Why do you build spear/pike men?

[marconos]

I keep trying to figure out what is the point of this unit.

Yes, they attack/defend against mounted units well .... but honestly I rarely see enough mounted units from the computer to warrant making very many of them at all. The units seem horrible at doing most anything else.

Am I missing something or is this just a poor design of the unit? Just seems to me Pikeman/Spearman should be great defensive units and not just against mounted units.

 

[warpus]

Computers usually build some mounted units. In one of my games I had to have at least one spear in each of my cities, due to my enemy having a large cavalry contingent.

So yeah.. if you see enemies on horseback, build spears.. (if not, I would still build a couple, just in case)

 

[Grawss]

I normally stick a couple in my stack of doom. The AI loves to build knights in my games. Loads and loads and loads of knights. To the point where I have to keep any siege I plan on using in strategic places to prevent ten knights from suiciding into them.

 

[oranges]

You must have been lucky enough not to fight any wars against Ghengis. He seems to have at least 80 percent of his units some kind of mounted.

Knights are plentiful among many civs and if you don't want them pillaging your land, you'll need some pikemen.

 

[Supr49er]

You'll need them if you start next to the civs that have a mounted UU like: Hatty/Rammy; Suryavarman; Saladin; Justinian; Izzy; Catherine/Peter/Stalin; Cyrus/Darius; the Khans; Hannibal.

 

[Oni of Chaos]

Early Game: If you attack with mainly axes, chariots will eat them for breakfast. Put a spear or two in the stack to protect against that.

Medieval Age: Enemy knights are easily countered by a pike or two. Base stats for Knight=10, Base stats for Pikemen against Knights=12

Promote your spears/pikes with Combat I and II, then Formation.

 

[krille]

A common approach is to use a spear- or pikeman as multi-purpose medic. A stack defender (against mounted units) as well as a medic (with Medic I). Personally, I prefer a Medic II/III and Woodsman III Explorer. But till then sacrificing a promotion on a spearman usually hurts you much less than having to build a dedicated medic unit.

 

[marconos]

Yes, I have started using them as Medic recently. They just seem so woefully underpowered. It's like the only purpose of them is against mounted units. I generally look for the computers mounted unit and attack them 1st. This way he has so few of them to matter. I do generally put like 1 pikeman in each border city and 1 or 2 with my various stacks (generally attack a computer form 2 - 3 areas at once). It just seems such a limited to use of them.

 

[The Snug]

It's the only way to stop stacks of elephants, and they're even competent against Curassiers.

 

[AfterShafter]

Your experience is not like mine if you see no use for these guys or think they're underpowered They aren't attack units... They aren't general purpose defense units. They counter mounted, and that's it... But they destroy mounted, which is really quite necessary, because knights in particular stomp all over just about anything else in their time period in open field combat. Without pikemen, you'd be more or less hooped when Saladin does his signature camel archer spam, or Justinian with Cataphracts... Or heck, just regular knights - I see lots of them around.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

Stack medic plus my defense against mounted. They are usually one of the last to defend in a fully healed stack too.

 

[DMOC]

this was a game where suryavarmann completely dominated his continent and I was trying to win domination by taking out a couple of his cities.

Spoiler :

Notice how many mounted units he's creating? I know it's the modern age and pikes/spears are obsolete, but the AI does build some mounted units. In this game, Sury had about 80 cavalry (my estimate) and 30 rifles when I declared war.

 

[r_rolo1]

I wonder why nobody mentioned this earlier:

Spoiler :

Seriously, spear/pikes are the main defense vs early mounted units... if normally AI don't press much on chariots/HA if they don't have a UU if that kind, they seriously press in knights, mainly because if they hit guilds soon , Knights are the strongest unit in field for a while. And spears/pikes make good medics....

 

[Willem]

It's like the only purpose of them is against mounted units.

Well that is the only purpose for them. You generally don't need to build alot of them, just enough to counter the AIs mounted units.

 

[cronullasharks]

Surely you have felt the pain of arriving at the gates of your target city , armed with a big stack , lots of attacking melee and nicely promoted mounted units , archers/longbows for defence etc.......then when you get there and the city has no mounted units you say to yourself "see , I knew I would not need Pikes"

Then suddenly all his fast moving mounted units come from nowhere , cut down your stack , flank your seige and basically wipe you out....."I wish I had brought just two little pikes"

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Knights keep killing my city raider maces as well, so pikes for the win.

 

[cronullasharks]

Exactly.......any CR units you bring need to be in tip top condition before you attack and Knights are the only unit that would force the CR maceman to defend (if you did not bring pikes)

If he uses melee to attack your stack the x bow defends

 

[AfterShafter]

Meh, once the siege has done its job (if you brought enough), even your medic pikes should be able to clear out a few of the heavily injured units. Don't need a CR macemen to take out a 3/4 dead longbowmen on a grassland. Even in stacks that never run into a mounted unit, they can still even be half decent cleanup.

 

[cronullasharks]

True......but meh? you dont use maces?......and what if its the second or third city of the campaign? seige is starting to run dry

3/4 dead long bows yes..drill 3 x bows that did not take much damage? CR maces help

 

[say1988]

I think you missed the point.
He isn't saying that CR maces are useless, just that Pikes can support them by taking weak units out. This decreases the number of maces needed, and may even let you take a city a turn earlier.