Charging hoplites use swords

[rhetoricalcalvary]

First, sorry if this has already been brought up, I searched for something like this and didn't see anything, so...

I've noticed that hoplites, as in, hoplites without the phalanx formation (i.e. armored hoplites) use their swords when charging instead of spears. When they make contact and reform, the spears come out and a pretty authentic slugging match occurs.

Does anyone else notice that they charge with swords, or is it just my game? Is there a way to have them charge with spears, since that's basically what a hoplite battle was--charge as hard as you could (with overhand spears) and push?

Thanks!

[Jingles]

It's not just your game. This only happens with the hoplites that use their spears under arm, such as the athenian or Byzantine ones. This also includes other spearmen such as triarii or the carthaginian sacred band of baal. The idea is that you can choose to make your spearmen fight with their spears OR with their swords (this is done by holding down ALT when you click to attack) A side effect of ths feature is that when such units charge they use their swords, then get their spears out as you described.

[rhetoricalcalvary]

huh. yeah, i can see that with units that go underarm with spears. thanks, i'll keep that in mind.

[Athkara]

If you don't want them to use their swords, at all, then go to the unit's entry in export_descr_units.txt, and find their secondary weapon line - "stat_sec"

then just replace the stats there with

stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 0 ,1

Now the unit doesn't have a secondary weapon and will only use their primary one, their spear.

[rhetoricalcalvary]

I thought about asking how to do that, but what kind of effects would that have on the battlefield? I mean, would it impact effectiveness if they could only use spears?

[Gotthard]

Spears add (iirc) 4 defence to the unit they are attacking... basically they aren't as good fighting infantry as they are cavalry. Usually this is offset by extremely high spear attack values, and the bonuses they get against cavalry are extremely high... frankly, any hoplite unit that takes out it's sword is worse than those who don't imho... my testing in this area has revealed the same, but these are not exhaustive.

[beatoangelico]

actually the penality seems to be -4 to their defence

[Gotthard]

Ahh, you are correct sir! It is a -4 to defense. More information on unit attributes can be found here (and it's where I found my mistake):

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=111344