Spears are very unbalanced

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

To jump out of the time frame for a second, many Frankish infantry, though heavily armored, often are depicted as fighting with spears instead of swords, the spear type they often had has a very long protected shaft and something that looks like double headed hammer just under the neck of the blade which implies that they used the spears in the pole arm sense for parrying and thrusting and whacking at their oponents, arguably they could also pull cavalry down with the mor melee orientated parts of the spear. So clearly the spear can be a weapon of the elite and was undoubtably one of the more successful weapons in history.

Spears are very effective weapons, however, IMO EB portrays them in an uber manner. I feel that we could only solve this by providing reliable test data, and that includes training both sides, then giving one side fake spears and shields and the another fake shortswords and shields, then throwing one against another . That's how we can get good data about it :P.

[dezzerx]

Spears are very effective weapons, however, IMO EB portrays them in an uber manner. I feel that we could only solve this by providing reliable test data, and that includes training both sides, then giving one side fake spears and shields and the another fake shortswords and shields, then throwing one against another . That's how we can get good data about it :P.

Or you ask some reenactors ;)

[the_handsome_viking]

Spears are very effective weapons, however, IMO EB portrays them in an uber manner. I feel that we could only solve this by providing reliable test data, and that includes training both sides, then giving one side fake spears and shields and the another fake shortswords and shields, then throwing one against another . That's how we can get good data about it :P.

I love mock battles personally. It's a pretty complex situation really, the strange thing about the Legionary is that they seem to be both offensive and defensive in nature, the giant curved shield, yet the aggressive short sword. In tight quarters that little sword will do a lot of damage and if the formation holds well, and the spearmen find themselves in a situation where they cant effectivly use their longer ranged weapon, you will see the short swordsmen landing more hits. But it really depends to be honest, unfortunatly I don't think EB can truly represent the diversity of the Legionary and thus effectivly show why he won so often.

I personally feel that spears have sort of been, the weapons of retards for the most part in the game, and I'm glad to see Celts using the overhanded spear tactic that would have been undoubtably very common during the period because realistically, the only way you can fight with a mass amount of spearmen is to have some degree of formation tactics imployed or else youll just end up hitting each other or obstructing each others capacity to attack.

Perhaps the only way to really get around this is to just make sure the Legioanries have very good blocking capabilities and fast attacks. I'm not sure if attack animation speed can be edited though but it would be key for representing the likes of Celtic swordsmen.

[Watchman]

I dunno, the legionary is sort of a cross between those Iberian foot guys and a Peltast; a sort of do-anything generalist. Versatile ? Sure. But that also means he's not so good at specialized stuff.

Incidentally, when Caesar had his big showdown with Ariovist didn't his soldiers ultimately have to resort to something to the level of physically hauling the blasted German shields out of the way to start trying to take their shieldwall apart ?