Help with Modding Phalanxes

[Geffalrus]

Somewhat related question - is there anything moddable in the game files that determines how fast a pike unit will lower sarissa into attack position? I have not played this mod a ton, so maybe this was just a fluke, but had a couple battles today where my Mercenary Pikes took an absurdly long time to deploy pikes. They just kept them completely upright while the enemy ran up and bonked them. This was in an open field battle where the pikes where marching, multiple units in a long group line. No maneuvering, just forward march, then stop. A later battle with an Agema Pike seemed to have a much quicker deploy pike action.

Again, I'm not very used to how this mod handles pikes. Mostly used to either EB1 or the new Divide et Impera mod for Rome 2.

[Marvzilla]

The Agema is much faster I think ? Stats wise.

[QuintusSertorius]

Movement speed determines animation speed.

[IrishHitman]

I tested this after seeing the thread, and to be honest, things seem to be refined as well as they can be. They certainly function how I think the pikes would have. Only way it could be improved was if a fear mechanic was added for frontal assaults, but obviously that isn't within the remit of the game mechanics to implement.

Celtic Spears spam versus a Makedonian pike wall. I controlled the pikes.
I tried to go on the attack like I used to in EB1, EB2.1 and to a lesser extent 2.2. Memories of those nice snap-to pike kills you got by micromanaging the attack clicks got me trying to repeat them, to see if the tweaks had helped there. They had. Pike attacks via the traditional attack-click method cause a severe breakup of the line and the pikes seem far more sluggish, i.e. much more in tune with the reality of hefting a 4-6 metre pike around. You can still get the same devastating effect by simply moving your pikes up and stopping them just in stabbing range, just without the homing-pike effect. You can still get the pikes moving in interesting ways for maximum effect even on the offensive, the likes of which were performed by Alexander's troops as described by Arrian. It's simply far less 'gamey' now, which is something EB ought to strive for.

On the defensive, the phalangites don't seem less able to hold enemies at bay with their pikes than in previous editions. If anything, they seem to be exactly the same. I remember tearing my hair out many moons ago at watching Roman Extraordinarii allied infantry tear into my pezhetairoi troops from the front in many a multiplayer game. The difference now is that the pikes are more sluggish and thus are less able to respond to breakthroughs, especially if the line isn't cohesive due to your own attack moves. I had Celtic Spears leak in wherever the front ranks couldn't get their spears down in time, and down the sides of units that didn't overlap enough.

Conclusion: It seems to be consistent with the history and practicality of mass pike use, as far as the game mechanics allow for it.

[Pooploop]

IrishHitman, it seems to make use of the phalangites like you have, one has to micromanage them. The whole reason I started this thread is because I was playing multiple custom battles as Makedonia with sizable stacks. I was doing my thing, flitting from one end of the battlefield to another, paying special care to the mobile troops who traditionally need more attention. Then, I kinda check up on my phalangites, whom I either (spearwall on of course) order to stay put in one position in guard mode, or to attack one enemy unit. All hostiles were to the front and I didn't ask them to wheel or anything, just fullfil their simple anvil role. During the subsequent brawl the phalangites were getting WRECKED. Constant flashes that showed them dying like flies at an alarming rate and the end-reports of casualties and kills were galling. 90 deaths to 30 kills, 120 deaths to 20 kills, 50 deaths to 10 kills, and others in the same vein. I thought (sweating already) haha, maybe the phalangites were being focused on by the enemies' ranged troops, or maybe when I wasn't looking they were attacked by more than one unit (weak argument already, because even if phalangites were being attacked from the front by multiple units, they're supposed to hold them off with ease). So, I said to myself, end your fears already Pooploop, observe one hoplite unit vs one phalangite unit in a head on clash, no flanking, on level terrain. Unfortunately, after sadder and sadder reiterations of the same matchup, doru vs sarissa, I've come to three conclusive points about the phalangites of 2.3.

One, phalangites die like flies. Always get far more casualties than kills, so much so it is more efficient to replace them all with normal hoplites or other close combat infantry. Kinda makes you wonder WHY Phillip II even bothered innovating such a fighting style, no? Two, spearwalls, despite being on guard mode and set and ready to receive the foe (they are not attacking while moving, they just STAY PUT in perfect order with pikes leveled), CANNOT stop the charge of infantry. Attacking footmen just zip past the line of spears and attack the hapless phalangites. What THEN is the point of a pike formation? Three, in a melee, (no more charging, just regular in-your-face killing) the spearwalls are unable to stop the enemy infantry from infiltrating and killing them with their MUCH SHORTER weapons. Like 75% of the enemy infantry can just dance past those spearpoints and close in. WHY is the sarissa soooo long then? They can't even keep enemy infantry away. IrishHitman if pikes were really this bad in real life they should never ever have had any use on the battlefields all around the globe. The pikemen of the Chinese dynasties, of the Japanese ashigaru, of the Swiss, of the Scots, of the Germans, of the European Renaissance or Early Modern principalities, of the Spanish tercios, then finally, of the Hellenistic nations were all just walls of meat it seems. No matter their style of usage, pikemen, with the looonngg reach of their weapons should have an advantage over enemies with shorter weapons, if those hostiles are coming from the front and the pikemen are in a deep formation. In EB2 2.3 however, it's anything but that.

Quintus, do you need more stuff from 1648? None of the team has mods like that, or of Third Age or Divide and Conquer? I feel that those pike units and their animations can be used as a basis to form or fix the EB2 phalangites.

[QuintusSertorius]

Hang on, comparing their casualties to kills is meaningless. They're supposed to be on Guard Mode, which means they won't kill many. They have a low attack stat, which again means they won't get as many kills. Their job is to hold ground while you flank the front line. The kills will be made by other units doing the flanking.

[Cohors_Evocata]

Quintus, do you need more stuff from 1648? None of the team has mods like that, or of Third Age or Divide and Conquer? I feel that those pike units and their animations can be used as a basis to form or fix the EB2 phalangites.

I'm currently looking at how they function in Third Age (vanilla 3.2).

EDIT: My first impression is that they're not so much better at holding the enemy at bay as that they just slaughter whatever comes into frontal contact with them.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Pooploop]

Quintus, you are right on that as the pikemen are supposed to just hold the line. Maybe I'll make my observations clearer by focusing just on the casualty rates. Note, I have NO PROBLEMS with the stats (attack, defense, and movement rates). On fighting hoplites, the hoplites' charge initial impact and thrusting translates itself to phalangite deaths, which number 20+. 20+ or more. That means in the FIRST MINUTE of impact and the subsequent melee a large chunk of the front rank of phalangites just fall into the dust. It's like they got hit by a cataphract line. 4 or 7 minutes after, the time the situation stabilizes itself (meaning when the phalanx's unit icon isn't flashing like mad because of the high rate of casualties) is when the phalangites only number 190 or less to 130 still-alive hoplites. I want to make this clear, this is a custom battle, one-on-one unit match, with head-on melee, no flanking, no tricks. That means 256 phalangites had 66 of their comrades slain in, at least, the first 10 minutes by 160 hoplites (who had 30 of their own taken), men who have far shorter spears than the sarissas. Quintus, if your definition of "holding ground" means "beaten into sad sloppy submission" then, heck, the phalangites are doing their job then. I repeat, I don't mind if over the course of 20+ minutes, the phalangites kill less than 40 hoplites, as long as they keep their own deaths at a sarissa's distance away (like literally, LITERALLY).

P.S. I'm aware that the phalangites are, in this game, never supposed to be an offensive arm (however, I'm agreeable to Mamlaz's historical take on it, just not to be discussed in this thread please). I'm cool with that, and with the current stats of all phalanxes. However, to illustrate just how BAD the current phalangites are, I'll have to touch on their killing ability. Remember the 30 or so hoplite deaths caused by the pikemen? The majority of those were because the hoplites kept turning around (showing their backs to the foe!) casually marching away from the phalanx, and then charging again. Facepalm. If that doesn't illustrate the ineptness of the phalanx at pinning, PINNING, slow heavy infantry, I don't know what will. This means, that if the hoplites just stayed and grinded forward, instead of repeatedly attempting to disengage and charge the phalanx, there would be FARRR more phalangite deaths and far less hoplite casualties.

P.P.S. Cohors_Evocata why don't you try matching up the most pathetic pike units in Third Age, vs the most elite heavy infantry (trolls, uhh dwarven royal guard, black numenoreans)? It's less of the pike's ability to kill, but more of their ability to hold together and keep the foe from killing them right? Prevent them from penetrating the pikewall, stopping the momentum of their charge, heavens I've repeated myself enough...

[QuintusSertorius]

1v1 in Custom Battle is an invalid test. Units behave weird when they have the general present in them. The minimum testing size we use is 3v3, preferably with both generals not even part of the fighting line so they can be isolated from their effect on it.

How many are killed in the initial charge is also not a particularly useful part of the metric to include, hoplites have a good charge value so that's just them doing what they're good at. Test them against heavy infantry who don't have powerful_charge, like Thorakitai.

[Sar1n]

Still. I did a little test, 3v3 phalangitai vs. thorakitai, Hard. Generals in both armies were Getikoi Hippotoxotai, because they'll keep away and their weak bows will have minimal effect.

Phalangitai were arranged in 8 rows deep formations, thorakitai in their default. It took a single unit of thorakitai attacking frontally about 20 secs from contact to get their whole front rank through sarissas to close contact with phalangitai. That shouldn't happen. Afterward, killing went on slowly, with thorakitai having the edge, but strangely, and hilariously, thorakitai broke first, with ~10% casualties. Generals were both staying away, in vain shootout with each other.

[Cohors_Evocata]

P.P.S. Cohors_Evocata why don't you try matching up the most pathetic pike units in Third Age, vs the most elite heavy infantry (trolls, uhh dwarven royal guard, black numenoreans)? It's less of the pike's ability to kill, but more of their ability to hold together and keep the foe from killing them right? Prevent them from penetrating the pikewall, stopping the momentum of their charge, heavens I've repeated myself enough...

Ok, here's the best dwarven infantry versus more or less the shoddiest pikemen I could find:

Guard mode on: https://imgur.com/a/KYvmo. Pikemen get slaughtered.
Guard mode off: https://imgur.com/a/8gstB. More or less equal losses, depending on local situations

In neither situation do they really hold the enemy off; they mostly seem to stunlock, kill or get killed.

[Hellenikon]

P.S. I'm aware that the phalangites are, in this game, never supposed to be an offensive arm (however, I'm agreeable to Mamlaz's historical take on it, just not to be discussed in this thread please)

Stop talking about history? On the EB forum? Oh sweet summer child

[Pooploop]

Quintus, my initial observation of the bad performance of the phalangites was based on multiple custom battles of stack vs stack involving at least one Hellenistic army remember? It was only when the trend of the phalangites getting butchered became so apparent that I shifted to one on one for more specific viewing of the phalangites in particular. Quintus, I have great respect of your position as a member of the EB2 team, but at this point it really sounds like you're nitpicking. I hope Sar1n's follow-up of his 3 vs 3 scenario satisfies your queries. Phalangites in 2.3 are just really bad, bad enough compared to previous releases (whatever their past respective problems), that I was willing to start this thread. Of the descr_skeleton of 1648, was there anything in there that could improve EB2 2.3's pikemen?

Cohors_Evocata, how then do the pikemen of Third Age compare to EB2 2.3's? They have their own problems of course, but I believe they at least STOP the charge of enemy infantry with their lowered pikes right? And the infiltration of their spearwall is less than EB2's current pikemen, yes? The issue of them holding longer, or killing less efficiently could be adapted to EB2's standards with tweaking of their attack and defense stats. I don't expect that one can just copy paste the pikemen of that mod to EB2, but in respects to the integrity of their spearwall it is, at the least, better than EB2's yes? I'm not expecting this historical mod to make the perfect recreation of phalanxes, all I want is an improvement, ANY improvement, (even if it means restoring 2.2b's pikemen) of this current releases' phalanx.

[IrishHitman]

1v1 in Custom Battle is an invalid test. Units behave weird when they have the general present in them. The minimum testing size we use is 3v3, preferably with both generals not even part of the fighting line so they can be isolated from their effect on it.

How many are killed in the initial charge is also not a particularly useful part of the metric to include, hoplites have a good charge value so that's just them doing what they're good at. Test them against heavy infantry who don't have powerful_charge, like Thorakitai.

For the record, I used 10v10 with separate generals....

[betto]

just ideas to test improve defense skill and add that atribute that causes fear.

[QuintusSertorius]

Quintus, my initial observation of the bad performance of the phalangites was based on multiple custom battles of stack vs stack involving at least one Hellenistic army remember? It was only when the trend of the phalangites getting butchered became so apparent that I shifted to one on one for more specific viewing of the phalangites in particular. Quintus, I have great respect of your position as a member of the EB2 team, but at this point it really sounds like you're nitpicking. I hope Sar1n's follow-up of his 3 vs 3 scenario satisfies your queries. Phalangites in 2.3 are just really bad, bad enough compared to previous releases (whatever their past respective problems), that I was willing to start this thread. Of the descr_skeleton of 1648, was there anything in there that could improve EB2 2.3's pikemen?

I'm not dismissing what you're saying, they are worse, but the details matter. That's not nitpicking, all of these impacts are the result of small changes which have consequences which balloon outwards. Add to that the barmy way lots of unrelated things are interrelated in M2TW (movement speed is animation speed, kill rates are cohesion, etc) and there are rarely simple fixes. Never mind the plethora of strange situational and corner cases that can arise.

Thus I need to be sure the feedback is relevant and valid, not just some casual observations.

Cohors_Evocata, how then do the pikemen of Third Age compare to EB2 2.3's? They have their own problems of course, but I believe they at least STOP the charge of enemy infantry with their lowered pikes right? And the infiltration of their spearwall is less than EB2's current pikemen, yes? The issue of them holding longer, or killing less efficiently could be adapted to EB2's standards with tweaking of their attack and defense stats. I don't expect that one can just copy paste the pikemen of that mod to EB2, but in respects to the integrity of their spearwall it is, at the least, better than EB2's yes? I'm not expecting this historical mod to make the perfect recreation of phalanxes, all I want is an improvement, ANY improvement, (even if it means restoring 2.2b's pikemen) of this current releases' phalanx.

From what I've seen of some of those other examples, most of their "improvement" is simply from being better offensively. They kill the initial-chargers, which stops them infiltrating.

Again, the changes from 2.2b to 2.3 have nothing whatsoever to do with stats. It's entirely down to changes to animations. Something you have to understand about M2TW that's very different from RTW is that what you see has a mechanical impact. In RTW they were just acting out for the sake of giving you something to look at, but it was completely unconnected to the mechanics. In M2TW the animations are part of the mechanics, and indeed can completely override everything else in the battle engine. Bad animations were the reason swordsmen were consistently outperformed by spearmen in 2.2b, and why sword-armed cavalry couldn't attack anything directly in front of them. No amount of tweaking their stats would have fixed those problems.

The animation-set in 2.2b had other bugs in it, it isn't as simple as just restoring them.

just ideas to test improve defense skill and add that atribute that causes fear.

Stats won't make any difference, it's animations. And we deliberately removed causing fear because it's ridiculously overpowered (and nonsensical).

[xHolyCrusader]

Cohors_Evocata, how then do the pikemen of Third Age compare to EB2 2.3's? They have their own problems of course, but I believe they at least STOP the charge of enemy infantry with their lowered pikes right? And the infiltration of their spearwall is less than EB2's current pikemen, yes?

No, from my tests the uruk-hai pikemen are even worse in that regard, whether guard mode is on or off, charging infantry will just run right through the pikes up to the unit, however after the initial charge the pikemen are for some reason able to push the infantry away from them, and keep them at a distance..

[QuintusSertorius]

No, from my tests the uruk-hai pikemen are even worse in that regard, whether guard mode is on or off, charging infantry will just run right through the pikes up to the unit, however after the initial charge the pikemen are for some reason able to push the infantry away from them, and keep them at a distance..

Would they happen to use the "spear" property in their stat_pri_attr in the EDU?

[xHolyCrusader]

Would they happen to use the "spear" property in their stat_pri_attr in the EDU?

ye, they do, heres their entry:

type             Uruk-Hai Pikemen
dictionary       Uruk-Hai_Pikemen      ; Uruk-Hai Pikemen
category         infantry
class            spearmen
voice_type       Heavy
banner faction   main_spear
banner holy      crusade
soldier          noble_pikemen, 80, 0, 1.2
officer             isengard_captain_early_flag
mount_effect     elephant -1
attributes       sea_faring, hide_forest, hardy, can_withdraw, free_upkeep_unit, pike
move_speed_mod   0.7
formation        1.5, 1.5, 3.0, 3.0, 5, square, phalanx
stat_health      1, 3
stat_pri         3, 3, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, spear, 50, 1
stat_pri_attr    spear, long_pike, spear_bonus_8
stat_sec         0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, melee_simple, blunt, none, 0, 1
stat_sec_attr    no
stat_pri_armour  5, 1, 0, metal
stat_sec_armour  0, 0, flesh
stat_heat        4
stat_ground      0, -1, -1, -2
stat_mental      14, disciplined, trained
stat_charge_dist 15
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 700, 280, 100, 100, 700, 3, 150
armour_ug_levels 3, 4
armour_ug_models Uruk_halberd, Uruk_halberd_upg
ownership        france
era 0            france
era 1            france
era 2            france
recruit_priority_offset    10

[QuintusSertorius]

That's how they're "pushing" interlopers out. We removed that property from all spearmen before 2.2b even, because it ruins cohesion and causes units to push into others.