Modified Spanish Tercio Formation
One of the things I learned in the history of the late Middle Ages was the rise of Spanish dominance towards the end of the Medieval era. Spanish armies from the late 15th century through to the 17th century went relatively undefeated in its major battles, largely through the effective use of its tercio formation. In essence, the formations were pikemen being used in conjuction with firearms, and light infantry.
In the M2TW description of Spain, they are described as having excellent light infantry. At the end of an era where heavy armor and knights were the dominant force, Spain adopted lighter and more mobile infantry forces. Now while Tercio formations had gunners mixed in with the pikemen and other infantry, the units that come in M2TW are not mixed units. Instead, you have to mix them yourselves.
So I started up a custom battle and created an army late era professional units of 5 Arquebusiers (meant to do Musketeers but clicked the wrong unit), 3 Gendarmes, 6 Tercio Pikemen, 5 Sword & Buckler Men, and one Late General's Bodyguard.
I loaded up a French army of Voulgiers, Dismounted Chivalric Knights, Aventuriers, Pikemen, and Lancers/Gendarmes. The French army actually cost more than my army by a significant amount (over 10k florins), but both sides were equal in terms of experience, armor, and weapon upgrades.
In my formation, I lined up pikemen in a line, at an angle from the corner of the map. The reason for that? Well being near an edge of a map means that the flanks have a smaller amount of room to manuever. As always, picking the right terrain to fight on is a key to victory.
Then, what I did was, I mixed my gunpowder units in with the first rank just in front of the first rank of pikes. I then put my sword & buckler men within the Tercio formation, about 2-3 ranks deep, in the back. Picture:
Another view:
Now why would I do this?
First, only the first rank of gunners fires, so the back ranks within the pike formation wouldn't affect anything. Next, the gunners will not have any infantry obstructing them, as it would be possible that some gunners won't fire if put behind. Finally, the pikes being there means that no cavalry can be used to attack your gunners while they are shooting at enemy skirmishers or formation.
With musketeers, and their very long range, being at the front of your formation means that you have an even longer range than before. Thus, you can hit longbowmen before they can even hit your pikemen. If muskteers are put behind pikemen, the first few rows of pikemen may be hit by enemy elite archers without your musketeers being in range.
There is another benefit - gunners tend to be weak against enemy archer fire, and take lots of casualties. However, while stuck in a pike formation, it's more likely your pikemen take the arrows, and so you can protect your ranks better against enemy skirmishers. Furthermore, this formation tends to prompts the enemy to hit you head on, even when they aren't ready. The reason? First, if they skirmish, your musketeers will likely kill their skirmishers handily. Second, pikemen are so numerous in number, that skirmishing against them will take a VERY long time to kill enough to make a dent, and it's more likely the musketeers will kill all the enemy skirmishers before they make a dent in your numbers. Finally, the musketeers cannot be attacked by enemy cavalry directly in this formation, and enemy archers are more likely to hit your pikemen or overshoot/undershoot the formation (as it is thin facing the enemy).
Do, however, move your musketeers out to provoke the enemy into attacking you if they are just sitting there out of range to bombard you with artillery, if they brought any.
If the enemy charge your pikes, the trick is to move your gunners back while you move your sword & buckler men forward. This keeps the gunners out of melee, allows them to continue fire, though now from behind, and the sword & buckler men can fight enemy infantry at the front, while the pikes still protect the sword & buckler from enemy cavalry.
Your own cavalry must be deployed along the flanks to defend against enemy cavalry. If the enemy cavalry are defeated, you will then conveniently be along the flanks to hit the enemy from the side or from behind.
Keep your pikemen in guard mode to recieve the enemy charge. Now a lot of people have been saying that pikemen do not attack properly - they actually do, you just have to tell them to attack them. As seen in the picture above, they are attacking the Voulgier's with their pikes. What you do is you have to select your pikemen, and SINGLE right-click the enemy. This worked for me both in and out of guard mode. DOUBLE right clicking the enemy will force your pikemen to run at the enemy and thus they will break formation and drop their pikes. If you single click, they will try to stay in formation and in line and will engage the enemy with pikes. Only if the enemy gets too close/breaks formation will some of them use swords to fight their nearest threat. The rest of the formation, if not hampered, will continue to use pikes.
As you can see in this picture:
My pikemen are advancing with pikes at the enemy unit. This is quite devastating - even against halberds, mounted & dismounted knights, my pikes were able to inflict massive casualties. In fact, once you get some practice with pike formations, you can use pikes on the offensive and to "push" the enemy.
A few tips:
-Use the "alt" button to rotate your formation. Holding alt while moving the mouse will rotate the army around its center. It's great for moving your formation to face the enemy if they try to flank.
-When moving your formation at the enemy, always SINGLE right click a spot either in front or behind the enemy. Do not have them attack or units will start to converge to attack that targetted unit. Furthermore, after you have clicked, you can hold the "shift" button to see where your units will end up. This allows you to adjust the angle and direction of your formation.
-To attack the enemy with pikes, even in guard mode, make sure you SINGLE right click. On the offensive, if you single right click, pikes will stay in formation and will keep their line intact. As you see in my last picture, the pikes try to stay more or less in a line and will rotate the entire line at a target if the enemy formation is at an awkward angle. Pikes will only be dropped for swords if the formation is too thin, the formation is broken, or there is a more immediate threat to the pikemen than what the formation is targetting (for instnace, a flanker or straggler).
-Use sword & buckler men to flank or to defend pikes against infantry that are good at killing pikes, such as Zweihanders, other Sword & Buckler, and dismounted knights.
The weakness of these formations?
-First, they take a lot of practice, especially pikemen. They are tricky units to get used to.
-They take a lot of casualties! Late medieval armies got very large in part because they started to trade away armor for firepower. Most of these units aren't armed with shields or heavy plate armor and will thus take lots of casualties from enemy ranged units. Be prepared to lose a large amount of your army to enemy fire, but hey, in MP battles, winning is all that matters
-Against an enemy that is artillery heavy, your bunched up units will present juicy targets. To counter enemy artillery, either swap in some light cavalry (such as Jinetes), or your own artillery to counter the enemy. Formation positioning is also key - if you can position your units where the artillery has a hard time hitting you, you will also be good. Finally, use your musketeers/ranged units to provoke the enemy into attacking, so they cannot bombard you at will without causing friendly fire casualties. Again, use your musketeers range to your benefit.
-Against an enemy that is horse archer heavy, you will have to use lots of bowmen and light cavalry to counter them. Heavy ranged infantry armies, however, shouldn't be a problem, as you should use your units on the offensive (and musketeers do a great job at killing enemy ranged infantry anyways).
-An enemy that is very heavy cavalry in numbers will present a problem if you pick the wrong terrain to fight on. If your cavalry guarding your flanks falls, they will be at your flanks and your pikemen will be toast. To counter this, either bring more heavy cavalry (and less sword & buckler), use gunners to aid the flanks, or once engaged, swing unengaged pikemen at the horses. They will make mincemeat of them.
The battles results:
A lot of casualties, and my general died, but my formations stood their ground and didn't rout. Furthermore, this army was much cheaper to make than the French one, and surprisingly, one unit of pikemen inflicted the most casualties, at over 250 in this battle!
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Originally Posted by turd
