. Meaning that if Lusted is right in thinking that armor upgrades really add 2-and-something to a unit's actual armor instead of the displayed 1, then they're actually better than them.

Lusted being Lusted, I trust what he says to be right

[Lusted]

Well from my testing it definitely looks like armour upgrades give a +2/2.5 bonus to armour.

[Doug-Thompson]

Doug : you forget Italian Infantry in that list. Not only do they have the same stats as Armored Sarges except for the -1 in armor, they can also get 2 armor upgrades compared to the sarges' 1. Meaning that if Lusted is right in thinking that armor upgrades really add 2-and-something to a unit's actual armor instead of the displayed 1, then they're actually better than them.

Lusted being Lusted, I trust what he says to be right

Point taken. Italian Spear militia too.

[alpaca]

Actually unless I have some of the bad-ass spears (like Saracen Militia or Italian City), I'll just use them as sacrifices to stop charges until my good units move in (foot knights or two-handed units).
An exception to this rule is schiltrom, I lately adopted a tactic with the English where my Longbowmen would pin down their stakes and I put spear militia on schiltrom in the free spaces between the stakes - the enemy will still attack the spears while my longbowmen shoot them from a safe distance through the stake-induced gaps. Then I'll bring my cav or heavy inf around the flanks and then the enemy will run. Worked every time so far. However in that case even the spear units will usually do quite some damage because schiltrom is quite good if the enemy can't wrap themselves around your unit because of the stakes.

[HoreTore]

Well, the good spearmen(the ones with attack 7 and defense 14) can easily kill an enemy bodyguard unit charging them. So I say they're good.

[Doug-Thompson]

Actually unless I have some of the bad-ass spears (like Saracen Militia or Italian City), I'll just use them as sacrifices to stop charges until my good units move in (foot knights or two-handed units).
An exception to this rule is schiltrom, I lately adopted a tactic with the English where my Longbowmen would pin down their stakes and I put spear militia on schiltrom in the free spaces between the stakes - the enemy will still attack the spears while my longbowmen shoot them from a safe distance through the stake-induced gaps. Then I'll bring my cav or heavy inf around the flanks and then the enemy will run. Worked every time so far. However in that case even the spear units will usually do quite some damage because schiltrom is quite good if the enemy can't wrap themselves around your unit because of the stakes.

This is extremely effective even when the enemy wraps around, because then the cavalry turn their backs to your missile units and the rest of the world. Their front faces the spears. They also turn their vulnerable sides to the open while marching around, looking for a place to squeeze in.