Pike Troubles

[thingy850]

Can someone make a guide explaining how to use pike phalanxes because for me, the pikes dont seem to have mass and behaves more like heavy spearmen than pikes. The pikes almost never actually hold the enemy charges back and it just devolves into a giant melee. To me, they dont live up to the unstoppable wall of pikes that they were in history :/

[QuintusSertorius]

Pikes are broken in M2TW - look at how they perform in vanilla. They worked better in RTW.

You should only ever deploy them in guard mode, which should be on by default.

[Mamlaz]

Erm, aren't they quite deadly in stainless steel and also good in some other mods like Italian Wars and 1642?

[Imperial Pudding Head]

I'm not quite familiar with the pikes in those mods but I think the glaring issue is that the team is recreating macedonian phalanx, on a platform that base themselves on late medieval phalanx, although yes same weapon but they had different function and mechanics

The most obvious of the problem, barring strictly mechanical issues such as the fact that we can't add secondary melee weapons is that the macedonians were meant to create a moving spearwall to complement hammer and anvil tactics, while late medieval pikes existed as a static spearwall in a combined arms tactic to protect arquebus/musketman from cavalry

Another major issue I would like to point is that pike units are ridiculously hard to balance, anyone who played rtw will remember the glorious days of proper phalanx warfare, with double enveloping phalanx lines, phalanx squares, and whatnot. How they could win insane amount of odds in bridge battles simply because of the help of one mighty phalanx pikemen, how the pikemen majestically swish their sarissas while marching to swat out arrows, and how any cavalry unit no matter how tough will instantly turn into shish kebab simply from touching the tip of the unmovable line of pikes
Rtw engine was made for macedonian phalanx, and it was good, in fact a little bit too good. One could say we're a bit spoiled by that experience
The pikemen while can be an unstoppable force in the right terrain and conditions, they're also difficult to control, slow and ponderous at march, and they can't win battles on their own.


On a more serious note I typically deploy them on guard mode, on a single line, with more flexible units (hoplites, thureophoroi) on the flanks. It's important to move as one and not split up the line especially since the AI didn't like massive line clashes and prefer to focus on weak points on your lines.
You can use this to your advantage, skirmishers and archers are typically seen as soft targets by the AI and could be used to lure the enemy towards your line, just make sure to adjust for the pikemens slow march compared to the missile units fast movement.
If the AI doesn't take the bait and you need to shove your pikes on their faces then use the alt+move to behind the enemy lines to make the pikemen march perfectly into the enemy.
Once the tip of the pikes got into contact with the enemy you can leave it be and preserve your men, the units tangled up won't be moving anytime soon and it would be perfect for flankers (hoplites,thureophoroi, etc) or heavy cav to crash into the flanks. If you want to use the pikemen aggressively I normally turn the guard mode off and order them to attack the units currently stuck on the end of their pikes this would cause the pikemen to lose some cohesion but will be actively shoving pikes to any poor sods they're targeted to

Some extra tips
- When you see one of your pikemen suddenly going derp and began to break formation press backspace, this would cancel orders (obviously) but will also make your men stick together and try to reform the formation properly
- Pike units marches on different speeds. Levy pikes (deuteroi, pantodapoi) being the slowest, the regular phalanx in the middle, and agema phalanx being the fastest. Take this into account when marching them all together, and don't have any of them lagging behind when moving en masse

[RCDS28]

Thank you ! I am new on this mod and this information is very useful, especially for someone like me who likes to play with the Greeks factions.