Pike vs Cavalry

[Thierry]

Hello,

No, I'm not starting a spin-off of crossbow vs bow. At least I hope I'm not

I always heard that pike was a fantastic tool against cavalry.
Is there any effect in Dominion 3 that takes that into account (if it's true...)

Is it usefull to bring pikemen in front if you know you'll fight horseman or cavalry ?

[thejeff]

Pikes are long weapons and thus give a chance to repel against lances. Unfortunately, cavalry tends to have a high defense and morale and thus is hard to repel.

So, really no. Pikes aren't particularly useful against cavalry.

[Agema]

Pikes were effective because cavalry simply couldn't charge the formation lest they impale themselves, the same reason archers might hammer stakes into the ground in front of themselves. An awful lot of wargames don't represent that, although as said above the repel mechanics in Dom3 at least go some way to make pikes a bit more useful.

[thejeff]

Some games handle that by giving pikes, or other long weapons, bonuses when being charged. This could be handled in dominions by giving pikes bonuses to hit & the morale check when repelling vs a lance attack.

[Dedas]

CBM tried to address that by increasing the pikes attack bonus but that only makes it more strange. The pike probably was a good weapon (IRL) to stop a cavalry charge with but was it a good weapon to attack someone with? I think not. It must have been very cumbersome and unwieldy to actually use it offensively. I see it as a basically defensive weapon (keeping something away from you). A spear on the other hand is much shorter and could probably been used both ways somewhat effectively.

As for the repel mechanics they are much more potent than they seem. You have to remember that they bend both ways. With a long weapon you can repel a lot and not get repelled a lot.

[Agema]

Pikes were pretty effective generally. They were so long that there were probably 4 rows of pikeheads in front of the whole formation. To engage them from the front would involve getting past the huge number of spearheads, a very unhappy prospect for anyone.

Their weakness was manoeuverability. Uneven terrain could disrupt a phalanx's cohesion, and "holes" in the wall of spearpoints could be exploited. Whilst devastating to anything in front of them, they were very poor to the flanks and rear, and as they were so clumsy changing facing and direction, this was a big vulnerability.

[Dedas]

Yes, with the right tactics the pike could and have been used offensively. It is very hard to simulate that in Dom3 though, as we don't have a special formation bonus; every soldier is calculated on his own. So that is why I opt to only look at the individual soldiers capability because that is what we have to work with.

[Evil Dave]

Dedas got it right: the lack of any notion of formation is a key problem for modeling a bunch of things. One knight charging into a bunch of infantry will kill a bunch before he gets killed or forced to retreat. A line of knights, charging stirrup to stirrup, may cause the guys standing in front of them to rout before the charge hits home. That's even true of pike charges as well, at least against low-morale infantry.

[chrispedersen]

Alexander the greats father, Phillip of Macedon (??) developed the first real pike/long spear 24-26feet long, as I recall and had enormous success on the battlefield with it.

They were enormously susceptible to terrain, to archer fire, etc - but contrary to popular opinion face changing was relatively quick. They would point the spears up, turn, point the spears down.

However, as in another persons post, they really are not effective against cavalry. Cavalry have high prot and high morale - so a, the pikes don't tend to get through protection - and when they do the cav just make their morale check anyway.

The cav then proceed to hit you with that devestating first lance hit.

[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.