Huzzah! We are the Jatu!

[M0rdred]

Plus the very fact that the pikes were braced, meant the force was applied to the ground not to the wielder, all the pikeman had to do was aim it.

 

[Vissy]

It's really why cavalry did not charge straight on at masses of infantry; if they could've cut through a hundred times their number, no matter a pike or two thousand, they would've done that. Instead they resorted to tactics, quick charges to flanks and rear and such, while the heavy cavalry generally just charged weak spots. When they did charge large blobs of infantry, though, they did get slaughtered.

 

[No idea]

The Jatu have made me much more cautious and changed the way I fight.  I always look back to see if I'm being followed before I lance a horseman from the side or in a way that will stop my horse.  I've been lanced too many times after lancing someone else and have learned.  Fighting the Jatu is one of the epic experiences PoP offers, especially their armies.  There's nothing like seeing a hundred lancers charging at your army while you counter-charge with your own cavalry.  Total carnage.  I also use the, ride ahead and lure the lancers away method, but with over 100 lancers, you can only lure so many, the rest are going to continue their charge.  Against the armies, the stream of lancers is so long that I can get into trouble trying to lure them away because I can't turn back into the main battle without encountering a lot of enemies.  Nothing like having 20 lancers at your back and seeing 50 more in front of you and you're all alone.  Only PoP will give you these type of challenges and give you a great sense of accomplishment when you ride through the enemy forces, killing several in the process.  I love the fast horses you and enemies have.  It makes for fast paced battles and absolute chaos on the battlefield.  Great.

I really HATE the Jatu, no matter their numbers they ALWAYS kill at least one of my precious elite units. I think the best and least gamey way to partially avoid their charge is using yourself as a bait. When they are around 5 seconds away from hitting your lines start galloping towards them and change direction just one or two seconds before reaching the Jatu front line. That makes most of Jatu front units start chasing you, changing the whole direction of the Jatu charge. As soon as the Jatu direction is changing order your cavalry to charge. That will make your cavalry hit Jatus which are not pointing their lances at them (because they are changing their direction to go after you). This will, in turn, make the Jatus behind those hit by your cavalry charge stop without ever hitting your lines (because the front Jatus hit by your own charge will have been stopped by your charging cavalry, so the ones behind also stop)). Of course, a few ones will sneak and hit your lines, but really few of them.

 

[Fulkram]

Uhm it isnt actually hard to stop a charging horse if your in numbers.
Thats what the pike wall formation was built to do.
No horde no matter how well trained will willingly charge onto it and will slow down even if forced to do it.
That losses momentum and then the pike hitting it will likely stop it dead.
Its normally a wall of pikes so they will hit 3-4 horse and rider both being hit the odds of them continuing to charge down 12 ft of wood after the head has been plunged into them is extremely low.
It may destroy a pike but theres more behind and now a dead horse on the floor infront of the formation blocking the follow up waves.

Its dangerous if your formation is pore but any decently disciplined formation that has reasonable numbers would not have much trouble blocking a cavalry charge.

Your not stopping a charging horse with a stick.....no way in any hell. You might kill it, but it's corpse is still going to smash into you. Yeah, you might end a cavalry unit if it charges into a good disciplined pike unit pointing the business end at them, maybe. The main reason why pikes were effective is because you could afford to field 3 or 4 or 5 regiments of pikes to ONE cavalry unit, add that to the initiative the pikes provide and you have a winning solution, not a pretty solution mind you, but a winning one. Pikes really only made being cavalry a lively profession, it was guns that ended the reign of heavy cavalry. With pikes you turn an equation that looks like "I'm gonna run you over and probably stab you with something while I am at it" into an equation that looks like "You might kill me and/or my horse, but your still getting run over".  Guns turned the equation into "Wait....that part where you kill me before I even get my pointy thing within 20 feet of you isn't fair".

man....talkin about the guns is making me want to buy a copy of with fire and steel again.....I sooooo loved using those grenades.....

 

[mesor]

Lol thats crap a good wall of pikes will stop the charge dead.
A horse running onto 3-4 pikes? Its going to do what? Keep running straight down the length of the pikes and then over the top of you?
Aslong as there well braces that horse will never hit your line's it'll drop to the ground first and at worst might slide forward enough to trip you over for a couple of seconds.

 

[Fulkram]

If the horse is gonna hit the line...what's gonna happen is the sticks are going to brake. There are no 3, 4, or 5 sticks that are going to stop a 2000 pound object moving at 30-40 miles per hour. I won't argue that the cavalry line is probably going to get killed, but those front line pikemen are going to be in a very bad way, the guys right behind them aren't going to make out super well either. The sticks simply are not strong enough to absorb or displace that amount of energy.

War horses used during the medieval period weighed in between 1500-2000 pounds (supposedly). The ancestors of today's larger horse breeds like Clydesdale horses. Are you seriously trying to suggest that a STICK or even a half dozen sticks are going to stop one of these monsters COLD? Where not even talking about a line or wedge of them, just show me some math that says you can stop ONE. Two thousand pound object...30-40 miles per hour...3-6 STICKS....no....

 

[noosers]

First of all, those aren´t sticks. The shaft of a regular pike has about the diameter of a regular beverage shaft, perhaps a tad smaller. That´s like 5cm. And those shafts are usually reinforced with iron bands to avoid breaking.

Heavy draft horses or working horses werent usually used for bloody battle. They´re too well tempered and too heavy. They may be strong, but they aren´t fast. So forget the part of a 1000kg  (~2000 pounds) heavy horse hitting a line of infantry with 48-65 km/h. The highest recorded speed of a modern horse is about 70km/h which is 43,5 mph.

And now compare your average medieval armed and armoued soldier with todays jockeys.

So your fully armoured knight and his horse may be weighing 500-600kg at most. And I reckon the achieved tospeed won´t be higher than 40km/h. And that´s pretty stoppable for a couple of decent pikes. Especially since the horse won´t impale itself in bloody frenzy - it will automatically shy off if it recieves a certain amount of pain. Sure momentum will carry it onwards, but it´s not as if the horse would slide 200m.

The greatest threat off a dying/impaled horse for infantry is most likely it´s kicking legs, but that´s it.

Horses vs Infantry always ends up messy and the one with the bigger balls will win. But I think that topic was recently exclusively discussed in the Sage Guild. So if you want to read more opinions and details about it, please continue there.

 

[azxcvbnm321]

There is absolutely no way a pike or spear that can be carried by a single man can be braced into the ground so that it can stop a 1000+ pound mass moving at 30-40mph.  It's the laws of physics, the horse might be killed, but it will still barrel into the pikeman killing him and killing or severely injuring several more rows of men behind him.  And discipline works both ways.  It's been shown that horses can be trained to run into a wall of spears, but usually horses were not trained enough in medieval warfare for that tactic and it wasn't widely used.  On the other hand, the pikeman knows that he is dead.  He might kill the horse, but he's still going to die if the horse continues the charge.  Seeing dozens of not a hundred or more horses charging at you is very intimidating and can cause an untrained group to break formation and run. 

Like someone else said, there were usually far more spear and pike infantry than there was cavalry so they depended upon numbers.  Once a charge is stopped, the cavalry is dead meat to spears and pikes, just like in PoP and M&B.  But there's no way a single spear or pike infantry will be effective against a single cavalry.

Cavalry were the kings of the battlefield far into the period with guns which finally made them obsolete.  Without guns, there was no question over the dominance of cavalry in the battlefield.  In ancient times, I know that Alexander the Great countered enemy cavalry with his own cavalry.  The counter to cavalry is cavalry.  Once his cavalry defeated the enemy cavalry, he would turn his cavalry into the side or backs of the enemy infantry that was already fighting his own infantry.  That would usually end the battle.

We don't have many examples of cavalry charging head-on into spear infantry because no respectable cavalry leader would ever use his cavalry that way.  Cavalry are expensive.  Much better to order your own infantry to engage the enemy infantry, and THEN order a charge into the side or backs of the engaged enemy.  The hammer and anvil tactic is age old and very effective.

 

[No idea]

There is absolutely no way a pike or spear that can be carried by a single man can be braced into the ground so that it can stop a 1000+ pound mass moving at 30-40mph.  It's the laws of physics, the horse might be killed, but it will still barrel into the pikeman killing him and killing or severely injuring several more rows of men behind him.  And discipline works both ways.  It's been shown that horses can be trained to run into a wall of spears, but usually horses were not trained enough in medieval warfare for that tactic and it wasn't widely used.  On the other hand, the pikeman knows that he is dead.  He might kill the horse, but he's still going to die if the horse continues the charge.  Seeing dozens of not a hundred or more horses charging at you is very intimidating and can cause an untrained group to break formation and run. 

Like someone else said, there were usually far more spear and pike infantry than there was cavalry so they depended upon numbers.  Once a charge is stopped, the cavalry is dead meat to spears and pikes, just like in PoP and M&B.  But there's no way a single spear or pike infantry will be effective against a single cavalry.

Cavalry were the kings of the battlefield far into the period with guns which finally made them obsolete.  Without guns, there was no question over the dominance of cavalry in the battlefield.  In ancient times, I know that Alexander the Great countered enemy cavalry with his own cavalry.  The counter to cavalry is cavalry.  Once his cavalry defeated the enemy cavalry, he would turn his cavalry into the side or backs of the enemy infantry that was already fighting his own infantry.  That would usually end the battle.

We don't have many examples of cavalry charging head-on into spear infantry because no respectable cavalry leader would ever use his cavalry that way.  Cavalry are expensive.  Much better to order your own infantry to engage the enemy infantry, and THEN order a charge into the side or backs of the engaged enemy.  The hammer and anvil tactic is age old and very effective.

Well, we can only speculate about what happened when a cavalry charge met a wall of pikes or spears, but we know a thing for certain: during the XVI century cavalry lost its place as the king of battlefields (which had held since around V century). I mean, they weren´t anymore the decisive force which almost always dealt the killing blow or took the major offensive operations. They become again an important but auxiliary arm of infantry. Based on what I have read about warfare this was 1. due to firearms (not just guns), 2. the ability of states to field larger number of permanent or semi permanent and disciplined forces of infantry and 3. cavalry´s evolution, which, by late XV century, had transformed itself into a one shot missile. It might charge one time and then it would be spent, horses too tired to retreat and charge again during the decisive phase of most battles.

Regarding the cavalry vs pikes thing, even those in favor of cavalry, recognize that cavalry almost never charged head on against a formed wall of pikes, so, in some sense, that means a win for the pikes. If cavalry didn´t attack you frontally but only from flanks or when you are out of formation, that basically means that pikes countered cavalry, even if they didn´t engage on combat the mere fact that cavalry didn´t charge them head on is a victory for pikes (and when they charged head on things could go really wrong, as at Bannockburn). On general terms, I guess terrain had a lot to do regarding cavalry. A flat, hard terrain with space to maneuver, favored cavalry, while other kinds favored infantry.