Phalanx V-formation...exploit?

[Rodion Romanovich]

As for horse armour, given the sheer energy and momentum the charging horse puts against the braced spear-tip I strongly suspect nothing short of monolith steel plate (which is known to have easily enough withstood the forces involved in late-period knights clashing at full tilt) offers reliable defense for the animal (or rider, if he's hit instead). It's basically the whole theoretical impact energy of a couched-lance charge, without any of the factors that limited the amount the mount-saddle-rider complex could maintain behind the weapon (ie. the shaft slipping in the wielder's hands and similar "threshold exceeded" issues); bar the tip being deflected by striking hard armour at a shallow angle or the shaft suffering a catastrophical structural failure of course, but the latter for one is a bit unlikely with well-made spears.

It's not just that. Deflection as you mentioned is a major factor for well made armor, but even when there's no clear deflection with steep angles, a lot of armor will, if you try to penetrate it in one spot, create an effect where the parts around the penetration spot are drawn towards the penetration spot and into it, so for a very large part of the thrust you need to actually push not just a sharp, thin spearpoint into the victim, but a thick cylinder of a spearpoint with armor around it, into a hole in the wearer of the armor. In many cases this force could also cause deflection even at not too steep angles, or the victim could have enough time to turn away to limit the force of the thrust or cause it to deflect after only causing a short concussive blow, causing the wearer to fly backwards rather than be penetrated (in many battles in history it has been common for a lot of riders to be thrown out of their saddle rather than being impaled). Horse breastplates make a huge difference to how dangerout a charge is - which is probably why they've been used so much in historical cavalry forces. Bear in mind that the material that spearpoints were made of weren't always significantly harder than what the armor was made of. The deformation forces caused to the spearpoint are also the same as what the spearpoint causes to the armor. Unless the spearpoint is of much higher quality than the armor, the spear will have much greater difficulties penetrating than it might seem at first sight. It's no wonder why maces and other concussive and/or specially designed armor breaking weapons were used a lot in historical battles between heavily armored troops, and why it took so many hours of battle to actually chop your way through armor enough to kill a large enough number of soldiers to rout an army - in many cases it was probably more common to kill by making the opponent lose his breath and be unable to parry any further, exposing weak spots for a penetrative thrust.

The primary defense of an infantry formation against cavalry is, as stated before, psychological; a line that holds solid is nigh-impossible to charge with horse, spears or no

I don't think the romans holding pila in a demoralizing way would have been the most effective weapon they had against well armored eastern cavalry. Rather, I believe the roman anti-cavalry tactics would have relied more on the following two things: tight packing, and careful preparation of the battlefields.

Tight packing and discipline among the infantry does not kill cavalry, nor does it prevent the first ranks from suffering high casualties, but it prevents the infantry formation from breaking, and as a result it's capable of making the cavalry lose momentum. This puts the cavalry in a situation where it must choose between:
- staying in a prolonged melee without momentum, where the cavalry is more vulnerable and very ineffective, and can be destroyed if supporting arms are able to relieve the infantry
- choose to retreat and recharge. The fact that the caths were armored all around would probably make them excellent at this strategy, compared to horses that are only armored at the front. Indeed, the Parthians seem to have been using this (capability of so easily disengaging infantry) to conduct fake charges followed by retreats in order to force infantry formations to switch from their anti-missile formations to melee formations, to be able to increase the effectiveness of the horse archers. These fake charges probably did make contact with the roman line at some times and caused a lot of mayhem and casualties in the front ranks before the cavalry pulled back.

Preparation of battlefields, as well as picking of good existing terrain, obviously decreases the speed of the cavalry too, causing the same effect as the packing, but without the high casualties for the first ranks. The combination of the two is effective, but not if the enemy has nearly unlimited supply of arrows for their horse archers, or the infantry has just a single weak spot in their formation, where the terrain allows the heavy cavalry to repeatedly use their charges to decimate the enemy.

[Renegen]

Hmm interesting. I didn't know about this phalanx formation. Maybe it it an exploit, but the AI in general is beaten by a lot of strategies. Just stop using it! Against a human opponent it's just stupid, he will never charge the middle and your flanks are exposed not to mention your phalanx is out of position and ripe for the killing.

[bovi]

If you were to stop using all the ways the AI can be defeated, you'd have to limit yourself to making a line and walking straight ahead into its line.

[gurakshun]

Hmm interesting. I didn't know about this phalanx formation. Maybe it it an exploit, but the AI in general is beaten by a lot of strategies. Just stop using it! Against a human opponent it's just stupid, he will never charge the middle and your flanks are exposed not to mention your phalanx is out of position and ripe for the killing.

the AI cannot reach your flanks because you only use this v-formation at a gateway/wallbreach or bridge battle - aka hard chokepoints. even a human opponent would be hard pressed to break v-formation phalanxes at the bridge and every other passable area over the river - they are by their very nature extremely tight chokepoints.