Stopping cavalry as England

[Lord Brend]

Great mod but, I looked at England in the custom battles and they have no pike units. Is there a unit that could stand up to charges from units like French Lancers in their roster?

[algorath]

Dont they have some sort of 2 handed infantry...they work against cav, and stackes

[husker9.2]

I would say billmen or their spear men would be their chief anti cavalry unit. I haven't ever heard of the English using pike units in their medieval military history, although you figure they would have after numerous conflicts with the scots.

[Edimonde]

I would say billmen or their spear men would be their chief anti cavalry unit. I haven't ever heard of the English using pike units in their medieval military history, although you figure they would have after numerous conflicts with the scots.

The english never relied too much on cavalry charges, and used the longbows against the scots.

[husker9.2]

The english never relied too much on cavalry charges, and used the longbows against the scots.

yea what i meant is usually a wise or smart king or commander would see the how well pikes work against cavalry and adopt them into the army.

[Laird of Ravescroft]

Never Any need. Scots rarely had much cavalry. In ithe end the French realised that a cavalry charge vs English/Welsh longbowmen was suicide. In fact in pretty well all M2TW mods and vanilla (unlike originalMTW) longbowmen are underpowered. they were invincible in defence unless massively outnumbered or outmanouvred, until advent of decent artillery. They didnt particularly try to kill the riders, but killed or wounded the horses. a french knight on the floor after a fall from his horse was as good as dead. Remember they could fire an arrow every 4 seconds. Imaigne this ;at Agincourt 4,000 archers firing simultaneously . Thats 60,000 arrows a minute! The cream of French Chivalry may as well have been charging machine guns. Longbow arrows did not have the velocity to pierce the best fifteenth Century armour except at short range though which is why apart from the very first attack the French attacked on foot. They were wading through a mess of mud.dead and wounded horses , virtually blind. They couldn't open their visors because of the rain of arrows. After 4O minites of that the English men at arms and knights were standing waiting for them,Longbowmen were good at melee too. They all carried a mallet good for whacking a knight on the head with. Concussed they would be topped with a knife through an armour joint. As to the Scots the English gave up fighting the Schiltron with cavalry after Bannockburn. Not a single substantial defeat by the Scots until after the Middle Ages. The last great Longbow/foot knight /billman combo was Flodden, against Scots pikes.Result predictable.

[DaVinci]

Well, true, but it must be said, as for Agincourt, that the french knight armies did tactical mistake after mistake in this battle. The french commanders must have been quite idiots.

I would say if Agincourt would have not been in Agincourt, just in the muddy and pin area as it was, but in an open and dry field, and the frenchies would have planned their tactics properly, the English wouldn't have had any chance to win their campaign.
On the other side, afaik, that event was the first time that an english army conscripted/hired longbowmen in such masses, and we know the reason: the english had not enough money to afford enough professional heavy cavalry and infantry forces to face the french heavy and professional army. And well, there was of course a quite high surprise-factor, just to ride into a muddy field with a heaven filled of arrows. As said, the french commanders did nothing right there.
It was imo. a portion of luck, english tactical cleverness and especially french impetuous dumbness, that the english foot army could slaughter the french elite in that way. And i can't remember a second battle event that is rendered in the same way as Agincourt.
Imagine the following: Open field, french commanders coordinate their tactics, encircle this english foot army, a skirmish with english arrow and french pavise crossbowmen fire is following, longbowmen run out of enough arrows with the time, french knights charge from all sides in the same moment, result: longbowmen-mince-meat-lines and a following english mass-routing is a sure thing. It is wrong imo. to say a longbowmen army is invincible in any case.

Edit

As to the Scots the English gave up fighting the Schiltron with cavalry after Bannockburn.

As i recently learned, the Scottish pikelines were actually chained together and sticked in the earth. If this wouldn't have been the case, they would have fled in front of the horse charges: a sure routing as well.
And even professional pikelines weren't always able to stop cavalry charges.

You always need to look very close at the things

[frontier-auxilia]

For me, one cheap unit of spearmen to be the speed bump and another to outflank and shut them off from the rear. Of cos give them a dose of arrows before they engage in hand to hand combat. Stakes are also helpful in forcing the enemy cavalry units to stay away from certain areas and attack at a place of your choosing.

Stopping heavy cavalry in this mod takes effort and i like it this way. Not only that its rewarding to field them and a refreshing challenge when fighting them.