So, today I noticed a weird thing while doing custom battle tests: Even against melee cavalry, spear infantry like the picked warrior and Vlandian swordsman seem to pretty consistently do
worse than non-spear cavalry like the legionnaire or Khuzait spear infantry (despite the name, they only have javelins) against melee cavalry (and anything else) .
And I think I found the reason why:
This image is the result of 100 Khuzait lancers charging straight into a shield wall of 100 picked warriors. I count two horses that are spooked, but no horse or rider has been killed or dismounted.
The whole point of a spear is its range, specifically to hurt the enemy before he can hurt you. In close range, a spear is more hindrance than help compared to a shorter weapon -- that is true both in MB2 and in real life. If you cannot hurt an enemy before he gets in your face, a spear is pointless. And currently, any melee battle in MB2 seems to become a close range brawl -- is why I believe infantry with swords currently outperform spear infantry even against cavalry. And while it makes some sense that an infantry unit with a shield can...shield themselves while closing the distance to a spearman, it makes no sense that a horse can run straight into a shield wall without being even inconvenienced.
So could we please increase spear effectiveness vs mounted units?
In my opinion, a spear hit on a rider should have a much higher chance of dismounting them, and a spear hit on a horse should have a high chance of spooking the horse, and at least a low chance of dismounting the rider.
Spears are already a very bad infantry weapon against anything that is not mounted (in game, not IRL), and even versus mounted units they are of limited effectiveness unless the rider runs straight and frontally into the infantryman. But in that situation, a cavalry unit needs to
really be punished, with a high chance of being killed or at least dismounted, if spears and pikes should ever have any use at all.
