Pikeman vs Sword & Shield head to head post 1.02?

[Carl]

A far better comparison would be CK vs. DFK or DCK. In that case the S&S will easily lose. Given how short a time FK's dominate the cavalry scene (which is debatable; MK's are just as good anyway), this is a far more relevant comparison.

And CK are nearly TWICE the price of DFK/DCK, DFK vs. feudal is a FAIR comparison because since S&S ARE NOT an anti-Cav unit I would NOT expect them to hold vs. Cav that is nearly double their price.

S&S die even quicker to a good cavalry charge. Given the choice between a cavalry charge and polearms, I'd chose the polearms

WRONG, S&S don't die to a good Cav charge when they walk everywhere because you should have some spears behind the line ready to intercept Cav charges, the AI does exactly that to me in my ProblemFixer and if the AI was just half a second faster in moving it's spears forward I'd never be able to get a frontal charge into a formed battle line.

You can try the same with polearms, but I guarantee any sane opponent will shoot them to bits. if they walk, and Cav charge them off the board if they run, (you can't move the spears to protect because the spears move at the same speed as the Cav).

It takes a considerable amount of time to halt an uncommitted charge, withdraw, reform, and attempt another formed charge feint. During that time the pikemen can quickly close the distance between it and the archers.

Furthermore the enemy puts their own cavalry at the risk of friendly fire, just to feint pikemen. That doesn't sound too smart.

Well first they wouldn't keep shooting constantly, second, they could do EXACTLY the same with ANY infantry unit because Pikemen CANNOT use their pikes when out of spearwall so a simple spears charge into them will make them melee with swords. Lastly their is such a thing as multiple Cav units, you can keep more than one pike unit slowed up with just one Cav unit and cycling lots of Cav units in and out can really mess things up.

Missile fire can be let off in the gaps with relative ease. The other problem is I find that the time it takes for pikes to get into spearwall is about the same time it takes Cav to cover the distance your ordinary bowman can shoot. You won't EVER be able to switch out of spearwall whilst under missile fire because if you do you'll never get back into it in time to receive the charge. You will be forced to endure the missile fire regardless. Remember running units get spread out a Little.

I apologize if it seemed indirect, but they do have a connection. The stats of these units give a hint as to their function. Since these stats are very close to that of SBM, there is a strong possibility that these units ought to perform the same function of SBM. CA has described SBM as capable of breaking pike formations. So these units should probably break pike formations as well. If pikemen were over-improved, this would not happen, and CA would contradict itself.

The History that CA has provided with SBM says they used to be used for breaking pike formation. CA has said NOTHING on the matter. Lastly, it's not just S&S that are the issue, every infantry unit in the game (apart from a few of the weakest spears), can beat pikemen up. The only way you'll get Pikes to hold off non-S&S units is to make them fight in more ranks and in a more tightly packed formation so they keep these other units out frontally. However if you do that the S&S units won't get in either, they won't have enough defense and if you give them enough then even CK won't be able to hurt them with a formed charge. Your either stuck with pikes as invulnerable from the front,. or with pikes that are crap against everything, (since good spears can counter Cav far better).

[Lusted]

Well my first thought is... what good are knights now? You gave crap spear units so much defense that the knights can barely touch them even with a perfect charge - they lost 15 or less when I was charging spear militia w/ mailed knights. And that's with no armor upgrades at all on the spears. On the other hand, their attack boost ensures that the knights die in droves. Given that spears are the vast majority of what you'll encounter in the game for quite a while, what usefulness can knights now possibly have?

Ah, spears might be very good against cav when charged from the front, but they are still incredibly vulnerable to flanking and rear charges. The cavalrys mobility allows them to out flank spear units and beat them like that. The changes makes the player think more about how they are using cav.

I also notice that spears, when upgraded fully, will actually have comparable stats to most heavily armored units like DFK (13+7 = 20, where many heavies have 19 in your file). This just seems wrong, and I can't see how it will possibly be balanced.

Spear units have a negative bonus against other melee infantry so any non-spear armed infantry will have an edge over them.

So my overall impression so far is that things went in the right direction, but went past balanced and landed at unbalanced in the opposite direction. I suspect this is more due to the huge shift in spearmen stats than anything else...

Spearmen have had +2 or +1 added to their attack stats, the main change is their increased mass(are you sure your playing with the latest version of the files i posted?)

Note: I haven't played it to death yet so I'm sure there are more opinions & possibly refinements of these coming yet, but this is my impression after a play session.

You do need to play it quite a bit to see the full extent of the rebalance.

[Shahed]

Hi All ! I have'nt read through the whole thread, unfortunately but in essence, would some be so kind as to tell me if pikes work in 1.20 ? Thanks.

[Bob the Insane]

There is no perceptable diffierence in the 1.02 leaked patch...

[Shahed]

Thanks.

[Foz]

Ah, spears might be very good against cav when charged from the front, but they are still incredibly vulnerable to flanking and rear charges. The cavalrys mobility allows them to out flank spear units and beat them like that. The changes makes the player think more about how they are using cav.

Yes, I figured that out as I was going. However, it's still a problem. Almost all the fighting in the game happens during sieges... where it becomes nigh impossible to attack units from the flanks most of the time. Even harder to actually charge from there, the city layouts almost never allow it. And when my mailed knights do not hit the charge, they die anyway even when attacking from the rear of the spears. Most battles are sieges, ergo knights become pointless units if they are immediately ground into meat by spears frontally, and that's not even considering their already lacking usefulness because they are incapable of manning siege gear, assaulting walls, or otherwise performing useful functions in a siege.

I also note how ludicrous it looks for an entire company of knights to crash into what is essentially a brick wall of spearmen, which gives not at all under the tremendous energy of a charge. I thought that pikemen were supposed to perform that function, in which case spears should not do it as well, as they are less teched up and obviously not brandishing 3 whole rows of nasty pike points.

So perhaps my issue is more with the mass than with the stats. With the shield fix the stats, combined with the anti-charge ability, proved to go an awful long way toward stopping cavalry charges, which makes me think mass manipulation should not be required at all for spears now that their shields are working and you've otherwise boosted their melee defense substantially as well. I'd like to try that - setting the spears back to normal-ish mass, and just playing with mass in general. Where's the setting at in the files? I don't believe I've seen it yet, at least not that I knew what it was.

Spearmen have had +2 or +1 added to their attack stats, the main change is their increased mass(are you sure your playing with the latest version of the files i posted?)

Well I assume so, since I have previously not used your mod at all. I grabbed the "Latest changes.zip" late-ish last night, and dropped the files into my mod directory, overwriting my typical ones.

You do need to play it quite a bit to see the full extent of the rebalance.

I did notice one other big thing so far. It seems like missile fire is somewhat better than in vanilla. I note though that missile attack values stayed about the same, or maybe were lowered a bit even in some cases, and missile defenses are often increased. Am I imagining it, or are there changes to the projectiles or missile accuracy that are causing improved results?

Also I just ran a test of upgraded spearmen against DFK, and it put down that concern at least. The DFK won handily, losing only 23% while inflicting 78% casualties on the spears. Seems to more than justify the cost difference. So I'm more and more convinced my main beef is w/ the mass of the spearmen being high.

[Lusted]

I aim for the balance to be good for field battles, not sieges, as i tend to fight more field battles in my mod. Plus cav are never going to be very useful in narrow streets.

So perhaps my issue is more with the mass than with the stats. With the shield fix the stats, combined with the anti-charge ability, proved to go an awful long way toward stopping cavalry charges, which makes me think mass manipulation should not be required at all for spears now that their shields are working and you've otherwise boosted their melee defense substantially as well. I'd like to try that - setting the spears back to normal-ish mass, and just playing with mass in general. Where's the setting at in the files? I don't believe I've seen it yet, at least not that I knew what it was.

It's the collision mass number:

soldier Armored_Sergeants, 60, 0, 1.5

This is still much less than the 4 mass for pikemen.

There needs to be an early anti-cav unit that can stand up to cav charges, because pikes are late game, and having other heavy cav as a counter just doesn't work well for balance, as all cav armies would dominate.

I did notice one other big thing so far. It seems like missile fire is somewhat better than in vanilla. I note though that missile attack values stayed about the same, or maybe were lowered a bit even in some cases, and missile defenses are often increased. Am I imagining it, or are there changes to the projectiles or missile accuracy that are causing improved results?

Bingo, improved accuracy of arrows/crossbows, reduced accuracy of bullets to tone gunpwoder units down a notch.

Seems to more than justify the cost difference. So I'm more and more convinced my main beef is w/ the mass of the spearmen being high.

Basically im going for a MTW balance with cav v spears, where all spears can halt any cav unit frontally, though low levels ones will lose quiite a few men against high level cav. But spears remain very vulnerable to flanking, and can be almost wiped out in a single charge to the rear. This imitates the MTW balance, encourages flanking charges with cav whilst enemy spearmen are tied down by your infantry, and reduces cav spam as they can be countered better.

[Jambo]

Now we just need to get the AI to flank with its cavalry. The AI always seems to charge its cavalry headlong into my ranks...

[Gorm]

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikeman

"The pike was an extremely long weapon, carried by infantry and resembling a spear usually 10 to 14 feet (3 to 4 meters) long. It had a wooden shaft with an iron or steel spearhead affixed. The shaft near the head was often reinforced with metal strips called 'cheeks' or langets. When the troops of opposing armies both carried the pike, it often grew in a sort of "arms race," getting longer in both shaft and head length to give one side's pikemen an edge in the combat; the longest pikes could exceed 22 feet (6 meters) in length. The extreme length of such weapons required a strong wood such as well-seasoned ash for the pole, which was made narrower towards the tip of the weapon to prevent the pike sagging on the ends, although this was always a problem in pike handling.

"The great length of the pike allowed many spearheads to be presented to the enemy and greater reach, but also made it unwieldy in a confused close combat. This meant that pikemen had to be equipped with a shorter weapon such as a sword, mace, or dagger in order to defend themselves should the fighting degenerate into a melee. In general, however, pikemen attempted to avoid such disorganized combat, at which they were at a disadvantage. To compound their difficulties in such melee, the pikeman often did not have a shield or had only a small shield of limited use in close-quarters fighting."

(emphasis added by this poster)

[Lusted]

Im gonna play with that variable we discussed at TWc, see if that affects the ai.

[hrvojej]

IMO it's much better to decrease the mass of mounts than to increase the mass of infantry.

[Foz]

I aim for the balance to be good for field battles, not sieges, as i tend to fight more field battles in my mod. Plus cav are never going to be very useful in narrow streets.

How do you do it? I never seem to fight many at all. The AI seems more than happy to just let me march up to lay siege to its settlements most of the time.

It's the collision mass number:



This is still much less than the 4 mass for pikemen.

Yeah, it turns out it wasn't the problem. You didn't mention that you also nerfed the lance and sword attack values and charge bonuses for cavalry. The mailed knights do nothing because they've suffered what amounts to a 9 point loss to their charge value, between spear defense buffs & losses to knight primary attack and charge bonuses.

There needs to be an early anti-cav unit that can stand up to cav charges, because pikes are late game, and having other heavy cav as a counter just doesn't work well for balance, as all cav armies would dominate.

So... it's fair for a spear unit that costs 290 to chew up knights costing 540 and up? Cuz the way it is w/ the 2.3 files, I'm sure you could lose at least 4 units of knights to a single crappy spear unit, which is way beyond wrong IMO. "Stand up" to cav charges does not equate to "completely erase with hardly a scratch" which is more what I'd describe the current situation as - and that's without any armor upgrades to the spears, which will simply make things that much worse. Even if it expended an entire spear unit to stop a charging cavalry unit and kill it, you'd still be making nearly double your investment every single time it happened, which seems more than fair. There are more than enough spear units around in the early part of the game to counter cavalry if they're even close to okay against them, so I fail to see how the argument that such drastic over-balancing is required can hold any water. It seems especially important to NOT let crappy spears turn into cavalry meat grinders precisely because of their insane proliferation in the early game.

I also question why you suggest it's necessary that spearmen be able to do this. Is there a unit in the game that completely slaughters all the sword and shield units without a scratch? Monetarily, those two unit types are largely equal, but you'd never know it from the harsh treatment you're giving to the cavalry.

Bingo, improved accuracy of arrows/crossbows, reduced accuracy of bullets to tone gunpwoder units down a notch.

That part, at least, works for me! Missiles did seem weak-ish in vanilla.

Basically im going for a MTW balance with cav v spears, where all spears can halt any cav unit frontally, though low levels ones will lose quiite a few men against high level cav. But spears remain very vulnerable to flanking, and can be almost wiped out in a single charge to the rear. This imitates the MTW balance, encourages flanking charges with cav whilst enemy spearmen are tied down by your infantry, and reduces cav spam as they can be countered better.

I guess I just don't like that take on things. It feels rather like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. The game has plenty of dynamics without forcing even crap spears to stomp all over every sort of cavalry. They could've used a modest boost to be sure, but the RPS dynamic you're trying to make spears vs. cav conform to is so heavy-handed in comparison to the others the game employs that it's a deal-breaker for me.

[Lusted]

I also question why you suggest it's necessary that spearmen be able to do this. Is there a unit in the game that completely slaughters all the sword and shield units without a scratch? Monetarily, those two unit types are largely equal, but you'd never know it from the harsh treatment you're giving to the cavalry.

Okay, only from the front do spears chew up cav, from the flank or rear the spears get chewed up, and cav are still really effective against non-spear infantry.

I guess I just don't like that take on things. It feels rather like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. The game has plenty of dynamics without forcing even crap spears to stomp all over every sort of cavalry. They could've used a modest boost to be sure, but the RPS dynamic you're trying to make spears vs. cav conform to is so heavy-handed in comparison to the others the game employs that it's a deal-breaker for me.

It's only if you charge spears from the front that it works like that, use the cavs great assets - speed and ability to flank, as well as devestating rear charge, to beat early spears. No spear unit can withstand a proper rear charge.

[pike master]

even spear and shield infantry should not be worthless versus swordsmen in my opinion. the spear was an effective weapon in infantry combat.

also units like the papal guard and various dismounted noble units should be able to match swordsmen fairly well. there should not be a penalty against spears versus swordsmen. however this is a minou issue and i can live with it.

its the pike issue that im more cocerned with.

[hellenes]

even spear and shield infantry should not be worthless versus swordsmen in my opinion. the spear was an effective weapon in infantry combat.

also units like the papal guard and various dismounted noble units should be able to match swordsmen fairly well. there should not be a penalty against spears versus swordsmen. however this is a minou issue and i can live with it.

its the pike issue that im more cocerned with.

But you see the spear isnt giving any area effect to keep the enemy away from you...Only shieldwall/classical phalanx has a chance against swordsmen...
This is because the sword is more expensive and takes more skill to use than the spear...
also I cant understand how spearmen are supposed to stop a heavy cav charge of armored knights the pike makes sense due to its length and the butt end of it stuck in the ground but plain 2 meters spear logically would have a tough task to stop it...

[Agent Smith]

But you see the spear isnt giving any area effect to keep the enemy away from you...Only shieldwall/classical phalanx has a chance against swordsmen...
This is because the sword is more expensive and takes more skill to use than the spear...
also I cant understand how spearmen are supposed to stop a heavy cav charge of armored knights the pike makes sense due to its length and the butt end of it stuck in the ground but plain 2 meters spear logically would have a tough task to stop it...

True. Stopping a cavalry charge is much more about bracing when it comes to spears than the actual weapon by itself.

[Bob the Insane]

also I cant understand how spearmen are supposed to stop a heavy cav charge of armored knights the pike makes sense due to its length and the butt end of it stuck in the ground but plain 2 meters spear logically would have a tough task to stop it...

I think to be fair their is an eras thing at work here...

Certainly your Gothic Knight is not going to be bothered too much by charging a bunch of guys in chainmail welding spears and shields, at least not much more than the same men with swords and shields. However the early Feudal Knight in his chainmail and chainmail barding is certainly going to have a lot more problems charging onto those 2 meter spears with their bases set...

I think the assumption is that Town Militia have light spears and are not particularly effective against cavalry. Spear Militia (for instance) have heavier spears that are effective against cavalry but are less so against other infantry.

You know after some test runs it is not that fact that S&S beat pikes that bother me, it is that they do it so very fast... I mean the pikes are abandoned almost immediately on impact rather than waiting until the S&S have significately inflitrated the ranks of the pikemen. I would not really expect to see the pike men cutting a swath through everyone, but I would have thought they could have held the S&S men at bay a little longer even if they would eventually loose...

I guess one question I have is: Are pikes the late era successors to spears or another unit type altogether?

[RickooClan]

Not sure if CA have taken notes from this thread or related issue??

It will be great if we could have some official respond on this!
(The great discussion/debaten here shouldn't be wasted)

[pike master]

INDEED!

[Jambo]

After conducting some rather extensive testing using the 3 different Scottish pike units vs DFKs I reckon I've found the best compromise! Until, that is, CA sort it themselves.

Removing their secondary weapon is an unfortunate must I'm afraid, and this is really more for the benefit of the AI than anything else. Although having said that, even I find pikes irritatingly unreliable in my own hands. We all know this can make pikes a bit uber, but there's a clever way round this without completely crippling their stats! What I did was reduce their main attack by 1 and also reduce their mass by 0.2. This reduction in mass gives them some much needed vulnerability particularly if attacked from directions other than from the front.

Try it out and see for yourself. It works quite nicely. :)

[PutCashIn]

Bring back Feudal Sergeants! They stopped cavalry and were available early.

[RickooClan]

Hi guys, sorry I haven't been around much today... been up at SEGA HQ with Alex. I will look into the Pike issue and see what I can find out.

Mark O'Connell
(aka SenseiTW)

Not sure if this is a good news or not....sounds like the pike issue was not addressed in patch 1.02.

[pike master]

mark does the intercedin for people on the .com.

he is trying to find out what the devs have done specifically to address the pikes and their intentions.

hopefully once he can get an answer or get them to answer the community it will put the issue to rest.

[Foz]

mark does the intercedin for people on the .com.

he is trying to find out what the devs have done specifically to address the pikes and their intentions.

hopefully once he can get an answer or get them to answer the community it will put the issue to rest.

Well that would certainly be a welcome development. Their intentions (and reluctance/inability to express them) have been the source of much debate and anxiety, I'm sure...

[Bob the Insane]

It will be interesting to hear...

Do we think this could be more of an issue with the Shield wall formation/special ability than the unit itself... I have been having issues with Halberd Militia in my HRE campaign. Enabling Shield wall does not appear to have an disernable effect (other than prevent the men from running) when facing either infantry or cavalry...

To continue my question from above, are Halberd militia a replacement for Town Militia or do they serve a difference purpose?

Am I intorducing the new troops too soon? Should I wait unit the enemy armies have a large proportion of AP (specifcally gun powder) missiles before introducing the use of pikes and halberds myself...

I staged a custom battle, 10000 point each side... Pike and muskets, plus a few S&S and knights on one side (Spainish) against a spear and knight, both mounted and foot and a few crossbows (French) on the other side.

It was an open field battle (grassy plain) and a victory for the Spainish (played by me). I would have to say the units that played the biggest role in this were the gunpowder ones. The morale hit from the gunpowder volleys breaks up the enemies attacks making it pretty simple to take on individual units rather than a whole army. My knights and gunpowder units did the most work with the pikes forming a line to base the action around.

I will have to try it the other way around to see how that goes...

[Jambo]

I don't just think it's the spearwall that's the problem, since removing the secondary sword weapon of the pikemen units make them function very well. The problem with vanilla pikemen is they change to their swords too quickly rendering them fairly useless.

I too have issues with western halberd units. Not only do they move excruciatingly slowly, they also function poorly much like the vanilla pikemen. However, if you replace their primary weapon (long_pike) with their secondary weapon, and remove the phalanx (spearwall) ability they function much better overall, much like the ME Halberd Militia and Janissary HI.

[Shahed]

Carl do you plan on releasing a fixer for 1.20 with rebalanced stats ? 1.13 was perfect and actually I still have'nt uninstalled it.

[Carl]

@Sinan: Yep, I've only just come online and noticed the patch is out though, it's at 44% downloading. I'll need 24-48 hours depending on how my Rebuild-ProblemFixer compatibility testing goes. Thats pretty much ready to go and i need to check it's fine under officio 1.2, then i'm gonna get onto V1.14 of PromlemFixer-Pure, thats ready for compatibility testing too, but I need to make a few checks on that with regards to the new 2-hander animations.

[Shahed]

Great news !

By the way could you please see if chasing routers is ok in 1.20, then don't change it. Just a suggestion as that was the only aspect where I felt 1.13 could have been better.