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.
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.

[Dedas]

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

[Wauthan]

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.

[Evil Dave]

Dhaeron said:
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.

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.

[Taqwus]

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

[Evil Dave]

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

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

[Dedas]

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.

[Wick]

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.

[Folket]

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

Dedas said:
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.

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.