Probable Clue to the Solution to the Pike Problem?

[Pooploop]

Guys (and really, Devs) I won't get into the historicity of whether or not pikes/sarissas/really long spears should be more effective in this time period. What I will discuss are the SPECIFIC problems of EB2's phalanxes expressed by the M2TW game engine. Note though, these errors only appear for phalanxes with guard mode OFF, so I will be listing the reasons WHY said mode should be off and then the horrible glitches that forced the devs to turn it ON for the ai not to suck so much in their usage of the unit/like-units.

Reasons to Turn OFF Guard Mode for Phalanx-"Type" Units (For both AI and Player):
1) Pike units can PIN the foe. If the enemy turns about and tries to disengage, they suffer, because the whole phalanx is pressing on them and thrusting. They're (the phalanx) not just passively staying in place.
2) In the right situations against the right opponents (so levy phalanx against levy infantry/light phalanx against medium infantry/phalanx against heavies) the phalanx performs well, instead of having such a lopsided death to casualty ratio, where the best the phalanx can hope for is an equal death to kill ratio.
3) Far more effective against cavalry...same reasons as the first but magnified (pikes have bonus against cavalry).
4) Looks more realistic? Never heard of any sort of formation being so picture perfect after the shock and grind of battle. Seeing the phalanx type units thrust home and try to keep even battle lines despite becoming gradually more disorganized is cool (to me and those of like opinions).

Reasons why Devs had to keep Guard Mode On (Especially due to AI usage of them):
1) Enemy infantry can somehow break through the phalanx. A select number of individuals on the opposing side somehow pass through the phalanx like it was air and appear behind your lines.
2) In extreme stress situations (getting attacked from multiple directions), the phalanx sometimes turns around and remains locked in an about face position...the WORST thing to do ever in melee combat (show back to opponent).
3) AI usage of the phalanx gets a fourth of their number killed because they right click into the enemy formation, and because there is such a massive lag between marching and keeping the pikes DOWN, the first ranks of the phalanx get decimated.
4) All the three reasons above magnified in any pike units that are NOT the regular phalanx/the mercenary phalanx/and the agema phalanx. Any AI army with lesser pike units that have guard mode OFF are better off without them because they become player targets as they are so easy to rout and slaughter.
5) The exact opposite reason compared to the last one in the first block. More people like seeing the phalanx in perfect eternal rectangles. I don't understand why but there you have it.

Now on to the solution (more aptly termed clue):



You see that pic up there? That's a custom battle in the Divide and Conquer Mod between Dunlending Pikemen (attack 2 defense 6) against Loke Gamp-Rim (attack 8 defense 26). Dunlending Pikemen with GUARD MODE OFF AND under AI Assistance. No, I did not double stack pikemen into one unit before handing them over to ai command. No, I did not get Dunlending Pikemen to gold experience with upgraded arms and armour, they remain as sucky as they were initially. No, I did not order the Dunlending Pikemen into better battle lines before handing them over to the ai, that's why you see only two dunlending pikemen against the Easterlings, ai likes holding back captain's unit and never using it *shrugs*. The only thing I did before grouping them and clicking the ai assistance button was to turn all their guard modes off.

This scrimmage was going on for a long time. The undeniable positives that this battle (and tons of other tests I did in Divide and Conquer) show are as such:

1) Pikemen in Divide and Conquer with guard mode OFF never let any individual enemy infantry go through their whole formation and out their rear. Never.
2) The about face problem is FAR rarer. Also, even in the cases that it does happen, half the pike block still faces forward and thrusts home....so they kinda make an improvised pike square (maybe a boon)???
3) The pikemen I showed are one of the crappiest pikemen in the game. They're close to the equivalent of the levy eastern phalanxes in EB2 as their stats are attack 2 and defense 6. Also, take this into the context of the Divide and Conquer Mod, with high end units that have ludicrous stats, and realize how much crappier Dunlending Pikemen are in-universe. Despite all of that and under AI command, they held the line, did not break, and dished out more kills than their deaths against formidable foes.

I am not saying that THIS is THE solution. Heck, the devs still have to look at the export_descr_unit file of Divide and Conquer and see it anything can be applied to EB2. It's possible they already did this a LONG time ago, and I'm just wasting everybody's time. But, considering the pikemen of one M2TW mod can work so well (in the light of the usual flaws), I really hope EB2's pike units can copy that.

[Shoebopp]

I can vouch for your experiences that guard mode phalangites allow enemies to run through and behind them, and that guard mode phalangites always lag behind the enemy. Maybe

1. Turning guard mode OFF
2. Increasing the mass of phalangites

Would prevent AI misuse while keeping the phalangites impenetrable?

[moisesjns]

I would like a submod for this, changes. Because i agree, the Vanilla pikemen with AI are no good / stupid. And i know EB team has does the best they can, but anything to make the AI phalanx more of a threat and less of a easy kill is well appreciated. I mean just as the romans were scared of a well organized phalanx, So should i and any other faction. The hellenistic Hoplites have far better AI / challenge on battlemaps than the pikemen currently as you said when i see AI pikemen i dont think "oh sh*@ deadly pikes," im more like "slow dumb AI that is not helping his battle line and will be easy kill"

[Pooploop]

EB2 Devs, is there any chance what I observed in Divide and Conquer is legit? The "impenetrability", and the fact that the about-face disaster happens far less in their pike formations? Any chance that whatever they did in that mod can be applied to EB2?

[randy_cat]

Unbreakable pike walls are just as unrealistic as easily broken formations of spears... the M2TW engine does not allow for realistic pike formations, in this regard R1TW did a better job ( tho, pikemen with long sarissae in Rome 1 tend to be too powerful unless flanked or surrounded in which case they collapse pretty fast )

[ntabc2001]

okay, i think i found the solution, i have compared D & Conquer with EBII, here's what I found, there are 3 points:
1.
_ open battle_config.xml, find the part:
<!-- phalanx -->
<!-- intercept-range>15</intercept-range -->
<!-- /phalanx -->
I wonder why does EBII's devs decide to disable it??
replace it with
<phalanx>
<intercept-range>99</intercept-range>
</phalanx>
note that 99 is my fun number, i don't know limit hard-coded. You find out, and choose.

2. the animation:
in D & C, when a pikeman is hit, he have a deflect animation. no fly back and stunt animation.
but in EB II, when hit, the pikeman fly back.

3. stat in export_descr_unit,txt:
in D & C, pikemen always have higher defense skill than other counterpart with the same quality.
in D & C, it usually +4, or +5.
I suggest you +10, for ebii
example:
stat_pri_armour 9, 6, 4, metal
change it to:
stat_pri_armour 9, 16, 4, metal

there are only under 10 units have phalanx ability in EBII, really quick to edit

i +20, that is my taste, jugde me!


If point 1, doesn't work, point 3 definitely works, but point 2, I have to wait for the team

[Pooploop]

ntabc2001, thanks for the input!! To be honest however, and given the context of the game as it is, the best overall improvement would be a slight increase to the defensive skill score (the middle number in the string following stat_pri_armour) - around +2. I applied this +2 to every single unit in the game with the "phalanx" ability to represent the simple and undeniable difficulty any assaulting foe has to face against a person wielding an 18 foot spear amongst a hedge of spears. It's just a physical "wall" so to speak that greatly increases the capability of the pikemen (on top of or despite of the varying quality of their training and discipline). With a lot of testing I have found that all the pike units that are not regular, mercenary, or agema phalangitai to actually perform OK against a variety of foes with GUARD MODE OFF (the pikemen). Instead of the horrifying lopsided casualty rates of unmodded EB2 (like 3 dead pikemen to one normal heavy infantry, normal meaning around hoplite level and below Marian legionnaires - why honestly would Phillip II even bother with sarissas if the general performance was this bad as portrayed by the EB2 Devs) it was a more manageable 1 is to 1, with good positioning 1 is to 2 or 1 is to 1.5, and with eastern levy phalanxes coming out at 2 to 1 at their worst and 1.5 to 1 on average. Note, by worse or better it consistently means in a simple battle line, with maybe one of the flanks getting slightly outflanked. Should these pikemen get surrounded, they all generally do bad, or really horribly because of the sheer rigidity and ponderousness of the formation - they can't break through and reform at all.

With the +2 to the defense score, the three top phalanx units (regular, mercenary, and agema) return to being the premier front-line anvil of the Hellenistic world. As long as the enemy infantry is coming from the front, and not trying to flank, nothing can break through these pikemen other than other pikemen. Note, they are not invincible and against, say Polybian Legionnaires will suffer heavily, but as long they form a straight, UNFLANKED battle line, they'll come out on top, routing the Romans (decimated) with around a third to half their (the phalanx) men killed. Another note, this is with guard mode off and a simple heavy infantry clash with no cavalry intervention (it took forever, had enough time for a bathroom break and back). Thorakitai and other newfangled infantry types still have their place and especially in flanking and rapid infantry assaults, but nothing can budge the phalanx in a simple direct melee.

Though point 1 has its merits, the reason why point 3 (or at least my implementation of it)is better for the game as a whole is because of the vast number of auto-calculated AI vs AI battles. Unmodded current EB2 phalanxes have it really bad: they're stuck in guard mode so they don't contribute to killing the enemy, then due to this and their mediocre stats they actually do horribly in "pinning" the foe because the enemy can back away with impunity, and finally even in auto-calculated battles they're a massive liability. Regular hoplites just outperform the average phalanx in every way. Hopefully the re-implementation of the intercept score as stated in point 1 will contribute to formation integrity and might ease the Devs into allowing guard mode off phalanxes, but EB2 phalanxes are just plain mediocre as they are now.

[ntabc2001]

I totally forgot about the auto-calculated aspect, slightly increase the defense is the way to go

[Pooploop]

For the +2 stat, I compared the average defensive scores of the closest counterparts among regular heavy infantry to each pike type (so how do phalangites fare compared to hoplites, machimoi phalangites to machimoi spearmen, and eastern levy phalanxes to eastern levy spearmen). I did not consider the agema in trying to find such an average, because they and their counterpart the hypaspists are too strong an outlier. Also, no improvement to attack because I mostly agree with the Devs that phalangites of this age simply do not compare to the later Swiss or the Samurai/ashigaru in offensive use over difficult terrain of such a long weapon. The result is a simple +2 to personal defensive score across all units with the spearwall ability. To critics, note I agree that such an increase of +2 might be too much for a unit type known for the uselessness of a lone member in truly personal hand-to-hand situation, but I argue that they are never really "alone". That +2 is to represent the effectiveness the phalanx as a whole, with guard modes off and with the AI never turning off the spearwall anyway.

ntabc2001, checked out that intercept value in the battle config and replaced it with the 15. Unless I coded it wrong (both phalanx in parantheses were blue, and the other one still had a slanted line), it didn't seem to do anything. Maybe the problem IS in the animation, as charging infantry have some heroes among them still capable of ghosting through a phalanx. The +2 seems to be the most balanced and hopefully the devs agree here, NOT overpowered improvement to phalanx types, along with turning guard modes OFF.

[randy_cat]

In autoresolve only the stats of the units are taken into consideration, and since pikemen have in general low stats in most mods, they fare poorly in the campaign map, even if they are good in the battle map... for example in EB2 they are good in battle but poor in autoresolve. EB1 was better in this regard since pikes had good stats in general but they were a bit OP overall. One thing i don't understand, why in EB2 pikes are " permeable " and units can always seemingly run through the pike wall, while in vanilla M2TW and other mods pike walls actually work like a " barrier " and they stop units in their tracks ( even tho, after the initial charge units can fight pikemen in melee, once they have gone through the " wall " )

[Pooploop]

That's why I'm hoping the +2 to defense and the sheer number (as originally implemented by the devs) of the pikemen per unit will somewhat put sarissa users on a similar "rating" as hoplites in auto-resolve. The agema with the +2 makes them as good as other elites....I think.

[Pooploop]

Also, I'd have to disagree with you randy_cat. Pikemen in EB2 are not good in battle, especially with guard mode ON. You get way more value out of a normal hoplite unit than with pikemen. They just become sad passive meatshields (no pinning whatsoever, the number of times the ai could disengage their HEAVY INFANTRY in the MIDDLE of the battline with impunity was mind-numbing).

[Sint]

Also, I'd have to disagree with you randy_cat. Pikemen in EB2 are not good in battle, especially with guard mode ON. You get way more value out of a normal hoplite unit than with pikemen. They just become sad passive meatshields (no pinning whatsoever, the number of times the ai could disengage their HEAVY INFANTRY in the MIDDLE of the battline with impunity was mind-numbing).

Agree they can't even deal damage to units that frontally attack them.

[randy_cat]

Agree they can't even deal damage to units that frontally attack them.

Well they aren't great in all situations, but if used properly they perform well, for example defending a position, killing heavy cav and light infantry, holding a battle line while you flank the enemy. Their weakness is heavily armored infantry like hoplites, thorakitai, legions, etc... they struggle a lot with heavy infantry in general mainly because they have low attack and defense ( in my own submod i made pikemen stronger but with less weapon lethality, which fixes both their weakness in the autoresolve and also their performance against heavy infantry in the battle map )

[Sint]

Well they aren't great in all situations, but if used properly they perform well, for example defending a position, killing heavy cav and light infantry,

Vanilla EB2 pikes aren't even able to do that.They are pretty much just walls that barely kill anything.

[Pooploop]

Sint, EXACTLY. My personal fix was the aforementioned +2 to defensive score, and then turn guard mode OFF. One will finally see the potential in them which Phillip the II of Macedon himself must have seen. Also, randy_cat, your observation drives home the point that EB2 phalanxes aren't that historically accurate in their performance. Phillip created said phalanx to directly combat and counter hoplites without having to spend too much to individually equip each phalangite. Their long massed spears gave them staying and grinding power, while their lighter armor and shields allowed them to march further and stay in melee longer (without tiring). Add the fact that their fighting style was uncomplicated in the extreme (stay in position and hold pike extendinf out while jabbing), and that the sheer length of their weapon kept them OUT of reach of their enemies' means they have a distinct advantage in straightforward melee. The problem was that in this era, most phalangites devolved to becoming part-time farmers compared to their professional full-time forebears, which means they really suck against unexpected situations. Situations most commonly created by more open order, maneuverable infantry (elite light infantry, or gallic/italic style skirmisher/assault infantries), in unfavorable terrain.

[Shoebopp]

Sint, EXACTLY. My personal fix was the aforementioned +2 to defensive score, and then turn guard mode OFF. One will finally see the potential in them which Phillip the II of Macedon himself must have seen. Also, randy_cat, your observation drives home the point that EB2 phalanxes aren't that historically accurate in their performance. Phillip created said phalanx to directly combat and counter hoplites without having to spend too much to individually equip each phalangite. Their long massed spears gave them staying and grinding power, while their lighter armor and shields allowed them to march further and stay in melee longer (without tiring). Add the fact that their fighting style was uncomplicated in the extreme (stay in position and hold pike extendinf out while jabbing), and that the sheer length of their weapon kept them OUT of reach of their enemies' means they have a distinct advantage in straightforward melee. The problem was that in this era, most phalangites devolved to becoming part-time farmers compared to their professional full-time forebears, which means they really suck against unexpected situations. Situations most commonly created by more open order, maneuverable infantry (elite light infantry, or gallic/italic style skirmisher/assault infantries), in unfavorable terrain.

You raise two good points about how highly trained the phalangites of Philip II and Alexander were, and how unprofessional the phalangites of the later Hellenistic Age were. Unfortunately, only the latter point is relevant in EBII's timeframe. As you said, later phalangites were not battle hardened by years of nonstop campaigning and drilling. Instead, they were at worst levied farmers and at best settlers who semi-frequently train in between their farming duties. Thus it wouldn't be realistic for them to execute complicated maneuvers. An exception could be made to the Hellenistic Elite Phalanx (Agema Basilikon) unit, which owing to their elite training could probably do all the things you talked about.

[Pooploop]

Yes, shoebopp, but to clarify, what I meant was that owing to the very NATURE of a pike phalanx, even if the average phalangite was not as well trained as his illustrious world-conquering predecessors, they will still excel in simple direct melee. Even in as late a reign as Phillip V's, the Romans were unable to overcome the phalangite in said simple direct melee. In fact, they found the formation impervious and were themselves pushed back. It took a combination of better maneuvering, broken ground(hilly terrain), their own triumph over the Macedonian's auxiliary troops, the Romans' attack on the left flank and from behind (really what infantry wouldn't get fudged), and (if what I remember is correct) Flaminius's 20 war elephants (yes, elephants on the Roman side) to shatter the phalanx. I ask you, with such side losses that would lead to the destruction of any other army comprised of more "normal" infantry, how does it lead to so many later historians decrying the ineffectiveness of the phalanx? The ineffectiveness of the phalanx in SIMPLE DIRECT MELEE (completely understandable, however, in the belief of the ineffectiveness in redeployment, in fending off or executing flanking attacks, in subgroups of phalanx taking their own initiative, and in operating on broken ground, as these flaws, unaddressed by more consistent professional training and leadership, is what led to their defeat)?

I reiterate, I am not saying that ALL phalanx types should become battle-winning forces by themselves. They should be good in simple direct melee (I stress simple, direct, not flanked) though, and three of them (the regular phalangites, the mercenaries, and the agema) should be really good or GREAT at it. As the way current EB2 is however....with subpar stats, a problematic animation that might be the reason for enemies phasing through them, and with guard mode ON...they are all poor or terrible.

[randy_cat]

Phillip created said phalanx to directly combat and counter hoplites without having to spend too much to individually equip each phalangite. Their long massed spears gave them staying and grinding power, while their lighter armor and shields allowed them to march further and stay in melee longer (without tiring). Add the fact that their fighting style was uncomplicated in the extreme (stay in position and hold pike extendinf out while jabbing), and that the sheer length of their weapon kept them OUT of reach of their enemies' means they have a distinct advantage in straightforward melee. The problem was that in this era, most phalangites devolved to becoming part-time farmers compared to their professional full-time forebears, which means they really suck against unexpected situations. Situations most commonly created by more open order, maneuverable infantry (elite light infantry, or gallic/italic style skirmisher/assault infantries), in unfavorable terrain.

I'm not really sure that to drill and equip a pike phalanx was easier and cheaper than an hoplite one, but it is clear that a pike phalanx has many disadvantages, expecially on rough terrain and/or or against heavy infantry maniples ( my guess is that pikemen are generally effective and fairly resistant to arrows ). A realistic mod should make pikemen effective on the front but weak when flanked, or against infantry with high armor and mass ( higher mass means they get through the pike wall easier ). Rome 1 had quite realistic phalanxes but they were a bit too powerful in general, unless flanked or shot down with massive arrow fire.

[Pooploop]

High armor and mass means hoplites randy_cat. Hoplites Phillip's phalangites were able to fend of, rout or destroy. In battles against the Romans, those maniples found it incredibly difficult to break through or discomfit the phalanx in a head-on clash. It took very bad terrain, the routing of the phalanx's supporting troops and cavalry as well as attacks on the flank/encirclement. That's why I'm hoping a +2 to the total defensive score of all units with the phalanx ability is a balanced improvement to those units. They perform better both in real-time battles and in auto-resolve while not being too overpowered.

As they are now, even if they were to face theurophoroi in a head on clash on level terrain...they'll only have a 1 is to 1 death to kill ratio AT BEST. At worst they just lose. This is too suboptimal for a phalanx.