From a realism perspective saying that scottish highlanders were the only ones who ever used pike formations is just retarded. It's something that was used since at least ancient bronze age warfare. The spanish tercio, landsknecht, swiss pike formation are prob the closest contemporary (for the period Warband mirrors) examples. And even then, having a long polearm in the second rank stabbing/attacking over a frontline of shielders is a no-brainer. You know what, just read this, it's wiki i know, but cba to look up other sources for obvious stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_%28weapon%29
When did i say pikes were only used by scottish highlanders, look at my thread in balance to get my full history take. At any rate i meant highland or mountain warfare, you mentioned the scotts and the swiss, which means you agree with me. You also mention bronze age warfare, yes i know about that, and its really my whole point in the history part of my nerf thread. Pike walls are a bronze age tactic that were rendered useless by the advent of professional armies (the Romans) using sword and sheild infantry who could get in close and render the pikes useless.
I even posted links to some of these battles between the roman legions and these pike wall or phalanx formations, the Romans won basically all of these battles and in two of them had kill to death ratios of 25:1 and 50:1 despite being outnumbered (these were very large battles too). I took this historical evidence and provided a rationale for why pikes were not effective to prove why they should not be so effective here. Some of the biggest defeats in military history have come from pitting an army of pikes/phalanx against sword and shield infantry and yet doing that wins you battles in strategous? Its the same thing as if the game was messed up so badly that an army of cavalry could destroy an army of pikemen effortlessly.
As far as the other comments about game play. The way i see it, its a bunch of people (the ones who mass pikes) saying that pikes are not OP and are easy to stop (which is why they use them), and they would know that pikes are easy to stop seeing as the people they fight against do not use pikes. Wait what?
Pikes and other weapons are not static objects and thats unfortunate, but you can still adjust the minimum attack range in the code, that needs to be done. You can also slow down the movement speed of those who use pikes, it has been done to a very small extent, it needs to be done more. The lawl-stabbing needs to be doen away with on all weapons, everyone seems to agree with that. The bunny hopping needs to be disabled when using a pike, and it can be done (i would want this done on alot of other weapons too, but pikers seem to be the only ones who do it). If you want to agrue agaisnt these changes read my rationale for them in my nerf thread. At any rate, when it comes to making a weapon balanced instead of realistic or historically accurate, this changes would make the pike balanced.
A pike is a weapon that was designed in an extreme way to do one job, and do it very well, that being to stop cavalry. Balance is not taking a weapon meant to do one thing, and changeing it in all kind of absurd ways so that it can do EVERYTHING well. With that kind of thought why dont we take throwing rocks, which suck, and "balance" them by filling them with gunpowder so that they function as gernades. That way rocks wont suck anymore. If something like a pike does one thing SO well as it does stopping cavalry, its already balanced, its aptitude of stopping cavalry offsets how much it SHOULD suck against infantry.
And if you say "balanced" armies win battles, i would think you all would be for this. I would not consider a "balanced" and "diverse" army as you describe it, to be an army made of two different unit types. With these changes, you would still have some pikes for stopping cav, its just not 80% of your infantry would have them. This opens the door for other unit types to replace those pikers making your army truly diverse and balanced. At any rate now that the Knights of new and TKOV have gotten into the action, its 4 vs 1 in strat now, you dont need OP pikes anymore.
And remember, if something (the pike) gets nerfed over, and over, and over, and over again, then its probably OP.
Why pikes should not be so good:Pikes were so long and heavy pike men/phalanx moved extremely slow.
If infantry got past the spear points and in close to the pikers, the pikes were useless, they had to drop their pikes and fight with their side sword, if they had one.
Pikes were so long and heavy that when flanked they could not turn to their left or right to face their attackers, they had to drop their pikes and use their side sword, if they had one.
Pikes were so long and heavy that when flanked from behind they could not turn around face their attackers, they had to drop their pikes and use their side sword, if they had one.
Pikes had no maneuverability or flexibility as soldiers/a military unit.
All of this was made worse by the fact that they typically wore very light armor because of how heavy the pikes themselves were, the very most elite pikemen could wear heavier armor, but the vast majority could not.
Pike walls were only useful in exactly one scenario, if the enemy was in front of them and they were able to keep them at bay, meaning the enemy did not have shields, or did not have the discipline to advance whole heartily into the pike wall. Yes some may be stabbed or even killed while doing so, but that's what professional soldiers do, and when they get in they slaughter the pikers.