Pikemen Vs. Dismounted Knights

[ccqwert7]

Pikemen don't seem to be the same thing Phalanx units were in RTW, how would they fare vs Dismounted Knights?

[Sodbuster]

Here's my favorite Pikeman guide, as posted by Old_Scratch back in November:

Pikemen can be very effective offensively in vanilla, so much so that they can become unstoppable if used properly.

First of all, since we're talking about their offensive usage, you'll want spear wall on and guard mode off. Guard mode is what makes them go into "brace" formation, but it also causes them to move more slowly and they pretty much drop their pikes right away in melee.

With their mode properly set you need to use pikes in conjunction with other units. For example, you can use dismounted knights as your front line and charge them in, then take your pikes and tell them to attack the same units your dismounted knights are fighting. They will move up and start using their pikes between the dismounted knights effectively doubling your offensive power.

Now you can take this a step further and use my favorite multiplayer pike army. That is, all of my infantry consists of pikemen. I'll use Scotland for example. Your strongest pikemen are in the front line with the weaker pikemen behind, so highland pikes front line and Scots pike militia in back. You don't want any pikemen fighting alone, they all must have at least a second unit of pikemen behind. When you are going to close with the enemy just tell them all to attack in the same manner described above. Some may switch to swords but once all the pikemen engage the formation will be strong enough that the enemy will not be able to break through and will suffer severe causalities and morale damage. Once I get my pikes going there is little or nothing that can stop them, even the best infantry in the game. They are also very cheap so affording other units to back them up isn't a problem. Weapon upgrades are key too, I try to have it on all my pikes in multiplayer.

Other advantages to this are it's impossible to rear charge the formation with cavalry. If you see them coming around you can just take one of your double stacked pikemen and tell it to attack the charging cav. That's the end of that cav, go back to fighting in the front.

There are other tricks with pikemen, like if many of your pikemen are falling out of formation and dropping their pikes, just click stop, wait a second and then tell them to attack again. This resets them and they all pull their pikes out again. Anyway, this is my favorite and most cost effective multiplayer army and it works great. Using them like this they are almost overpowered. I have replays galore so I can post screenshots of what I'm talking about when I have more time.

This was taken from this thread:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=308593&page=2


That should get you started on killing stuff with Pikes.

[ccqwert7]

My Pikes when taken off guard mode don't keep using their pikes, they just walk forward and keep moving forward until they get within sword range and get pwnt.

On guard mode for me at least the first line of pikes collapses but the ones behind set up a proper formation and hold infantry off.

[eregost]

The trick is to click behind the unit you want them to engage with. They will attempt to move there and will impale anything in the way. They are also most effective when they can't be flanked. +rep me if this works for you