Pikes mostly work but need tweaking

[mao16]

Before anything this is how I feel pikes should work when in formation and assuming there is no ai bugginess. If the same tier anything attacks the pikes head on they should lose decisively every time. If a better tier or elite unit attacks pikes head on they should win with major losses. Pikes should absolutely massacre anything in a defensive shield formation (hoplite phalanx/ shield wall) when attacked head on. Ranged anything should be a hard counter to pikes. When flanked pikes should pretty much have no chance.

Right now if there is no ai weirdness they do exactly this BUT only after taking losses for a while. If the battle keeps going the fight will go the way mentioned above. The problem is this takes way too long to happen now (anywhere from 20 min-1hr). When you factor in ai problems, the kill rates of everything else and using low unit counts pikes seem too weak comparatively.

The solution I propose would be to give pikes a melee attack bonus instead of a penalty when in phalanx formation. I tested this by changing the value from .85 to 2. This basicly just sped things up dramatically and also buffed pikes a lot. To make this balanced I would decrease all their base stats so that they relied on the formation buff for their stats. Therefore if the formation broke they're dead. The exact values for the base stats and formation multiplier will obviously need tweaking.

The major problem this solution would cause would be that since pikes almost never actually break formation when flanked this would make them op. The only way around this would be to drastically increase the attack bonus units get when attacking from the flank. Yes this would require the rebalancing of every unit in the game but it should work. Another simpler fix would be to simply make the moral for pikes almost non existent. This means they would be fine attacking normally but route really quickly when flanked (this will have the added side effect of making ranged units possibly too effective against pikes). The perfect solution would be to make it easy to break the pike's formation but from what I understand thats impossible without source code since that's hard coded.

As a side note I also tried changing the hoplite phalanx attack multiplier from .9 to 1.1. This made so that they will basically beat anything head on (except pikes) but are guaranteed to take massive loses (near 1:1) instead of slightly losing to shield wall sword units. I feel that a spear phalanx should beat shield walls with swords but that's more personal preference.

[FlashHeart07]

Before anything this is how I feel pikes should work when in formation and assuming there is no ai bugginess. If the same tier anything attacks the pikes head on they should lose decisively every time. If a better tier or elite unit attacks pikes head on they should win with major losses. Pikes should absolutely massacre anything in a defensive shield formation (hoplite phalanx/ shield wall) when attacked head on. Ranged anything should be a hard counter to pikes. When flanked pikes should pretty much have no chance.

Right now if there is no ai weirdness they do exactly this BUT only after taking losses for a while. If the battle keeps going the fight will go the way mentioned above. The problem is this takes way too long to happen now (anywhere from 20 min-1hr). When you factor in ai problems, the kill rates of everything else and using low unit counts pikes seem too weak comparatively.

The solution I propose would be to give pikes a melee attack bonus instead of a penalty when in phalanx formation. I tested this by changing the value from .85 to 2. This basicly just sped things up dramatically and also buffed pikes a lot. To make this balanced I would decrease all their base stats so that they relied on the formation buff for their stats. Therefore if the formation broke they're dead. The exact values for the base stats and formation multiplier will obviously need tweaking.

The major problem this solution would cause would be that since pikes almost never actually break formation when flanked this would make them op. The only way around this would be to drastically increase the attack bonus units get when attacking from the flank. Yes this would require the rebalancing of every unit in the game but it should work. Another simpler fix would be to simply make the moral for pikes almost non existent. This means they would be fine attacking normally but route really quickly when flanked (this will have the added side effect of making ranged units possibly too effective against pikes). The perfect solution would be to make it easy to break the pike's formation but from what I understand thats impossible without source code since that's hard coded.

As a side note I also tried changing the hoplite phalanx attack multiplier from .9 to 1.1. This made so that they will basically beat anything head on (except pikes) but are guaranteed to take massive loses (near 1:1) instead of slightly losing to shield wall sword units. I feel that a spear phalanx should beat shield walls with swords but that's more personal preference.

All good ideas but could you perhaps post it in some of the other threads about pikes and a general balancing of units in the game. No need to start multiple threads where people all discuss the same topic instead we should keep it in the already made topics and come to an agreement or perhaps a solution.