Pikes & longspear need to be adjusted...

[Lemmy_Winks]

[rustyspoon]

The historical inaccuracy of the OP's post makes my head want to explode.

Other than that, I think that pikes are mostly fine. If they would just fix the magic spin-thrust that lightsabers its way through people, I'd be happy.

Anyway, history has proven time and time again that the ability to damage your enemy when they cannot reach you is always a good thing.

[Lemmy_Winks]

No.
You know what: Pikes got nerfed with every patch. Not sheathable, 3 slots, a lot less damage, even alot less speed, unbalanced and so on. I am a dedicated pikeman and everything is fine now, I never complained when any of these nerfs came (ok, I also play 2h from time to time) and I agree that pikes aka long spear were a bit OP like half a year ago when they still were balanced and had more speed, but now there good. Not to good, and not to bad. My next Gen will be 2h nonetheless ...

If something continues to get nerfed over and over again, its probably overpowered.

[Lemmy_Winks]

The historical inaccuracy of the OP's post makes my head want to explode.

Other than that, I think that pikes are mostly fine. If they would just fix the magic spin-thrust that lightsabers its way through people, I'd be happy.

Anyway, history has proven time and time again that the ability to damage your enemy when they cannot reach you is always a good thing.

I gota go right now, but what is wrong about it exactly? And the makers of the total war series seem to agree with me, the melee stats for pike troops are atrocious.

[rustyspoon]

I gota go right now, but what is wrong about it exactly? And the makers of the total war series seem to agree with me, the melee stats for pike troops are atrocious.

First off, total war is a game and needs some balancing factor. Pikes were also not only used anti-cav. Tightly packed spear or pikemen are INCREDIBLY effective against infantry. As a pike square can present multiple ranks of pikes in a direction it makes it incredibly difficult for infantry to even approach. Especially with the 2nd and 3rd ranks protecting the front rank. In a loose formation, sure, pikes aren't that effective, but trained forces didn't use them that way.

Also, the romans got their asses handed to them on multiple occasions by phalanx formations. Generally the romans only won those encounters when the phalanx was thrown into disarray. The romans hated going up against phalanxes and had a hell of a lot of trouble with them until they discovered how vulnerable their flanks were.

[POOPHAMMER]

my favorite part about pikes is when they do the ultra realistic jumping super spin stab that manages to hit you with pinpoint accuracy each time to abuse the speed bonus system

[Tears of Destiny]

I gota go right now, but what is wrong about it exactly? And the makers of the total war series seem to agree with me, the melee stats for pike troops are atrocious.

Historically, pikes were devestating against infantry.

As a Total War M2TW:K Modder, the Pike has such a stupid powerful animation that it has low attack numbers for a reason. Fight Swiss Pikemen and get back to me on that, or the Papal Guard (iirc those names). Numbers can be false advertising if you don't understand the hidden bonuses (located in the xml files) or the attack animations.

Animations are why an identical stat Spear and shield unit will always lose against an identical stat Sword and shield unit.

[Jarlek]

Historically, pikes were devestating against infantry.

As a Total War M2TW:K Modder, the Pike has such a stupid powerful animation that it has low attack numbers for a reason. Fight Swiss Pikemen and get back to me on that, or the Papal Guard (iirc those names). Numbers can be false advertising if you don't understand the hidden bonuses (located in the xml files) or the attack animations.

Animations are why an identical stat Spear and shield unit will always lose against an identical stat Sword and shield unit.

Just started playing Medieval 2 again. Could you please tell me these hidden bonuses, animation bonuses and whatnot? Or give a link to where I can read up on them? Could google them up, but I'm guessing you know exactly where to find it. Thanks beforehand!

[Zerran]

Lemmy I seem to recall you on multiple occasions telling me I should use a different weapon because the pike was so terrible that it was nearly useless... what changed your mind, hmm? 
I'm also interested to find out which battle you were in that had this massive number of pikes that decimated your force.
I'd also like to know when you last saw someone with a PIKE use a shield with it? Because, just fyi, it's impossible.

Oh, and I should note, the pike does slow the movement of the user down quite a lot. The longer the weapon that someone is holding, the more it slows them down. Also, you DO realize the Pike is the slowest melee weapon in the game already, right? Only one slower is the great lance, but it can't be thrust. Not to mention with the unbalanced tag it has a thrust-stun of around a full second.

Longspear is faster, sure, but it's still hella slow and has a nasty thrust stun, and doesn't have nearly the range of the Pike.

[Lemmy_Winks]

First off, total war is a game and needs some balancing factor. Pikes were also not only used anti-cav. Tightly packed spear or pikemen are INCREDIBLY effective against infantry. As a pike square can present multiple ranks of pikes in a direction it makes it incredibly difficult for infantry to even approach. Especially with the 2nd and 3rd ranks protecting the front rank. In a loose formation, sure, pikes aren't that effective, but trained forces didn't use them that way.

Also, the romans got their asses handed to them on multiple occasions by phalanx formations. Generally the romans only won those encounters when the phalanx was thrown into disarray. The romans hated going up against phalanxes and had a hell of a lot of trouble with them until they discovered how vulnerable their flanks were.

Sheilds nullify the effectiveness of pikes in melee combat. You can walk right up to the enemy line and they cant touch you. As far as flanking goes, these battles arent gigantic, they are small scale battles, one side or the other gets flanked in every engagement. Its would be especially easy to flank a group of pikemen if they were moving slowly, as they should be. On top of all that, its not like any clan would even be able to fight together in a phalanx style, the battle i refereed to in my post consisted of an unorganized clusterfuck.

As far as the roman stuff, looking at their wars against Macedon and the Seleucid empire, the only greeks they really fought, they crushed the greeks in every recorded battle except 2, one of which they took very few casualties anyways, and the other they were a small contingent in support of another greek army fighting against the Macedonians. I believe one battle had the romans killing 50,000 greeks while losing less than 400 men http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Magnesia . Or another battle were they killed 25,000 greeks while only losing 1,000 men http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pydna. Pikes and the phalanx are super effective huh. Seriously bronze age tactics shouldn't be owning a medieval game like crgp.

[Lemmy_Winks]

Lemmy I seem to recall you on multiple occasions telling me I should use a different weapon because the pike was so terrible that it was nearly useless... what changed your mind, hmm? 
I'm also interested to find out which battle you were in that had this massive number of pikes that decimated your force.
I'd also like to know when you last saw someone with a PIKE use a shield with it? Because, just fyi, it's impossible.

Oh, and I should note, the pike does slow the movement of the user down quite a lot. The longer the weapon that someone is holding, the more it slows them down. Also, you DO realize the Pike is the slowest melee weapon in the game already, right? Only one slower is the great lance, but it can't be thrust. Not to mention with the unbalanced tag it has a thrust-stun of around a full second.

Longspear is faster, sure, but it's still hella slow and has a nasty thrust stun, and doesn't have nearly the range of the Pike.

When i said that to you it was in a battle server and i think it was after i killed you in a duel at the end of a round. In that situation, being in a battle server and fighting somene one on one yes its a shitty weapon. But with a group of people working together like in a strat battle where everyone has pikes, they are overpowered. While i acknowledged the fact taht even when running around on your own with a pike, the pike is unrealistic with teh speed you can move and the lawl stabbing and bunny hoping, i didnt care because it was still easy to fight someone who has it. But now that ive seen them in strat battles these unrealsitc and unfair features can no longer be ignored, they must be fixed.

The battle was at hanun which we fought last night, i guess you werent there, chaos had a shit ton of pikes and crushed us with them. The crpg equip web site doesnt say u cant use with a sheild, but at the same time i was generalizing pikes with other long spears. You were plate armor and have a pike and can outrun most people, when i was infantry i had 6 or 7 athletics and wore medium armor and i dont think i could catch you. Almost every semi-decent piker ive seen has a ton of athletics and is very fast. If weapon length slows you down already its clearly nto slowing people down enough. The lawl stabbing and bunny hopping is also a huge problem as i mentioned. In my opinion the bunny hop stabbing is almost as bad as the speed. Also as someoen else mentioned the side swiping, and stabbing people who are way close to you. Even in movies if you see phalanx troops you seem them moving extremely slowly, cause thats how it was. You only see someone with a long spear running 30 miles an hour and jumping 6ft in the air and spinning around stabbing people in kung foo movies, and they did that much shorter spears.

Tears: Ive played MTW2 alot before as well as Shogun 2 more recently. I cant remember pikes ever being a challenge. In shogun 2 im like 184-64 in one on one battles, if someones got pikemen i send in my katana samarui and destroy them with taking almost no casulties.

[rustyspoon]

Sheilds nullify the effectiveness of pikes in melee combat. You can walk right up to the enemy line and they cant touch you. As far as flanking goes, these battles arent gigantic, they are small scale battles, one side or the other gets flanked in every engagement. Its would be especially easy to flank a group of pikemen if they were moving slowly, as they should be. On top of all that, its not like any clan would even be able to fight together in a phalanx style, the battle i refereed to in my post consisted of an unorganized clusterfuck.

As far as the roman stuff, looking at their wars against Macedon and the Seleucid empire, the only greeks they really fought, they crushed the greeks in every recorded battle except 2, one of which they took very few casualties anyways, and the other they were a small contingent in support of another greek army fighting against the Macedonians. I believe one battle had the romans killing 50,000 greeks while losing less than 400 men http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Magnesia . Or another battle were they killed 25,000 greeks while only losing 1,000 men http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pydna. Pikes and the phalanx are super effective huh. Seriously bronze age tactics shouldn't be owning a medieval game like crgp.

Shields don't nullify pikes. In spear/pike warfare you are never attacked from straight ahead. It's usually the pikeman on either side of the one you are facing. Also, ATS used to fight in a Phalanx style back in the day and they were pretty effective. If you REALLY want to see those tactics used in-game you should play some Vikingr during one of their events. It's pretty crazy.

Also, the Greeks beat the Romans many times during the Pyrrhic War. They did pretty damn good considering the fact that Greece wasn't united and was also under-funded and under-manned compared to the Romans. If the Romans had invaded 100 years earlier (before Greece was falling apart) I think the results would have been VERY different.

The Romans also got their asses handed to them many times by the Carthaginians during the Punic Wars. The Carthaginians also used the Phalanx during that conflict.

Pikes were also incredibly effective in Medieval and later periods. I'm guessing you've never heard of Swiss Pikemen? Pikes dominated battlefields until the introduction of firearms.

[Penitent]

Pikes were very very very very effective in combat.  So much so they were used with great effectiveness all over the world through the ancient, medieval, and renaissance time periods.  Yes, they were especially effective against cavalry.  Also, yes, they were mostly only effective when used in formation.

You can't say "look what the romans did to the greeks" because there are so so so many more factors involved in a war other than "these guys had pikes and those guys had shields." 

So, in terms of this game, I think pikes should be very very effective in formations (like you most likely experienced in your strat battle) and very poor as a main melee weapon in duel.  Fixing the "lol-wtfp0wn-spin-stab" would fix this just fine.  No other adjustments needed.

[Lemmy_Winks]

Shields don't nullify pikes. In spear/pike warfare you are never attacked from straight ahead. It's usually the pikeman on either side of the one you are facing. Also, ATS used to fight in a Phalanx style back in the day and they were pretty effective. If you REALLY want to see those tactics used in-game you should play some Vikingr during one of their events. It's pretty crazy.

Also, the Greeks beat the Romans many times during the Pyrrhic War. They did pretty damn good considering the fact that Greece wasn't united and was also under-funded and under-manned compared to the Romans. If the Romans had invaded 100 years earlier (before Greece was falling apart) I think the results would have been VERY different.

The Romans also got their asses handed to them many times by the Carthaginians during the Punic Wars. The Carthaginians also used the Phalanx during that conflict.

Pikes were also incredibly effective in Medieval and later periods. I'm guessing you've never heard of Swiss Pikemen? Pikes dominated battlefields until the introduction of firearms.

Getting attacked by the pikemen on either side of the direction your facing? Wouldn't you be getting flanked if that was happening, all the battle formations ive seen are two long lines of infantry going at eachother head to head. Youd also have to be heavily outnumbered to be getting flanked on both sides. So pikes could be effective if they are flanking the enemy? Really? so is everythign else. The Greeks beat the romans in two land battles in the phyric war, and those victories were both "phyric" victories meaning the greeks lost so many men that they may as well have lost the battle. If we had more time last night at hanun and had gone on to win the battle that would have been a phyric victory for us.

The greeks still lost the war, and the greeks had war elephants which make a huge difference. The only reason carthage won any battles at all was because of hannibal, they were like the French, completly useless without napoleon. Hannibal was like George Washington, using advanced tactics and trickery to prevent his troops from having to go head to head with the roman legions were he knew they would get crushed. Not only that htey had war elephants which were to a large extent responsible for winnign many if not all of their battles. Also the the majority of their army was made up of barbarian mercenaries from spain, not phalanx troops.

Yes when i think of troops and nations that dominated the medival battlefields, i think of the Swiss and there pikemen, gaurding the Pope in their fancy uniforms, they did such a good job. I dont think about the English long bowmen or the French knights that actually dominated the battlefield.

As far as the Greeks being weaker and "divided" in the later wars, the opposite is true. Greece was divided into small city states that were always fightin eariler in its history. Later on greece to a large extent had been united by Macedonia, a much larger and more powerful force than the spartans or athenians would have been. The selucid empire was also huge, much bigger and more powerful than the earily greek city states.

[rustyspoon]

At first I just thought you were misinformed. Then I read this:

Yes when i think of troops and nations that dominated the medival battlefields, i think of the Swiss and there pikemen, gaurding the Pope in their fancy uniforms, they did such a good job. I dont think about the English long bowmen or the French knights that actually dominated the battlefield.

and LOLed.