Why are Swordsman so weak to Pikemen?

Swordsman have 14 strength vs a whooping 16 for the pikeman, plus the mounted bonus.

Considering you are paying iron for the swordsman, why is it so much weaker?

It's a classical unit that you can get fast vs. a Medieval unit that takes a lot of techs to reach.

Swords upgrade to Longswords, which are more powerful than pikes.

But pikes are medieval, swords are classical. It takes 10 prerequisite techs to reach CS and only 2 for IW...

prince_caspian said:

But pikes are medieval, swords are classical. It takes 10 prerequisite techs to reach CS and only 2 for IW...

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Which is exactly why pikes are better combatants than swordsmen. Makes perfect sense, way more techs to get them means they need to be worth the time and investment.

I do believe that the OP's confusion comes from the fact that, before Gods and Kings, pikemen were strength 10 and swordsmen were strength 11.

Consider this a (positive, imo) rebalancing

It's a good rebalancing, but (if the tech tree hasn't changed) it makes libbing CS with the great Library a tod more powerful too. And it already was quite powerful, especially when playing Korea/Babylon.

I'm really happy with this change. I hated the fact that pikemen were weaker than swordsmen in vanilla since it made no historical sense. Pikemen should be the mainline unit and swordsmen, if they exist at all, would make more sense as specialized city attackers like in civ4.

I think a lot of it is that we got used to Swordsmen being amazing must-have units in Civ V vanilla, whereas in G&K they really feel more like Warrior 2 .

strijder20 said:

It's a good rebalancing, but (if the tech tree hasn't changed) it makes libbing CS with the great Library a tod more powerful too. And it already was quite powerful, especially when playing Korea/Babylon.

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Tech tree has changed, CS is now 10 techs away as said before. You can see it here if you're EU or don't have the game yet.

Combined with flipping republic and collective rule in the liberty tree, you Can't GL/GS rush through classical and then on to CS/Theology that easily now since liberty doesn't give you a ridiculous early game expansion now, forcing you to go a little slower. This realization was my first 'big' mistake on my part.

strijder20 said:

It's a good rebalancing, but (if the tech tree hasn't changed) it makes libbing CS with the great Library a tod more powerful too. And it already was quite powerful, especially when playing Korea/Babylon.

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The tech tree has changed and changes make it a lot harder. You now need Drama & Poetry, Horseback Riding and Currency. Good luck researching that before someone else builds the Great Library. Iron Working looks like a good option to take as a free tech now. It's expensive but it requires only Bronze Working. You'll also be able to get more Swordsmen now that Catapults don't require iron any more.

In game, it may take many more techs to reach civil service. But it is along a tech path that is a must have. Writing, Philosophy, on your way to Civil Service, Philosophy and Education. So in reality, Ironmen and Pikemen often show up at the same time.

It's often a question of when you stop on that path to education, and get Iron working. You could say that you can just beeline to Ironworking. And you can, but you will very often have some work to do after you discover Iron working, settling a city, then mining often being the best case scenario. If you're not out of luck and need to find it another way, buying when civ or CS eventually get it, then your strategy has been a waste and you will find the AI to be on even terms.

So very often by the time you get your iron men, the AI is fielding pikes. But when it does work, you go for iron and have it within your borders or get a quick hold of it, for a short while you have a clear upper hand.

Edit: looks like I posted in the wrong forum.

Solon64 said:

I do believe that the OP's confusion comes from the fact that, before Gods and Kings, pikemen were strength 10 and swordsmen were strength 11.

Consider this a (positive, imo) rebalancing

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I see several issues with the new change though.

1) CS is now both a terrific military and peace tech. Before, the +1 food bonus was amazing enough, and you got a unit that could serve as a decent but weaker addition to your army compared to other units.

Now you get the food bonus and the new primary mainstay unit that outclasses anything that has come before it.

2) Pikeman are now a mainline instead of specialty unit. Before pikeman were often a unit used to counter horse units, which is exactly the point of them. You would use swordsman as your mainstay unit, and add pikeman to help counter horseman/knights.

Now pikeman are the main unit, and as such make using horse units a complete waste of time.

I don't think horse units are useless at all. Pikes hard counter them, but pikes are slow so ranged units destroy pikes; ranged units are hard to kill unless you can close fast, so horse men kill ranged units. Pretty sure that's how it's intended to work at this point, the rock-paper-scissors of early warfare. Does make you wonder where swordsmen are supposed to fit into this though.

Wolfbeckett said:

I don't think horse units are useless at all. Pikes hard counter them, but pikes are slow so ranged units destroy pikes; ranged units are hard to kill unless you can close fast, so horse men kill ranged units. Pretty sure that's how it's intended to work at this point, the rock-paper-scissors of early warfare. Does make you wonder where swordsmen are supposed to fit into this though.

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Swordsmen fit in as anti-spearmen/city siege units pre-medieval. Longswordsman fill that role in Medieval, being stronger than pikes.

I like these changes too. Pikemen remained a major part of warfare almost to the Modern era. The Confederates even started to arm units with them in the American Civil War! That would have been interesting...(and would have led to an even bigger disaster than Picket's Charge, IMHO).

In my current game, it did seem like Pikemen and Swords came around fairly close. I think I would prefer to see Pikemen pushed back a bit to Renaissance. I think they come a bit too early right now compared to history.

kgoodrid said:

In my current game, it did seem like Pikemen and Swords came around fairly close. I think I would prefer to see Pikemen pushed back a bit to Renaissance. I think they come a bit too early right now compared to history.

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I have to agree there, I always thought pikes were a reaction to knights (heavy cavalry as opposed to just Horsemen) not a precursor to them.

Pikes require more hammers, no?

because the pike man got big as sticks and they can poke from farther away

Barghaest said:

I have to agree there, I always thought pikes were a reaction to knights (heavy cavalry as opposed to just Horsemen) not a precursor to them.

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Sir, our enemies have these new pikeman. They have long spears that will kill our horses!


Good god man, we can't have that. Well....lets put some heavily armored men on those horses to protect them!

I thought, historically, classic era swordsmen were better than medieval era pikemen.
Isn't that why the medieval ages in Europe are also known as the dark ages? Because it was a time in which no major advances were made in terms of philosophy and warfare/military science?

Or perhaps roman legionaries are still a match for pikemen, which would make sense...

Heinage said:

I thought, historically, classic era swordsmen were better than medieval era pikemen.
Isn't that why the medieval ages in Europe are also known as the dark ages? Because it was a time in which no major advances were made in terms of philosophy and warfare/military science?

Or perhaps roman legionaries are still a match for pikemen, which would make sense...

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Honestly, the historicity of the whole thing is dubious, to say the least. Technology provided advantages, but there are plenty of examples of e.g. well-trained light spearmen defeating British Riflemen circa ~1900, things like that. Wars were always fought by men (and occasionally women), not by weaponry, so the tech progression of Civilization in which units quickly become 100% obsolete simply isn't historical. And often, tech progression was made lockstep in an arms race; trebuchets are an impressive weapon for fighting on the battlefields of medieval Europe but would be no help at all against a Native American or Zulu foe. Yes, advances like the saddle, stirrups, steel, bows etc made a huge difference...

Modern technology is finally enough to make wars effectively unwinnable by a technologically inferior foe... but even now, with access to virtually no modern technology it is possible to fight a war that you aren't likely to lose (see: Iraq, Afghanistan), it'll just stalemate, using guerrilla tactics.

We tend to overrate just how much impact technology has because it's the basis of our particular society. It does matter, but it isn't 100% increases in combat effectiveness until the technology explosions of the last century or so.