Correct use of Pikemen?

[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.

[Old Geezer]

Thanks PBI for the quick reply! I just found out that each campaign has its very own unpackers from searching over in a mod forum. (I am reluctant to enter a mod forum, because I understand so little of what is being said there.) You may be able to teach old dogs tricks, but we are slow.

[PBI]

No problem.

So, do you find the "fixed" pikemen overpowered? I'm not convinced they are - decent heavy infantry like DFK will still beat pike militia, and even against light infantry I still seem to suffer a lot of casualties. Plus, missiles still eat them for breakfast, but at least now they can put up a proper fight against cavalry.