Spearman Line bonus armour vs The Coustillier?

Coustillier seems really OP with charge attack. But I have a rather simple solution, give all Spearman like unit (and kamayuks) a heavy bonus armour to Coustillier’s charge attack. Make it literally one damage to a Sperman-line unit. You now have a cheap counter to Coustillier. Even Turks Spearmen can at least tank vs them for a little.

Reason? Cavalry charging into walls of spears or pikes meant instant death in real life.

It might need more nerfs than this. But this one seems a good idea.

2 Likes

Not at all, and several times a Heavy Cavalry charge actually broke through Spear lines like they were unsharppened sticks.
Real warfare was actually extremely brutal and Cavalry-favoured, until the Swiss Pike Square, which had Guns in it, for the real anti-armour punch that could actually kill Knights mid-charge.

It’s very risky thing do to. Charging into this was very risky. Granted, this was the ancient Greek version. A phalanx formation. They were better off hitting them either behind or the flanks.

main-qimg-d0e5f33b395e249c4f12de7b7cbbd306

I think it is a good idea, but you wouldn’t even have to negate all of it really, just give them enough armor against it to not die instantly so they have a chance to do some damage back, it’s normally expected that you will lose with spearmen against cavalry unless you outnumber them

In real life I think caltrops and walls were the main anti-cavalry measures that existed though, I don’t think I would want to try to poke a horse with a sharp stick while it was coming towards me at high speed, I would still get squished even if I killed it, they weigh a lot and don’t stop moving when you stab them

You may die. But the sheer number of pointy spikes (spears) will inflict heavy damage to the cavalry units.

a lot of people also put forward similar recommendations on reddit already… unless you are poachin from there already…

I don’t like reddit. So, I would not know.

Not really, after the fall of the phallanx, Heavy Cavalry was the “be all, end all” of warfare in the Middle Ages.

They were like the Air Force of modern day, you could not actually stop an attack from dealing brutal damage to your lines, no matter what you did, so you had to brace your men for it.

The simple shock and awe of seeing hundreds of men disappearing amongst and beneath horses, was usually enough to route the vast majority of armies in the period.

Heavy Cavalry only stopped being the whole focus of battlecraft, when Pike & Shotte came into play.
Before that, the side with the most horsemen would often just win any field battle.

Cavalry charged from the rear, and flanks and some cases the front, spear were not very long in the middle ages so a lance could outranged them. Then came the swiss and spanish with more professional soldiers longer pikes, guns and made cavs no so dominant anymore

1 Like

Err, horses sucked awful in forests and swamps. And in long, drawn out siege battles. It would be very hard to use horses in tight city streets or within a fight inside a castle with tight spaces, like corridors.

Most of the time, Sieges would just starve out the defenders, precisely so they would not have to fight on the streets.

It worked, most cities just surrendered after a few months of Siege, no need to fight over the battlements.

I believe majority consensus here is that if the game was historically accurate to a time period of 1000 to about 1400 franks would have a 150% win rate on all land maps except against Britons when charging uphill in the rain through a mud pit

But fortunately it is not perfectly accurate or I think I would have to uninstall it for sanity purposes

1 Like

And after that period, Spanish would auto-win all Land maps, and Portuguese would auto-win all Water maps.

Historical accuracy would make a terrible game to play…

Spanish would be very OP, Franks would rage quit ay the start of every map

Well by this logic coustilliers one shotting peasants and old men is fine, after all they wouldn’t realistically survive getting pierced by whatever this huge weapon is.

So what? They waste the charge and then they die anyway. They would be as useless as usual.

Only a stat nerf can work. First because we don’t need the game to get any weirder, and second because the coust would need to remain super strong to justify its charge getting denied so hard by a class of unit. But then to counter them you would be forced to make halbs since they would beat your other units, and the Burg player can just make HC (or just xbows at this rate, really) and demolish you anyway.

2 Likes