It REALLY bothers me that pikemen are just a very bad ‘upgrade’ to spears that loses its bonus vs. cavalry and has no additional melee range.
For some reason they made pikes (which have a different unit role than spears) a direct upgrade to spearmen, which is almost as stupid an idea as making landschneckt an upgrade to men-at-arms or crossbowmenan upgrade to basic archers. I hope they fix this.
In reality pike and shott formations were very prominent in the mid to late renaissance period, especially in Europe. Pikemen made up the bulk of European armies at the time though they slowly got phased out in favour of more guns as they continued to develop.
In a similar way that hand cannons replace crossbowmen lategame, pikemen can replace spears for the most part. Though spears, like archers, would not be entirely obsolete because pikes would likely have a cost that includes gold, which can sometimes be a limited resource.
Pikemen should counter cavalry MORE effectively than spearmen especially in large numbers due to longer reach. Pikes should have: higher weapon strength, very slightly higher armour, additional reach (+1 or 2 melee range), paling-like ability (cavalry charging into braced pikes should take serious damage), small bonus vs cavalry. A slighly more spread formation might even be viable due to longer reach, though they would obviously perform better in melee while in a tight formation.
Spearmen could get sheilds to give them more ranged and melee armour from the front in the late game and differ them more from pikemen.
edit: my bad pikes do still have bonus vs. cav but they don’t perform as pikes should in my opinion
4 Likes
I agree, upgrades should give more options and pikes should be able to fight in lines of 2, helping to counter the knight meta
2 Likes
Yeah, and it would give landschneckt a purpose lategame as they could work great in conjuntion with pikes as they did historically. The pikes would help with their weakness to cavalry and landschneckt would help to clear infantry hoards.
Huh? Each upgrade to spearmen maintains bonus damage against cavalry equal to 2x their base attack.
4 Likes
Landschnecks should be anti Pike with a bonus vs them, Their AOE damage helping to fight the ability of 2 rows of pikes together. and lighter inf like archers if they get to them. but lose to MAA and knights.
Pike should be more anti MAA and cav.
a special unit, a long pike, would be interesting if it had a minimum range but also attack in 3 rows… so just a few would be pretty weak, but a mass of them would be incredibly strong.
1 Like
Yeah, would be cool if extra range pikes had a secondary weapon for close quarters combat similar to how archers have a melee attack but its not very good. Men-at-arms at arms or landschneckt would be a good synergy when combined with pikes because they would perform well at the front line especiallywith pikemen support. Men-at-arms should honestly upgrade to halberdiers lategame in my opinion.
Pikes, handcannons, landschneckt, and then halberdiers . . . it would be history as it happened. (no bonus vs cav for halbs though just for balance reasons) Pikes would still be low armour and therefore weak to ranged attacks and lose men-at-arms in the frontline.
. . . . but maybe this would be too complicated idk.
well the way I see it is the first line with the minimum range would be able to attack the second row of units while the 2 behind him, are covering the attacker on the front line… Though in the case of no men behind, i suppose he could get out a dagger for a weak attack.
lots of units lack secondary attacks, bowmen firing close range is silly, and also lack of snare makes archer kiting too good, if no snare, then at least units should not have to stop in movement to attack… its kinda silly especially for knights to have the horse stop for the unit to attack while the unit is walking away.
I think halbs and MAA should be different… MAA with a shield are great for archers and crossbows. Halbs are good vs armored knights and MAA. but really armor is totally underestimated and by that point the plate armor was so good shields were not needed vs arrows.
There were a variety of weapons and each had its place… we are missing war hammers, and others too that serve purpose to get beyond the armor tech,