phalanxes are awesome

[Schmieds]

They aren't as strong as Modern Armor.

All I ever find myself needing is a few spears for the early wars, spamming axes works well enough for me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well... without phalanges it's hard for the phalanxes to hold their spears, right?

Even harder to play civ. Definitely need those.

Their value-over-base isn't that impressive. They are completely equal to axes vs civs w/o horse, and by the time the AI starts spitting out HAs instead of chariots they're just axes.

So basically they save you 1 str on an extra unit or two vs spears in an axe rush. This is not great at all, but there are worse UUs, like the panzer.

Pre-BTS phalanx units were far better...being cost-effective anti-mounted for a ludicrously long period (alex's contended quite nicely with knights as you could have formation at 5 xp so even shock knights were weaker). Greece should have kept that version of the UU, it was better.

 

[Tristan_C]

Axemen are so good in practice anyway, none of the axe UUs manage to offer much value-over-base by changing the format. The vulture only gets better math out of its promos and its odds vs archers... useful, but not an institution of itself. Probably not much point in discussing the Dog: 8 vs melee (but all other axes are 7.5) and otherwise worthless.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

I believe TMIT may have illustrated their usefulness as 'chokers', they require no metals and are a huge pain to get rid of!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Axemen are so good in practice anyway, none of the axe UUs manage to offer much value-over-base by changing the format. The vulture only gets better math out of its promos and its odds vs archers... useful, but not an institution of itself. Probably not much point in discussing the Dog: 8 vs melee (but all other axes are 7.5) and otherwise worthless.

Vultures have the highest value-over-base of the axe replacements but only vs the AI. When defensive bonuses are significant, the higher base str means more than a 25% reduction in defender multipliers. Attacking a walled or hill city the vulture would be stronger even against the likes of spears/swords. Of course it's better against all mounted, although still weak to chariots.

Overall axes vie with chariots for the most consistently effective rusher. I'd hand that merit to chariots having dozens of games doing both on various levels, due to the combination of their speed and the typical tech progression that calls for them.

As for dogs, they *are* effective chokers as they can get in there early and if the AI doesn't have metal yet, it never will. The problem is on high levels it's hard to contain the AI before it starts expanding out to 3+ cities (immortal AI for example settles its 2nd city ~ 3000 BC, so choking its metal might or might not be doable). This leaves the strength of the dog more a lower level or MP thing, although it is certainly a consistent option vs barbs. They are trash vs cities.

If the AI had a good, shifting defense force or built chariots axes wouldn't look nearly so hot. Sometimes it happens on higher difficulties and the rush fails ----> they'll have like 6 archers in 1 city with walls. You might take it, but all your momentum is gone :/. This is WHY I rate chariots slightly higher: their chances of hitting smaller garrisons (and giving the AI less time to build units) make them more effective. Usually. Not always.

 

[Tristan_C]

Alas, that sort of exposes the bias in my methods, I guess. I tend to crowd my maps with AIs. I'm not afraid of leaders with any of the military traits. I go to BW fast- certainly not justified if we have BFC animals, tech AH early, and spot hosses. I don't play many games, because I'm a very slow, deliberate type. For some reason, I just haven't had early impetus to get AH as often as your wider experience is reporting. This mishmash all amounts to an unhealthy fixation with axe-swinging I guess

When playing the axe rush, I've had success doing them extremely early by building axe stacks half-way and sending them out in front of a steady stream of reinforcements. I always thought that chariot rushes have to bring more frontloaded pressure, so that they can just keep steamrolling through and kill the copper mine, and that's how I've played the 1-2 that I've managed. They came current or later than my axe rushes (seemed to me). So this is interesting news.

 

[mariogreymist]

Alas, that sort of exposes the bias in my methods, I guess. I tend to crowd my maps with AIs. I'm not afraid of leaders with any of the military traits. I go to BW fast- certainly not justified if we have BFC animals, tech AH early, and spot hosses. I don't play many games, because I'm a very slow, deliberate type. For some reason, I just haven't had early impetus to get AH as often as your wider experience is reporting. This mishmash all amounts to an unhealthy fixation with axe-swinging I guess

Play a few games with Persia or egypt, and you may be cured. Both have awesome chariot based UUs.

 

[kivanc]

greece have 1 of the weakest ancient UUs, i guess.
well, if phalanx was resource free like jaguar in addition to its existing bonus or had a free formation promo, then it would be awesome.

 

[Rusty Edge]

Why were the phalanxes changed from their Vanilla 5 str spearman implemantation anyway? Sure, it's kinda neat to have ancient Greek armies composed of these hoplites, not these brutish axes, but the Vanilla version was more useful.

Kind of a long story but interesting story of how Fireaxis reads CFC forums.


The subject used to come up. Usually beginning with" Phalanxes were formations or tactics, not units."

Praets could march around the Med, Cosssacks could sweep across Asia, Redcoats could carve an intercontinental empire, but could Alex's spearmen conquer the known ancient world?! No! They were justy hill defenders. They couldn't even crush Persia in this game.

I even invited people by PM from various threads on the subject into one discussion.

While phalanxes were varied, just like Greek city-states, the graphic looked like a Macedonian phalanxman. Fair enough. Alexander was the only Greek leader anyway. The idea of Greek axeman was as silly as US lancers- it just wasn't the way they equiped themselves or fought.The Macedonian phalanx was primarily an anti-melee unit, so why not an ax replacement? OK - But how do you properly represent that?

Macedonian Phalanxes were for fighting on battlefields, not hills or cover, so that hill bonus had to go. Some kind of a mounted bonus or formation promotion because they were also spearmen? No, Alex's Macedonian version was directional, 4 rows of specialized spears faced the front, but it's weakness was flanking attacks by mounted/horse archers. It was more realistic to have them supported by regular spearmen to counter that threat. The Greeks used both phalanxes and other spearmen.

Shock promo out of the box? Strength 6 ? Overpowered. We concluded that maybe the best way to represent it was....

The March promotion, to represent their relentless forward push/march across Persia and Egypt into India.


So... It sorta happened. Cossacks and Redcoats were nerfed, but not Praets. Phalanx became axmen replacements rather than spearmen replacements ( but they reversed the graphics ala Kublai/Quinn...oh well ), and if you looked in the civilopedia , it said they had the march promotion. They didn't, they had a bonus against their counter ( chariots), which incidentally happened to be the archnemesis Persia's UU.

My guess is that the march promo was overpowered that early in the game, and useful long afterward in a Berserker -sort of way, so it was abandoned in play-testing, but they forgot to update the civilopedia.