Phalanxes and animations!

[Lockcaps]

Hi guys, i posted this on totalwar forums, but i'd like to hear your opinions aswell.

I just thought of something: How in the world are they going to make phalanxes as dangerous as they are supposed to be and still have animations?

So in Rome 1, phalanxes were pretty much a meatgrinder for anything, even heavily armored enemies, if they attacked from the front. If you would attack with light cav, or light infantry even, they would die extremely fast, as in 10+ dying per second of combat. Now the problem arrives : in Rome2 we will obviously have animations for everything(which i really really like, im not against this feature by any stretch) and i guess that includes phalanxes.

The problem arrives when the killing power of the phalanx is reduced because the guys have to complete their animation before starting to attack the next target. I can imagine an animation looking something like this(i will call the soldier in the phalanx "Hoplite" for simplicity):
1. Hoplite brushes aside the shield/sword/whatever with his spear.
2. Hoplite shoves the spear through the enemy, and leaves it there for around 2 sec or so.
3. Hoplite pulls out his spear(slowly because of the dramatic effect, perhaps?)
4. Hoplite picks a new target, the combat "computer" calculates what is going to happens and the cycle repeats.

If you look at the movie "Alexander" this is a scene where the persian light infantry charges straight into a macedonian phalanx and get decimated. But the macedons don't "mow down" the persians like they do in Rome 1 - they have to kill everyone individually.

So what is the problems with this? Well, this animation probably took around 4-6 seconds or so. Now consider that EVERY soldier in the phalanx are going to do it like this - that is alot of time "wasted" on the animation instead of actually killing your enemy.

What does CA do? Well, there are a few options:
1. Give the phalanxes a really, really fast animation which will look kind of ridicilous like it does in Rome 1, in order to make them as strong as they were in the original.
2. Keep this animation and balance phalanxes around it, eg. make them not as good as Rome 1(all speculations ofcourse)
3. Keep animation and buff phalanx units in other ways, like making them less vulnerable to flanking, making their spears deflect arrows(as they did in real life!!!) etc.

Thoughts/opinions? Would really like to hear CA's "solution" to this problem - ofcourse, this is probably the least of their concerns now.

[mcantu]

why would you want to keep the insanely fast kill rate of vanilla RTW? thats one of the first things mods correct for...

[Lockcaps]

I am not saying that i want them to be so powerful(infact i think it's stupid how OP they can be), im just wondering whether or not CA intends for them to be as powerful as in the original.

[Hresvelgr]

I am not saying that i want them to be so powerful(infact i think it's stupid how OP they can be), im just wondering whether or not CA intends for them to be as powerful as in the original.

I think they should be pretty damn powerful. Even the Romans who fought them (and eventually won) said the scariest thing they ever saw was a Macedonian phalanx marching straight towards them, and for good reason. After all, there are 5 ranks of spears all pointed forwards. If you've got 16 men across the line in a single group, that's 80 very long pikes pointing at the enemy with more men pushing from behind just for that one group.

[Aetius]

I never really liked the rome phalanx, how it walked into the enemy and then slowly started poking. That is NOT how the phalanx operated at all. Have you ever tried to hold a long pipe or wood and just try to stab at something? It doesn't work well. The phalanx worked by keeping momentum, it had to keep moving and pushing and thrusting foward steamrollering its enemies. I hope they fix phalanx.

[Adreno]

Wish they could break.. normal spears too.. they were great weapons but might not allways last very long compared to other weapons

[Biggus Splenus]

Well, if CA represent what a phalanx (Greek and Macedonian) actually fought like properly this time, then we won't have a problem

[Greve Af Göteborg]

I'd rather see a preview on the campaign map, there's so little we know of the campaign map.

[Jedi]

The original rome phalanx or pike was useless.Its the same as the scottish pikemen in MII.They drop thier best weapon (spear) for a sword and proceed to get butchered.

In rome they never had pushing mass above 1.2 i believe which is equal to a legion.So in a 1v1 the legion would butcher the phalanx as they drop pikes for swords.

Now if you remove the sword and increase mass to say 1.4 on a phalanx and reduce the killing power you actually get a pretty good phalanx even though as OP said animations will suck.Ive edited this myself in the descr_unit.txt and it worked wonders.

I would like to see them simply walk foward and push any other unit back in a 1v1 fight while inflicting deaths in a moderate amount.The main thing about the phalanx is its ability to simply push or drive and army off the field resulting in confusion morale drops and panic.

So come on CA do the phalanx some justice this time.

[UchihaMadara21]

I think an insteresting feature for the phalanxes (and eventually, for all soldiers carrying shields) would be a actual "usage" of their Hoplons. For example, if they are marching against an army and receiving an rain of arrows, an automatic animation should run at this moment: They would use the shields to protect themselves (something like the "our arrows shall block out the sun" thing from 300); or if they were laying a siege and receiving arrows from the top of the walls, they would move up the shields. In RTW1, it was stupid to watch your Hoplites marching slowly and then dying because of the archers (the trail of soldiers in the ground was sad to see). Also, in very close-combat, Hoplites should do exactly what they did in real life (pushed {actually "hitting"} their shields against the enemy then piercing them with their swords/spears). If CA said that they will bring reality and emotion to the battlefield, something like that would be really epic. Also, another feature that would bring more individuality for the Hoplites: if they got corned by all sides, instead of destroying the formation, they should form a defensive circle (mainly with the "defensive formation" option turned on) to keep themselves alive; something like the schiltrom formation ability of M2TW, but automatic. Obviously, it shouldn't be perfect, sometimes, it could fail (the animation shouldn't be all-synchronized, but more "random". Some soldiers should do it 1 second after, for example).

[Lockcaps]

@UchihaMadara21 About the shields, it was stated in 1 of the previews that the soldiers used their shields to bash and push their opponets, so there is a pretty good chance of that happening.