[Sombre]

I think the changes made to pikes in CBM make perfect sense.

Attack was increased not because the pike is some lightweight weapon that you can whip around hitting people, but because it actually is very hard to avoid being hit by a long weapon in the normal battlefield situation of a group of guys all using them. Additionally the bonus you get for being mounted is added def - having an extra point of attack helps here. KO and JK seem to agree since in basegame pikes are att 1 - compare this with glaives or naginata which are shorter and far less heavy weapons but have att -1.

Increasing attack also means repel works more often. And no, I don't think repel is underrated or more significant than it appears to be. Since it rolls against morale and is decreased with each attack it isn't any good against units designed to actually deal damage (as opposed to chaff) which have good morale and will have an easy time whacking the low def pikeman. However it is good against enemies like barbs, which is as it should be - I can't imagine disorganised barbarians overcoming pikes but enemy heavy infantry and elites would be much better at getting in to attack.

I think there's some confusion about att and def and what they represent. Almost universally, def comes from weapons that are less cumbersome like short swords etc, not so much att. Giving pikes def rather than att wouldn't make any sense, although it seems counter intuitive because they are recognised as 'defensive' weapons. The att value they have just represents how effective pike formations are in a system that doesn't have mechanics to better do so.