Phalanx V-formation...exploit?

[The Internet]

Thats the thing that annoys me about cav in this mod, they seem to be able to push right through spearmen and units in a phalanx and stand their ground for ages instead of being run through like kebabs.

[fallen851]

And 1000 lbs of horse and rider moving at 20+ mph is simply going to stop dead when a few men put some flimsy spears in front it? I don't think so.

[Conradus]

Horses stop dead most of the time when they're storming towards a wall-like object. After all the animals don't have any intention of breaking their bones when running into walls. A phalanx or schildtromformation resembles such a wall, so I doubt that many horses actually charged right into such formations.

[Moros]

Unless specifically trained?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Yeah, I wish the game would make it where the horses just wouldn't charge in on spears from the front - they'd shy and turn or halt just before they hit or veer off. That would be pretty awesome if it would do that, but it'll never happen.

[Hooahguy]

Yeah, I wish the game would make it where the horses just wouldn't charge in on spears from the front - they'd shy and turn or halt just before they hit or veer off. That would be pretty awesome if it would do that, but it'll never happen.

they may have that in Empire: Total War

[blank]

Unless specifically trained?

if you charge at a wall of spear points with your horse then your horse is going to go down awfully fast

[overweightninja]

Unless specifically trained?

As blank said even if you could train a horse not to brick it when it saw a wall of spears, it would still just be turning itself into a kebab.

[Sarkiss]

As blank said even if you could train a horse not to brick it when it saw a wall of spears, it would still just be turning itself into a kebab.

hah, you all seem to forget that it would take hell of a lot of power to hold those spears pointed, especially against an armored horse. no one seem to think about broken human arms and twisted shoulders.
and yes, horse were trained. they were trained to the point when the obstacle would not scare them but irritate and desire to tear it apart.

[Bootsiuv]

hah, you all seem to forget that it would take hell of a lot of power to hold those spears pointed, especially against an armored horse. no one seem to think about broken human arms and twisted shoulders.
and yes, horse were trained. they were trained to the point when the obstacle would not scare them but irritate and desire to tear it apart.

Exactly....a ton of horse and metal isn't going to just stop because it's dead....the sheer momentum of the dead beasts would probably kill quite a few of the phalanx men in and of itself.

[Rodion Romanovich]

hah, you all seem to forget that it would take hell of a lot of power to hold those spears pointed, especially against an armored horse. no one seem to think about broken human arms and twisted shoulders.
and yes, horse were trained. they were trained to the point when the obstacle would not scare them but irritate and desire to tear it apart.

Indeed! If the horse can't be penetrated by the pike, such as when it's heavily armored, the entire momentum comes against the pike, and is transferred to the holder of it. Basically he may have something like 1 second to halt the fast-moving horse/horse corpse, and to turn a momentum of 900*8 into 0 in that time would require an average force of 7200 Newtons over that entire period, which is the same as the force needed to lift 720 kg. Ideally, at least 3-4 spear/pike points would be needed to share this weight between the pikemen, which is why long pikes would be very much desirable. This can be achieved by:
- thinning out the enemy formation before it arrives (by uneven ground, caltrops, and missile weapons), so many pikemen can aim at the same horse simultaneously
- the enemy horse being unarmored, so the horse flesh can be penetrated, which means the entire momentum doesn't have to be stopped in such a short period of time.
- bracing the pike in the ground
- positioning your men on ground that is either difficult for the horse to move fast in (forcing the cavalry to charge at a much slower speed, and thus with much less momentum), or preparing the ground to achieve such an effect
- making sure the horse dies almost at the time of penetration by the pike, so that it falls downwards and ground friction helps slowing down its momentum, before it reaches the first rank of pikemen

However, I also think mounts of the ancient period weighed a lot less than modern horses. The riders must also have weighed a lot less, as they were often shorter in those days. Maybe 900 kg for a horse with rider is too much? Maybe the horse weighed 600, the rider 70, and the armor 30, which gives around 700 kg. And the speed of the horse may in practise also have been reduced a lot by not only the weight of the armor, but also the way it would hit the horse's legs, or move against its skin with friction, in a painful way. Then the force required may have been as low as 3850 Newtons under ideal circumstances (terrain and such), which would require only two pikemen per horse to halt the charge. This is still enough force to break a pike, and indeed, enough to break or crush human bones. Even in this case, the ideal circumstances for a horse would cause a big, damn mess among a pike formation. So, I'm not sure pikeman formations before the era when pikes were supported in the ground could feel that safe against a cavalry charge - short spear formations should probably bulge to a cavalry charge. So if someone would have succeeded in training the horses enough to charge a pike/spear formation, he would probably have been able to use it to quite devastating effect after all. Remember that a lot of early Medieval armies used mostly spears due to the cost of alternative weaponry, and still, in these battles, it's claimed that the cavalry were crucially superior to much of the opposing infantry. I don't think short spear formations should be considered that safe against cavalry. However, of course, horse formations would take huge casualties when charging such a formation, so it would not be practical to hit it except from a flank or rear, but real life formations would always be able to turn part of the formation backwards, so cavalry would most likely often have to face at least a few spear points turned their way. If such a row of spear points isn't dense enough, a well trained horse and rider can make a quick sideways manouver and move in between them, if the line of charging horses isn't overly dense either. In short, I think cavalry warfare is probably a very complex subject, which explains why a lot of historical charges didn't end up as planned, and others managed to surprisingly break an infantry formation in an army that believed it had taken all the necessary precautions.

[tapanojum]

I noticed on Midieval II spearmen actually dropped cavalry REALLY fast...

[Landwalker]

I noticed on Midieval II spearmen actually dropped cavalry REALLY fast...

Spearmen, or pikemen? It's been a while since I was playing Medieval 2, but I seem to remember heavy cavalry being entirely capable of obliterating a unit of spearmen with a well-formed, straight-on charge. Pikemen, on the other hand, were a different story completely--they were so effective they even skewered your own cavalry.

Cheers.