Are pikemen too powerful for their cost?

[Kiki52]

Hi

Don't flame me but I have something to say about Pikemen. I had a custom battle with 20 Swiss Pikemen versus 20 Zweihanders. I charged the Zweihanders at the Pikemen, and they were completely slaughtered. I remember back when Darth Vader was here with Darthmod, some people brought it up that pikemen were too powerful and Darth changed it so most heavy infantry should be able to defeat most pikemen even head on. The reason being that the Pikemen were simply unbeatable in melee. It sure feels that way to me.

The Swiss Pikemen mercs cost less than Zweihanders yet they completely destroy them. Don't you think in melee vs melee, unit cost should be roughly equivelent to their relative power? If relative cost/effectiveness ratio for a unit or group of soldiers in real life is not good, they wouldn't use them on the battlefield anymore if pikemen can be most anything in melee.

What do you think about Pikemen.

Also, about the Kievan Rus, I was just wondering if they also seem a bit too powerful compared to lets say Novgorod. Kievan rus have mounted Cossacks, and have everything Novgorod has and more/better than they do. I was wondering how the Kievan Rus is balanced, if you compare Novgorod and Kievan Rus and they have every unit that is better and more.

[BigJake]

Also, about the Kievan Rus, I was just wondering if they also seem a bit too powerful compared to lets say Novgorod. Kievan rus have mounted Cossacks, and have everything Novgorod has and more/better than they do. I was wondering how the Kievan Rus is balanced, if you compare Novgorod and Kievan Rus and they have every unit that is better and more.

I think Novgorod have stronger H.Cavalry

[Fenix_120]

Historically Swiss soldiers(pike men or halberds) were the best of the best.

For every Swiss soldier that was killed in battle 40 of his enemies were slain, which is the highest kill to death ratio on earth at the time.


The saying "no silver, no Swiss" is not a false one however, and even though Swiss pike men should slaughter anything in a one on one, they should also be expensive.


The only weapon known to take out Swiss pike men without taking very heavy loses was an artillery barrage.

So yes, your right in that they should cost a lot more gold, but your wrong in that heavy infantry should be able to beat Swiss pike men.


My two cents.

[whhyy]

Pikes are a tricky thing to balance. Make them to strong and they rip through anything with ease.. Make them to weak and things become rather unrealistic.

You can see how difficult they are to balance when you look at the way CA addressed the pike bug. They knew removing there swords would ruin vanillas balance and make battles drag on forever in some situations (e.g Pikes at the gates) with even lowly pike militia eventually defeating heavy infantry. So they chose to tweak them a bit and keep the swords - the lesser of two evils in the eyes of a developer.

So as you can see finding the right balance for pike units has a lot of problems. Giving them high costs isn't a great option either for certain reasons.

Unless someone can do some serious changes beyond descr_unit.txt tweaks things ain't going to change..

The question is: Do you want a useless unit or an overly powerful one? :hmmm:

[domenic]

hi

i think it's realistic since you can defeat them easily if you don't charge them "face to face"

just take them by side or back and they die easily

just imagine you trying too pass a wall of pike, it's normal for heavy, light infantry to be destroyed (sorry for my english it's not my native language )

EDIT : ho and for the price i don't really thing they must cost more since their armor are less effective than heavy infantry and since their sword was remove their weapon are cheaper too

[Point Blank]

You can damage badly and sometimes beat swiss pikemen head to head with zweihanders. When you charge, a decent number of zweihanders will slip between the pikes and kill pikemen. Once the charge is over, way less will do so. You can then withdraw and charge again.

I notice the latest descr_formations_ai.txt file does not set pikes to defend mode. This also makes the WAY more powerful by allowing all pike rows to fight and move forward, not just the first 3-4 rows. This can be remedied by setting all phalanx infantry to defend mode:
default_melee_state defend
in that file, but that is a non-trivial change as it sets other units in the same block such as spearmen, swordsmen to defend as well so they become very ineffective.

[ZinedineZidane]

that's exactly why pikemen were used, they were a lot cheaper to maintain then heavy infantry! its like the transition from a crapload of armour to muskets and stuff

[Hrimfar]

I think that most pikemen should be easier to shoot down - I mean, for the most part, they go unarmoured! The pike was not the most "best" weapon in medieval warfare - it was cheap to make and it was really easy to train paople how to use it - when compared to sword or bow or even muskets.

BTW: I really think someone ought to do something about the model and skin for the swiss pikemen and also the landsknecht!

[Chim]

How can you possibly think that using a pike is easy to learn? The effective use of a pike requires years of individual but also group fomative training!
If one brakes out of formation the whole idea behind the phalanx for example is lost.

[Hrimfar]

How can you possibly think that using a pike is easy to learn? The effective use of a pike requires years of individual but also group fomative training!
If one brakes out of formation the whole idea behind the phalanx for example is lost.

Yes - I agree, to get a really great unit of pikemen you'd need good trainers and much time, probably having to let them experience battles as part of their training. But compared to other PROFESSIONAL units, the pikmen are having a easier time training - not quite as many ways you can use a pike as you can use a sword. Most training would be with formations and obeying orderes as a group. Say it takes a month to train a pikeunit into adequate form - it would take several years to train a unit of swordsmen to get the same effect (that's got something to do with the pike being the most popular weapon in the 16th century). Also, the pike is a cheap weapon, easy to replace if you have woods nearby.

[Rosacrux redux]

The pike is easy to use, but hard to use effectively - that's why the pike-armed mercenaries (Swiss or German) dominated the renaissance battlefield: they were mere peasants, but trained for years in the fine arts of butchering the man opposing you, by using a big, pointy stick. Discipline and keeping the formation in tact, was essential. Well, head on, pikes should defeat anything. But they should be also vulnerable to archers and arques/muskets and VERY vulnerable in the flanks.

BTW the Swiss and their German counterparts (the Landknechte) never actually employed solely pike-formations. They used pikes, halberds and sweihander, in an analogy 6-3-1 or 5-4-1 or even 4-4-2. The pikes are good, but they are not nearly enough.

[King Kong]

Just found an interesting passage from wikipedia regarding pikemen:

These largely defensive formations were essentially immune to knightly attack as long as the knights obligingly threw themselves on the spear wall, but the passive nature of pike formations when used by such troops with little armour and rudimentary training made them very vulnerable to enemy archers and crossbowmen, who could shoot them down with impunity. Many defeats, such as at Roosebeke and Halidon Hill, were suffered by the militia pike armies when faced by cunning foes who employed their archers and crossbowmen to thin the ranks of the pike blocks before charging in with the knights.

I think that's almost the way pikes are working with Real Combat: Pike units have almost no defense points, so they should be pretty easy to kill with any missile units.
Probably I will also increase this disadvantage of pikemen against missile units.
Their melee defense will stay the same though...

[Wolfcp11]

Just found an interesting passage from wikipedia regarding pikemen:

I think that's almost the way pikes are working with Real Combat: Pike units have almost no defense points, so they should be pretty easy to kill with any missile units.
Probably I will also increase this disadvantage of pikemen against missile units.
Their melee defense will stay the same though...

Thats cause of the lack of sheilds.

[Kiki52]

Just found an interesting passage from wikipedia regarding pikemen:

I think that's almost the way pikes are working with Real Combat: Pike units have almost no defense points, so they should be pretty easy to kill with any missile units.
Probably I will also increase this disadvantage of pikemen against missile units.
Their melee defense will stay the same though...

Were those knights riding on horseback and charged straight into the pikemen? Or were they dismounted? I assume they charged with a horse, of course they'll be slaughtered.

But what about the Spanish sword and buckler men? I heard they ran straight up to the Swiss pikemen, and when they came close they literally did something like a baseball slide under their pikes, then rose up and cut all the Swiss pikemen. Niccolo Machiavelli speaks about it though in one of his books that the pikemen died and were routed due to sword and buckler men. So I could see see a powerful late era sword unit like Spain's sword and buckler men defeating Swiss pikes head on I think.

Also, the Polish hussars (horsemen) were able to defeat Swiss pikes by charging straight on, although that was due to those horsemen having longer lances than the pikemen themselves (thats what I heard) but that's out of the timeframe of MTWII to have Polish Winged Hussars.

[Shaio]

But what about the Spanish sword and buckler men? I heard they ran straight up to the Swiss pikemen, and when they came close they literally did something like a baseball slide under their pikes, then rose up and cut all the Swiss pikemen. Niccolo Machiavelli speaks about it though in one of his books that the pikemen died and were routed due to sword and buckler men. So I could see see a powerful late era sword unit like Spain's sword and buckler men defeating Swiss pikes head on I think.

Actually i believe Machiavelli talked about a french general dismounting all his knights and crushing a swiss pike formation that way.

I know you have to raise the mass of dismounted knights to over 2 for them to reliably break pike formations, about 1.8 they usually break through the pikes, however would take so many losses that the pikemen would beat them with blades.

Mind you when i was messing around with that i was using vanillia EDU as base not a RC.

[whhyy]

KK. May I suggest a nerf to Guard Pikemen. They have no hard counter right now like all other units.

They absorb my missile spam like a sponge and taking them on in a melee is not an option. If I don't have javelins there is little I can do.

[Severloh]

That's why swiss pikemen are so tough right? Weren't they the best of the best?

But anyway, i made swiss pikemen face a pike militia, the swiss won, of course, but they lost A LOT of men. almost 90 were killed. Something is wrong, isn't it?

[Hrimfar]

...i made swiss pikemen face a pike militia, the swiss won, of course, but they lost A LOT of men. almost 90 were killed. Something is wrong, isn't it?

That's odd! Well, the swiss pikemen should have better armour which would make them stand a better chance against lighter armed foes...

[Point Blank]

Swiss pikemen are unarmored and impetuous, which adds one to their attack and subtracts 1 from defense.

[Severloh]

My opinion: Just make our swiss fellows stronger, so they can face a pike militia and not be almost decimated on the fighting