Correct use of Pikemen?

**Barbarian** · 01-13-2008, 03:23

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** · 01-14-2008, 06:56

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.

**Abokasee** · 01-14-2008, 17:28

Originally Posted by 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.

Essentially... Late Game militias

Except Tercio Pikemen, Scots Noble Pikemen (If your alive by then) Aventuros (Not Aventuriers) and umm... dunno really