Repels and the pike square
 

Units don't get a repel benefit from being in the same square as a unit with a long weapon, correct? The manual at least seems to indicate that it's only the target's weapon that matters, not anybody else's.

For instance, if one mixed pikes and crossbows in the same squad, and a knight attacks one of the crossbowmen who shares the square with two pikemen -- the pikes do not repel the knight?

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

I believe so, and repel would not be useful against knights in any case, since they have so high morale.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

Even a 15 morale gives 18% chance of not attacking...

But yes, only the defender's weapon matters.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

But the defender also needs to attack/repel the attacker and score a hit before the attacker must pass a morale check. So units with low attack and long weapons against units with high defense and shorter weapons is not very effective. And if they also have high morale they are almost never repelled. They do take a one HP damage though (protection counting) if they pass the morale check and the defender succesfully hits them with their repel attempt. All this according to the manual.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

I'm curious if anyone someone feel that pikeneers (odd word) are tactically viable as a unit. As far as my own testing shows it's a lot better a few burly high protection units with shields at the front, than a whole regiment of pikemen.

ME Tien'Chi is a good example of this. The pikemen have just barely better survival rate then a common militia. His shield and sword wielding "brother" however tends to actually survive half of the time.

Perhaps I'm not using them right? Based on the mechanics of the game what is the best use of these kind of units?

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

Pikemen should have an defense & attack bonus against mounted units

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

1) repeller must hit the attacker
2) attacker must succeed in morale or abort his attacks. 3) only happens if attacker passes the morale check.

3) damage for repeller vs attacker is generated; if repeller would deal any damage to attacker, 1 point of damage is dealt

A hit is enough. Shield's don't help when you want to avoid getting hit... they only make it harder to get that 1 point of damage.

Knights of MA Man have:
morale 14
base defence 12: +3 mounted, +1 weapons, -6 armor+shield
parry: +6

Knights of MA Man have defence 10 before shield parry. That's not hard to hit, thanks to Pikes having att value of 1.
One note: I'm not 100% sure about shield parry being ignored. I think it is ignored, but haven't tested it in any way.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

Hm in my Dom2 TienChi games pikemen worked well against heavy cav. Though i see them more as chaff with increased effectiveness against cav, than as real cav killers. They're worth the extra cost overstandard militia imo, though of course i'd prefer gladiators for the task. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
They don't perform so well vs. artillery, but that's what the footmen with towershields are good for.
But i agree that Dom3 could use some real anti-cav units. Maybe instead of improving the pikemen, add another better (consequently more expensive) pikeman to the nations that have them, with enough stats to actuall get that repel working reliably. (say, 30-40% of the time against heavy cav, less against knights obviously)
I see a possible balancing problem, since they'd also be quite effective at repelling other infantry, which shouldn't be the case with pikes, but then, without shields they'd be quite weak against artillery, and high morale can at least make the attacks connect.
Hmm, maybe (for TienChi) something comparable to the heavy glaive troops, 14 protection, 7 defense, but 13 attack and 15 or 16 gold costs (and 18 ressources). And a pike obviously.

Or as an alternate route, maybe change the pike's stats from 1 att -1 def to +4/-4. Will not exactly increase the pikemen's survivability, but make them chaff that actually hurts heavy cav while taking away their charge bonus. Heck that's even more realistic. While pikemen could skewer charing cavalry, those 1000kg of horse, rider and armor didn't stop dead just because there were a few pieces of wood stuck in them. And a horse rolling over you hurts.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

A question about retarius (gladiator with net and trident): what exactly does the net do? It seems terrible effective against big units.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

Hmmm... Good idea Dhaeron. A high attack/low defence might be a good representation of a pike. I'll put into a test mod to see what happens.

Re: Repels and the pike square
 

Yup, but strangely, few knights had much interest in becoming initimately familiar with a foot of pike head followed by 10-14 feet of pike. I think this is the problem with repel: it's not nearly effective enuf for very big differences in weapon length.

Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

...reflecting the magnitude of the one-time charge bonus on lance-type weapons.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

It couldn't hurt, I guess. 'course, pikemen can charge too...

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

I think the length of the weapon should play a role when calculating repel effectivness. Now the game (according to the manual) just checks if defenders weapon is longer than the attacker, and if true the repel check is initiated.
It would be nice if the difference in length could be added as a bonus to the defender, not just as a security to be able to repel at all.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

Better then giving some weapons an attack & defense bonus against mounted troops would be giving mounted troops a penalty on the repel morale check. No matter how stupid the knight, the horse isn't that brave...

I think of a lot of nice things could come from recognizing that steeds and riders are separate creatures but that would be very developer-intensive.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

War trained horses seldom diobied their masters, some even wear blindfolds not to get distracted.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

Well, maybe then the horses should have seperate morale to the rider. I mean, there are those units in the game that ride less than trained warhorses.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

Those troops already have worse morale than the Knights etc who have trained warhorses.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

This sounds like a really good idea. The length difference times two or three as a penalty to the moral check would maybe work well. then the attack could stay low, so pikemen wouldn't repel infantry too often (infantry has mostly better defense than cav) so increased so the really big moral penalty from a pike vs. a sword wouldn't imbalance them, but even a 2 or 3 penalty against knights would really improve the repel effectiveness.
This isn't moddable though i suppose, while changing att/def is.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

Natural attacks such as Claw or bite are length 0. Spears are length 4. Morale check at -8 for all animals seems rather extreme.

Also, cavalry often have better defense than infantry. The shield type might confuse you, as e.g. EA Ermor has Tower Shields and those appear to be really fantastic, but don't affect repel (or at least, I think they don't). Just being mounted gives +3 defense.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

An added factor for difference in weapons length won't matter since a knight's lance is pretty long anyway. Once his lance is used up it might matter, but the issue is the pikeman's effectiveness vs a charge.

Repel mechanics just don't work very well as currently implemented. It isn't a huge problem as repel is not a big part of the game, but pikemen just don't seem to work the way they should. Especially, I think there should be a bonus for having a lot of pikemen in one place, historically the pikemen would be placed in mixed formations or even in the second row, to protect their fellow troops, and as it stands they can't.

I'd recommend some weapons be designated as "good at repelling" like pikes, halberds, long spears or jotun spears, and these would have various bonuses to repel. Maybe you could just say any weapon of length 5 or 6 is like this since these are the primary repelling weapons anyway. I'd recommend they be able to repel attacks targeting anyone in the square, have a large attack bonus (+5? +8? Something really useful) when repelling, and maybe do extra damage if the attacker manages to make his morale check. Similarly, some weapons could be designated as "bad at repelling" - like a flail, for instance - and they not be able to repel at all, though their weapon length would still come into play in determining if they would be repelled.

Re: Maybe a \'Receive Charge\' bonus...
 

Altering the attack defence values on the pike produces somewhat dissapointing results. High attack values with low defence values means that the pikeneer becomes a glassjawed butcher of militia.

Too bad we can't assign a specific attack value that applies to repel attempts only. Or perhaps some value that is related to size? Two size 2 units in the same square could perhaps gang up on one attacking size 3 unit and thus force two repel checks for an attack on either of them. Way to complex solution I guess but somewhat more realistic. Polearms are only effective in formations after all.