Correct use of Pikemen?

[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?

[Barbarian]

I have been using a lot of pikemen lately in my battles. Usually, pikemen are only good against cavalry. In other cases - they loose in approx 70% situations that would be won by heavy infantry.

However, if they manage to use their pikes properly, they kill everyone and everything.

Two main reasons why they fail:

1) They switch to their swords (battle lost, because they are terrible with swords)

2) They hold the enemy using spear wall, but do almost no casualties (they simply stand and hold them, until their defence is broken.

you can resolve the first problem by switching guard mode on, but that gives you the second problem.

I usually switch between modes quickly, to find the best option for the situation.

Combined units of pikemen + another unit work very well.
For some strange reason, pikemen will fight more actively, if there is some fighting in front of them already. If there is 1000 enemies in front of them, they will do nothing. If thousand enemies attack a unit of swordmen, who march through pikemen lines, pikemen will start fighting perfectly with their pikes, not using sword.
There is variations for this strategy. I wrote somewhere, that I use formations of musketeers, stationed closely in front of pikemen, thus being protected by pikes. In a case of attack, pikemen fight perfectly, because there a is friendly units in the range of their pikes, who is being attacked.
Another way (for offensive tactics): Pikemen unit, which advances through standing unit of pikemen. Almost unmatched tactic, because, if the marching unit is forced to switch to the swords, they will still be protected by the pikes of the standing unit, which has a perfect formation + the standing unit will fight actively even on the guard mode (see previous paragraph) + the density of pikes from 2 units make it near impossible to beat them in frontal assault.

I especially concentrate on the tactics of pikemen in "guard mode", because the standard mode makes them slowly move forward during a melee fight, although there is no need for it, as their pikes allow to attack from a great range. This results in switching to alternative weapons (swords).

By the way, removing the secondary attack for pike units makes them work better (they use pikes, because they have no swords to switch to). But I have only tried it in few battles in vanilla M2:TW, so correct me if I am wrong.

[ReiseReise]

Unfortunately most pikes are low stat cheap units. Even the medium "Pikemen" unit costs less than half of any other spear/sword infantry, so i would not expect great things from them. This is not RTW, pikemen are not phalanxes (but damn that would be cool if they were!!!)
They were meant to be cheaply equipped untrained peasants able to provide a counter to mounted knights which had come to dominate battle (originally by the Scottish fighting English knights). More professional pike units were later developed to be effective against other infantry (eg Swiss pikemen), which they were in a few wars, but by that time they were nearly obsolete due to advances in gunpowder. Spain perfected the pike and musket tactics in the century after the game ends. Later, the bayonet eliminated the need for pikemen at all.
Anyway, on defense someone noted that the pikes will often sit there holding the enemy at bay but not actually doing any damage. You must order the pikes to attack, but then they sometimes get out of formation from the rest of the line and it turns into a huge mess. Pikes seem to be a crap shoot to me. Sometimes they work wonderfully, other times they fail miserably. I wonder about putting a high strength melee unit inside the pike formation (actually on top of the pikes) to aid them once they turn to swords. Supposedly some historic pike units had individuals wielding two handed swords to accomplish this.