Correct use of Pikemen?

[CountMRVHS]

Hi all,

I'm playing the Scots in the Britannia campaign. Sometimes I can get the pike units to work correctly, but it seems pretty random and I'm not sure what I'm doing to get certain results.

It seems that, if I put my pikes on Guard mode with Spearwall activated, the front ranks crouch down & form a wall of spearpoints. When attacked, however, they quickly switch to swords - even men in the rear ranks. I most often see this when I'm guarding a castle gate. I assume Guard mode is the setting I want in that situation, but after the enemy ram breaks the gate and the enemy charges into the front of the pikes, they switch to swords.

Defending a bridge, I put my pikes in Spearwall, with Guarde mode OFF. They seemed to perform pretty well there, using their pikes to keep the enemy at a distance.

But in an open battle on the attack, with Spearwall on and Guard mode off, I got totally different results - I'd order the pikes to attack an enemy unit and they'd switch to swords almost immediately after making contact.

What is the best way to use these pikes? When they work, they work great!

CountMRVHS

[WhiskeyGhost]

I use spearwall/guard mode ON, then after impact, i turn off guard mode, and watch as they poke the enemy to death. The biggest key to it, is making sure your pikes DON'T GET FLANKED. If a single enemy soldier wraps around your pike wall (which will happen a lot if not managed right, with say, your own flanking troops) then when that 1 man gets too close, all your pikes will switch to swords and die. I've gotten ridiculous good results when having highlanders on both sides of a scots pike unit, even against highly armored enemies.

edit: also, your unit will move funny when you turn off guard mode, and will only move in 1 direction as they poke the enemy. This too results in the unit being flanked, if the enemy has gaps in their formation.

added some pics from a recent battle:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

sorry about image size, but to make it easy on ya, it shows the scots pike militia had a better kill/death ratio then the highlanders, despite in the first picture showing the pikemen taking all enemy charges

16-29 kills for the pikemen (29 was most peasants)

25-11 kills for the highlanders (25 was mostly that peasant unit)

and the highlanders didn't even take a charge

Note on the first pic, that i JUST turned off guard mode, and about 20 peasants died in the first poke volley

This was done against 2 armored swordsmen, dismounted english knights, a peasant unit, and a Armored Sargents (who didn't actually enter the battle, since by having a cavalry unit (bodyguards) they went and chased them instead of getting into the melee.

[CountMRVHS]

Thanks!

Now, when attacking, do you just select one of your pike units and then click on an enemy unit as usual, or is there more to it? I seem to remember in Rome that you'd get best results by actually clicking *behind* the enemy, so your pikes walked into them.

[WhiskeyGhost]

I personally get decent results just clicking on the enemy. I only click behind if its cavalry, or the enemy unit is spread out and i need my men to change direction (pikemen only seem to jab in one direction, and won't turn to attack with the pikes)

thats just how i do it though, i'm sure someone else probably has some really good strategies

[LadyAnn]

I use spearwall/guard mode ON, then after impact, i turn off guard mode, and watch as they poke the enemy to death. The biggest key to it, is making sure your pikes DON'T GET FLANKED. If a single enemy soldier wraps around your pike wall (which will happen a lot if not managed right, with say, your own flanking troops) then when that 1 man gets too close, all your pikes will switch to swords and die.

Is this BUG fixed? It sounds like a huge bug to me. I don't want my pike to ever use swords until they are really desperate.

Annie

[khaos83_2000]

Well, I will spearwall on, defend on. Wait for them to charge in. Wait for a few secs more then turn off defend and my pikes will push them back.

If ur pikes are changing to swords, i will turn everything off for a few secs then turn everything on again. they will bring out their pikes again.

imo, pikes needs to be 2 units deep to be effective because the 1st unit will usually be decimated but they will be dealing the most damage. Then 2nd unit behind will not be dealing a lot of damage but they will be holding the line.
(i mean UNIT, not rank or men)

Believe it or not. When pikes are working well, they eat elephants for breakfast. I personally saw it happen.

[manwithplanx]

I have an idea, have two units of pikemen side by side two that are on either side of the two units and two that are rear facing. that way they can't flank you.

[Alpedar]

Is it good or bad to place pikeman so they overlap?

[PrestigeX]

Pikemen are cheap to field, and come with a high number of men (like other spearmen units)

The correct way to use them in my opinion is in combination with Missile Units.
Use archers/muskets to pepper the enemy infantry units. Even tho foot-knights can beat pikemen in hand combat, when u've concentrated all ur fire on them - they're numbers are too small to be effective once they close in.
When i have pikemen in my army, I am not so worried about trying to shoot at the enemy cavalry either.

[imnothere]

as suggested in previous post - i usually try to combine pikes with schiltroned units at the side. usually, i have pike units in the middle, flanked by schiltroned units (mercenary spearmen, levy spears, militia)

i am not so concern about pikemen doing damages, because i only need them to keep people away from my precious archers and/or to buy time so that my other heavier units (swordsmen, billmen, dismounted knights, other disposable mounted units) can flank and finish off the enemies. as per previous posts in this topic, sometimes the pikes works wonderfully, but sometimes terribly. i have long given up on depending the pikes to be my post-Greek phalanx of death and merely use them as a disposable buffer.

i've noted that on the bridge scenario, pikes can be useful up to a point. at one point i had lots of spears/militias/any units (even the catapults!) that AI can produce and throw at me when they are trying to force a crossing. just as well that i delibrately setup a few schiltron spears to contain the enemies, because pikemen seems to have a habit of more chance of breaking under immense pressure than the schiltroned spears (who usually died to the last man).

in wide open battleground such as the middle east, i am avoiding (they are mercenary units in western europe anyway) usuing them, as they are purely unsuitable as they have the habit of attracting arrows and flaming balls of deaths (from the all-catapult AI armies!)

[Old Geezer]

I changed the line settings as suggested and had some field engagements with militia pikemen and noble pikemen against armored sergeants. It was not a pretty sight. The pikes would not keep their pikes down. When I'd get them to put them down, then the men on the sides and the ones not on the front line held thier pikes up or switch to swords if near an enemy. It was a butchering. The militia pikes did kill one third of the enemy before routing. The nobles just stood there and died. I was advancing with them up a slight hill. From the animation it seems that the problem came because the rearward lines all held their pikes up rather than keeping the spearwall. I tried switching the spearwall off and on but it did not help. (When you do the switching of the spear wall off and on do you have to wait for 5 seconds or so for it to work properly?) In these battles the pikes actually performed much worse than when I had them advance on the knights in the town square. I think that I'll just remove their secondary weapon to see if they really are too overpowered. I'm afraid that I am too impatient to micromanage these guys.

[Old Geezer]

I removed the secondary weapon from the pike units and changed the spacing between the men to 1.0 and am well satisfied with how pike units perform now. Now pike militia beat spear militia in head on confrontations.

I cannot however find the file to change the settings in the Britan_isles campaign. I made changes in the export_descr_unit files in the medieval data file, the LTC file and the retrofit file. A search does not reveal any other locations. I am at a loss. My Scots pikes still switch to swords so something else needs to be done but I am at a loss. I tried copying the export_descr_unit file and putting it into the Britania folder but that apparently did not work. What file are the Kingdoms' campaign mods using?

[PBI]

This is probably a stupid question but have you unpacked the Kingdoms files? Each campaign has its own pak file which needs to be unpacked separately. The files are all in the same directory as the original vanilla campaign pak file, and I think the Kingdoms disk contains separate unpackers for each. After running it the relevant EDU for Britannia will be in the folder mods/Britannia/data. You then need to delete the two geography files and set up the -io switch, the same as for vanilla.

Hope this helps.