Aren't phalanxes overpowered?

[Morshu9001]

I've always had trouble fighting these. It seems like the only thing you can do is attack from the sides or back because even good heavy infantry get killed if you send them into the pikes or spears. They can turn around and fight when attacked from behind, so I'm afraid to charge cavalry at them even from the back. They hardly take any hits from arrows to the front. And the Selucids get these dirt cheap militia phalanxes that are so much better than my eastern infantry (as Armenia) and cheaper! Is there some downside to phalanx units?

Of course, I try to surround them with my cavalry archers so I can shoot their backs, but cavalry archers beat almost any AI-controlled unit anyway.

[Morshu9001]

Oh, more specifically, I have trouble fighting these when I play as the Romans. Armenians have horse archers, so the phalanxes aren't a problem unless I run out of ammo.

[Sar1n]

Well they're supposed to be impenetrable from front. Go for flanks. It's not hard against AI, it never uses phalanx unit properly.

[Morshu9001]

Yeah, but even the AI usually turns the phalanx around in time to kill my men after I flank. If I attack from both sides, I kill them, but it seems like I waste too many men on a cheap militia phalanx. A human could use a phalanx really effectively. They just seem like normal spearmen but way better.

[Sar1n]

They are slow, that's one disadvantage. Scatter the battlefield and take them out one by one. You don't need to rush head-on against enemy, that's the kind of combat phalanx was designed for. This isn't TWR2, you need to do more than just throw units against enemy and wait who wins the blobbing fight.

[Doros_of_Sparta]

The big issue with Romans vs phalanx is that the pila don't work like in real life. The point f the pilum was to eliminate one shield, the shield was the phalanx, without it the line would shatter completely. So the Romans could eliminate 2 shields with every soldier. Other than that the phalanx is very easy to beat unless it's supported by to tier cav. You could also try clicking behind the hoplite unit so your men force past tree spear and get them into melee combat where rome is king

[Oskatat]

It seems like a bold claim to say that the shield was the phalanx. The pike phalanxes in the game have a tiny shield and next to no armor, they still totally slaughter a frontal charge. Either they are grossly inaccurate and overpowered, or the spear wall was the phalanx and the shield an extra. Good to have, no doubt, and very useful, but not essential. A pike phalanx does very badly against missiles, which sounds reasonable considering the small shieldand lack of armor.

[Doros_of_Sparta]

It's not a bold claim is a historical fact. The point of the pike phalanx was to bring far more spears to bear and increase the the casualties and help prevent the pushing match that was greek warfare by breaking the opposing phalanx before they ever went into close combat. The game does have that terribly wrong and that's why it's so easy for your men to push past the pike lines and get them into melee where even militia hoplites can beat higher end units.
The Roman legion was designed to beat the phalanx as they had fought in phalanx originally but found it unsuitable to Italy. They fully understood the strength and weaknesses of it and as such knew how to it. Thus the pilum. Take shields out of the fight by hanging a spear from them and you take away the phalanx primary strength, It's near impenetrable fron the front due to the shield wall. And as such is my claim, the shield was the phalanx, the pike was the Macedonian phalanx as you say but not classical period.
Basically the romans had a much larger shield so they could protect themselves advancing through the spears and get into melee where the now shieldless greeks were whipped.

[BatGoat]

The pila was designed so that when it stuck into a shield, some armour, or some poor enemy soldier's body, the handle snapped off, making it impossible to throw it back (as one could do with a normal javelin) and also to hamper the movements of whoever it was stuck to. If you could imagine a poor sucker with their shield impaled by two or three of these things, trying to hold the line (or even move forward) you quickly come to realise that the Romans were ingenious and somewhat cruel bastards.

[War lord]

I've always had trouble fighting these. It seems like the only thing you can do is attack from the sides or back because even good heavy infantry get killed if you send them into the pikes or spears. They can turn around and fight when attacked from behind, so I'm afraid to charge cavalry at them even from the back. They hardly take any hits from arrows to the front. And the Selucids get these dirt cheap militia phalanxes that are so much better than my eastern infantry (as Armenia) and cheaper! Is there some downside to phalanx units?

Of course, I try to surround them with my cavalry archers so I can shoot their backs, but cavalry archers beat almost any AI-controlled unit anyway.

Send Armenian Heavy Spearmen to pin them down, and then send Cataphracts into their flank.

EDIT: And as a Roman faction Urban Cohorts can beat anything short of Armored Hoplites from the front. Hammer and Anvil with Praetorian Cav to reduce casualties.

[Vossie]

Phalanx was the best unit back in the day, obviously it's very deadly but also easily detroyed if you use the right tactics.

What I like to do is either lure them with cavalry ( preferd light cav) and then repeatedly charge into them from the rear or flank with another unit of cavalry ( preferd heavy cav). Pull them out before they start turning towards you. This will cause minimum casualties.

This tactic obviously don't work if you face a full army. If you have to face them head-on try to pin them from the front with infantry ( Use light, expendable forces like mercs if you don't wanna lose to many units ) then try to get your cav or heavy infantry to flank them. Also killing their general will cause a major morale loss wich will probally makes them run instantly when you flank them.

[BatGoat]

The trick with the flanking though, is that it has to be done fairly expediently, especially, if for example, you're holding the line with lighter infantry, who run the risk of being peeled out by hoplites pretty darn quickly and running off like crybabies to their mommas (yes, Hastati, I am calling you out).

[Doros_of_Sparta]

About the only thing you can do with hastati against a decent phalanx is click behind them and they will force past the spears and try to get them to pull the sword out. You can hold the line much longer like that. Still will suffer heavy losses and will rout fairly quickly but not as fast as ordering them to straight attack and watching them stand right in front of the pointy sticks.

[James_Northstar]

The trick with the flanking though, is that it has to be done fairly expediently, especially, if for example, you're holding the line with lighter infantry, who run the risk of being peeled out by hoplites pretty darn quickly and running off like crybabies to their mommas (yes, Hastati, I am calling you out).

What are you talking about? Hastati are GREAT against phalanxes- just don't try and make them face the spear wall directly (no, the strength of a PHALANX, as in phalangites, not Hoplites, was NOT the shield: Macedonian-style phalanxes were the dominant type of phalanx by Roman times, the Greeks having long since been crushed by Macedonian phalanx and superior Macedonia cavalry. It's almost unrealistic for the Romans to still encounter classic Greek hoplites at all)

To hold phalanx units with Hastati, just wait until the phalanx gets close and in phalanx formation (the AI, stupidly, will try and advance across the entire battlefield in this formation or by marching. Human players sometimes have enough sense to CHARGE close to the enemy, and drop into phalanx formation at the last minute- though Macedonian-style phalanxes require a lot longer to re-organize than Greek Hoplites), and then throw you pilae and fall back. Then throw your next round of pilae. Keep falling back in small steps every time the phalanx starts to get close. It will only make it that much easier for the rest of your army to envelop the phalanx from the sides and rear... Hastati have a great mobility advantage- even Principes tire out a bit quicker due to their heavier armor... (although the difference is hard to notice, and Principes are almost always superior)

[Doros_of_Sparta]

The pilum was designed specifically to break the shield wall that a phalanx provided. Traditional hoplite phalanx. The Romans initially, being Hellenistic in origin fight in a phalanx, but found it unsuitable in Italy. Thus was for reasons such as terrain and style of warfare as the greeks fight very ritualistic warfare before the Peloponnesian wars. But a shield wall was a dominant force in warfare in Italy as well. So the pila was designed to disrupt ranks of a shield wall ie phalanx. By forcing the opponent to drop the shield that now had a heavy cumbersome pila hanging from it. The enemy ranks world be forced to rearrange while the Romans charged in.
As far as hastati being great phalanx breakers. Well that depends on the general in truth. An experienced phalanx player can defeat hastati with mere militia hoplites. Where's a good player can also readily beat better hoplites with hastati as well.

[Oskatat]

the pilum was adapted to be more useful against shields, specifically to be harder to partly remove by cuttng off the wooden part.

If I consider that a hoplite would have to juggle a long spear, a sword or axe and a shield even against a normal javelin stuck in the shield, I don't feel it was designed for use against a phalanx shield wall, but more likely against units that used mostly swords or axes and would otherwise quickly cut away the javelin.

As I've said before and as others have mentioned, a unit of hoplites was a spear wall, not a shield wall. You try to keep the enemy at a spear length. If the enemy got close enough to strike your shield you were doing something wrong. The shield could protect you from arrows and javelins though and was useful if the other guys had equally long spears or if they did get close to you, but the spear and how it was used was the thing that defined the phalanx. As mentioned, most other cultures more or less dropped the shields and went with longer spears and were very successful.

The romans used a shield wall, stabbing through with their short swords. Theirs was a shield wall because the enemy was kept at the distance of the shield and their 'wall' was all but impossible without shield

[Obadiah Hakeswill]

As I've said before and as others have mentioned, a unit of hoplites was a spear wall, not a shield wall. You try to keep the enemy at a spear length. If the enemy got close enough to strike your shield you were doing something wrong. The shield could protect you from arrows and javelins though and was useful if the other guys had equally long spears or if they did get close to you, but the spear and how it was used was the thing that defined the phalanx. As mentioned, most other cultures more or less dropped the shields and went with longer spears and were very successful.

Not entirely true. With the later Macedonian style phalanxes (technically not hoplites), yes. With the shorter-speared Greek hoplites, no. When the lines met, they'd push at each other, kind of like a huge, less boring rugby scrum, and unless one side was very quick to give in, a lot of the spears would break, at which point they'd be ditched and the hoplites would push at each other with shields instead, attacking over the top of the shields with swords. The shield was an absolute necessity for this, because if the lines pushed at each other without their large shields, they'd just get slaughtered and the lines'd be broken (it's probably not much of a stretch to assume what you said in your final paragraph was another example of the Romans taking their cues from their Greek predecessors). As in the game, the strength of the phalanx was in its use of the troops' collective weight (though unlike in the game, hoplites tended not to be defensive), and a line being broken was more or less the end of the battle.

Macedonian pikemen acted as a spear wall. Greek hoplites absolutely did function as a shield wall.

In real life, hoplites were rare by this point because, as "James_Northstar" stated, they'd been made obsolete by the Macedonian phalangites, however in the game the Greek-style hoplite remains prevalent and hoplites did use phalanxes and did function as a shield wall.

[Doros_of_Sparta]

Northstar is correct on the aspect of charging each other. When the lines crashed together many spears would break. The fellows at the front would switch to swords while those in the rear would assist pushing and stabbing over the top with spears. The reason the phalangite came to dominate was that it brought many more spears to bear. This slowed down the hoplites in their advance to the lines. The phalangite phalanx (in theory) would not have been successful without the excellent usage of cavalry by the Macedonians. That statement is proven by the fact that successor kingdoms began to fail in combat as they began to use the phalanx as the primary means of battle rather than as a holding point as Phillip and Alexander did. Of the main reasons the phalangites obsoleted the hoplites was the use of combined arms, and the weakened manpower of traditional greek powers. The reason the Spartans had the premier phalanx in the classical period was due to their extensive training and the fact that they pushed together better than any other army of the time. For everyone thinking the game is right on the phalanx consider this. Until the Peloponnesian wars (when greater use of cavalry came into the picture) there were, nearly always, very few casualties as the result of inter-greek wars. Thats because they weren't trying to decimate the line, only break it. Hoplite warfare was extremely ritualized abd generally centered around border disputes. So the goal was to break the phalanx, win claim to that patch of land, and go home. This changed with the Peloponnesian wars because they were actually for conquest. Thus the need arose to eliminate the vanquished. The success of these tactics influenced epimonodas (sp) of Thebes abd he used advanced tactics in combined arms (and invented some still used today) to ensure victory. Epimonodas was celebrated in thebes where Phillip studied as a youth. And the Macedonians invented the phalangite to stave off the hoplite until their far superior cavalry could destroy it from the sides and rear.
An interesting side note, there is no specific point in history that the Roman legion broke a phalangite phalanx from the front. Only succeeding when terrain broke the cohesion of the phalanx. Some believe that had the antigonids had the great cavalry of alexander that rome would not have been able to defeat them on the battlefield, only, possibly, through attrition.

[Oskatat]

we're starting to get into historical discussion which is very interestng, true, but in any case I think the answer to the orignal question is that if you manage your forces correctly you can most definately destroy phalanxe armies, so a phalanx isn't absolutely over powered. Strong, up to very strong or almost impossible to beat in some situations (holding a bridge comes to mind), yes, but not overpowered

[Doros_of_Sparta]

So true, if we want to talk about overpowered units in rtw we should be having an urban cohort or chariot discussion.