Can anyone give me a good stat balance for pikemen?

[Leaky]

Ive never tried to mess with unit density and all that, so I was hoping someone here can help me out and send me there favorite EDU of a Pikemen unit that does the following:

1: Almost invinsible in the front, can withstand heavy horse charge, but cant stop around 3 units attacking if defending gateway or bridge.
2: Pikes stay down!! Pretty much how RTW had it
3: Extremely weak in the rear and left flank
4: Useless against the oblique (btw, how the Spartans were defeated, free history today!)
5: Withstands calvalry charge from front easily, from rear disaster, instant route.


Thanks in advance

[Daergar]

The thing is that in order to make the pikes stay down, you have to remove their secondary weapon. Not sure if anyone has a better solution but that's the way I've been forced to do it since m2tw came out.

Never had to mess with the density, but I guess changing it from 1.2 to 1 would make them like a brick wall?

Sadly, this make the pikes almost too good outside a spearwall as they walk around and stab wildly at things with their big sticks. I haven't done so myself but I presume if you make their morale pretty low you could achieve a decent weakness to counter the killing machine phenomena, route instantly from behind and such.

[zerathule]

From my experience, Pikes in kingdoms are good. With highland pikemen for exemple, i can hold the line versus hordes of norsemen, infantry and cavalry, despite their weak stats. Hold ground now actually works, and pikes are really efficient.
Seriously, try it.

[Daergar]

From my experience, Pikes in kingdoms are good. With highland pikemen for exemple, i can hold the line versus hordes of norsemen, infantry and cavalry, despite their weak stats. Hold ground now actually works, and pikes are really efficient.
Seriously, try it.

If you mean without disabling their secondary weapon, I'd love to know how you get them to... not get utterly violated when they switch to their axes/swords/useless kitchen knives.

If you mean after disabling the secondary slot, I completely agree but that's been true since m2tw, even in vanilla. Though I've started advanced my pikes in a nice line now and with no secondary weapon they are very useful. A forests of lowered pikes stabbing away wildly, it's glorious. Reminds me of the Macedonian sarissa units in RTW/RTR.

[zerathule]

I meant using plain vanillia highlanders.
I had 5 units of highland pikes with no upgrades or experience that i left in the center of the field, and planned that they'd rout soon enough since i only had a couple archer units, 3 highlanders, 2 generals and 2 border horses versus 2 full stacks of norvegian troops (horse and infantry, with huskarls and gotland swordsmen).
I did no micro, only put them in defensive mode, and they held the line for most of the battle. Only one routed (it was flanked by an ennemy general) and most had more than 100 troops left at the end (on 150).
Since that battle, most of my troops are pikes and it works well. They are not that good when attacking, so watch out, but they still are ok.