Tarentine leuskapides crappy in battle map !

[Cheetor]

Has anyone tryed to use the Tarentine Leuskapides on the battle map, they seem unable to kill anything and either in phalanx formation or at sword point. Also in phalanx formation they seem to loose cohesion even by the weakest cavalry charge.

I noticed this in over 3-4 batles in wich my army of about 12 TL (Tarentine Leuskapides) brigades most at 2-3 silver chevrons against Ptolemey pezoi similar in number but no chevrons!!! (phalanx vs phalanx) every tine they got riped apart by the pezoi, lucky I had superior cavalry and a few other infantry units to flank and charge the rear or else I would have lost all battles, but even so I had the same death toll as the Ptolemey.

Same thing against Ilirians, this time I tried a TL charge at sword point(same silver chevrons) equal in numers, the inexperienced ilirian spearmen and hoplites held them back with little to no losses until the ilirian misile troops routed all my silver chevron leuskapides!!! 2 turns later I retrained, faced the same ilirian army (only 10% weaker) and autoresolved, crushing victory for me 4-1 losses.

In autoresolve they seem good enough, that's how I got them at silver/gold chevrons, but battle map they seem to have 0 efect.

Please note that I am an experienced battle map comander, I usually win most battles with 5-1 loses when army strength is equal so I did everything by the book, they just don't do any kind of killing.


Anyone else ?

[Carados]

They seem fairly competent to me? What battle difficulty are you playing on??

I can see a few issues here. The first one is that you say you use 12 units of them. Have you tried using the standard epirote phalangites too? If not, try using one of them in the same way as your leucaspides. It might be that the way you are telling them to attack results in them attacking with their swords rather than sarrissa or other stupid things like that.

Another point is that sometimes in phalanx vs phalanx situations the whole combat gets completely muddled up and you'll find soldiers all over the place. This will lead to a lot of casualties on both sides.

The last point, which is quite crucial really, is that the Ptolemaic phalangites are much better fighters in the desert than yours are, as such you should find you suffer a lot more casualties against them when compared to phalangites in cooler climates.

[Quinn Inuit]

Strange. The Tarentines have fine stats and only slightly less mass. There's really nothing in the code that should make them different.

[Wambat]

The desert fighting point is very relevant. Phalanx combat was, before Alexander, all about leaning on the enemy untill one side or the other became exhausted and broke. If you are fighting in deserts and your opponent gets an effective boost in in stamina in the dessert, your troops will be at a decided disadvantage.

I see you say you are an experienced battlefield commander. I have no intentions of insulting your intelligence or skill, so please forgive me if I am waisting your time with the following advice:

1) It is very important to pay attention to your units status, do not bring your infantry to the enemy at anything less than "fresh" if you can help it. Also, take steps to reserve your stamina once engaged, if you set your infantry to guard mode and then simply walk them into the enemy they will do there job of holding the line and killing a few of the enemy while losing stamina at a much reduced rate compared with charging them into the enemy lines with guard mode off.

2) No matter what kind of units you are using, if you want to get an extremely good kill ratio against hoplites and there ilk you need to be flanking them. You can always present a minimal depth front to the enemy hoplites, so long as you use the above technique and send your other infantry and, or cavalry to assault from the rear ASAP.

[Cheetor]

I admit I did not know the dessert bonus thing, but that should be a little advantage comapred to the experience advantage my troops had... 3 silver comapred to none on their side, no bonus can top that!

I user large unit size (240 men brigade) btw.

As for the rest I was very aware of, dont't enage the enemy with tired soldiers, stron phalanx straight line, no gaps, at leaset 8 men deep, dont do anything that might affec phalanx cohesion, guard mode on to maintain formation and suffer little loses, charge the rear... I do this stuff on a regular basis with very good results.

As an update... I tired it again last night same result. It was an 3 on 3 fight.
I had 3 TL brigades 1 gold chevron each, 3 star general.
They 3 had 3 pezoi no genreal and no chevrons, and it was a dessert I'l give them tat.
Battle joined phalanx vs phalanx, at first it seems I had the upper hand but at one point, one pezoi brigade made a step foward and everything changed I started loosing much more men they started losing much less. I got to the point that army strength was 2:3 in their favor and obvious I was going to lose, so I took the general and charged the rear, broke them and I victory, thanx to the general cav. Final victory count I lost 300 they 500 but only because of my general who broke them and then pursued to encrease their body count.

Few turns later I tried the same thing... exactly same battle ground but this time with 1 silver chevron Epirote Phalangites (no TL), this time it was 10 on 10 brigades. I had a 5 star general but less chevrons than before so an all same strength ratio, they had 10-11 pezoi brigades no general no chevrons. Battle joined... phalanx vs phalanx... fast forward... fighting... all pezoi rout without any charge to the rear flanking or any tactical advantage just plain old push pike fighting. Clear victory, count... I lose 300 they 1500 with no pursuing all the killing was done by the phalanx.

Clearly something wrong with the TL, perhaps it's just my installment, but the stats are good engouh in autoresolve they do well enough. I aslo has previous battles with 12-15 brigades TL vs similar numbers of pezoi same result so brigade number does not seem to influence.

[Cheetor]

Also they did equaly bad against Ilirian troops in about 3 battles I did not autoresolve with them, either sword point or phalanx formation... very bad results... so it's not just a phalanx cohesion or phalanx vs phalanx thing, they seem to have an all around battle map disadvantage, one that Eporote Phalangites or mercenary pezoi do not.
Again wen I quit fighting the battles and autoresolved the ilirians where smashed, I took most of their provinces with just 13 Trantine Leuskapides brigades and a competent general with autoresolve.

[Carados]

Hmmm
Well with all that said, it might be that this "slightly less mass" is a crucial factor when dealing with phalangites. What are the current stats for the pezoi and leucaspides??

[FriendlyFire]

Hmmm
Well with all that said, it might be that this "slightly less mass" is a crucial factor when dealing with phalangites. What are the current stats for the pezoi and leucaspides??

If I'm reading the right numbers in export_descr_unit.txt, then Tarentine Leukaspides ("rtr_tarentine_phalanx") and Ptolemid Pezoi ("rtr_egyptian_macedonian_infantry") both have a mass of 0.8. The Pezoi have the advantage of a denser formation (0.9,1 instead of 1,1) and a better stat_heat (1 vs. 3). Both units fight the same in sand (second number in stat_ground). The Tarentines should be better at melee combat out of phalanx formation (higher attack rating and lethality of their sword).

One oddity is that the Tarentines have both the "light_spear" and "long_pike" primary attributes. Maybe this is the cause, i.e. they're fighting as if they only have spears, not pikes? Highlighted below...

Edit: After looking at other long_pike phalangite units in export_descr_unit.txt, a better way of putting it is "the Pezoi are the only phalangites who don't have the light_spear attribute". Every single other phalangite, except the Pezoi, have light_spear or spear. The comments at the top of the file say that the spear attribute gives a combat bonus against cavalry, but a penalty againt infantry. So, Pezoi seem to be the only phalangites who don't have a penalty when fighting infantry!

type tarentine phalanx
dictionary rtr_tarentine_phalanx
category infantry
class spearmen
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier tars_elite_hoplite, 60, 0, 0.8
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_sap, hardy
formation 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, square, phalanx
stat_health 1, 5
stat_pri 14, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 25 ,0.4
stat_pri_attr light_spear, long_pike, spear_bonus_8
stat_sec 6, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 25 ,0.3
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 6, 18, 3, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 3
stat_ground -4, 0, -8, 0
stat_mental 16, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1540, 552, 90, 120, 500
ownership greek_cities, slave, macedon, carthage, epirus

type egyptian macedonian infantry
dictionary rtr_egyptian_macedonian_infantry
category infantry
class spearmen
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier egyptian_pezoi, 60, 0, 0.8
attributes sea_faring,hide_forest,can_sap,hardy
formation 0.9, 1, 2, 2, 8,square,phalanx
stat_health 1, 4
stat_pri 14, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 25 , 0.4
stat_pri_attr long_pike, spear_bonus_8
stat_sec 5, 3, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 0 , 0.25
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 21, 3, leather
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 1
stat_ground -8, 0, -8, 0
stat_mental 15, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 0
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1740, 385, 104, 112, 432
ownership egypt

[mcantu]

difficulty level?

[Cheetor]

Battlemap dificulty is normal, as stated above all my other units perfom excelent, levy hoplites, epirote phalangites, cav, those do great... I have them all at silver and gold chevs and can break most troops with ease including full stacks of Ptolepemy pezoi.

[Quinn Inuit]

That's strange. Regardless, though, I thought long_pike supplanted light_spear. One way to find out: Cheetor, why don't you add the light_spear attribute to pezoi and see if they fight differently?

[Carados]

That still doesn't explain why the epirote phalangites fare better, despite having poorer stats.

Surely if only the ptollies pezoi lack the light_spear attribute then the epirotes will be just as susceptible to being destroyed so easy?

[Quinn Inuit]

One would think, yeah. I'll have to run some test battles on this.

[Cheetor]

As an update to this thread.


I Made some extra tests out of campaing ( I gave up on the Eipote campaign and started a german one, like all my other campaigns at some point it bacame to easy...). I tried in 'custom battle' some one on one phalanx fights. I only used mainstay phalanx, no elite phalanxes or native weak ones like persian or machiamoi, just regular ones leukaspides, pezoi or variations. Don't remeber the exact results, but I have an overview. Battle map (in case you are wondering is default map) is the one with the tower in the middle, it looks like a desert althoug I'm not sure.

So here are my comments on the results:

1. Worse ever:
The one that and lost all fights... Tarantine Leukasipides, upon zoom on the battle I noticed in most figts that at some point they loose formation and all switch to sword... althoug the ones still in formation in show both the sword and pike at the same time, that must explain the total ineficency of these units, they switch to sword fighting way to easy, slightest disruption in the formation and they switch to sword, all of them!! but if you look from a distance they still have some pikes, else I would have caught it sooner.

2. Clearly alot stronger than TL but with a high defeat count it's the Pontus Pezoi, similar behaviour but not as decesive, they seem too eager to lose phalanx formation. They had average defeats from all other pezoi. Al also got this impresion from my 3 previous pontus campaigns.

3. Pezoi and leukasipides (egypt, macedon, seleucid):
Good enough, they can hold their own againts most, performed as expected.


4. Much better then expected, curious enough Epirote Phalanx... not one defeat althoug they have same stats as everyone else.

Please try it for yourself if you have the time, I'm curous on your results, but it's clear to me that the stats that are visible ingame are not the only ones that affect a phalanx combat value.

Any chance it is a skin problem, not a stats one ?

[Gomer]

I quickly tested out a fight between Tarantine Leukasipides vs Pezoi (Ptolemy) and the white shields lose because they break formation, as they are a wider front phalanx and the pezoi push up the middle, breaking their formation causing them to drop from phalanx and use their swords.

Most likely why they appear weaker against other phalanx units.

[Cheetor]

That is only when they are controled by the AI... when I use them, I set them at leaset 8 lines deep, and still lose, you can try againd with a short and deep formation, most likely it will be the same result.

[Caesar Augustus]

I see people talking about amending the formation of their troops all the time, but I must be being really dense, because I've never seen a way of doing it before. Any chance one of you could give me a quick heads up on how to do so please?

[Carados]

When you click to place a unit, if you hold down the button and drag your mouse you should see some yellow triangles? This is the formation the unit will assume when you let go.

[Caesar Augustus]

Ah wonderful, cheers Carados!

[Quinn Inuit]

This is strange behavior. Based on this explanation, I have an idea, though.

Try changing the stat_fire_delay and charge_distance lines to these:
stat_charge_dist 2
stat_fire_delay 55000