broken hoplites and pikes

[kuaminifu_mwenzi]

am i the only person who is having a lovely fight against hoplites in the front line, and for some reason their whole formation spins on the spot so that their line just barges through mine like my troops have 0 mass? or when i rear charge pikes, they just smash my line back, about face on the spot, and slaughter the unit i used to flank? is this cropping up for anyone else?

[Falco]

am i the only person who is having a lovely fight against hoplites in the front line, and for some reason their whole formation spins on the spot so that their line just barges through mine like my troops have 0 mass? or when i rear charge pikes, they just smash my line back, about face on the spot, and slaughter the unit i used to flank? is this cropping up for anyone else?

Yup, happens. Don't think there's anyway to fix it either unfortunately, I think KAM touched on this the other day, can't remember the thread though.

[Dago Red]

I think it's all a work in progress, despite huge improvements and some pretty cool features like 1-click engage and double-click push. Units in this handicapped engine attack single men at the center of enemy units and have cause these idiotic pivots since the release day of the vanilla alpha pile of turdetani. I don't know why the problem is mostly solved, but cropped back up again with hoplites.

As for the phalangites, if they spin to face a new flank attacker, you are still engaging them with your original unit so I'm not sure what the problem is (other than the AI never used to do this, but would continue facing the original opponent). Either way you still have them "flanked," by the first unit. If not, you need to re-engage them. If they're hoplites/phalangites, you may never have been engaged in them in the first place so they were just standing there in a kind of weak defensive stance rather than actively fighting.

[meerkatology]

hoplites pushing thru by formation shifting is generally pretty bad for the hoplite, when their formation shifts, esp being rear charged by cavalry then pushed forward, they suffer massive casualties shifting their formation.

its very bad for the hoplite unit itself.

pikes seem to suffer much less, but its generally bad for the unit itself.

i've neverh had experience of flank charging them and then having my flanking units get decimated, they try to maintain their formation rather than all turn to face my flanker and killing them. nonphalanx units do alot more damage to my flankers

[KAM 2150]

That turning thing is a vanilla bug, it looks at if this is hardcoded behavioir from CA so they would face flanking/rear attacking enemy bit they forgot to take into account that unit might be aleady locked in frontal combat...

[Butan]

If you're pincer attacking a unit which about-turns magically, at least there is always one of your unit attacking it from behind. When you're flanking/rearing un-engaged enemy units then this is very problematic indeed, but you will still get a nice initial charge damage. Then there's also the fact that they can surround you within their formation while re-forming and make for some really funky battles
Everyone hate it when it happens, but its near impossible to avoid.

[rbt]

Did you check it with hold line formation ability?

[Goatse_Mare]

This issue is easily the biggest flaw in the mod right now in my opinion. I love all the new hoplite & pike mechanics but phalanx vs phalanx battles are sometimes borderline unplayable because of this.

[KAM 2150]

It is not the flaw in the mod, it is flaw in the game. Same happens in vanilla.

[milohve01]

hi can fix that, can be remove phalanx formation ?????? for me is no fluit...

[Tenerife_Boy]

hi can fix that, can be remove phalanx formation ?????? for me is no fluit...

Remove phalanx formation...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Dresden]

I believe the Data Venia submod does just that, its not updated right now for 1.2.2 but it should be soon.

[Goatse_Mare]

It is not the flaw in the mod, it is flaw in the game. Same happens in vanilla.

True, but I am fairly certain it is the mass/push attributes that hoplites and pikes now have that make it so glaring in this current version of the mod.

[Tenerife_Boy]

True, but I am fairly certain it is the mass/push attributes that hoplites and pikes now have that make it so glaring in this current version of the mod.

Totally agree. Removing this well balanced feature is madness.

[theLuchii]

I have a few method I use to remedy the situation. The more effective one is for when pikes/phalanxes push forward and turn around to face the flanking unit, simply wait the few seconds until they start the "push" phase then pull your flanking unit back as they are now disengaged. The enemy hoplites/pikes with them proceed to take a lot of damage to the rear, and turn around again, at which point you charge them from the rear with the flanking unit for a second time. At this point they should be weak enough where you don't have to wait to devote any more micro to the situation, and remember shock cav are exceedingly good at this tactic. As for phalanxes bisecting your line, if you can hold a unit in the rear and push them through your lines to intercept the phalanx as it tries to pivot into yours, the new engagement can halt their turn, but I've had somewhat more mixed results with this.

[KAM 2150]

True, but I am fairly certain it is the mass/push attributes that hoplites and pikes now have that make it so glaring in this current version of the mod.

Pikes have it even in base game.

[Ikeis93]

I need, I BEG for a submod that disables hoplite phalanx and let them just with Formation Attack (until it is kinda fixed). it bugs me so much that not only we have to face this idiotic behaviour against helenistic factions but also againts barbarians godammit. I swear in vanilla was not as big of an issue as in DeI
The solution might be to make the unit inmobile when in phalanx formation.

[Dresden]

As I posted above Data venia I believe does get rid of the phalanx as we have it, so there is already a submod for that. The reason its more noticeable in DeI is because we use the pike behavior that causes it in more locations than vanilla.

[iRoygbiv]

I think I've discovered part of what is making this problem worse in DEI - when playing as Rome with formation attack off my units will tend to wrap around the ends of weirdly angled phalanxes, which visually stands out as odd. However when formation attack is turned on (using a submod) my units will swing to face the phalanx head on, which visually looks better. You will end up with a few kinks in the battle line but other than that it looks ok, nothing immersion breaking like a unit of hoplites at right angles to a blob of legionnaires.

So yeah, I think the issue is much more noticeable because FA is turned off for Rome in DEI. If you want to have a semi fix then only play against phalanxes with units that have formation attack!

[Dresden]

We have turned formation attack back on in the latest update in a test to see how it works, it may get applied to more units later.