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Thread: Questions about spear

  1. #1

    Default Questions about spear

    I notice the spear in the mod have been weakened, so I set up a battle between 1400 Middle East heavy spearmen (200 soldiers per company) and 80 Lancer. The Lancer only charged once and then go close combat, they totally massacred all of the spearmen with very few lost, so my questions is:

    Can 80 Lancers really massacred 1400 spearmen in close combat as as well as in a charge.

    How do I use spear effectively in the game especially Moors because they have no armor as well as a good attack points.

  2. #2

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Here are a few tips: Use your own cavalry to stop the enemy cavalry. This includes lancer-type cavalry or horse archer/javelin mounted companies. As the Moors, you'll have no shortage of Arab Cavalry and Granadine Jinetes. With these mounted forces you can initiate a head-on countercharge to the enemy cavalry which is most effective if you have a spear-based company following up right behind your charge, engaging the enemy cavalry in a melee with your spearmen. Use horse archers (Fari Cavalry are godly) and jinetes to soften up the enemy cavalry significantly before they even hit your own troops. More often than not when I do this upon contact with my spears the enemy cavalry just routs instead of finishing the charge.

    A few other ideas include effective use of your own archers, crossbows and javelins before the enemy cavalry arrive. While one archer company won't seem to do much damage to a feudal cavalry unit, three archer companies firing at once actually will. I'll often use my archers to take down all of the cavalry on either the left or right flank of the enemy's army so that my own cavalry can utilize that flank for rear-charges without fear of enemy cavalry interrupting. Crossbows do much more damage than archers but often require clever angled placement (direct line of sight), which sometimes means in front of your spears. If the unit is something cheap like crossbow militia, it might be worth having them lob a volley of high damage bolts into the enemy cavalry, absorb the charge (the unit will probably rout), but then you follow up the melee with your own spears and trap the enemy cavalry before they flee. Lastly, the javelins are great if placed immediately behind your spear line. As the enemy cavalry gets close to hitting your spear wall your javelins will severely destroy them, again causing the enemy to rout upon impact or simply do far less charging damage.

    Lastly, the final tactic I typically employ is the use of archers' stakes in the field and then doubling up my spears on the flanks, or putting a two-handed armor piercing unit behind the spears. That way, after the enemy charges your unit, even if most of the unit is dead you have another secondary unit that is just as if not more effective at cavalry killing ready to rush into the melee before the enemy cavalry flee. This also works well, but the above mentioned strategies work best if you want to minimize your casualties.

    As for Heavy Spearmen dying from a frontal charge... Doesn't sound too wrong. There's a huge discussion going on about how effective pikes really were against cavalry, so I'm willing to suggest that spears also had an element of unreliability against a massive armored cavalry charge. I guess the secret is to stop them before they charge
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  3. #3
    hippacrocafish's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Are you still using my edited export_descr_units? If so, I'd go back to that thread I made because I had to correct a few things (Pikemen moved way too quickly, I forgot that I removed eastern standard bearers) so I would download that if I were you.

    I'm pretty sure they could since pikes were the only effective counter against mega-heavy cavalry, even then it wasn't exactly a death sentence for the cavalry.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    @smitty
    thank man that's very helpful, Im doing way better than before at dealing with cavalry.
    I still think spearmen is useless though, I usually throw them straight at the cavalry then use my own cavalry to flank theirs but doing that is too costly, I have to use at least 2 units to cover one of theirs, and a typical french army have at least 4 heavy cavalry unitsso the casualty is super depressing since I'm playing as Moor and currently at war with french in 1450 campaign.

    @hippacrocafish
    A few tips for your mod: Mongol as well as Eastern armoured horse have less mass than French and Western armored horse because they wear less armor, shouldn't they be faster? I notice all of their movement speed mod is 1.2, I think 1.3 for Eastern and Mongol horse make more sense.
    You are right the pike move way too quick, I'll download the thing you said.
    Last edited by Babygod22; July 21, 2010 at 10:27 PM.

  5. #5
    hippacrocafish's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by Babygod22 View Post
    @hippacrocafish
    A few tips for your mod: Mongol as well as Eastern armoured horse have less mass than French and Western armored horse because they wear less armor, shouldn't they be faster? I notice all of their movement speed mod is 1.2, I think 1.3 for Eastern and Mongol horse make more sense.
    You are right the pike move way too quick, I'll download the thing you said.
    Were they faster than western horsemen before? Because if I raise the speed of all heavy cavalry by the same amount the difference in speed is still pretty much the same.

    I'll test it out a bit, any ideas on things you think should be changed are welcome.

  6. #6

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Well a light cavalry horse not wearing armor or carrying much weight should move faster than a heavy destier carrying armored rider and some of its own armor.

    How much do changing the speed in the files affect it on the battlemap? I haven't played around with edu but from what I've seen in mods the speed changes in files seem limited. IE- heavy cavalry always catch light cavalry eventually. Map corners usually.

    It would be nice if the super heavy cavalry had a speed disadvantage vs light cavalry so there is a point of bringing light cavalry to the fight. If the light cavalry stop to fire arrows or engage in some melee then of course heavy cavalry should catch them, or maybe from an ambush but that is about it. The medium cavalry then becomes quite precious... almost the speed of heavy cavalry but the melee capability closer to heavy cavalry.

  7. #7
    hippacrocafish's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by Ichon View Post
    Well a light cavalry horse not wearing armor or carrying much weight should move faster than a heavy destier carrying armored rider and some of its own armor.

    How much do changing the speed in the files affect it on the battlemap? I haven't played around with edu but from what I've seen in mods the speed changes in files seem limited. IE- heavy cavalry always catch light cavalry eventually. Map corners usually.

    It would be nice if the super heavy cavalry had a speed disadvantage vs light cavalry so there is a point of bringing light cavalry to the fight. If the light cavalry stop to fire arrows or engage in some melee then of course heavy cavalry should catch them, or maybe from an ambush but that is about it. The medium cavalry then becomes quite precious... almost the speed of heavy cavalry but the melee capability closer to heavy cavalry.
    From what I've played so far light cavalry can easily outrun heavy cavalry, but some heavy cavalry still have that look as if they were running in slow motion, which I am trying to eliminate while still keeping them at a reasonable speed.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by hippacrocafish View Post
    From what I've played so far light cavalry can easily outrun heavy cavalry, but some heavy cavalry still have that look as if they were running in slow motion, which I am trying to eliminate while still keeping them at a reasonable speed.
    That would be nice... what mod has light cavalry moving so fast it easily outruns heavy cavalry?

  9. #9
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    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by Ichon View Post
    That would be nice... what mod has light cavalry moving so fast it easily outruns heavy cavalry?
    My mod.

    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=372764

    It's still a work in progress, and it's essentially the same thing as that "Bigger and Faster" mod in the 6.1 forums, I released it under the impression that it was incompatible with RR/RC, which was wrong. There is one difference though, I increased the training times of many units, a feature which doesn't seem too popular.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by Ichon View Post
    How much do changing the speed in the files affect it on the battlemap? I haven't played around with edu but from what I've seen in mods the speed changes in files seem limited. IE- heavy cavalry always catch light cavalry eventually. Map corners usually.
    That because those modder don't increase it to a point that you would notice the diffrence, I tried increasing Mongol Heavy Cavalry speed to 1.3 and they can run faster than the Mongol light horse archers (uneditted)
    Are you sure? I never see heavy cavalry catch up to light cavalry in a fair chase, only at map corner which is still pretty effective considering how much energy and time the heavy cavalry wasted, by the time they get back to support the main army I'd already massacred the infantry with flank attacks.
    Last edited by Babygod22; July 21, 2010 at 10:54 PM.

  11. #11

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    @hippacrocafish

    Do you know the maximum number that they allow for the mov_speed_mod? I want to see what happen when Lancers have super speed

  12. #12

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Well I am usually the one using the light cavalry so for me it matters. When running away from heavy cavalry charge it is impossible to escape which seems unrealistic. Heavy cavalry stays around and protects the infantry makes sense... not chasing down the light cavalry across the map. On huge units you reach map corners quite quickly and in turning often the heavy cavalry closes enough distance to catch the edge of the light cavalry formation.

    As well for when I am using FM to defeat 4-5 companies of light cavalry. I do it because it is possible but really I shouldn't with 1 heavy cavalry chase down so many light cavalry.

  13. #13

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by hippacrocafish View Post
    My mod.

    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=372764

    It's still a work in progress, and it's essentially the same thing as that "Bigger and Faster" mod in the 6.1 forums, I released it under the impression that it was incompatible with RR/RC, which was wrong. There is one difference though, I increased the training times of many units, a feature which doesn't seem too popular.
    I actually am more a fan of longer recruitment speeds and shorter pool replenishment. I think that is more accurate reflection and mentioned it to PB. He agrees to a point and try to reflect it with the later era professional units in RR/RC but majority of the game is not played with those late era units so... can't say as it would be popular move anyway so PB is entitled to do what he thinks is correct. What else are you changing? I might end up just taking 6.3 and looking over your edu and changing mine if you did alot of playtesting because I like BGR compilation with 6.2 and hope 6.3 compilation with few small changes will be best MTW2 version ever.

  14. #14
    hippacrocafish's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by Ichon View Post
    I actually am more a fan of longer recruitment speeds and shorter pool replenishment. I think that is more accurate reflection and mentioned it to PB. He agrees to a point and try to reflect it with the later era professional units in RR/RC but majority of the game is not played with those late era units so... can't say as it would be popular move anyway so PB is entitled to do what he thinks is correct. What else are you changing? I might end up just taking 6.3 and looking over your edu and changing mine if you did alot of playtesting because I like BGR compilation with 6.2 and hope 6.3 compilation with few small changes will be best MTW2 version ever.
    There is a detailed list of what I've changed so far, though it will probably change soon enough.

  15. #15

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    a thought, shouldn't more speed = more devastating charge in reality/real physics? example, get hit by a 100 km/h formula 1 would have perhaps equal or even bigger killing force/impact force than get hit by 75km/h normal sedan?

  16. #16

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by Babygod22 View Post
    @smitty
    thank man that's very helpful, Im doing way better than before at dealing with cavalry.
    I still think spearmen is useless though, I usually throw them straight at the cavalry then use my own cavalry to flank theirs but doing that is too costly, I have to use at least 2 units to cover one of theirs, and a typical french army have at least 4 heavy cavalry unitsso the casualty is super depressing since I'm playing as Moor and currently at war with french in 1450 campaign.
    And now you see why France began its imperial domination at that period and why the Moors were driven out of Spain But for gameplay, 1450 French cavalry are going to be so insanely armored I doubt even Granadine Jinetes will do much for you, let alone poor spear militias. Perhaps your focus ought to be forcing those units to engage you in a siege where they cannot charge on the open fields. I think you start getting camel gunners relatively quickly in that 1450 campaign too, so hopefully those can give you an edge on those Gendarmes/Chivalric Knight units.

    Or you're just dead meat
    Wealth beyond measure, Outlander.

  17. #17

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    @smitty
    True, even with the best javelin unit Almughavar who totally massacred a company of elephants in one wave of javelins only managed to kill 5 freakin Lancers after using all their ammo, I doubt guns will do anything to them, I'm thinking the best way to deal with them effectively is cannon ball, too bad Moor's cannon suck.

  18. #18

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by napoleonic View Post
    a thought, shouldn't more speed = more devastating charge in reality/real physics? example, get hit by a 100 km/h formula 1 would have perhaps equal or even bigger killing force/impact force than get hit by 75km/h normal sedan?
    I was wondering the same thing, I notice that Eastern Cavalry charge bonus are pretty low when it suppose to be faster than the Western one (Turhagut and Hochuchi of Mongol have 8 for charge I think), Ofcorse armor is also another important factor, I say East horse's charge bonus should be about 2 to 3 point less than West.

    I but in the game I can't even tell if the east armored horse is going faster than the west, look all the same to me.
    Last edited by Babygod22; July 22, 2010 at 11:48 AM.

  19. #19

    Default Re: Questions about spear

    Quote Originally Posted by smitty View Post
    And now you see why France began its imperial domination at that period and why the Moors were driven out of Spain But for gameplay, 1450 French cavalry are going to be so insanely armored I doubt even Granadine Jinetes will do much for you, let alone poor spear militias. Perhaps your focus ought to be forcing those units to engage you in a siege where they cannot charge on the open fields. I think you start getting camel gunners relatively quickly in that 1450 campaign too, so hopefully those can give you an edge on those Gendarmes/Chivalric Knight units.

    Or you're just dead meat
    The Jinetes are still useful for the high(20+) armor values but only when fired from above and the rear so sometimes you still need sacrifice unit to draw the heavy cavalry attention. Sieges are good as are pikes (mercenaries if you can't get your own) or other cavalry rear charges. Stakes and other obstacles work as well. Problem is not many units can hold the late period western heavy cavalries attention long without suffering large losses. Halberds, mercenaries, peasants... probably work well but not many such useful troops on the Moorish roster. Though Moors have pretty rich position and you can usually afford recruiting expeditions for mercenaries in S France, Italy, and the Alps if you have good relations with Genoa or whatever faction control those area.
    Last edited by Ichon; July 22, 2010 at 12:15 AM.

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