Ability is, fight even against one unit(no base penalties), instead of being countered by that unit.

Spearmen defend chariots way better, and swordsmen a bit better... then, war elephant, longbowmen, horse archer, etc.. Therefore the phalanx's advantage is ONLY evident when you do not have these units or do not use them, or the opponent masses chariots and you had already built all your axemen and sent them out, or were caught unprepared.


Now, I am not saying this isn't useful, it can be... it makes preparing your attacking stack a bit easier, they can defend single tiles and pillage on their own a bit better than other units early on. And in regular games its usefulness is emphasized because the best strategy is to rush in the first couple 1000 years. But it is still so niche.


And historically, their ability makes little sense. The phalanxes weakness was the exact strength it is given... it was vulnerable to being flanked by quick infantry or cavalry, or archers. Where the heavy phalanx showed it's superiority was when it fought other infantry and was not outflanked.


I don't know what it's ability should be, I think +75% versus melee instead of +50% would make sense, but that is the Dog Warriors ability... they were the finest infantry in the world of their time, yet they stack up even against all the other nations axemen... (except for the vulture, and losing to the Dog Warrior)

I do agree it is a bit of a lame ability and although it is a neat looking unit, it isn't anything special unless yer fighting Hatty or Cyrus (It works against special-chariot units right?)

I personally think it should be +25% against MOUNTED units, since the Phalanx Position is a tightly-packed group of soldiers with short-spears.

Just look at the movie 300, the Spartans are Phalanxes.. they should be better than they are in game.

Well, they're at least as good as an axe :(.

Seriously, I got jumped on a bit for saying these guys suck over in GD or BTS or something...one of those subforums. Fact of the matter is though, their usefulness is minimal AT BEST compared to regular axes. They are a UU with a bonus against a chariot, that the generic counter (a spear) still handles better, and will ALWAYS be available if the UU is! Spears and axes cost the same in hammers. So what you're doing with this UU, is MAYBE taking 1-2 less spears, although honestly you'll still probably want a spear or two...and all of this is assuming the opponent has horses during the time period where this really matters in the first place!

Compared to the other axe UUs and most UUs in general, this one is foul. It's right up there with the ballista elephant and post rifle/cavalry UUs. When playing as the greeks I tend to pretend I have no UU...although with alex you have AGG to lean on and agg axes are good anyway.

Certainly my least favourite UU
True about their Civ abilities not being an accurate reflection of real life not that this would worry me too much if they were a well-balanced and useful unit

i'd personnaly rather see it having a ~50% bonus versus Mounted ... still not that strong but certainly less niche (and no ... 50% wouldn't be to much in my book)

Hi

I dont think they all THAT sucky. They get an extra bonus that's handy to have and better than what some other UU's get. And they get it without any drop in str or upping of cost. Yeah they not best UU in game but they not worst either.

I really only have two problems with phalanxs.

1) their icon in build list loos soooo much like spears I cant count how many times half the units I am building/whipping for a rush end up being spears grrr. Like someone pointed out it NOT as bad as when say whipping a conquistador in an emergency and only to find a exploere opos out but it still annoying.

2)But BIGGEST thing that annoys me about them is a phalanx is a formation NOT a unit. The SHOULD be called Hoplites dang it!!!!


...
Just look at the movie 300, the Spartans are Phalanxes.. they should be better than they are in game.

Well if we are gonna go by 300 movie then their bonus should be something like plus "100% to tummy crunches" I swear they could have called that movie 1800ABs instead of 300 spartans hehe :P

Kaytie

The phalanx gives a bonus that isn't used, except in extremely rare circumstances.

So, as far as UUs go, Phalanx is one of the worst.

I think the UU will stand a better chance against knights. Up it 20-30% in strength and it will probably take out most knight units and be cheaper than a pikemen. Your always going to use spears. Esp against horsemen which the AI loves.

If you're planning on an axe rush the phalanx is actually pretty good, you often have to build ~3 spears on ~12 axes to defend cities taken against chariots and to bring in reinforcements safely. Now you can just build 15 axes which can be the difference between success and failure in close situations.

The phalanx gives a bonus that isn't used, except in extremely rare circumstances.

So, as far as UUs go, Phalanx is one of the worst.

Hi

actually Iwould say its the opposite. A stack of axes getting hit by chariot units is one of the more common circumstances in game.

The knock against phalanxs being immune to their counter isnt from standpoint of situation being rare but just that so many people think that the situation can be taken care of just as easily of by bringing along a cpl of spears that the bonus doesnt mean much.

I think a unit being immune to its natural counter is a VERY handy bonus. Yeah maybe it doesnt elevate it to status of the top UU's but it doesnt make it useless either.

Kaytie

If you're planning on an axe rush the phalanx is actually pretty good, you often have to build ~3 spears on ~12 axes to defend cities taken against chariots and to bring in reinforcements safely. Now you can just build 15 axes which can be the difference between success and failure in close situations.

Hi

I agree :). Or another way to look at it is say if normaly a axe rush is X number of axes/y number of spears with phalanx it means choice of X plus Y number of axes in same amount of time or X number of axes off and running that much sooner since they dont need to wait for spears to be built. And getting a rush started even just one or two turns sooner can aslo sometimes make a big diff.

Also its not as dangerous for a lone phalanx to veer off from the stack to pillage a resource or capture a worker or whatever since that lone phalanx wont have to worry as much about being picked off by a chariot.

Maybe to some or even most thats not as gamebreaking as quecha rush or a lightning Immortal/war chariot blitz or prat attack but it not sucky either.

Kaytie

I suppose if you were pillaging or doing some other sort of low intensity stunt, being able to send one or two axe-like units instead of an axe escorted by a spear my be a benefit. However I hardly ever use early UU's anyway (never seem to have the right resource so early) so I doubt I would miss this. Glad to see most folk think they're pants, since the actual model looks well-hard and always scares the cr*p out of me ...

@Kaytykat,
Exactly, good point about the pillaging axe, it almost always gets killed if the ai has horses. So you pillage with a spear, but now the stack probably has no spear left so the stack gets attacked. The longer a war lasts the more your stacks get split, if it's not possible to pillage the horses you need more and more spears to defend.

Basically Phalanxes are invulnerable in woods and to a somewhat lesser extent on hills against anything pre Phants/Xbows. I think it's sound tactic not to pillage the horses in these wars, chariots are much weaker defending cities than archers and the ai will build them.

They are a UU with a bonus against a chariot, that the generic counter (a spear) still handles better, and will ALWAYS be available if the UU is!

Spears require Hunting.

Spears require Hunting.

And the Greeks start with Hunting, which makes it a moot point.

actually Iwould say its the opposite. A stack of axes getting hit by chariot units is one of the more common circumstances in game.

Not if you use a mysctical unit called a 'spearman' to guard your stack of axes.

Even if my spear gets lost I rarely find the AI attacking a large stack of axes with a few stray chariots anyway... just their own stupidity.

Not if you use a mysctical unit called a 'spearman' to guard your stack of axes.

Even if my spear gets lost I rarely find the AI attacking a large stack of axes with a few stray chariots anyway... just their own stupidity.

Joshua368,

In the early game there are very few military units. Warriors, Archers, Axemen, Swordmen, Chariots, and Horse Archers. The Axeman counters 3 of them. The Phalnax counters 4 of them. (4 and 5, if the Archers are in a city.) I rarely see the AI building Horse Archers, and often times I'm attacking AIs without knowing if they have Horses or Metal or neither. If the enemy doesn't have horses then that spear is wasted hammers and I could have added 1 more offensive unit to my stack.

Then there's the flip side where the AI has Horses but no Metal and are just spamming Chariots all over the place. The "just build one Spearman" doesn't always work, where as the Phalnax works as both an offensive unit and a defensive unit.

The Phalnax units permits me to spam one single unit with little worry that the AI will have a counter unit. It's a very useful early game domination strategy unit.

If you're planning on an axe rush the phalanx is actually pretty good, you often have to build ~3 spears on ~12 axes to defend cities taken against chariots and to bring in reinforcements safely. Now you can just build 15 axes which can be the difference between success and failure in close situations.

QFT.

If the phalanx is a sucky unit I don't even want to contemplate something like the navy seal or panzer.
It's not a great unit but it's decent enough coming so early. I mean compare the relative advantage of those units vs the standard fare in that point in the game and consider the relative leverage of having one more axe in an early rush. The difference is staggering if you ask me.

And no my deity game is not dead, sorry about the delay. ;)

Panzer is a great UU imo. Phalanx is ok--not great, but ok. Axe rush is a powerful, although situational, strategy. Being able to bring along 1-2 less spears may not seem like a big deal, but an opponent with horses presents a legit threat to maybe not halt your axe-rush, but at least be able to take out a couple of your attackers pretty easy, which can slow your advance. And spears are less effective at attacking cities. And production is limited earlier on. I wouldn't say it is among the worst UUs, but it is certainly not among the best.

Greece is such a good civ anyway (phil + one of agg/cre) that it doesn't make much difference that their UU is ordinary.

As usual, ppl are treating the other side of the battle as a punching bag.... :(

Phalanxes are very useful when the enemy knows how to play, that is, mainly in MP. Ok, you can defend your stack with spears, but spears are weak units for everything else besides defending vs mounted and they also cost hammers.... IMHO I would clearly prefer a extra phalanx to 2 extra spears in early game: it is not so good defending vs chariots but it is more flexible, and when the hammers are scarce I prefer a unit that can defend and attack effectively than a unit that is no more than a shield.

Anyway, like i said , it depends of the way that the enemy acts. Given that the Ai is a bad defender in all cases phalanx and axe pretty much stay in the same level. But that is not because of the unit, but because of the noobness of the AI :p

I'd give Phalanxes (Hoplites) the "Formation" promotion for free to round-them out... neither too much, nor too little to top-off this unit and make them equal with other UUs IMHO. (Formation is +25% against mounted units, and one less promotion they have to waste exp points acquiring to get).

well Wolfshanze

Formation or a raw +25% against mounted ... both have their merits

As usual, ppl are treating the other side of the battle as a punching bag.... :(

Phalanxes are very useful when the enemy knows how to play, that is, mainly in MP. Ok, you can defend your stack with spears, but spears are weak units for everything else besides defending vs mounted and they also cost hammers.... IMHO I would clearly prefer a extra phalanx to 2 extra spears in early game: it is not so good defending vs chariots but it is more flexible, and when the hammers are scarce I prefer a unit that can defend and attack effectively than a unit that is no more than a shield.


Spears are no more than a shield? Here are the strengths of spears:

Attacking chariots, obvious. Axemen still have a decent chance to die attacking chariots. If a spearman saves one axeman casualty, then it has earned its keep.
Attacking others, you can give city raider to give +25% city attack, so with base strength 4 they have 4.8. Not as good as a CR axe (6.25) but still quite decent. So when the opponent doesn't have have many axemen, it is not a matter of getting 2 units, it is a matter of getting a bit extra strength to a few units.

The only time when spears are no more than shields is when they have healthy axemen... although a spear can finish off an injured axeman.


Like I said, the niche bonus of phalanx is emphasized because axe rushes are so prevalent, and axes are so prevalent in general. Of course I would still want to have the phanlanx instead of a modern UU, or even many renaissance/medieval UUs(at least the ones with less-often used techs). My Complaint is not so much that it is one of the worst UUs, but it is so niche and, to put it plainly, lame. For any battle beyond the early ancient period, if you have any other unit (swordsman, spearman, horse archer, elephant), the ability becomes basically obsolete, or if they don't have horses/chariots of course. I don' know of any other UU unit ability who's usefulness can die off that quick.

Civ Iv is all about city taking. Spears are bad city takers compared with axes in general. That is what I meant and the numbers of your response only gives me reason. If you don't beleive me, take any game situation, give 10 chariots to the enemy and see if 8 axes and 2 spears ( OFC this numbers aren't written in stone ) are comparable with 10 phalanxes .

I agree. Extra shameful that the Greek UU used to be good. Before the switch it was a Strength 5 Spearman without defense bonuses except a special +25% Hills defense.

That was worth your while. Now? Meh - just another Axeman unit...

QFT.

If the phalanx is a sucky unit I don't even want to contemplate something like the navy seal or panzer.
It's not a great unit but it's decent enough coming so early. I mean compare the relative advantage of those units vs the standard fare in that point in the game and consider the relative leverage of having one more axe in an early rush. The difference is staggering if you ask me.

And no my deity game is not dead, sorry about the delay. ;)
Agree on Panzer and Navy Seal often coming too late, they can be useful though, i go for modern wars from time to time. Happy to hear that you haven't abandoned your deity game :goodjob:.

@TMIT

Sorry, I was the one that jumped on you when you said Phalanx sucks.:D

@Rolo

I agree 100%; in singleplayer, they aren't must better than an aggressive axemen since AI's do not mass chariots, but in MP, I'd rather have a Phalanx than 2 Spearmen. In MP, units that do not have a counter in their age become very powerful. Other example is Numidian Cavalry; sucks against AI quite a bit, but rocks in MP. Phalanx is a mid level UU overall.

On the contrary, Vultures, Praets, and Quechas all get weaker in multiplayer although Praets still kick butt.

It's a decent enough unit for those who love axe rushing, but is this a great defensive unit or what? If you're not rushing but fighing a war in which you'll have to defend the cities you capture, it's great; 5 strength with a 50% bonus against melee and invulnerable vs. chariots: early on, only HA stand a chance of overcoming these guys.

If you're playing Alex:
5 xp : combatII & formation : 6 strength vs. archers, 7.25 vs. mounted, 8.5 vs. melee,
Neither melee units nor archers, horsebacked or otherwise, will capture your cities.

If you're playing Pericles, it's not as goodlooking, you just get a fast cultural defence bonus, and either shock, cover or combatII. But who plays Pericles anyway?

Now, many of you will say; a spearman and an axe will get better results defending; but if the AI brings more units that you have defenders, they won't always fight the unit they are supposed to. If an AI attack you with 2 chariots, and two axes, I think the odds of 2 phalanxes winning are much better than an axe and a spearman.

While I still think the bonus isn't amazingly amazing, I did just recently prove to myself that at least, they are better than Axeman. Using Alex on the Earth18 Map, Prince Difficulty and Epic speed, I was able to, using ONLY Phalanxes, take over Rome, france, spain, and germany with no catapults up until ~500 AD, even when Germany began using crossbowmen and longbowmen. Although at the end I sustained HEAVY casualties, they did the trick.. And I got 2 generals to boot outa this. Dr. Ivan the Terrible, field surgeon extraordinaire at yer service!

Plus I still say they look bad ass :D

I'm not enthralled with the unit, but it does have its uses; it comes off a pretty much must have tech (no having to tech out to IW or HBR first), it gives a respectable ~5-15% increase in effective combat power per :hammers:, and it makes a more effective sitzkrieg/pillage unit. Do I prefer the Impi, Vulture, etc.; of course (and I even have a soft spot for Holkan), but they are far easier to leverage against the AI on a quick rush than say the Jag (yeah it makes a good super medic, but that takes a general by which time the first war is won or I'm waiting a long time to get that super medic), the B.Phant (only really good once the AI has pike or for some odd reason Xbows in quantity), or bowmen.

An improvement of the AXEMAN unit is inherently at risk of becoming rediculously overpowered. IMO they did a good job. It's an axeman without the annoying spearman defense logistics.

An improvement of the AXEMAN unit is inherently at risk of becoming rediculously overpowered. IMO they did a good job.
But if any Axeman UU is doomed to have only underwhelming improvements, why then base the UU on the Axeman...? :confused:

Besides, if you consider the Roman UU, I would think the room for overpoweredness is considerably higher than what the poor Phalanx got!

I think they should just rename it 'Hoplite'
(I'd also like to see Panzer renamed Tiger, and the graphic for tanks changed from a Sherman.)

I think phalanx's should start with the 25% against melee promotion instead of the chariot bonus, they should be superior against every melee unit until praets come along.

Remember that the bonus chariots get vs axeman is only when attacking. So, if a phalanx attacks a chariot he stands a very good chance.

i'd argue against that one ...

we allready have dog warriors which is str:4 +100% melee and Vulture which is str:6 +25% melee

Remember that the bonus chariots get vs axeman is only when attacking. So, if a phalanx attacks a chariot he stands a very good chance.

Chariots don't get defensive bonuses though, so they're right screwed by regular axes on defense, especially if the axe has any city raider promo (an aggressive axe with CR has over 90% odds against a defending chariot in a city).

It's marginally useful I GUESS, moreso than ballista elephants, but it still sucks. As people have pointed out, greek leaders have good traits so handing them a strong UU would be a little iffy. Kind of true for American leaders too especially lincoln and washington.

Only leader with sound traits AND a questionably overpowering UU is Inca, but we all know about what they're capable of...

*cough* Liz *cough*

I think the old Vanilla/Warlords Phalanx as a replacement for the spearman with 5 strength was much better. They could even stand up against knights!

At first I thought the BTS Phalynx was a total nurf. However, after playing the Al RPC game I found their strength, that they are no ucceptible to anything until HAs come arround. They are powerful for both Greek leaders: Al get's the free combat I so each Phalynx get's 2 free promotions, pretty good for a unit with no early counters (vulture and Dog warriors are still succeptible to chariots): Pericles is a monster turler with this as nothing can touch them on the defense allowing him to utilize the creative/Philosophical traits for a major tech advantage!

All that said, I would prefer is if the BTS Phalynx were simply axemen that start with free shock promotions.

I agree. The old vanilla phalanx was a much better unit. It improved the spearman making it able to take on any mounted troops upto war elephants and knights. At the time axes weren't vulnerable to chariots so Al had an ordinary axe (but he's aggressive anyway) and a very special spearman that was so good you didn't need to build pikemen.

In BtS Al has been weakened as the new phalanx is just an axemen that's not vulnerable to chariots. But it is vulnerable to HAs and war elephants and knights crush it. Spears aren't that good against HAs or war elephants. Pericles isn't even aggressive so the Greeks were weakened in BtS.

Historically it's absurd that a phalanx should be weak against any mounted troops. Alexander's phalagites were just an early version of the medieval pikeman using even longer versions of the pike called the sarissa. They manouvered and fought just as pikes did in the medieval and renaissance times. Pikes were included in armies to protect other troops (crossbows and muskets) from mounted troops. Phalagites should be treated the same way and be invulnerable to mounted... but when did civ 4 ever try to be historically accurate ;)

As far as I'm concerned, it would just be a matter of giving the unit the formation promotion rather than just a bonus while it is an axe. An axe starting with combat and formation would be a fine unit, expecially because a great deal of us turn CRII axes into maces, and CRII + CRIII maces into gunpowder units. If you could carry the formation promotion with it for it's entire life, it would be a lot less of a discussoin about whether or not the phalanx is a decent UU.

I consider this payback for the Civ II phalanx, which was a crazy useful unit.

Let's be honest, strength 5 spear is overpowered; not quite as bad as prats, but close. In terms of defense per :hammers:; I'd be tempted to run those guys for mounted defense up until I get rifles. What other UU in the game is that useful that long?

Regarding historical Macedonian sarissa formations vs pikemen; umm put down the crack pipe. Macedonian sarissa would have been terrible against armored knights. Heads were not strong enough to make it through late era horse armor, they lacked the the leverage to grapple down knights that halberds retained, and they were too heavy to allow for quick redeployment against mounted troops. Late era knights would eat sarissa for lunch just due to the weaponry. Now adding to this the facts that: pike were faster than sarissa (which is exceedingly important to avoid being flanked or decimated by longbows), drum trained (for more coordinated attacks), and historically outmarched Sarissa. In a push pike duel, the grappling halberds would decimate the sarissa.

Quite frankly it would be absurd if sarissa troopes weren't vulnerable to mounted troops. Historically, sarissa were weakest on the right flank and rear. Phillip and Alexander used supporting troops to cover this; however when other armies (i.e. the Ptolemies) didn't we saw that the Seleucids flank around the ponderously slow sarissa which couldn't about face to save their lives (literally) and then get mowed down from the back by armored cavalry (going back to pike; pike were drilled so as to be able to do this about face of the formation and hence a good deal of their reduced length came from their ability to reform quickly to avoid flank threats). Sarissa should be weakest against against horse (the most common unit to defeat them in the Hellenic era) and against mobile disciplined infantry (most notably the Roman Legions). They also have a mixed record against Elephants in battle (for instance at the Battle of Gaza routed elephants broke through their own phalanxes). Where the owned was against units poor at flanking (notably scythed chariots) be it swords, spears, or axes.

Historicly, Sarissa spears would best be represented in game by spears with free shock (they were best against melee troops who couldn't flank) and reduced anti-mounted defense (due to the limited mobility of the sarissa units they were more vulnerable to flanking). This would be an interesting mix as you'd have a less effective unit vs archers and axes than an axe, but lacking a strong counter. It might be overpowered in MP though.

I think Phalanx (Hoplite) and Spearman should both be strong against shock cavalry (hand-to-hand weapons so chariots) while weak against horse archers since these are mobile and I don't think these can never touch a horse archer in battle. Ranged horse units should in turn be countered by shock cavalry (there should be a Horseman unit in Civ 4 that has a close range attack and is unlocked with HBR and Iron Working) and maybe footed archers/longbowmen. This way its ok, but not exactly realistic anyways.

I think Phalanx (Hoplite) and Spearman should both be strong against shock cavalry (hand-to-hand weapons so chariots) while weak against horse archers since these are mobile and I don't think these can never touch a horse archer in battle.

Well, while it is true that a spearman would not be able to defeat horse archers mono e mono, it is because spearmen have almost always been supporting troops. The spearmen would be able to defend against the horse archers charge, which is another strength of the unit...

A spearmen + archers would be what would be the combo to destroy horse archers, since I'd guess archers would fire a bit quicker and have a bit better range, since it's more difficult to fire from horseback, and the horses are also quite vulnerable to arrow fire since they are large target,s and if they have armor to protect the horses the unit would be more costly, and more susceptible to being charged by lighter enemy cavalry.

However, one of the biggest difference really, that balanced the horse archers in real lifewould be that horse archer units would require more resources and more training than foot archer units. It is quite a difficult skill, to shoot accurately from horseback.

So cost for cost basis, archers and spearmen would beat a horse archer army, unless, of course, the side with the horse archers were tactically superior and/or had the right support.

I think it would be interesting if units had to be grouped together into larger groups of 4-6, and then those groups would match up against the strongest defender, just like happens now. That is basically what combat is all about right now, finding the best group balance to counter the enemy... but it is just simplified into 1v1 combats.

So to defend against 4 horse archers, you'd want groups of 2 spearmen + 2 archers... but then if they mixed the group into 2 axemen + 2 horse archers, the best way to defend would be 1 axe 1 spear and 2 archers.

To fight against 4 axemen, you'd want 3 axemen and 1 siege probably. While in reality siege were almost always less cost-effective against infantry than archers (more useful, for lowering morale or causing confusion) for game balance purposes they could be made better against infantry (esp. heavy infantry), since obviously they are bad against horses... can hardly retreat away or maneuver, putting the army in a compromising position. Although that could be minimized in sieges, choke points, and city defense.

What you could do then is some of the units always die (more likely the frontish units, foot soldiers, before archers, while all the others receive something like collateral damage. AI would likely be horrible at it.

If that was modable I'd actually try to design the system, I think it could be balanced, don't think it is possible though.

you could give the idea a spin on creation/mod forum and ask for pointers how to make it so :)

Let's be honest, strength 5 spear is overpowered; not quite as bad as prats, but close. In terms of defense per :hammers:; I'd be tempted to run those guys for mounted defense up until I get rifles. What other UU in the game is that useful that long?

.

Powerful, yes but not overpowered. A 5 strength Spear is susceptible to Axemen and swords. They are overpowered versus all mounted units and have are equal to axes against archery units.

If the BTS Phalynx was established from the beginning there would be no issue. However, having it nerfed so badly sucks! Still given the great trais and starting techs of both Greek leaders plus a very powerful and useful UB that get's stronger all the way to the modern era I can understand having a weaker UU.

Apart from history i prefer having the Phalanx as an axeman actually, a spearman with strenght 5 isn't any use in a rush against any other metal unit. Spears counter chariots and horsearchers so a spear phalanx is only useful against Phants (and knights but you're doing something wrong if you're at war with an ai that has knights and you're still in the classical era,even then enough spears in cities defend against Knights anyway)

Think about Phalanx this way since you'll realize that they are actually good. What would you do if you are attacked by an all Phalanx army early (i.e. before HBR) in MP by someone using Alexander. You're probably screwed! If vultures (which are a better unit for SP) attacked, your axemen will have winning odds against them especially if you're defending. You only have a chance to defend against a Phalanx rush if you have as many or almost as many aggressive axemen as the attacker.

If you're using archers to defend, vultures would actually be slightly stronger (CRII phalanx is slightly worse than CRI vulture) against you. Assuming I am building many melee/mounted units and humans typically do, I'd much rather face a vulture stack than a phalanx stack although vultures also do ok against chariots and do not have an easy counter either. A good way to promote a Phalanx would be CRI/CRII and CI/Shock and this is a mix you will likely encounter. If phalages were any stronger, they would be OP - as simple as that. They are aggressive axemen that are immune to chariots. Even if I had praets, I'd be scared about facing those monsters. :lol:

Think about Phalanx this way since you'll realize that they are actually good. What would you do if you are attacked by an all Phalanx army early (i.e. before HBR) in MP by someone using Alexander. You're probably screwed! If vultures (which are a better unit for SP) attacked, your axemen will have winning odds against them especially if you're defending. You only have a chance to defend against a Phalanx rush if you have as many or almost as many aggressive axemen as the attacker.

If you're using archers to defend, vultures would actually be slightly stronger (CRII phalanx is slightly worse than CRI vulture) against you. Assuming I am building many melee/mounted units and humans typically do, I'd much rather face a vulture stack than a phalanx stack although vultures also do ok against chariots and do not have an easy counter either. A good way to promote a Phalanx would be CRI/CRII and CI/Shock and this is a mix you will likely encounter. If phalages were any stronger, they would be OP - as simple as that. They are aggressive axemen that are immune to chariots. Even if I had praets, I'd be scared about facing those monsters. :lol:

The obvious MP counter is shock axes if aggressive. They just get 1-3 extra axes instead of having to use spears. But being next to greece, you may or may not be forced by other nearby foes to make any spears of your own, and you still get all the normal advantages of defense (roads, no WW, shorter route to the front, etc).

Powerful, yes but not overpowered. A 5 strength Spear is susceptible to Axemen and swords. They are overpowered versus all mounted units and have are equal to axes against archery units.

If the BTS Phalynx was established from the beginning there would be no issue. However, having it nerfed so badly sucks! Still given the great trais and starting techs of both Greek leaders plus a very powerful and useful UB that get's stronger all the way to the modern era I can understand having a weaker UU.

You are missing the point. A 5 spear will be a reasonably good exchange of :hammers: to defense all the way out to rifles. Yes pike would have slightly better stats, but not a per :hammers: basis. No other military UU is viable through not one or two, but three eras. Only the prat comes remotely close to this longevity. Can they be beaten by an axe? Yes, but it doesn't matter. You are going to run axes for offense regardless and on defense they will only be chosen later. Due to the mechanics of n-squared you should be able to remain safe from Curis with these suckers (you will lose more units, but the low :hammers: cost is offsetting; this will be further enhanced by the fast rate of promotion to uberunits).

As it is a phalanx does give you more effective power by allowing you to swap spears into phalanxes (say only 5% more potential offense vs metaled opponents). Obviously on the weaker side of the pack vs the AI, but not as useless as say the B.Phant, the Jag, etc.

@dirk:
Not really. Spears vs pike (in game) is just a question of which is the better ratio of :hammers: to defense. Yes you will get a few more heavily promoted enemy mounted if you were to run a 5 spear; however due the xp to odds relation your UU will level quickly. Right now, the numbers say go pike, but at 5 I'd say stay spears. The only real wild cards are the tech options (road movement, castles, and trebs are all ownage) and upkeep.

It really would be the same as catas vs curis. Curis are slightly stronger, but aren't worth the opportunity cost of getting over Justinian' catas. I could see times I'd forego pikes intentionally to keep open the option for cheap-ass 5-spears.

While they're better across more eras, their POWER of usage is still as stack protection, not offense, so the UU wasn't anywhere near prat-class in vanilla. A stack of prats or keshiks will mow down cities left and right. Str 5 spear still is limited to moving at the speed of your best offensive unit with rare exceptions (a couple HA's or knights in a city or something being chosen as defenders even against them). Good, no doubt (better than the axe version, and certainly a good UU), but hardly overpowered. They do in fact offer nothing to deal with defending axes or even archers/longbows, and share the same vulnerability to siege (barely relevant against the AI but still) and anti-melee as any other unit.

Also, claiming they're viable stack d in the renaissance is dubious. Shock cuirassers are difficult for PIKES in the field, unless they have formation. A shock cuirasser will have very favorable odds against this UU, even if it has formation they'll be around 70%. Sure, that's still a better hammer to D ratio, until you realize that whatever siege was in your stack is gone now.

Cavalry are not reliably countered by pikes even, and they're still renaissance, so there's that argument too (the only counter to cavalry in stack defense situations is a rifle, and if you don't have enough rifles a stack o cavalry will own the hell out of you).

So while the vanilla version was certainly useful, countering wellies and HAs more easily and holding their own against knights (pericles, lacking aggressive, would have a hard time getting formation though, making them slightly weak to shock knights), they're not game breaking. At all.

Yea.. spearmen suck so you don't want them during an axerush. Offense improvement is often much more than 5% for BTS phalanx over aggresive axeman. Just consider what Rolo said about 8 axemen and 2 spearmen vs. 10 phalanges.. Which would you pick before anyone has HBR? If playing MP and assuming your enemy has horses, it will build the axemen-countering chariots even more if you are aggressive so you may save even more spearmen. The new phalanx is actually better than the vanilla one IMO. The BTS phalanx is an all purpose unit at its finest while the vanilla one was a solid niche unit, but nothing more.

I agree. The old vanilla phalanx was a much better unit. It improved the spearman making it able to take on any mounted troops upto war elephants and knights. At the time axes weren't vulnerable to chariots so Al had an ordinary axe (but he's aggressive anyway) and a very special spearman that was so good you didn't need to build pikemen.


Yeah that's the problem it was TOO good and hence it was nerfed.

The bonus is most noticeable in teamers (which none of you seem to play) because of how useful they are at choking. Typically, if you try to choke with 1 or two axes in the start of the game there is a very good chance it will die before it does much harm (or any harm at all) to a chariot. In the much more passive single player (and even in free for alls that aren't always war) you can expect to be safe from a chariot rush 99% of the time simply because there will not be anyone in the game that likes to chariot rush (this applies to all AI), or anyone in the game that does will not have access to horse.

The fewer skirmishes and the more stack battles there are the less relevant the phalanx becomes, but the fact that it can go wander out into enemy territory by itself early in the game with very little to fear is a huge benefit that experienced war mongers appreciate and use to great effect.

I like the phalanx because it allows me to skip spearmen all together and have a handy two-in-one unit. As Alex, I usually go for combat 2 as that way, they can handle pretty much anything that comes their way. You can't say the suck, as they're an axe with a damn nice bonus! But I get it that most people miss that 'oomph' factor, that for example praetorians, cataphracts and chokanu (sp?) have.

While they're better across more eras, their POWER of usage is still as stack protection, not offense, so the UU wasn't anywhere near prat-class in vanilla. A stack of prats or keshiks will mow down cities left and right. Str 5 spear still is limited to moving at the speed of your best offensive unit with rare exceptions (a couple HA's or knights in a city or something being chosen as defenders even against them). Good, no doubt (better than the axe version, and certainly a good UU), but hardly overpowered. They do in fact offer nothing to deal with defending axes or even archers/longbows, and share the same vulnerability to siege (barely relevant against the AI but still) and anti-melee as any other unit.

Also, claiming they're viable stack d in the renaissance is dubious. Shock cuirassers are difficult for PIKES in the field, unless they have formation. A shock cuirasser will have very favorable odds against this UU, even if it has formation they'll be around 70%. Sure, that's still a better hammer to D ratio, until you realize that whatever siege was in your stack is gone now.

Cavalry are not reliably countered by pikes even, and they're still renaissance, so there's that argument too (the only counter to cavalry in stack defense situations is a rifle, and if you don't have enough rifles a stack o cavalry will own the hell out of you).

So while the vanilla version was certainly useful, countering wellies and HAs more easily and holding their own against knights (pericles, lacking aggressive, would have a hard time getting formation though, making them slightly weak to shock knights), they're not game breaking. At all.

Stack protection = offense. Every :hammers: not spent on stack/city protection is another :hammers: to spend on something else (at least as good as more offense). Unless you reach into the hard per turn unit caps; the two are at least equivalent.

So what will the uber spear get me? Say a 10% (conservative) increase in offensive :hammers: in the ancient era (25% more efficient mounted defense with n-squared vs mounted units gives you a 150% more effective use of defensive :hammers: couple this with the fact that 5 spears are identical to axes vs archers and you can now more effectively use spears to kill weakened archers); once you can pillage the Cu this would of course be ownage across the board and I'd say would be at least as good as vultures if not prats. Now into the classical era; metal is likely too abundant to count on them to do anything solo, however you still need fewer spears which vs phants is huge and flanking HA/replacement UUs, I'd drop a conservative estimate of saving 15% on my :hammers: so I could build more pults and swords. Now on to the middle ages; we lose most of our care about using them to whack wounded archers, however we get to skip a tech (and all its prereqs possibly); we get to keep a great :hammers: to D ratio, and we can build them them outside of our major military cities easy. Call it a 5% boost to overall offense. Now on to curis (my earlier post had a brain misfire stating infantry). Curis vs anything except rifles (MAYBE highly promoted grenades) means you: don't fight in the open field (naval drop your stacks onto hills and forests only), don't have siege, decimate the enemy's lines of communication, fight on your terrain (or at least where you have move advantage) or make peace. So we will be highly conservative and assume that in sum total we are going to use them only for defensive wars to cheaply bolster city defense, smack unsupported curis on our land, and perhaps help out a few siege lacking stacks; call it a whopping 2.5% improvement.

How many hammers is this total? Depends on the game; but enough to say build all of my universities for Oxford is a good bet. Due to front loading, the ability to skip entire branches of the military tech tree, etc. a "free" SoL is not out of the question.

How does this compare to the Prat? A prat is 21% more effective than a sword which gives a baseline 47% increase in :hammers: effectiveness. I spot this up to 65% by virtue of the versatility of prats (i.e. as cheap LB killers when you can run Prat/Xbow/Pike/Treb/pult stacks). Which, over the course of the game gives you more bang for your buck? I don't know for sure, but I'm going to go for the 5 spear for anything that involves killing, at most, one civ prior to gunpowder. You save a HUGE amount of production with a 5 spear.

I mean seriously, what other UU has that type of longevity? The fast worker and what? Quecha bite it at bronze working pretty much. Immortals and war chariots? Pretty much gone soon after BW, and by IW definately on the decline. Vultures and Dog Soldiers? Gone at machinery at the latest. Aside from prats; nothing can compare. Prats already push the edge of game breaking and they at least run into diminishing returns as you run out of land to take on the cheap; these supply a steady :hammers: savings for half the game. With the changes in the unit tree for BTS, it would have been stupid to keep a 5 spear running around (namely due to the fact that you have a whopping 3 anti-mounted units in the game whereas you have 5 mounted units).

Regarding historical Macedonian sarissa formations vs pikemen; umm put down the crack pipe. Macedonian sarissa would have been terrible against armored knights. Heads were not strong enough to make it through late era horse armor, they lacked the the leverage to grapple down knights that halberds retained, and they were too heavy to allow for quick redeployment against mounted troops. Late era knights would eat sarissa for lunch just due to the weaponry. Now adding to this the facts that: pike were faster than sarissa (which is exceedingly important to avoid being flanked or decimated by longbows), drum trained (for more coordinated attacks), and historically outmarched Sarissa. In a push pike duel, the grappling halberds would decimate the sarissa.

Quite frankly it would be absurd if sarissa troopes weren't vulnerable to mounted troops. Historically, sarissa were weakest on the right flank and rear. Phillip and Alexander used supporting troops to cover this; however when other armies (i.e. the Ptolemies) didn't we saw that the Seleucids flank around the ponderously slow sarissa which couldn't about face to save their lives (literally) and then get mowed down from the back by armored cavalry (going back to pike; pike were drilled so as to be able to do this about face of the formation and hence a good deal of their reduced length came from their ability to reform quickly to avoid flank threats). Sarissa should be weakest against against horse (the most common unit to defeat them in the Hellenic era) and against mobile disciplined infantry (most notably the Roman Legions). They also have a mixed record against Elephants in battle (for instance at the Battle of Gaza routed elephants broke through their own phalanxes). Where the owned was against units poor at flanking (notably scythed chariots) be it swords, spears, or axes.

Historicly, Sarissa spears would best be represented in game by spears with free shock (they were best against melee troops who couldn't flank) and reduced anti-mounted defense (due to the limited mobility of the sarissa units they were more vulnerable to flanking). This would be an interesting mix as you'd have a less effective unit vs archers and axes than an axe, but lacking a strong counter. It might be overpowered in MP though.

I'm not sure where you get your ideas from about the historical efficacy of pikemen but they do not correspond to anything I've ever read. I've studied ancient history extensively over several decades and have a good appreciation about how military technology developed over time. So what is the basis of your assertions that medieval pikemen are somehow better than ancient ones?

The sarissa is a pike. The pike formations used by Philip, Alexander and the Diadochi were well drilled and very flexible tactically. On flat terrain they were unstoppable by anything other than another phalanx of pikemen. Due to the length of their pikes and the reliance on an organised formation the phalanx was weak on rough terrain. The Romans were not stupid and knew this and that's why they only ever fought against it when the terrain favoured them. The phalanx of pikemen is less flexible strategically than a Roman legion, particularly in seiges and field fortification. That accounts for the decline of ancient pike armed troops rather than anything to do with weapons or training.

Your points about mounted troops attacking the flanks or rear of a phalanx are nonsense. The phalanx would simply turn its rear ranks or form a square. Of course if it was also engaged frontally by other troops then it would be another matter. I suspect that is what you meant. Well frankly that is saying very little that isn't obvious, since it is true for any type of close order heavy infantry, being hit in the flank and rear even by weak troops like light infantry or mounted was usually decisive if the unit was required to fight frontally as well.

You mention that sarissa armed troops were beaten most commonly by mounted troops? :eek: I have never heard of a single instance of mounted troops beating a phalanx (unless it was already engaged frontally as I mentioned above). In that case it would be fairer to say that the opposing phalanx and the flanking cavalry beat the phalanx rather than just the cavalry. If you can provide any historical accounts of mounted troops beating a phalanx on their own then please supply them I'd be most interested. To say they were "commonly" beaten by mounted troops is incredible.

How should sarissa armed troops be represented in civ4? I would like a return to the vanilla strength 5 spearman, essentially an early cheaper pikeman. If that is overpowered (and I haven't been convinced of this) I would be happy to pay 40 hammers for one, just like the overpowered Praetorians cost more than a swordman. The BtS phalanx is far too weak against early mounted troops to begin to be historically accurate.

prefer the old stats as well (and the Civ3 graphic for that matter) Why greek phalanx's have a hair-brained cut shield instead of the big circular one with a painting on it is beyond me. Lets take an atypical shield shape and give it to a Civ that used big round shields?
In MP i was gang attacked and held off a huge stack of phalanx until the guy quit when someone attacked him from the north -whenever anyone encounters a major setback in MP they quit, crying home to mama.
A pike like spear with a big round shield makes perfect sense- a cut shield axe makes no sense. Decision makers can be stupid at times.

Okay, it's nothing special, but it isn't the worst UU in the game. It gives a tiny boost to a unit that you would build anyway, so it's not like you need to go out of your way to leverage it. Just be happy that your axes don't have to worry so much about chariots. There's more to axes than making big stacks that can easily be protected with a spear. They can be useful in 1s and 2s to harrass enemies.

So leverage your philosophical trait and your building, the odeon. You have to look at the whole package.

My least favorite UUs are the ones that come too late in the game to matter (panzer), are extremely situational (panzer, ballista elephant), or are generally worse than the unit they replace. Dog soldiers most often make your axe rush worse. They only thing good about them is that they make the Native American AI a pain in the rear to finish off.

@mirthadir,

Strictly speaking you're right that you can build phalanxes instead of pikes and save hammers. But what does it save exactly? Most games i build ~3 pikes so i'm certainly not saving a SOL or more.

Observations like what is best are extremely dependent on game playing style. If you like to go on medieval wars with lots of muskets/trebs with pikes mixed in for protection, yes i'd prefer a spear phalanx to an axe phalanx though i still don't see myself saving a SOL. I actually remember a game where i had to fight with 25 landsknechts + loads of other units including cannons against some 40 curi's, i would have appreciated spear phalanxes among the older rubbish i dragged along, this was definitively an exception though.

As it is it's mostly axes for me when i'm boxed in, otherwise renaissance (cannons/rifles or curi's). Sometimes i go cats when i have phants, spear phalanxes are pretty useless in that case.

I'm not sure where you get your ideas from about the historical efficacy of pikemen but they do not correspond to anything I've ever read. I've studied ancient history extensively over several decades and have a good appreciation about how military technology developed over time. So what is the basis of your assertions that medieval pikemen are somehow better than ancient ones?

The sarissa is a pike. The pike formations used by Philip, Alexander and the Diadochi were well drilled and very flexible tactically. On flat terrain they were unstoppable by anything other than another phalanx of pikemen. Due to the length of their pikes and the reliance on an organised formation the phalanx was weak on rough terrain. The Romans were not stupid and knew this and that's why they only ever fought against it when the terrain favoured them. The phalanx of pikemen is less flexible strategically than a Roman legion, particularly in seiges and field fortification. That accounts for the decline of ancient pike armed troops rather than anything to do with weapons or training.

Your points about mounted troops attacking the flanks or rear of a phalanx are nonsense. The phalanx would simply turn its rear ranks or form a square. Of course if it was also engaged frontally by other troops then it would be another matter. I suspect that is what you meant. Well frankly that is saying very little that isn't obvious, since it is true for any type of close order heavy infantry, being hit in the flank and rear even by weak troops like light infantry or mounted was usually decisive if the unit was required to fight frontally as well.

You mention that sarissa armed troops were beaten most commonly by mounted troops? :eek: I have never heard of a single instance of mounted troops beating a phalanx (unless it was already engaged frontally as I mentioned above). In that case it would be fairer to say that the opposing phalanx and the flanking cavalry beat the phalanx rather than just the cavalry. If you can provide any historical accounts of mounted troops beating a phalanx on their own then please supply them I'd be most interested. To say they were "commonly" beaten by mounted troops is incredible.

How should sarissa armed troops be represented in civ4? I would like a return to the vanilla strength 5 spearman, essentially an early cheaper pikeman. If that is overpowered (and I haven't been convinced of this) I would be happy to pay 40 hammers for one, just like the overpowered Praetorians cost more than a swordman. The BtS phalanx is far too weak against early mounted troops to begin to be historically accurate.

You are correct regarding the reasons for the historical decline, however middle ages pike were NOT similar to Sarissa. The quality of metal is higher giving rise to better piercing points to defeat late knights with horse armor. Macedonian Sarissa will be deflected off fluted horse armor (as many period pikes actually were). Further sarissa are poorly weighted compared to late era pikes. Again I must note that drill of middle age pike is non-trivial; they could close with archers far faster than sarissa ever managed.

Late era pike (notably the Swiss during the Italian campaigns) were drilled to reverse the formation even while maintaining some frontal engagement. Regarding the defeat of Sarissa, I would refer to pretty every contest between the Ptolemies and Seleucids; the normal rule was that you'd have the sarissa facing an opponent and have cavalry wade into the rear of the formation. In many cases this was not a direct push pike duel, but rather a credible threat that did not allow the formation to turn in entirety. Prior to the Romans, Sarissa were commonly beat by cavalry as nothing else could flank rapidly enough and maintain sufficient striking force not to be dealt with by means other than turning the formation. Aside from the legions, what other unit broke them? I know of a handful of cases where elephants managed to break them. Javelin formations rarely had the decimating power to break through. Melee troops from Mesopotamia to India refused to close with sarissa. Chariots lacked the flanking ability. Few archery units had the range and power to seriously impair a sarissa formation.

The truth of the matter is sarissa were slower than the older hoplites, the formation was easier to pin and flank, and the most common tactic to defeat them did not involve sending melee troops at them. It was pin and flank with the odd elephant charge (which historicly did break through the ranks) thrown in by those who could field them. I really fail to see why you'd say this should be a 5 spear. Sarissa vs non-sarissa melee was advantage to the sarissa; not to the swords or axes (up until the legions); sarissa vs mounted units was not particularly stronger than other spear formations previously in use. The successor Hellenic states used them as melee line anchors, not as formations to prevent cavalry charges into the flanks (as cavalry tended to be used).

Frankly though, sarissa are classical units. They shouldn't be around so early in the game.

In the end the problem is that Civ does not properly treat combat as combined arms nor do their truncation points regarding unit evolution make proper sense of military history.

My least favorite UUs are the ones that come too late in the game to matter (panzer), are extremely situational (panzer, ballista elephant), or are generally worse than the unit they replace. Dog soldiers most often make your axe rush worse. They only thing good about them is that they make the Native American AI a pain in the rear to finish off.

Panzers do come late and that is their only bad feature. They are not that situational at all. Tanks all by themselves murder everything except AT guns (they do ok against those too) until Gunships show up. Panzers have the added benefit of ripping up other armor as well. Play an advanced start with a human player and either pick Germany yourself or let them pick it and fight a war with them. You'll see what I mean. Even AI builds tanks in the modern era, but not as much as human players do. Panzers are so strong against armor that they have >50% odds against modern armors and that's just sick. It's worth leaving a few Panzers unupgraded once you have modern armors to help against enemy armored units.

Regarding the BTS phalanx, I'm not gonna keep trying to convince people it's a great UU. :lol: Heck, give an AI 10 Phalanges right next to your capital's cultural borders at ~1500BC, declare war on the AI, and try defending. Against humans, it would be even harder because the phalanxes would be better promoted and humans would use defensive terrain, but this test would satisfy.

The BTS Phalanx is first and foremost boring.

So you don't have to bring any spears, wow. It doesn't add anything extra.

And why is it a good thing that you don't need to use combined forces? Just pouring out a single unit is brainless; even the Praetorian is vulnerable to enemy axes.

And again, why was the vanilla Phalanx replaced if it wasn't more overpowered than Praets? If it was too good against medieval mounted troops, why not instead replace its general Strength bonus (when doubled by the general Spear bonus) with a bonus specifically vs Chariots and Horse Archers?

Finally, that test of yours. Not sure what to say. Other than any UU that needs a completely artificial test like that to shine must be pathetic indeed... so thanks for inadvertently proving the opposite point! :)

Panzers do come late and that is their only bad feature. They are not that situational at all. Tanks all by themselves murder everything except AT guns (they do ok against those too) until Gunships show up. Panzers have the added benefit of ripping up other armor as well. Play an advanced start with a human player and either pick Germany yourself or let them pick it and fight a war with them. You'll see what I mean. Even AI builds tanks in the modern era, but not as much as human players do. Panzers are so strong against armor that they have >50% odds against modern armors and that's just sick. It's worth leaving a few Panzers unupgraded once you have modern armors to help against enemy armored units.

Regarding the BTS phalanx, I'm not gonna keep trying to convince people it's a great UU. :lol: Heck, give an AI 10 Phalanges right next to your capital's cultural borders at ~1500BC, declare war on the AI, and try defending. Against humans, it would be even harder because the phalanxes would be better promoted and humans would use defensive terrain, but this test would satisfy.

It would only be marginally better than 8 axes 2 spears, which would also be a pretty big screw-job ~ 1500 BC (that's fast troop massing, usually only possible on epic or marathon).

Panzers may be nice in a late-era start, but against they AI they're pretty soft. The AI doesn't use many tanks actually, and if the player gets there earlier (which is ideal regardless because it means you won't be getting hammered by fighters/bombers and attacking crap like marines instead of infantry), a panzer = a normal tank. Not a great UU either.

Don't get me wrong, both have SOME use, but they're not nearly as good as a lot of other UUs. If vanilla 5 str spear was too much, make them 4 str instead and start them with formation. This would give them an incredible edge on early mounted (shock elephants would no longer hold the promo advantage) without making it super easy to constantly counter knights (sure, you can make them then upgrade them to pikes, but that wouldn't be cost effective compared to just making new pikes once the time came, keeping the UU reasonable).

The BTS Phalanx is first and foremost boring. So you don't have to bring any spears, wow. It doesn't add anything extra. And why is it a good thing that you don't need to use combined forces? Just pouring out a single unit is brainless; even the Praetorian is vulnerable to enemy axes. Finally, that test of yours. Not sure what to say. Other than any UU that needs a completely artificial test like that to shine must be pathetic indeed... so thanks for inadvertently proving the opposite point!

You are contradicting yourself actually. First you are saying that Phalanx is easy to use.. you just spam them and conquer and that's brainless. And then, you say that my test which is not situational at all (people do rush with aggressive Phalanges!) makes the phalanx look bad. :crazyeye: The whole point of a phalanx is that it's not situational at all. Against a competent opponent, it is always strong.


It would only be marginally better than 8 axes 2 spears, which would also be a pretty big screw-job ~ 1500 BC (that's fast troop massing, usually only possible on epic or marathon).

2 extra axemen is not marginal at all.. that's roughly a 25% increase in offensive capability since spearmen can't attack cities if they lives depended on it. I'm sure you've also had many situations where even one extra unit would have made a difference between capturing and not capturing a city. With city elimination on in MP, this will often decide whether you win or lose.

Also, someone mentioned early that if you can hook up copper early, you can send one or 2 into enemy territory to pillage and/or choke. A CI/CII phalanx fortified on a hill is tough to dislodge. On another note, can a phalanx get guerilla I after CI?

@mirthadir,

Strictly speaking you're right that you can build phalanxes instead of pikes and save hammers. But what does it save exactly? Most games i build ~3 pikes so i'm certainly not saving a SOL or more.

Observations like what is best are extremely dependent on game playing style. If you like to go on medieval wars with lots of muskets/trebs with pikes mixed in for protection, yes i'd prefer a spear phalanx to an axe phalanx though i still don't see myself saving a SOL. I actually remember a game where i had to fight with 25 landsknechts + loads of other units including cannons against some 40 curi's, i would have appreciated spear phalanxes among the older rubbish i dragged along, this was definitively an exception though.

As it is it's mostly axes for me when i'm boxed in, otherwise renaissance (cannons/rifles or curi's). Sometimes i go cats when i have phants, spear phalanxes are pretty useless in that case.

1. Yes this is situational; but so is any UU. Prats are useless without Fe; Impis suck if you are boxed by Sitting Bull, etc. If you are going to be peaceful between when axes are effective (before walls and mass enemy axes IME) and gunpowder (more often, for me, rifling or steel) then then what 2/3rds of the UUs are even LESS useful?
2. This isn't stricly about the numbers of :hammers: you save, its about when you save them. Compounding rates are very high (highest during war, then during peaceful expansion, and then vertical expansion) for production and can become super-exponential. With a major war after HBR and Construction this can easily save enough :hammers: that after compounding you end up with a "free SoL".
3. Phantapulting actually has pretty good uses for such units (or even normal spears). The expected cost : expected damage ratio is better for spears vs phants than phants vs phants; for low stack sizes it is better than pults vs phants. A 5 spear would be EXCEEDINGLY useful for keeping your phants healthy for offense by absorping enemy phants. Aside from axes and xbows, 5 spears would also be cheap clean up crews to pick off the last few wounded defenders (normally I cart around a few axes/swords for this).

2 extra axemen is not marginal at all.. that's roughly a 25% increase in offensive capability since spearmen can't attack cities if they lives depended on it. I'm sure you've also had many situations where even one extra unit would have made a difference between capturing and not capturing a city. With city elimination on in MP, this will often decide whether you win or lose.

Actually its more. If we assume that only axes will be attacking that is a 25% off the top which means a 56% increase in offensive capability for a war of any real length (law of n-squared). This will get modulated downward as spears can attack decently if you give them CR (or cover) against archers, but flips back the other way if you have axemen (or swords for that matter) to kill. When looking at longer term wars, the more units over which you distribute duties, the less time :hammers: are out of commission healing. For an 4:1 mix I'd go so far as to say you should expect AT LEAST a 50% increase in offense capabilities for long wars (say more than blitzing two cities).

You are correct regarding the reasons for the historical decline, however middle ages pike were NOT similar to Sarissa. The quality of metal is higher giving rise to better piercing points to defeat late knights with horse armor. Macedonian Sarissa will be deflected off fluted horse armor (as many period pikes actually were). Further sarissa are poorly weighted compared to late era pikes. Again I must note that drill of middle age pike is non-trivial; they could close with archers far faster than sarissa ever managed.

You have merely repeated your assertions without explaining why you think they are correct. I asked for your reasons since I have never heard these claims before.

Let me reply to your statements with what I have learned and some questions for you to answer.

a) There is no reason to believe that the metals used in medieval europe was better than in middle eastern Hellenistic kingdoms. Wootz steel was invented in 300 BC in Sri Lanka and it was a rare and exotic process unknown in middle ages europe (although Damascus steel was known it could not be made). Actually most iron weapons used in the ancient and medieval world were not really steel. Why do you claim that european pikes were better metal than Hellenistic sarissas? What is your evidence?

b) Why do you chose a late medieval knight as the standard to compare the two types of pikemen? You could instead have used an earlier version of the knight or other mounted troops? The heavilly plate armoured horsmen riding a horse of that period was often called a gendarme. They were only used for a short period of time. Earlier knights had much lighter equipment including chainmail. However, whatever the armour thickness, it is ridiculous to suppose that horsemen can charge into solid infantry formations. They never did this successfully against properly organised infantry, let alone pikes, in any period of history. This is for several reasons. Firstly, horses just don't do that, it is against their nature. Secondly, it is simple physics, a horse and rider have less mass than a phalanx drawn up with 16 ranks. Thirdly, the horse and rider will face 2 files of pikemen and as many as 10 pike points as the first 5 ranks can present their weapons.

c) What makes you think that european pikemen moved or manouvered faster than ancient ones? They were not physically bigger men or fitter, if anything the opposite was true with a worse diet. Did you know that the Spanish tercio and Italian armies in the early renaissance used training manuals based on ancient training manuals (translated from Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine sources and preserved by the Arabs) to drill their troops. Why would they do this if medievals had the drill all sorted out?

In many military and technological things the ancients were more advanced than the medievals. A huge amount of knowledge was lost in the Dark Ages.

Wow, a historical discussion of sarissae in here :eek:

There was a huge diference between sarissae infantry and late medieval pike formations: sarissae were not developed to face heavily armoured charging mounted units, pikemen were.

And I can give a clear example of a phalanx-like army being trounced by mounted units: Zama. It was not the Roman legionaries that won the day, it was the Numidian cavalry....

You have merely repeated your assertions without explaining why you think they are correct. I asked for your reasons since I have never heard these claims before.

Let me reply to your statements with what I have learned and some questions for you to answer.

a) There is no reason to believe that the metals used in medieval europe was better than in middle eastern Hellenistic kingdoms. Wootz steel was invented in 300 BC in Sri Lanka and it was a rare and exotic process unknown in middle ages europe (although Damascus steel was known it could not be made). Actually most iron weapons used in the ancient and medieval world were not really steel. Why do you claim that european pikes were better metal than Hellenistic sarissas? What is your evidence?

b) Why do you chose a late medieval knight as the standard to compare the two types of pikemen? You could instead have used an earlier version of the knight or other mounted troops? The heavilly plate armoured horsmen riding a horse of that period was often called a gendarme. They were only used for a short period of time. Earlier knights had much lighter equipment including chainmail. However, whatever the armour thickness, it is ridiculous to suppose that horsemen can charge into solid infantry formations. They never did this successfully against properly organised infantry, let alone pikes, in any period of history. This is for several reasons. Firstly, horses just don't do that, it is against their nature. Secondly, it is simple physics, a horse and rider have less mass than a phalanx drawn up with 16 ranks. Thirdly, the horse and rider will face 2 files of pikemen and as many as 10 pike points as the first 5 ranks can present their weapons.

c) What makes you think that european pikemen moved or manouvered faster than ancient ones? They were not physically bigger men or fitter, if anything the opposite was true with a worse diet. Did you know that the Spanish tercio and Italian armies in the early renaissance used training manuals based on ancient training manuals (translated from Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine sources and preserved by the Arabs) to drill their troops. Why would they do this if medievals had the drill all sorted out?

In many military and technological things the ancients were more advanced than the medievals. A huge amount of knowledge was lost in the Dark Ages.

a.)The quality of the ores increases throughout the late antiquitious and middle ages. Noric "steel" for instance is harder than anything Macedonian; let alone the superior quality of Swedish ore to anything Hellenic. Even within basic wrought iron there are differences in the hardness of the metal and pike simply have higher quality as a general rule. My evidence is what I was taught in military science and no I'm not going to dredge up my books from back then for an internet debate (sorry but I trust the guy with the birdie over you).
b.) Because we are talking about pike being effective out until curis. Given the relative strength of knights vs longbows, xbows, and oh every other unit of the era; they are clearly modeled as late era knights for all other game purposes it would be retarded to model only sarissa vs early era knights (further having longbows precede knights means were are ignoring the early era knights). Out of game, I'm using that as the point of comparison because up until you armor the horse the armor of the rider doesn't matter. Had knights faced a sarissa challenge they would have adopted different armor to handily defeat this threat. As it was they were more worried about fast marching pike and archery in its many forms. Heavy cavalry formations can and did charge into solid pike formations, i.e. at Westrozebeke the French charged the flanks of the pike bloc and decimated it. Now would a full frontal charge work? No. Of course neither would a frontal assault of maces, swordsmen, or anything else. Pike, sarissa, etc. were just as secure from frontal assault by infantry as from mounted unit. The traditional method was to pin and flank, sarissa just are not as good at avoiding this as pike.

c.)i.) Pike were not equiped with shields (even if they were just peltist shields, they still slow you the hell down); sarissa were (I could go on about how Hellinc armour from helmets to leggings tended to be heavier and but that would be redundant). ii.) Skeletal remains suggest otherwise; to this day the genetic lineages of Hellenic Greece tend to be shorter than those out of Greater Germania or Scandinavia. Regarding diet, yes for the lowly peasant, no for the professional pike forces (higher proportion of meat in the diet and more protein lead to greater heights). iii) What part of drum trained don't you get? Sarissa formations were limited to immediate tactical awareness to keep ranks in order (and given their helmets they had piss all for peripheral vision and hearing); they signalling (such as it was) was done by trumpet. Pike were drum trained which allows you to match stride and keep ranks in order order at much faster pace (which is why every bloody army in the world used drums for quick moving formations eventually). iv) Thank you for a bad history lesson. The Tercios were a mixed formation which needed to adopt tactics centred more on preserving firepower than quick pike pushing to overcome longbows. The Italians were: Roman fetishists (going so far as to try to adopt citizen militias to weapons which were utterly impractical) and also handily slapped around by pike not trained to those methods. Yes there was a revival of infantry drill from classical sources, however this was done after a long period of decline in all infantry in the west; nothing in the Macedonian training came close to matching that employed by the Swiss, Austrians, or Scots to name a few highlights.

Yes knowlege was lost, but no not that much and it was quickly regained. We got to see how infantry fared in places that retained their classical heritage; in both the Arab and Byzantine world the schock charge remained highly succesful against massed spear infantry. Going a bit further afield; somehow the Persians managed to "lose" the sarissa even though they fielded after the Greeks abandoned it and retained extant records in a language with minimal drift.

Face it mate; sarissa owned in their day, but they weren't more modern pike. There is a reason why pike CHOSE to have shorter weapons, to wear different armor, and to use different drilll; namely it WORKED BETTER. With the advent of the knight it is going to be remarkedly easier to pin and flank sarissa, particularly if they adopt Macedonian formations.

Actually its more. If we assume that only axes will be attacking that is a 25% off the top which means a 56% increase in offensive capability for a war of any real length (law of n-squared). This will get modulated downward as spears can attack decently if you give them CR (or cover) against archers, but flips back the other way if you have axemen (or swords for that matter) to kill. When looking at longer term wars, the more units over which you distribute duties, the less time :hammers: are out of commission healing. For an 4:1 mix I'd go so far as to say you should expect AT LEAST a 50% increase in offense capabilities for long wars (say more than blitzing two cities).

If your last two units are facing up against moderately healthy axes, your attack is probably going to fail.

Wow, a historical discussion of sarissae in here :eek:

There was a huge diference between sarissae infantry and late medieval pike formations: sarissae were not developed to face heavily armoured charging mounted units, pikemen were.

And I can give a clear example of a phalanx-like army being trounced by mounted units: Zama. It was not the Roman legionaries that won the day, it was the Numidian cavalry....

Yes, but we're not getting very far ;). Mirthadir and I have diametric views and little evidence (on either side) to settle the disagreement.

I agree with your assessment, and have never said otherwise, the sarissa was optimised to deal with other infantry not mounted troops. But mounted troops were no threat to an organised phalanx of spear or pikes in the ancient period but could harass the flanks and rear if they were otherwise engaged and attack them if they were disorganised by terrain or missile fire. Medieval use of spears, pikes and polearms was a reaction to armoured cavalry and intended mainly to repel them (which they did with almost universal success). But these solid infantry formations were also used against other infantry and could fight effectively mainly because other infantry were so poor.

Sorry Zama is not a good example at all. :p Carthaginians were facing solid Roman infantry and hit in the flank or rear by Numidian and other cavalry. I asked for an example of a mounted force beating a spear / pike armed force frontally and on their own without the help of other troops. There are no such examples, so don't worry about not finding even one ;) But there are innumerable examples of the opposite where mounted troops with good armour and high morale being beaten whenever they assaulted the infantry frontally. The battle of Falkirk in 1298 is a perfect example of what pike armed infantry were capable of in the middle ages. The English cavalry and then the infantry were beaten off by stout Scottish schiltrons with heavy casualties. The schiltrons were only finally shot to ribbons by longbows.

UJJ: Okay now you are verging on duplicity. Sarissa and pike were both immune to frontal attack from anything; except other sarissa/pike. Rarely, unsupported longbows could beat pike head on (normally then it was on a prepared field with stakes and piss terrible terrain for a quick march across). Rarely, elephants could break sarissa formations from the front.

Mounted troops broke more sarissa than anything else in the classical era, period. Yes they used pin and flank; so what? Flanking is part of combat and part of the weakness of sarissa; it also part of the reason why legions were superior; they were much harder to pin and flank. You can hold up a false standard about frontal assault all you want, but at the end of the day a Ptolomian general knows that enemy sarissa can be flanked if he pins the formation in the front. The DID THIS. It was the most effective way to deal with sarissa. It killed, many, many sarissa (with only other sarissa coming close to the body count).

If you have nothing to say but "sarissa are immune to frontal assault" then be honest and just say that. Flanking is part of combat (and in game we have those promos for a reason), and sarissa units historically were easier to flank with fast moving cavalry.

Now do you grant that mideivel pike were:
1. Armed with better metal.
2. Quicker.
3. Better drilled/more able to respond quickly.

Mirthadir, I'm going to call a halt to our discussion as we're not making any progress :(. You clearly have a different appreciation of the level of organisation and technology of medieval europe than I do. Feudal societies were in my opinion quite primitive and badly organised compared with Hellenistic ones. I know that you imagine something different. We are not going to close that gap after your gaff over over the amount of information lost in the dark ages. We will never recover from that tragedy. :(

Your attachement to "drum trained" is an indication of how you think and grasp on to straws of information to support your arguement. Drums are not some magic that makes men march faster and it is preposterous for you put such a high emphasis on this detail. Unfortunately, we don't know much about how ancient armies signalled their manouvres. We just know they had a more sophisticated set of drill and were better organised than feudal troops. They must have had an adequate signalling system by implication but we don't know what. Your reaction to that is that they couldn't manouvre as well since they didn't have drums. Well that is just a lack of imagination on your part and a lack of faith in our ancient forbears. They were smart, smarter than our medieval forbears! Drums are probably of more use to bolster morale than as signals, they were later replaced by bugles as signalling in most armies... bugles being a coiled trumpet, which we know some ancient armies used :D I cannot accept your assertion that drums allowed medieval pikemen to march and manouvre significantly better.

Besides that, did all pike formations have drums? I don't think the Scots schiltron did. It seems you're allowed to pick the best trained Swiss pikemen while I have to accept the least able Hellenistic picked from the battle of Raphia or some such arbitrary battle of your choice. It would be more interesting to speculate about the arrogant Swiss coming up against Alexander's Argyraspides... I know who would win that little confrontation. It is impossible of course since they're separated by 1700 years and thousands of miles and all of them are long dead. But both were considered the best of their type in their own age. The difference is the Argyraspides were never beaten ...

You mention Austrian pikemen as being of note? I've never seen them mentioned anywhere. I guess you mean Lansknechts who were originally Swabian, an area ruled by the Habsburgs.

Now let's move to the Scottish pikemen that you hold in high regard. My northern bretheren :) were so well trained at the battle of Falkirk that they couldn't even retreat into the woods when the English and Welsh longbows shot them down. Scottish schiltrons were not well drilled. They didn't form up in rank and file, they didn't extend ranks or double files. They formed a circular blob, a hedgehog of pikes. They are best thought of as enthusiastic amateurs, an irregular formation with basic weapon handling and a few commands.


Now do you grant that mideivel pike were:
1. Armed with better metal.
2. Quicker.
3. Better drilled/more able to respond quickly.
:rolleyes:
1. Noric steel was good. Were all medieval pikemen using it? I don't think so... I'm not getting further sidetracked into a discussion of the history of metalugry.
2. No. Provide just 1 scrap of evidence for this please or a reasoned argument that doesn't involve drums or other musical inspired phantasy.
3. Highly dubious. I don't know what the Swiss training manual was but I suspect it was thin. They thrived on aggression and a no quarter policy to terrorize their opposition rather than skill. The thing is, we know how Hellenistc troops drilled but we don't know how medieval pikemen did. So what can the basis for this assertion of yours be? How do you know this? Divine revelation? or maybe a little birdie told you :p

My evidence is what I was taught in military science and no I'm not going to dredge up my books from back then for an internet debate (sorry but I trust the guy with the birdie over you).

I call fallacy; argument from authority. Give me the references that support your arguments or stop making them. An unsupported argument is worthless, mere hearsay.


Finally, I don't appreciate being addressed as "mate". I am not your mate, please stay civil, even if you disagree. Thanks.

P.S. don't put too much effort into a reply (if you choose to make one) as I feel we've taken this discussion as far as we can. You and I are just repeating our points so it's unlikely I will reply.

WORK the body! WORK the body! Under the ribs! Under the ribs!

Mirthadir, I'm going to call a halt to our discussion as we're not making any progress . You clearly have a different appreciation of the level of organisation and technology of medieval europe than I do. Feudal societies were in my opinion quite primitive and badly organised compared with Hellenistic ones. I know that you imagine something different. We are not going to close that gap after your gaff over over the amount of information lost in the dark ages. We will never recover from that tragedy

Sigh, another person falls victim to the Petrarch stupidity. Listen, the "Dark Ages" preserved more texts than during the classical era (this is due to cheaper transcription and storage costs due to the monastic movement and the introduction of eastern technology). In 1330 Italy, they did not appreciate just how much was preserved in Ireland, Cluny, etc. however real historians have found that the "Dark Ages" to be well recorded and to have witnessed a good deal of technological improvement. No serious student of the middle ages or even the immediate post-imperial period refers to them as the dark ages. Read some real history instead of revisiting 14th century anti-HRE propaganda.

In reality, as opposed to your opinion, feudal societies were more highly organized due to interlocking feudal obligations. Everyone had a defined role with defined obligations and defined rights; this was a fault of middle age society as it stifled economic activity and academic achievement. In terms of military organization, a far higher percentage of the population and its resources were organized towards providing military forces. We know this due to the Byzantine records which show marked increases in manpower and troop sizes with the adoption of the semi-feudal themata.


Your attachement to "drum trained" is an indication of how you think and grasp on to straws of information to support your arguement. Drums are not some magic that makes men march faster and it is preposterous for you put such a high emphasis on this detail.

You, sir, are a fool who has never had to march in formation. The point is not how fast a man can march, it is how fast the formation can march. The limitation here is how fast can you move before the front rank begins to crook and slant; or worse files begin to drift. When marching men in close order you have three basic options to have them keep their place in formation:
1. Rely upon touch. This is the most effective and can be done in dark in silence. It is of extremely limited utility during a fight as you need your hands to wield your weaponry. Most often it is used either to train soldiers to maintain proper stride or was used to preposition soldiers for a night fight. To some degree shield locking functioned thusly as well.
2. Rely upon sight. You can tell the men to keep their ranks and files straight by simple visual inspection. This is better than touch as you need only glance to keep track of those around you; however you run into several problems. First in order to keep the ranks in order you are looking at peripheral vision;this means that soldiers need to keep all the other soldiers in their ranks in at a 0 degree angle. The problem here is that you are making an angle measurement using peripheral vision (non-sterioscopic). Humans suck at that. When I was in OCS the gunnies would sometimes make the candidates go out on the deck to march in formation in silence. College educated males, soon to be the officers, could not manage this. A misjudgment of 5 degrees (better than most people can judge angles in their peripheral vision) means that at best your front rank will have a slant amounting to 2.8 meters irrespective of dynamic error. Further visual cues are of limited utility for formation marching go all to hell when the fighting starts; looking to your side to correct angles means you are looking forward at what you are about to stab and what is going to stab you. Trying to keep rank by sight at a dead trot while wearing a helmet that destroys your peripheral vision (and yes I've worn an Ogive helmet and yes it eliminates most of your peripheral vision) is not going to work except for the most elite of formations.
3. Rely upon hearing. For this to work you need an auditory cue for soldiers to match stride so as to march in unison. The familiar cadence calls of "left, right, left" tells every soldier when to step and if proper training has been undertaken to match stride lengths and deal with curvature you can march forever without creeping error. The human ear's ability to gauge when it hears a sound and to react is far finer than angle measuring by eye. Ancient military formations knew this. Macedonian phalanxes used a trumpeter to to shout out commands. The problems with calling cadence (it is not known if the Macedonians actually did this, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and giving them the best practices possible) are that: a. human voices drown each other out, between the enemy, the dying, the terrified, and psyched an ancient battlefield would quickly develop many voices at roughly the same pitch of the cadence caller and drown him out. b. Phalanx helmets had full head protection and protected much of the face; good for not getting one's head bashed in but bad for hearing higher pitches. c. You tend to be limited to one cadence caller as it is exceedingly hard for multiple people to call in concert. Enter drums (as well as bagpipes and other instrumentation). Drums use pitches distinct from human voice so they are easier to hear over the battlefield, drums can either be made to strike at low ranges initially (which carries better through metal) or can be struck to create beat waves to the same effect (in fact some drum "beats" are not actually "heard" but "felt"; Galludet University - a deaf school- uses this old military drum trick to signal play calls down its offensive and defensive lines), and lastly it is far more trivial to have drummers match beat than cadence callers. Pike that were drum trained could close bow range up to twice as fast as formation infantry not drum trained according to period estimates. That is the "magic" of drums, it provides a reliable beat to match strides and keep the front rank in order with minimal drift, skewing, or staggering. It is so effective at maintaining order that every army in the world eventually adopted drums for their formation infantry. Anyone who has ever been out leading a platoon on the parade deck knows how bloody hard it is to keep the ranks in order, drums do it and let you march faster without sacrificing formation order (even over broken terrain).

We just know they had a more sophisticated set of drill and were better organised than feudal troops.
Source? At the battle of Gaza they had piss for organization and were broken by their own elephant units routing into the formation. Their drill was such that Emmaus they fled from untrained soldiers not in formation. Or perhaps at Elasa where they were handily flanked by infantry and unable to shift the formation to cover their own general?

But both were considered the best of their type in their own age. The difference is the Argyraspides were never beaten ...
Whatever. A perfect record tells us more about your opponents than about you. Of course the fact that the Argyraspides were NOT sarissa troops means nothing to you.


You mention Austrian pikemen as being of note? I've never seen them mentioned anywhere. I guess you mean Lansknechts who were originally Swabian, an area ruled by the Habsburgs.
No I mean Austrian pike which composed of true pikemen from the royal demense and from dismounted lancers. They were inferior to the Swiss pike, but were exceedingly better than various Italian citizens' militia.

Regarding Falkirk, umm what are you smoking? The Scots formed up with supporting bowmen and cavalry that routed leaving their pike isolated and flanked by cavalry. The English cavalry charge was blunted until Edward I opted to pin and flank. At this point the longbows began to reign death, but English infantry blocked pike advancement while cavalry in flanking positions precluded non circular formation. To whit, at Falkirk the supporting troops to the Scots pike were driven off or slaughtered, their position was flanked, and they were picked apart by longbows. Yet due to their ability to remain in formation during the onslaught English records show 2,000 dead English infantry based on wage reports. Given that the English killed approximately the same number of Scots in spite of having a > 2:1 numerical advantage and at the end of the battle both ranged and mounted supremacy; I find it hard to say that Scots drill was just "They are best thought of as enthusiastic amateurs"; amateurs don't hold formation under withering longbow fire to inflict equal casualties.

This is of course extremely evident if we go to Bannockburn we find that here the Scots have managed to maintain formation and retain mobility. If we pick battles from say any campaign after the first one where the Scots adopted pike tactics they manage to advance in good order and not die to withering longbow fire (as better drill after Falkirk trains them to march in formation to cover bowshot range quickly).

Seriously do you always have to be duplicitous when debating? You demand that cavalry charge into the teeth of a phalanx when I specifically cite pink and flank tactics. You denigrate Scots pike, but only cite on of the very first battles wherein they were used (even though you have yet to mention a single Macedonian encounter from the first generation of sarisa phalanx). Can you be honest and stop with the apples and oranges comparisons? If we are comparing elite training standards, then let's go with both sides having say 100 years to refine their tactics.


1. Noric steel was good. Were all medieval pikemen using it? I don't think so... I'm not getting further sidetracked into a discussion of the history of metalugry.
Nice, you won't "get distracted" because you will lose. Metallurgy advanced in the middle ages and the average hardness of steel across the board goes up. Noric steel is actually inferior to most of the steel in use by pike.

2. Provide one scrap of evidence for any of your positions. You deride drum training, yet it has a proven history over a hundred years long of greatly aiding in formation marches the world over. You piss and groan when I say that pike were faster than sarissa even though the sarissa carried several kg more weight and an encumbering shield. You quote Petrarch's "Dark Ages" BS, even though that has been demonstrably false for decades. Sorry, mate, but I'm not going to go unpack my old books just so I can provide ISBNs for a random know-nothing on the internet.

3. Whatever. We have records of Swiss campaigns using counter marches, of pike squares using pin and flank against other pike, and covering bowshot ranges in times unheard of by anyone outside of Rome in the classical era. The basis for this is a full bird colonel with a PhD in military history who reads the ancient Greek directly and teaches a a course on formation fighting and tactics for officers. I haven't read the actual Greek records myself, but I know someone who can (I have read much of them in translation).

I call fallacy; argument from authority. Give me the references that support your arguments or stop making them. An unsupported argument is worthless, mere hearsay.
Excuse, but please don't make me laugh. You have yet to cite a single source for any of your classical bias and you repeat Petrarch's "Dark Ages" crap which hasn't been taken seriously in fifty years by serious historians. I have explained in far more detail than should be required for someone who claims to have studied this for years about Austrian pike, formation marching, the relative kit weight, and metallurgy. You have attacked strawmen of frontal charges and other duplicitous crap. Funnily enough I'm not the one unwilling to continue, I leave it to the reader to judge whose claims are less reasonable - the guy who claims that metallurgy was effectively stagnant for 1000 years or the guy who knows which ores produced harder steel; the guy who makes breezy statements about the utility of drum training, or the guy who can explain the physics behind its utility. But please cut the woe is me, you have no sources crap. I've studied military science as my day job, however you studied antiquitious tactics it was glaringly deficient.


Finally, I don't appreciate being addressed as "mate". I am not your mate, please stay civil, even if you disagree. Thanks.
Listen, mate, I use mate in the Aussie sense meaning "friend" with no negative connotation. If I want to be uncivil I will cast dispersions upon your parentage, point out your glaring intellectual short comings, and if bored provide scatological commentary.


P.S. don't put too much effort into a reply (if you choose to make one) as I feel we've taken this discussion as far as we can. You and I are just repeating our points so it's unlikely I will reply.
This is as far as we can take if you refuse to debate up front and honestly. If you would quit substituting your 'opinion and imagination' for fact we could go a bit further. If you would quit attacking strawmen, we could go forward. This might require pronouncing a few shibboleths on your part, but hey I understand it is easier to declare the debate done in a huff than to lose if the vapidity of your position ends up being exposed.

i read that some military historians thought that Alexander's army was so well honed it could have beaten early gunpowder armies. The phalanx at its peak was used as pivot point, Phyruss (sp) and later versions were never of the same calibre.
The idea that swiss pike were made shorter for maneverability makes sense tho. (the original saissa thing was lengthed by Phillip? Which is to say that it was probably lengthened and mader shorter a few times in the ancient age. I don't think they had stirrups in the Phalanx days so the mounted opposition issue was tactically different. And after the fall of rome they found skeletons that appeared to be healthier (the common man) than those alive during the empire's reign. Loss of knowledge or not- the common man was better off nutritionally speaking.
If the aborigines in Australia were a Civ they could have Boomarang troops that might have had a an impact against a calvary/phalanax combo but i never read anything like Baelaric slingers effect against a phalanx.
However, both alexander and rome had artillary units as well- and i am stupified as to guess why someone didn't look at a wall of spears and say - throw giant rocks at it. It is like Napoleon famous for massing artillary and then he goes and charges fortifiied english positions with cavalry? Like Lee's ordering Picket's charge.
I think that many of these loser "great generals" we read about actually suxed and the only reason they are labled great is because the people that kicked the crap out of them said they were.

@TtF: ehh early gunpowder armies sucked pretty much across the board. They were an exercise in economy, not fighting prowess. In order field get good pike, longbows, xbows, or especially knights a military had to make a significant investment in training up the troops. For instance most marines today do not have enough muscle in the right places to draw a Welsh warbow; let alone hold it for command volley fire. For most of the good middle ages fighting forces, be it Swiss pike or English longbows you pretty much started training in childhood and had to devote a significant amount of food to bulk the fighters up.

Guns change this equation. The early hand cannons have piss for accuracy, they more often than not explode in the hands of the user, they cannot be reloaded at close quarters, and their rate of fire is a fraction of even xbows (let alone rapid firing longbows). Their charm is that they are cheap and easy. Take twenty peasants with no military training, give them hand cannon and two weeks of training (perhaps firing the hand cannons once). In a typical battle as many as half would die from the hand cannon exploding in their face, of the remainder half won't hit the broad side of a barn, so we are left with 5 guys actually shooting near the target. This has decent odds of hitting a knight or his horse and if so, he dies. Supporting that knight from birth to battle required at least 100 peasants per year. So in battle you've traded 400 peasant-years for 2000 peasant years; and as an added bonus guns cos a fraction of armor, quality weaponry, gear, and warhorses. Early gunpowder armies were just cheap, quick, and dirty if you don't have such concentration of resources they lose most of their effectiveness. Against these armies pretty much any infantry that can march decently in good order will decimate them (as happened in period).

Regarding Lee and Napoleon. For Lee Picket's charge was actually a decent, if highly risky gamble. Break the Union center and turn the guns enfilade - you break the Union army most likely and when they break you have your cavalry across their line of communication to decimate disorganized troops. The problems are well known: Southern gunners were overshooting their targets (this was not visible to Lee or his artillerymen at the time due to topography), "silenced" union batteries were not destroyed but had been ordered to ceasefire to conserve ammo, formations broke to volley fire that they could have absorbed, and when the confederates actually took The Angle and its guns they had no ammunition to use for enfilade fire down the Union line. Such a charge could well have worked; a number of Union formations did break and fire down the line would break many more. If by breaking the strong centre you can but the army to flight; it is far easier to rack up kills firing into the backs of the enemy. High risk, high reward gamble that failed. It is awfully easy to call this one in hindsight, but Lee frankly has few other options if he actually wants to end the war without playing the attrition game (which he knew the South could only win by bleeding both sides white). His military skill is pretty much unquestionable; he was offered command of the Union armies if he was willing to be loyal to the United States over the Commonwealth of Virginia - his skill merited that much trust. His defensive campaigns in Northern Virginia were so skilled that he held off Grant who had superior numbers for so long that Sherman had to march over 1000 miles to flank him and force checkmate.

Napoleon revolutionized command in war. Up until Nappy you pretty much always marched the army in one large hoard like a ravenous hoard. Nappy organized his corps such that they could march far enough apart to feed off different farmland but in close enough communication to assist each other. His reforms were so effective that EVERYONE from the Russians to the English to the Americans adopted them. Tactically, he is overrated in my opinion, Wellington is far better at the tactical level, but Nappy was innovative and one of the seminal figures in revolutionizing military theory.

To me the best indicator of greatness is how many other contemporaries adopt your signature tactics and strategies and then how long they endure (making concessions for technological advancement). Both Lee and Nappy were wildly emmulated by their foes and both had lasting impact upon the conduct of war throughout the world.

"To me the best indicator of greatness is how many other contemporaries adopt your signature tactics and strategies and then how long they endure (making concessions for technological advancement). Both Lee and Nappy were wildly emmulated by their foes and both had lasting impact upon the conduct of war throughout the world."

I think Hannible adopted the losers (roman) formations-Canae. (although the romans added a maxim to their doctrine about having more horse)
The military establishment wanted Lee because he was an aristocrat and fit in well with tea parties. It took a pragmatic grant and sherman to win the war and the doctrine of industerial output became the hallmark of the 20th century. Lee was an arrogant fool and even the troops in that charge are suspected by some to have stopped halfway in lieu of the southern madman's ideas. Only once did someone use a Gatlin Gun on the offensive on the Union side (to good effect) and this was a precurser to modern squads. Napoleon's idea of fighting everyone in Europe and losing fifty billion men in Russia was emulated by Hitler and artillary did become the number one killer of troops (over small arms fire). The tactics of that union officer with the gatlin gun and the southern commander that fought guerilla war and the guys that built ironclads had more impact on future war.
Someone should have armed elephants with sarissa's and had lots of artillary like units in the ancient age.

"Napoleon's idea of fighting everyone in Europe and losing fifty billion men in Russia was emulated by Hitler"

Well it's a thing to pursue an irrealistic imperialist dream... it's another to implement racial cleaning... (and I am aware that french soldiers were probably real jerks while occuping european territories). That being said, I am obviously biased... ;)

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

WORK the body! WORK the body! Under the ribs! Under the ribs!

:lol: 10 chars

Rolo is right, phalanx are only good if your opponant is smart enough to use chariots to counter axes. Which the AI never is.

And about picking greece for their traits, good call, I never pick a civ for their uu, sometimes the uu and ub factor in when I'm equally torn between two civs to play next, but 90% of the decision is based on traits.

? if i fail to build some spears and the ai has horses i tend to lose some axes to chariots, even in woods they lose against attacking chariots. Not whole stacks but very annoying, if you don't have phalanxes you better build some spears or make sure the ai doesn't have horses. This makes the actual phalanx a fair unit of course.

You can much easier split your phalanxes into small groups for strategic pillaging, road blocks and so forth without them become susceptible to enemy chariots.

Yep, with axes it's not only the stack and cities that have to be protected, sometimes also your reinforcement route, with spears that are immobile while the axes hop from spear to spear, its not always that bad but i remember these sort of situations occurring once in a while.

The only reason i don't think of Phalanx as very good is that i don't axe rush all that often, on defence it hardly hurts to build a few spears. But if i have to rush i'm very happy to have them.

"To me the best indicator of greatness is how many other contemporaries adopt your signature tactics and strategies and then how long they endure (making concessions for technological advancement). Both Lee and Nappy were wildly emmulated by their foes and both had lasting impact upon the conduct of war throughout the world."

I think Hannible adopted the losers (roman) formations-Canae. (although the romans added a maxim to their doctrine about having more horse)
The military establishment wanted Lee because he was an aristocrat and fit in well with tea parties. It took a pragmatic grant and sherman to win the war and the doctrine of industerial output became the hallmark of the 20th century. Lee was an arrogant fool and even the troops in that charge are suspected by some to have stopped halfway in lieu of the southern madman's ideas. Only once did someone use a Gatlin Gun on the offensive on the Union side (to good effect) and this was a precurser to modern squads. Napoleon's idea of fighting everyone in Europe and losing fifty billion men in Russia was emulated by Hitler and artillary did become the number one killer of troops (over small arms fire). The tactics of that union officer with the gatlin gun and the southern commander that fought guerilla war and the guys that built ironclads had more impact on future war.
Someone should have armed elephants with sarissa's and had lots of artillary like units in the ancient age.

Umm Lee was a proven soldier from the Mexican American war where he he served with distinction under Winfield Scott (the nominal head of the Union forces at the outbreak of war). Prior to that he rose through the ranks, made it through West Point with no demerits, and graduated 2nd in his class. Having served both in the cavalry and with the engineers he was well rounded for command. During the war he managed on multiple occassions to fight off better armed, more numerous opponents. He was innovative in trench warfare. According to his contemporaries, Lee was the antithesis of arrogant. He was said to be self-deprecating and a highly intelligent man (if you wish to look beyond his war record, see his time presiding over Washington University). Yes in retrospect Picket's charge was a bad decision, but war is all about taking the best calculated risks you perceive at the time. If you don't deliver a spectacular victory soon to break Northern morale, the South always loses. The manpower numbers just don't allow you to be conservative and leave the Union army intact when you have one of your better chances to kill it. Lee's later experimentation with trench warfare was perhaps the single greatest innovation of the civil war and accurately presaged the entirety of the Western Front in WWI.

As far as attacking Russia; meh. Napoleon achieved all his strategic goals for the Russian campaign; except for the surrender of the Russians. The idea that he'd be able to force a peace by taking the heart of the Russian Empire is not without precedent. The Poles did it a few centuries earlier with at least one of the false Dmitris. Closer to home the success Napoleon had in Russia was far greater than that which he had against the Austrians or Prussians (those victories had led directly to a forced capitulation).

To be a great general requires one to take weighted risks; Qui audet adipiscitur. Sometimes those risk play out and you are renowned as a hero, sometimes the circumstances turn against you (i.e. at Gettysburg Lee did not have his best subordinates, the topography was heavily in favour of artillerly overshot, etc.). If you only act in a manner sure not to end in bloody failure, you make it that much easier for your enemy to predict what actions you will take - hence why the easy way is always mined.

all of Lee's best subordinates were killed because they were brave and had to lunge at all of the cowardly lee's targets. Pickett refused to talk to him after the war because both men knew it was a deliberate suicidal charge intended to destroy the bulk of the south's infantry by a weary old man who wanted to go back to his plantation and drink mint julips.
I agee with the trench warfare- i read that the europeans thought that the war amounted to a group of yahoos running around shooting each other.
Napoleon said to be a great general (and some chess master said the same thing about chess- that you have to be lucky.
Based on this theory the best generals are not those that take risks rather those that have things go their way in spite of whatever action taken.
Cortez and Nimitz come to mind as great generals (admirals) based on luck. Given the problem...rescources, manpower, ect, Lee could not figure out a way to succeed. If he had used Gatlin guns and spencers and six shooters in trenches and bayonets like sarissa then he would have been.

all of Lee's best subordinates were killed because they were brave and had to lunge at all of the cowardly lee's targets. Pickett refused to talk to him after the war because both men knew it was a deliberate suicidal charge intended to destroy the bulk of the south's infantry by a weary old man who wanted to go back to his plantation and drink mint julips.
I agee with the trench warfare- i read that the europeans thought that the war amounted to a group of yahoos running around shooting each other.
Napoleon said to be a great general (and some chess master said the same thing about chess- that you have to be lucky.
Based on this theory the best generals are not those that take risks rather those that have things go their way in spite of whatever action taken.
Cortez and Nimitz come to mind as great generals (admirals) based on luck. Given the problem...rescources, manpower, ect, Lee could not figure out a way to succeed. If he had used Gatlin guns and spencers and six shooters in trenches and bayonets like sarissa then he would have been.

What are you talking about? Lee's principle subordinates were:
Jackson, Longstreet, Ewell, Hill, Stuart, and Anderson (argueably Pendleton). Of those only Jackson and Stuart did not survive the war. However, Jackson fell not while lunging at Lee's targets but when challenged by sentry when returning to camp. Stuart died while exercising independent command; given that is was mid '64 there isn't much any general could do to stop being massively outnumbered and outgunned (Union cavalry had repeater rifles, Confederate by and large did not).

Your characterization of Lee as wishing only to retire is frankly balderdash. At any time he could have simply walked away (indeed he had sufficient stature that some in Richmond feared he might walk in there and declare himself to be president).

Actually Pickett's animosity to Lee is based off a single account by Colonel Mosby. Given Mosby's political career it is unclear if this actually occurred (other witnesses at the event deny it occurred). Oddly enough other criticisms of Gettysburg decesion come to precisely the opposite conclusion: that Lee refused to force Ewell to attack in earnest the previous day or to compel Anderson to do likewise.

Regarding gatling guns, repeater rifles, and six shooters. Munitions were outside of Lee's control, what weapons to make and procure were limited to what the ironworks could supply. Exactly what type of firearm was made was a decision made above Lee in Richmond. Regarding "sarissa" bayonets; umm a 20 ft bayonet is going to be impossible to wield, will result in easy flanking and enfilade fire, and sucks up weight like nothing else.

At the end of the day, the North had more men, it had better armament, and it had more defensible terrain. The mere fact that Lee held out against all that for so long shows a first rate strategic mind.

Luck does play a huge element in great generalship; but it requires a good enough general to capitalize on their luck when it occurs. Numerous generals have gotten massive lucky breaks in their efforts and have failed to make good on them. War is about calculated risk; you have to be willing to roll the dice but you need to do so only when the odds look like they are with you.

"At the end of the day, the North had more men, it had better armament, and it had more defensible terrain. The mere fact that Lee held out against all that for so long shows a first rate strategic mind."

Hannible, Rommell, Lee all had similiar problems, and all of them "held out" against all that for so long in an effort of foolish wrong headed futility. If any had been a "first rate strategic mind" they would have come up with a better strategy rather than minor tactical displays. Lee decided to invade. Bad idea. He should have concentrated on spies and maybe had some bio attacks with small pox blankets and getting allies from western Indian tribes. Instead he lined up men and charged into fortified positions, while looking good on his darling white horse, that he apparently cared more about than his troops or logistics. One of the greatest overrated generals of all time.

"At the end of the day, the North had more men, it had better armament, and it had more defensible terrain. The mere fact that Lee held out against all that for so long shows a first rate strategic mind."

Hannible, Rommell, Lee all had similiar problems, and all of them "held out" against all that for so long in an effort of foolish wrong headed futility. If any had been a "first rate strategic mind" they would have come up with a better strategy rather than minor tactical displays. Lee decided to invade. Bad idea. He should have concentrated on spies and maybe had some bio attacks with small pox blankets and getting allies from western Indian tribes. Instead he lined up men and charged into fortified positions, while looking good on his darling white horse, that he apparently cared more about than his troops or logistics. One of the greatest overrated generals of all time.

What are you talking about? Lee's men thought he was one of the most paternal generals in the war. Their nicknames for him, Marse Robert, Bobby Lee, and Old Man were all in reference to how he cared for his men. The only moniker they bestowed upon him that was derisive was The King of Spades because he was too prone (in their estimation) to have them dig in than to have them charge the enemy. Lee's period detractors referred to him as Granny Lee because he was too conservative and only rarely relied upon corageous if bloody charges.

Regarding spied, what are you going to have them do? This is before dynamite so explosive sabotage is out. Cutting lines of communication is almost impossible as the Union controls all the major water ways and has naval supremacy; once you start the bridge burning game, the South loses. About the only shot you have for actually impairing union fighting strength through irregular means is to burn the cities. This is suicidal. As was demonstrated in 1812 once you begin burning cities you can expect the side with naval superiority to get the better end of the stick. In Lee's case while he might be able to have a few spies burn a few towns (like DC, Baltimore and New York), Grant can burn Mobile, Savannah, Hampton Roads, etc. with naval troops. Not to mention that once you begin burning indiscriminately the easiest strategic thing to burn with spies is going to be southern cotton (which Jeff Davis still hoped to leverage into European intervention).

Pox blankets would have only killed untold numbers of men on both sides if he sparked an epidemic at all. Both sides had the same immunological profile and there was far too much communication between the lines to prevent disease from skipping between sides.

Regarding logistics. Whatever, Lee fielded the seconded largest offensive force ever seen on the American Continent in hostile territory without ever overrunning his supply lines. The major problems with munitions were above his pay grade (most due to decisions by Davis).

Oh and none of Lee's horses were white. Traveller was "confederate grey", Richmond was bay, Ajax was sorrel, Lucy Long was also sorrel, and I will let you decide what colour The Roan was.

Where do you get this stuff?

I read that some confederate wanted to send pox blankets and it was not done but mysteriously wherever it was suppossed to be sent, men died.
spies would have been better spent sabotaging harbors and shooting public officals, spreading turburculosis on smallpox cotton clothing and bribing immigrants to secretly join the confederacy and attack new york from the inside out, with a promise of free spacious land and clean air.
The river wars should have been won by controlling ambush riverbanks. Artillary and shot gun traps. In so far as troops calling him pappa or whatever, essentially your stuck with loyal veterans enamored of their leader, whose numbers dwindle with each battle, and in the end, become inconsequential, not even good enough to be like Xenophones mercenarys roaming around.
Using rail made logistics much easier.
If lee had used more balloons and ironclads he could have destroyed the Union navy and bombed washington. His failure to put cannons on balloons, build a wolf pack of hunley submarines (sea sarissa units with bombs), a small fleet of the type Manassas (the greatest southern ironclad design of the war), steal gatlin guns and spencers in spy missions and steal the gunsmiths with plans and force them into slave gun making labor in the far south in hidden factories near where they weave small pox cotton blankets in a bio plantation and where they were far enough west to get plains indians good on horse and mexican foot troops to join the cause, says it all.
He placed his focus in the east when the fate of the confederacy actually lie in the west. A huge strategic blunder. They even hoped europe (the east) would help- which they did not- and neglected to seek help in the west- where they would have if they told mexicans and indians that this is the chance to stop the imperialistic U.S. What ever major battle that was fought in the west was more important than gettysberg which was really just a bonzai charge like that japanese general (whose tactics were actually better than lee's - go for the artillary and turn it around and shoot the enemy) made in the aleutian islands.

Query: How did this discussion go so wildly in this direction?

I read that some confederate wanted to send pox blankets and it was not done but mysteriously wherever it was suppossed to be sent, men died.
spies would have been better spent sabotaging harbors and shooting public officals, spreading turburculosis on smallpox cotton clothing and bribing immigrants to secretly join the confederacy and attack new york from the inside out, with a promise of free spacious land and clean air.
The river wars should have been won by controlling ambush riverbanks. Artillary and shot gun traps. In so far as troops calling him pappa or whatever, essentially your stuck with loyal veterans enamored of their leader, whose numbers dwindle with each battle, and in the end, become inconsequential, not even good enough to be like Xenophones mercenarys roaming around.
Using rail made logistics much easier.
If lee had used more balloons and ironclads he could have destroyed the Union navy and bombed washington. His failure to put cannons on balloons, build a wolf pack of hunley submarines (sea sarissa units with bombs), a small fleet of the type Manassas (the greatest southern ironclad design of the war), steal gatlin guns and spencers in spy missions and steal the gunsmiths with plans and force them into slave gun making labor in the far south in hidden factories near where they weave small pox cotton blankets in a bio plantation and where they were far enough west to get plains indians good on horse and mexican foot troops to join the cause, says it all.
He placed his focus in the east when the fate of the confederacy actually lie in the west. A huge strategic blunder. They even hoped europe (the east) would help- which they did not- and neglected to seek help in the west- where they would have if they told mexicans and indians that this is the chance to stop the imperialistic U.S. What ever major battle that was fought in the west was more important than gettysberg which was really just a bonzai charge like that japanese general (whose tactics were actually better than lee's - go for the artillary and turn it around and shoot the enemy) made in the aleutian islands.

BS. The only documented evidence regarding small pox blankets to possibly be used as biological warfare was with Gen. Amherst (during the colonial period). If there are documents showing ANYONE in ANY Civil War command considering pox warfare I will pay you good money for the sources (I know bioweaponry exceedingly well and I can right up a monograph on it to make it worth while).

Harbours? How? You can scuttle ships, however this tends to be:
1. Suicidal.
2. Hard to do as anything except a large charge is going to allow the crew to bail out.
3. Rather hard to close a harbor with wooden ships.

Even if you close all the harbours on the eastern shore, you still have the problem that the Union can use Canadian harbours.

Bribing immigrants? Right. You are going to give immigrants hard currency (non-Confederate) reserves you don't have and somehow expect them to attack federal forces rather than say, I dunno melt into the city and abscond with the money? Head west out of New York before you can threaten to kill them? Make a bundle selling out their handlers to the Union? Please. Free land was already out there in abundance.

Ambush riverbanks? Are you serious? You want to have military forces on a river bank where they are easy prey to armed riverboats raking them with cannon fire to which they cannot respond? Or are you so out of it as to suggest they position guns dearly needed for actual battles so they can be destroyed by Union marines? Or perhaps the most stupid choice of all, have enough men to hold these riverbanks, the guns to close the river, and thus deprive your main armies of men so the Union Generals can ignore the rivers and march directly on Chattanooga, Atlanta, Richmond, etc.?

Lee's army could have melted away at the end of the war and roamed around wreaking havoc; that, however would not have accomplished dick. The CSA were dead in the water and Lee's surrender was simply to SAVE HIS MEN'S LIVES as prolonged conflict would not prevent Union triumph and prolonging the war just gets more men killed.

Gunsmiths as slaves? Are you nuts? Even if you could get the quality of metal in the south needed to make these guns (dubious given that the South had only the Tregdor Ironworks of note), you are not going to be able to use slave labor to get production up fast enough to make a dent.

The Plains Indians were recruited as far west as Arizona. There just weren't enough of them to amount to anything. Several centuries of disease and warfare made the Indians a fraction of the new manpower arriving every year in the Nothern harbours. The Mexicans are not going to sign on with the Confederates, ever. You see to the Mexicans there real imperialists were the Southerners. It was, afterall, a bunch of Southerners who settled Texas and then declared themselves to be free; it was another bunch of Southerners who strong armed the Senate into bring Texas into the Union, and a combination of the two which sparked the Mexican-American war over the Rio Grande border.

The CSS Hunly killed more Confederates than Union sailors. Building a "wolfpack" of them would have required that you divert most of your steel production to piss slow contact mine ships. Which would have bought you perhaps 6 months before the USN goes out to sea and you are left with many, many steel coffins.

Manassas was a fine ship, however there is just one small problem. It was built in Medford, MA and the facilities to reproduce the design were in exceedingly short supply. There is no way the South can field enough ironclads to change the course of Union supremacy (indeed the more the war goes over to ironclad tactics, the bigger the advantage the Union has). All of this, was above Lee's pay grade. These were decisions made in Richmond.

Regarding balloons, are you nuts? The only balloons in use are soft skinned affairs which are sitting ducks to sniper fire. They will be riddled with bullets long before they can reach Washington and all on board will fall to their deaths.

The only legitimate concern here is the balancing of forces between the Missippi and Eastern fronts, however that is above Lee's pay grade. Strategic decisions of that scale were made by Davis himself; it is not until Jan 31st, 1865 that Lee is given the authority to do anything like shift the balance of forces. The disposition of troops was a decision made by Davis, not Lee.

In the end you are left with Gettysburg. Frankly your "alternatives" demonstrate the real truth facing Lee that day. He has few options to win the war; he either breaks Northern Morale or eventually the North forces their way down the Missippi, cuts the Atlanta axis, and the Confederacy dies. He gambles (based on imperfect information), and it comes up craps. That is not enough to come close to overshadowing his accomplishments at Cold Harbor alone.

"-BS. The only documented evidence regarding small pox blankets to possibly be used as biological warfare was with Gen. Amherst (during the colonial period).-"

"Allegations were made during the American Civil War by both sides, but especially against the Confederate Army, of the attempted use of smallpox to cause disease among enemy forces. "
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/biological_warfare/article_em.htm
Here are a couple quotes (with a links) i found when i typed in "biowarfare in the civil war" stating almost exactly what i said.
"This same tact was used by Dr. Luke Blackburn, the future governor of Kentucky, during the Civil War. Dr. Blackburn attempted to infect clothing with smallpox and yellow fever which he then sold to Union troops. One Union officer’s obituary stated that he died of smallpox contracted from his infected clothing."
http://www.azdhs.gov/phs/edc/edrp/es/bthistor2.htm
While not "documents" (who in their right mind would document such?) there are suspicions.
The Manassas and Hunley were small. Less metal- easier to build en masse. As coastal, river and harbor patrols they could have sunk troop and supply ships. The Hunley was a new weapon and simply needed time to work out the kinks. Even flawed as it was it sank the steam sloop USS Housatonic. Not an old sail ship but a modern steam sloop that had fought off two ironclads earlier and had helped to take "a cargo consisting of two marine engines destined for Confederate ironclads and a large quantity of ordnance and ammunition. These imports were of such great potential value to the South that they have been called "the war's most important single cargo of contraband."- The metal needed could have been allocated by stealing northern rails, cannon, and captured union ships.
Self sealing balloons with small hand held cannons operated from the ground would have had the enemy pointing rifles up and you could bayonet charge them like an updated Hun tactic of volley high, volley low. Floating balloons loaded with smallpox tobacco over enemy lines with the intent of being shot down. Riverbanks boobytrapped not manned in the convential sense, but by North Vietnamese-like guerilla units.
Manpower could have been doubled if they recruited women, and immigrants. The reason the South lost was because the gentile elite - in their snobbery-wanted an old western nation (england, france ect) with people that the south considered good enough to help them. Lee was the prime example of this snobbery. The south did not appeal to immigrants because of this. Maybe he should have given up some of his horses as a show of what was needed to win - sacrifice, and innovation. The south needed a leader like Vasily Chuikov at Stalingrad who stated "We will defend the city or die", not a southern dandy.
Instead, Lee failed to assess the strategic situation correctly, failed to allocate troops correctly, failed to utilize and direct the navy correctly, failed to use the east (entrenched) as a phalanx while swifter moving companion confederate horse armed with shotgun pistols (the Le Matt) and with plains indians as numidean-like skirmishers, swept in from the west, failed to use spies correctly, failed to make ironclad locomotive tank-like attack vehicles (early railroad blitzkrieg), failed to make any surprise attack invasion via topography like Hannibal over the alps or Lawerence of Arabia through the desert or the Germans out of the woods. Instead...straight into the enemy in a linear mind-numbingly stupid frontal assault. But he did manage to live through the war and go home to his planatation, wife, and talk to old generals and look at Mathew Brady photographs of all the men they killed while sipping brandy.

Regarding biowarfare: There is no documentation of anyone in the civil war using pox as a bioweapon. It would have been bloody stupid to try (the epidemic, if sparked would hit both lines). Blackburn did not try to use pox, but yellow fever which due to the assumed vector profile might have been useful; save for the fact that he was completely wrong (he needed to capture masses of mosquitos instead of shipping blankets). Biowarfare at this period in time is simply not feasible.

You know nothing about metallurgy do you? The steel needed for rails is not the same needed for guns and is not the same needed for armor plate. If you (somehow) managed to rip up the railroads and ship them back to Richmond, you don't have the means to melt them back down and recast. The amount of coke required would almost certainly be better spent on forging fresh steel. Face it the only ironworks of note in the Confederacy was Tredegar (which is one reason the Confederates couldn't afford to neglect Virginia); you are limited to how much steel it can process. If you build more ships, you get less artillery, less rolling stock, fewer locamotives, etc. If you skimp on artillery they you will lose line infantry by the thousand as you can no longer provide enough counter battery fire. If you skimp on rail then you are looking at a logistical nightmare (and most likely again the batteries falling silent). The South can't hope to gain naval supremacy, the union has more shipyard space, vastly more armour plate production, and access to the European market. Due to the limited range of Hunley and the inability of Manassas, et al to fight on the high seas, you can at best push the Union blockade out to sea; this will buy you some time before the naval build out of the Union reseals the south further offshore; but it comes at the price of tens of thousands of infantry dying because you removed their supporting elements. All of these decisions regarding the CSN are not under Lee's jurisdiction.

Balloons are sniper bait. They can be engaged at ranges of several miles and there is no possibility of making reliable self sealing at this point in time. Everyone who goes up in them will die. If you somehow managed to seal off rifle shots, congrats you now have force the enemy to expend exactly one mortar to fire grape and massacre everyone in the balloon (and put so many holes in the balloon that you will have a nigh unto instantaneous loss of bouyancy). Seriously mate, through out the entire 1890s and early 1900s armies the world over tried to weaponize the balloon, and by and large failed. It is only with the advent of the Zepplin (not possible in 1880, let alone 1860) that airborn bombing becomes even possible. Of course the bombing runs of WWI showed how utterly ineffective bombing was at knocking out an enemy capital a good 50 years after you propose it.

North Vietnamese guerillas could block waterways because they had: High explosives which could be easily thrown or swum onto a hull and blow it wide open (these did not exist in 1860); cheap machine guns which could supress a boat crew (such weaponry as could allow a handful of men to supress the deck crew of a river steamer was artillery and that was FAR too valuable and immobile to use in guerilla fashion); and contact mines (not in existance).

Snobbery had piss all to do with immigration patterns. The North was just a handy stoppover point in most immigrants mind before they headed west to homestead. Given slave agriculture it was impossible for immigrants without money (be they French or Irish as ALL immigrants at this time on the east coast were western style ethnics). The very cause of the initial succession (SC, not VA) was what precluded mass immigration in the South.

The number of horses for Lee had to do with several factors:
1. He had horses shot out from under him.
2. One of his issued horses was too large for him to sit astride at gallop as was normally then used by an aide.
3. He needed remounts because he covered more ground in a day that one horse could manage (this was true of virtually ALL generals of the era). Only a rank moron would limit the a generals observational mobility in order to save a few dollars on Horse cost.

Lee had NO COMMAND OF THE CSN; Lee command the Army of Northern Virgina; not the CSN (which was under Mallory). Get off it. Whatever failures the CSN had, it was under the purview of Davis, not Lee.

Regarind an armored train, whatever. Such a device is utterly useless as offensive weapon (as the British found in the Boer War). You pop a few railroad ties and your "superweapon" becomes an M-kill for the price of 5 men with pry bars.

Regarding fight or die style crap. First you are an inconsistent blowhard; first you piss and moan that Lee spends his men's lives too freely. Then you piss and moan that he doesn't spend them for crap kill ratios in one of the most bloody sieges in history (The 62nd didn't just charge fortified positions, they charged fortified positions with machine guns). Chuikov's tactics are only viable if you have the manpower advantage; they would have accomplished nothing but more death in Richmond.

Frankly I suggest you get the damn prejudicial chip off your soldier and read some REAL military history. Lee took a gamble at Gettysburg; by no means worse than those taken by Napoleon, Wellington, Sherman, Zhukov, Suvorov, Rommel, etc., he lost. It neither defined his style of battle nor overshadows his stunningly effective defenses (like at Cold Harbor).

You have shown yourself to be ignorant fool, I suggest you learn the facts before replying. Learn who commanded what in the CSA; how Lee did not control the CSN, nor any military formations outside of the ANVA until very late in the war. Learn about how military balloons were actually used, why they were used in that manner, and if you are really gumptious why the military attaches at The Hague conferences were willing to put a moratorium on airborne weaponry.

I'm sure instead of doing this and showing some glimmer of intellect, you will need to ramble about things you know nothing, castigate Lee for decisions not under his purview, and generally make a baffoon of yourself. But, for variety, could you try not so to do?

Thank you for the comments.
"You know nothing about metallurgy do you? The steel needed for rails is not the same needed for guns and is not the same needed for armor plate. If you (somehow) managed to rip up the railroads and ship them back to Richmond, you don't have the means to melt them back down and recast."

Which is interesting since ..."Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became an unwilling contributor the the Virginia project. In the summer and fall of 1861, Jackson's troops ripped up all of B&O's tracks in northern Virginia. Usable rails were sent south to become part of the Confederate railroad system, and damaged rails went to Tredegar where they were melted down to become part of the Virginia's one and two inch armor"
http://books.google.com/books?id=nAI9mJT6wiYC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=railroad+metal+CSS+Virginia&source=bl&ots=SejehLWYm8&sig=PzXl3zZ7eBxB2W7ZjL6Nic8LNI4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

"Seriously mate, through out the entire 1890s and early 1900s armies the world over tried to weaponize the balloon, and by and large failed. It is only with the advent of the Zepplin (not possible in 1880, let alone 1860) that airborn bombing becomes even possible."

"a patent for an unmanned aerial bomber balloon was issued to charles perley in 1863."
http://www.floridareenactorsonline.com/baloons.htm
Benjamin Franklin thought of airborne troops carried by balloons in the same article -which is another alternative. I suggest that the south focused on all the wrong things and in the wrong locations.
They could have had a night-time balloonist invasion and secret hunley special forces landings.
"read some REAL military history" ...Unlike the REAL mention of Bio warfare, rail used as ironclad armor, and the advent of moving troops in trains-which could have been amplified into an early blitzkrieg by an insightful commander, the real effect of a submarine that sank a ship that had stopped the most significant confederate contraband in the war from arriving, and balloon corp possibilities...?
Your right that Lee was only partly to blame.
However, the Phalanx in SP/MP suffers from what all UU's suffer from and that is if you know the Civ you know the counter. A Phalanx with horse is much as a Bowmen with horse - but no resources required for the Bowmen. The old version of the phalanx would be a spear/horse combo -better to stop counter-attacking horse.
Which is why Lee should have used the long rifles with bayonets in trenches like a phalanx (and stolen gatlin guns/cannon/spencers) and LeMat shotgun pistol armed dragoons with balloon aircover, incendairy munitions, and poisened shotgun pellets. (spear and horse)
Same at sea. Sarissa like hunley wolfpacks and Manassas ironclads.
(again spear and horse, (hammer/anvil) the Phalanx combination at its prime.)

:lol::lol::lol: Man i have having way too much fun reading about you guys arguing over Lee!!:lol: You want me to summarize the next 5-10 posts?

Troy says something not even possible, some other guy proves it not possible by acually knowing that he/she is talking about. Troy gets some sources from Google, repeat...:rolleyes:

Regarding rails to armour: I a piddling amount of steel was melted down and recast as plate armour. Yes that is true. However it was cannablized from friendly territory and there was no way to systematicly pillage a half dozen ships worth of armor from railroad steel.

Benjamin Franklin thought of airborne troops carried by balloons in the same article -which is another alternative. I suggest that the south focused on all the wrong things and in the wrong locations.

Sigh. The Confederates did focus on balloon (for observational purposes); they suffered from an inability to obtain the needed grades of coke or other hydrogen source. Instead they had to relay on crap affairs made with cotton cloth or the infamous dress balloon. The material used for real balloon programs required important. The first aerial bombing in the world (excluding trivial things like observational crews dropping items from a tethered position) was in 1912.

Air mobile troops would be a joke. Period balloons, at best, could move a company and would be at the mercy of the wind. Once they land, they will be unable to get back aloft and will most likely be seen coming from miles away (unless they are stupid enough to take up flammable balloons in inclement weather and die to electrical discharges).

There was no REAL biowarfare using pox in the civil war. There was a plot to use yellow fever (completely different disease), but it was not feasible at all. Even if you did manage to get a pox epidemic going it would have backlashed against the south as epidemiological records and reconstructions show too much camp to camp transit to provide disease barriers (natural epidemics crossed the battle lines regularly, with ease).

The Hunley sank a slight dated ship after losing more men than it killed. The problem, of course is that once the Union notices the Hunley, they just go a few miles further out to sea, build a few more ships, and the blockade continues. As I said you get ~6 months if you build up enough ironclads and subs to push the blockade out to sea, that is all.

Lee did use long rifles with bayonets in the trenches. Gatling guns at the time had inferior range to snipers and thus were easy victims to spire or volley fire to kill the operators with a cannon's ability to trade damage for range with solid shot. To whit they were cumbersome and unreliable alternative to cannon firing grape and cannister.

Incindeiary munitions are going to be worthless. Most battles occurred with no handy firesources and again: You are the South, you most important resources is cotton, playing with fire is bad m'kay? Even if you ignore the hopes of Jeff Davis to get European intervention, burning off the cotton will destroy CSA finances even quicker and make it that much harder to smuggle in anything.

The old Phalanx was countered by axes but was overly useful as long term anti-mounted. The new one has a decent, though not overwhelming, advantage over normal axes.

Now I know it makes you feel good when you can google some nitpicky little thing I wasn't explicate about, but could you try to keep your random quotations from webpages to things that aren't OBVIOUSLY being overblown by you?

"The first aerial bombing in the world (excluding trivial things like observational crews dropping items from a tethered position) was in 1912."

Except for of course this about 60 years earlier...
On August 22, 1849, the Austrians, who controlled much of Italy at this time, launched some 200 pilotless balloons against the city of Venice. The balloons were armed with bombs controlled by timed fuses - they are also said to have used fuses electrically activated via signals fed up trailing copper wires (to be confirmed - Ed.). Some of the bombs exploded as planned but the wind changed direction and blew several balloons back over the Austrian lines. This is, by most accounts, the first recorded action of its type

A Confederate veteran recalled an attaché' to the Confederate War Department who appealed for money through Richmond newspapers to build a big balloon. "He said that with it he could fly over Grant's army, and by dropping explosives annihilate them."

In February 1863 Charles Perley of New York City was awarded a patent for an unmanned aerial bomber. His design was a hot-air balloon that carried a basket containing a timing mechanism. The timer would trip a hammer on a cylinder to eject a hinge pin, opening the hinged basket at the bottom so that the bomb would drop out. The ejection on the hinge also ignited the bomb's fuse.
http://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/rpav_home.html
The north also had a balloon aircraft carrier- so all of these ideas were feasible and were actually being tested.
"The old Phalanx was countered by axes but was overly useful as long term anti-mounted. "
overly useful may be a reason it was changed. But so are other uu's. the change from a spear to an axe replacement is grating to the history of the phalanx and Civ where ol greece with spear and horse is a given.

Troy, i don't think you're getting the point. What Mirthadir is trying to say is that the South during the American civil war just did not have the manpower, materials, and productive capability. Instead of wasting energy on giant targets in the sky, why not build something that will help solders on the ground?

Now before you hammer me about how balloons were used as recon collectors, the south did use them. Unfortunately it didn't work very well. http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_than_air/Civil_War_balloons/LTA5.htm
Yes, i can use google too!:D

Yup, 2/3 of their balloons were captured. :lol::banana:

Congrats, you brought up a trivial example which accomplished precisely piss. The first aerial bombing, worthy of the name, happened in 1912. All of the earlier efforts were strategic in target size and sub-tactical in effect.

Axes, in general, are offense against history. Axes were most common as weapons prior to the advent of bronze; axes vs spears was handily won by period spearmen, and swords vs spears was also in favor of the spear. Like the macemen; axes are bastard unit of limited historical significance who were elevated to fill a niche in the game mechanic.

Historicly Greek phalanx formations were used in an anti-melee role, not anti-cavalry per se. Thus it makes much more sense to say they are a replacement for the anti-melee unit and have better anti-mounted defense.

"Like the macemen; axes are bastard unit of limited historical significance who were elevated to fill a niche in the game mechanic."

They should have skipped "axe" and added skirmishers- the niche of fighting elephants and the like were given to skirmishers- not axe, spear or horse. (Javelin throwers, Balaeric Slingers, Boomerang troops, light horse ect..)
Perhaps they are thinking Axe as skirmisher. However, ...
Axes were probably used very early in Egyptian warfare, though at first they were perhaps no different than the tool used for peaceful purposes, such as cutting would. As a practical weapon, it was the battle axe that eventually replaced the mace as one of the Egyptian military's primary close combat weapons.
and there is the the Sagaris used by the amazons and Scythians.

Which is another reason why Lee lost. He had bad skirmishers. (more accurately he had good skirmishers and but turned them into mainline troops -like BTS changing the phalanx from spear to axe)

I suggest that the army with the best skirmishers (and anyone north) tend to win wars. Hannibal had better skirmishers than Rome, Russia had better skirmishers than Germany, America had better skirmishers than Britain. (Hannibal lost eventually because Rome is north)

I think thebes was the first to figure out how to beat a phalanx which was skirmish around the land and free the helots. Also there was the noticible shift of each man in the phalanx ranks towards his neighbor's shield. The best way to beat a phalanx is with a left handed phalanx and skirmishers and giant boulders.

Lee should have had his western flank armed with ironclad wagontrains with balloons as a mobile fortress with cavalry and skirmishers to steal Henry repeating rifles and balloon supplies. A company of balloon raiders with shotgun pistols could have siezed a western or river Fort. They could have decimated any river invasion by utilizing the suggested giant high altitude dress balloon.

Early balloons were very unstable. Balloons as a "Mobile Fortress" is simply stupid. How could a giant flying target take a fort with cannons? Also, how would you LAND a balloon? Seriously, whats with you and balloons?

Everyone likes balloons.

Unless your on one thats about to become cannon chow...

Unless you on one thats about to become cannon chow...

Why you so down on balloons, Man? What'd a balloon ever do to you? Huh? Why you have to be so negative and down on Troy's ideas? He's thinking and creating - what about you?

:D

I still think the phalanx is a pretty lame unit.

Troy, dont be lame like the phalanx, stop being silly.

Ive been thinking of giving the phalanx the +25% bonus vs cavalry(forget the name) in addition to or removing the bonus againts chariots(dono if this has been talked about only read last 2 pages) but would enjoy thoughts on that before bothering with it.

I've been thinking of giving the phalanx the +25% bonus vs cavalry(forget the name) in addition to or removing the bonus againts chariots(dono if this has been talked about only read last 2 pages) but would enjoy thoughts on that before bothering with it.
It's a significantly better unit if you start it with the formation promotion and reduce the defense versus chariots from 100% to 50%. Mostly because you're greatly reducing the need to build spears. You're still gonna need spears if somebody named Khan is your close neighbor, but otherwise you can probably manage against mounted units pretty well. Plus, if you end up upgrading them to maces, they will be able to hold their own against knights.

Ok...Alexander the great is pretty awesome, I've been using him since vanilla. Honestly, you shouldn't really depend on the UU, just the traits. Aggr + Phil is nice for the SE and of course Pericles's traits are pretty awesome... Alex did of course used the phalanx formation in his Macedonian army, his troops had longer spears (12ft I think!), so I think the Phalanx should really have the strength with 6, with the same bonuses they have now. I honestly think the hoplite (not sure if im using the term) should be stronger than most, but not as strong as praets. Or..Since companion cavalry was the backbone of the macedonian army, Alex's UU should be a replacement of the horse archer, something a little less powerful than the cataphract can pack a punch!

Phalanx should get a +300% bonus versus Immortals when shouting "THIS IS SPAAAAAAATAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

:)

Phalanx should get a +300% bonus versus Immortals when shouting "THIS IS SPAAAAAAATAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

:)

LOL.

Unique unit ability:

"SPAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"!

- 100% win rate in next battle, but unit with sparta status guaranteed to die after that combat.

Actually, that would make them way too good ---> easily the best unit in the game (one would never intentionally obsolete such an obscenely overpowered unit) but it would be fun for a game or two.

It's times like these I'm happy I have a mac and can't upgrade to BtS. I remember in my last noble game, Monty attacked me in about 1350 AD with a huge stack of knights loaded off a flotilla of galleys. It attacked Thebes (Egyptian capital, not founded Greek city), which I had conquered in the BCs and still contained the majority of my old force of Phalanxes, about ten (I lost two (!!) phalanxes attacking all three Egyptian cities.) overall. Monty had about fifteen knights. Now, Thebes was my most valuable city, containing over five wonders and pop 14. I was terrified Monty was going to raze it after he captured it and erase all of that hard work. It was a long, hard battle, Monty attacking on two consecutive turns, but when the dust cleared, I had lost six phalanxes to Monty's thirteen knights. I won favorable turns in the peace treaty (Monty gave me HBR and 500 gold), and I proceeded to invade Azteca in 1500, with the stack containing calvary, macemen, and three of the surviving phalanxes. :D

Edit: This is Spata? Lol.

What makes the Phalanx worse than the Holkan?

What makes the Phalanx worse than the Holkan?

Holkan requires no resources.