pike men

[imb39changedmyusername]

i just got assaulted by the spainish during their siege of dublin. i put my scots pike militia in front of the gate in spear wall formation, and the sainish peaseants stormed through the gate and decimated the pike men with support from spear men. wtf?

[syntax_error]

What can be said, crap happens. If they had pike support, that could be where most of the damage came from. Then again, did you have any other units fighting in Dublin, or just your milita?

[imb39changedmyusername]

just the militia a that time, it was mainly peasents that cleaved through them.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Pikes are bugged. They are good against an initial charge of cavalry but once mêlée starts they want to use their more dangerous knives. Which means that they loose to anything with a hay stick.

[Larsen]

Pikes are bugged. They are good against an initial charge of cavalry but once mêlée starts they want to use their more dangerous knives. Which means that they loose to anything with a hay stick.

Do any of the patches fix that bug?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Do any of the patches fix that bug?

Nope. There are several fixes around on the forums. One is used in a lot of mods and fixes the formation. I don't know if that really works and makes them a hoplite mobile wall ( I really liked that in RTW). The other is to remove their secondary weapons, you know their feared and dangerous knives. This makes them somewhat overpowered.

[syntax_error]

Well, they could have been rather experience peasents. I've had some peasent groups with 4 experience that could cleave through untrained military units. I guess it also counts on how long your city was besieged. If they were held at siege for long enough, your troops could have been weakend by hunger and the such. I'm not for certain, but I saw somewhere on a post that the length of a siege contributes to the morale/health of your soldiers.

[Surgeon]

They were very determined peasants.

[Gaius Flavius Belisarius]

Wow, that's kinda nuts. Makes me miss the good ol' days of Rome Total War when you plugged a phalanx into a gap, it was just like having a mobile wall.

[MrMofo]

do you have any of the patches installed. Sounds like what happened before the patches fixed the shield values. It might not apply against pikes, but peasants were brutal then.

Also, i find you have to give your units room to let the others fill a space. Sometimes an army will just push through your guys if the rest of the army is behind pushing them in. In that case ill never ever put a unit directly in front of the door, i put them back a bit so the enemy can spread out on the sides.

[Sher Khan]

I must be the only person on this forum that is perfectly fine with how pikes are in M2TW and believe they aren't bugged.

[Theseus1234]

well sher khan, i think a lot of the people here got too used to the RTW phalanxes and their complete domination of the world

[Sher Khan]

Pikemen are meant to be a counter to the ridiculously heavy cavalry of late-game Western Europe, in this regards they perform incredibly well. Countering infantry? You've been recruiting well trained melee infantry since the early game, there's no reason to stop now. If you're being attacked by infantry, place some swordsmen within the ranks of the pikemen and have them shield your pikemen from infantry charges.

Pikes are godly when it comes to anti-cav work. You'll never see a unit of Lancers drop so quickly, even against cannon fire.


If you're having trouble with pikemen dropping their pikes too quickly, simply receive that initial charge, then single click the attacking enemy. Your pikemen will now advance with a push of pike. Moderately effective against infantry, but absolutely brutal against cavalry.

[SaintOfTheSword]

The pike militia are weak, and should only be used against cavalry in phalanx formation, frankly, they are no good against *anything* else. But if it's infantry, your best chances are to use the spear wall formation and try to attack by walking. You'll still lose, probably even against militia (you might defeat peasants though), but you'll take some with you. However, heavy pike militia are another story, they are killers. They can be effective anyway they are used, especially in pike formation.

For factions that, apart from pike militia also have halberd militia, I'd recommend the second, because even if the formation is broken, they still fight with halberds, not kitchen knives.

[thatguy]

I dont know what pikemen you all have but mine suck bit too much detail methinks
I could have some infantry charge some pikes head long, none would die as the yhit the pikes, and then, they'd lean RIGHT against the pikes (probably having a fag) and the entire pikemen sqauds just stands there. They dont even thrust at the enemy. Oh its even more annoying when those enemy soldiers, slash the empty air aboe the tip of the pike, and the pikeman holding it dies.
I hate pikemen, long live the halberd.

[imb39changedmyusername]

ok, i just replayed the battle, and i set the pikemen firther back from the gate and the peaseants charged with support from crossbows and spearmen and the pikes pretty much held them off sigle handedly with just 15 casulties.

[MrMofo]

yeah i love pikes. i dont think they're bugged either. I loved playing with scotland and the teutonic order, just for that reason.

You can achieve massively underpowered victories with pikes, but it takes micromanaging.

I make sure that i have at least two pike units for every very important choke point (in a siege im defending that is), sometimes 3 depending on how massive the force is.

Inevitably the first wave hits, and the guys in the front row will often break out their swords. That's when you double click their special action button, so it tells them to raise and then lower their pikes again and reform. It may take as long as 5-10 seconds, but they always reform, and then they hold the wall.

Along with that, i like going back and forth between different units holding positions, and if it's setup correctly, pressing the Guard Mode button, waiting a second, and then pressing it again. This makes the front row that's kneeling in front stand up and take one jab, killing 3-4 guys, or more, then kneel again.

Then when the unit youre fighting is sufficiently taken down, you can take them off guard mode, and often they'll just start stepping forward, jabbing as they go, until they poke right through the opposing unit and rout them.

yep, i likes pikes.

[Old_Scratch]

Yeah, I don't think pikes are broken either, they just aren’t the murder machines from RTW. Pike militia are actually one of my favorite units. For only 150 florins you have a unit that will destroy the most expensive cavalry. They also have three armor upgrades available which makes them much more useful. Pikes can also be great against infantry, even in the offense, but it takes a lot of micro managing them. I like to have my heavy infantry engage the enemy infantry and them tell my pikes to attack from the row behind my front. They will move up and start stabbing between my front line soldiers and increase the effectiveness of the entire line.