SP - Battles & Sieges Brace Polearms/Spear Wall Formation BADLY Needed

[DD44]

Spearmen/Pikemen/etc. BADLY need reworking. They're near-useless. Most of the time they keep their polearms on their backs and roll in with their shortswords and no shield. We badly badly badly need a spearwall formation option. We have a shield wall, but no spear wall. Hell even if the shield wall formation allowed spearmen to support people with shields in front of them it'd be better but as it is now the AI does nearly nothing with them. I worked hard to build up a battalion of voulgiers and pikemen to support my archers and they do not help nearly as much as even lower-tier units with shields.

What we need is for units with polearms but no shields to be able to set stationary spears in a two-deep spearwall against charging units, especially cavalry. Similar to couched lances for charging cavalry. But as it is now spearmen don't even target horses in melee, shieldless units get wrecked by archers and throwing weapons, and there's really there's no reason not to have every unit you have carry shields.

While we're on the subject, cavalry could use some love too. Cavalry charges aren't nearly as devastating as they really should be. They don't charge in any kind of formation half the time, and I don't even think they couch spears properly. We need at least tier 5 and up cavalry to be able to charge in a wedge and mow through dudes, UNLESS they have spears. (Though apparently the 1.4 addresses the charging in formation issue)

Medieval combat was a rock>paper>scissors of cavalry>archer>pike and right now the game is just "shields in front of a ****-ton of arrows for everyone!" Which gets repetitive fast. Never boring, but repetitive.

 

[TheShermanator]

Shoot, didn’t see this thread when I posted on the other current thread about spears. But yes, this.

 

[DD44]

I just had a realization.

Some have said things in other topics akin to "won't spear or pike walls render cavalry useless?" To which I have said "that's the point of a spear wall" but also consider:

There is already a "dismount" command that never ever gets used.

Boom.

 

[Nummer90]

I just hope that they increase the mass of dense infantry Formtions, so Cavalry cant just fade through 6 Ranks of heavy Pikemen/Halberdiers. There Needs to be an actual reson for dense Formations, as curently dense Infantry Units get recked by one third of their amount in Cavalry.

 

[Ingolifs]

I've been looking through the code and found this:

    private static float CalculateStrikeMagnitudeForPassiveUsage(
      float weaponWeight,
      float exraLinearSpeed)
    {
      return CombatStatCalculator.CalculateStrikeMagnitudeForThrust(0.0f, 40f + weaponWeight, exraLinearSpeed, false);
    }

This is code for calculating damage from a passively held weapon. It looks like they're at least considering having braced pikes.

 

[DD44]

The way they calculate relative speed in the game already should help too. Though I imagine a potential issue would be friendly fire.

 

[CzeReptile]

I just had a realization.

Some have said things in other topics akin to "won't spear or pike walls render cavalry useless?" To which I have said "that's the point of a spear wall" but also consider:

There is already a "dismount" command that never ever gets used.

Boom.

Well then people would actually have to use tactics for cavalry not the AI way of - charge HA, charge cavalry, charge rest. And it all dies to archer fire.

Also the notion of 50 knights dismounting and just CHARGING your lines, with heavy plate armor, big weapons and not so friendly attitude. I like that. Unless ofc they all die to massed archer fire because armor is haha.