Spearmen lose to swordsmen

>spearmen lose to swordsmen

Whoa, I didn't know that. The things Total War games teach you, huh?

Damn...

spears beat things running at them, swordsmen can choose not to and find a balance.

Spears > Horses > Swords > Spears
At least that's how AoE2 does it

>medieval warfare was uniform
woah

Armoured swordsmen approaching cautiously > peasant-levies with sharpened sticks.

God Burgonets truly are the sexiest helmet

Nice

>no shield wall
ASKING
FOR
IT

What movie ?

I dont think pikes are meant to be used with shields..

Say that to Macedonia's face not online see what happens.

the crazy ass FYROMian sarissas were used with shields.

their helmets were also shaped to deflect, bounce and slide off falling arrows

spearmen unsupported by shields is easy to deal with when you have good coordination with the people in your shield wall.

at one time alll together you need to push fast past the pointy end of the spear and once you are past that the spearmen wont be able to stab you without moving back then eventually the spearmen will be running backwards for their lives.
but if you dont work together you'll push forward on your own then the guy to your left and right will stab the fuck out of you

Medievil warfare wasn't about stats and unit strength, it was a chaotic shitfest.

If you have a sword you are somewhat more versatile in regards to what you can do, depending on where you are and what you're fighting.
With a long ass pike or spear you're limited to mostly grouped stuff unless you're facing off against something like a horse which you have a direct advantage over.

How the fuck do I skaven?

Artillery and backstabs, duh.

Make use of numbers and harass enemies.

The skaven arent played normally like other factions since they rout easily, but what youd notice is they also come back in the fight faster

Alatriste

user, the swordsmen have shields, once they deflect the first spearblow they can get close enough for their spears to be useless and kill them with their swords. It makes sense.

You're making it sound easy, when it was anything but. You're correct that skirmisher troops were used to disrupt formations, and often these troops would have swords besides their close range projectiles. But from the pike and shot era, we also know that these troops were the least likely to survive. If you look at the pike formations you'll notice that there isn't just one row of pike tips to get beyond, but at least three in a loose formation, and up to seven in a dense one.

PIKEMANII !

The thing is that the length of the pikes makes them hard to handle quickly and change position etc. You have to hit them with a good jab in the chest area to effectively stop an attacker, only the tip of the spear is an effective weapon, it's not like they can slap around the spear and kill everyone, Even grazing someone with the tip of the spear would not halt an attacker.

It's true that the swordsmen would have to make some sacrifice, but all it takes is for one or two spearmen to screw up to break the formation since the swordsman will be amongst them.

If the spearmen had room to fall back gradually and keep making jabs at the enemies, thinning out the herd then they are unstoppable.

But if some swordsmen decides enough is enough and charge in they will most likely die, but break the entire formation, making it easier for the rest of the swordsmen to annihilate them.

Sword this, limpdick

>pikes
>anything like handling proper spears
lmao at ur life

>hetuh day peddy hemmet

This type of warfare was described as 'Cruel war' at the time as it was as close to a meat grinder as you can get. people guaranteed to die if they didn't route, not a battle of skill just of morale.

*Teleports behind you*

GOTHIC KNIGHTS

Get a lot of unit variety as soon as you can, Stormvermin and Catapults are what I rushed first, but they have an answer to everything, also defending settlements with rank 3 defenses, make use of warp bomb/Menace below.

I've seen arguments that it rarely even happened, if ever, since someone would pussy out before they got into range, or they'd just smash into each other with pikes lifted up and made it a shoving match which sounds really counterintuitive to me.

best armor

1) Rat Ogres
2) Lightning cannons
3) Menace Below

when did this change happen? in earlier TW games armoured spearmen were the best frontline unit

Pshh... nothin' personnel'... shico...

Probably Lindybeige said this, he is a fucking retard though, he said the phalanx couldn't exist because of this same thing.

I think the pussying out would be a frequent outcome given how casualty rates were not that massive in battles. I know Swiss Pikeman were so effective just because they were known not to route, so formations opposing them knew before hand that if they tired to fight them they would undoubtedly suffer heavy loses- so they would very quickly route if engaged. As for devolving into a brawl.. maybe if the front line was engaged, and pikes then became more of a liability.

Who would've thought?

I'd list battles where the Romans defeated the Greeks in pitched battle, but there are too many.

>anti-swordfaggery as gone this far
Cmon guys, it's getting pathetic now.

>shieldlet_getting_BTFO.jpg

It was from Lindybeige, he said reenactors tried pike vs pike battles and found everyone died immediately if they actually used the pikes. His conclusion was pike vs pike never happened.

>Wall of sharp sticks approaching fast
>Wearing little to no armor
>You're supposed to attack that
How big does your codpiece have to be not to run from that

but spearmen are generally the best frontline unit

As big as common sense.
These people are there to come and kill you.
If you stand and do something with a like-minded group of people, you stand a chance.
If you don't, that wall of sharp sticks is going to knock down your home's door and you won't be a part of the same deadly wall of sharp sticks then.

Beast backed against a wall and all that. These wars were wars of annihilation.

They probably did run, hoping the pike follow and open up their flanks. This is what skirmishers were for.

Spears are absolute shite, but you would never know that, because 99% of the historians in this world are unabashed spearfags.

In total warhammer? Not even close. Spearmen are specifically countered by sword&board infantry and it actually makes sense, given a shitload of historical examples.

That picture never happened.

The OP is saying spearmen lose to swordsmen in total war games, which wasn't true in earlier games. I assume something must have changed for Warhammer TW.

>reenactors
>prepared to die
See, this is what I mean, we can't know how much balls men had at that time. Yes, I'm pretty sure a battle like this would be very short, someone would pussy out sooner or later.
I don't think this never ever happened though, by the same logic the Romans could have never conquered Greece because those guys had nothing but fucking pikes.

Yeah, that would be a bit of a weakness to the early pike formations. This is why it led later to the mixed arms approach, with swordsmen/halebardiers mixed in the front rows and musket rows moving around the pikes. This tercio formation was so successful that it spread everywhere in Europe.

Yup, can't argue against that.

Why is there seemingly so little good documentation of medieval warfare?

>deflect initial stab with your shield
>move in closer
>spear literally useless
Look at how long these fuckers are. All you need to do is get past the pointy end and you've won.

Romans had big-ass shields and armor. Even fucking mercenary (i.e. doesn't really want to fight to the death at all costs) BUCKLER men were enough to counter pikes in a head-on engagement in historical battles, tower shields would have raped the Greek cucks which is the reason they got fucked up the ass like the faggots they were.

I guess few people bothered to write down what was common knowledge at the time and then those works failed to survive long enough to reach us.

This has nothing to do with being prepared to die, the reenactors found that you would die if you went pike vs pike. You literally wouldn't have time to retreat due to being killed so quickly.

maybe they're not chads themselves, but i feel like skaven are the faction the chad picks

>These wars were wars of annihilation.

Not really. Not before firearms came along. Most wars were a case of one army camping around a castle/city until either those inside ran out of food or a bigger army chased them off.

A lot of early medieval/late antiquity stuff was not written down and much of the high medieval stuff has been lost. We have extensive documents on classical and renaissance warfare though.

I love to pick apart those battles because if you actually read about them you know the Greeks made major mistakes outside of combat, speeding up their fall dramatically

There's a thought that writers from their respective time periods, be it ancient history or medieval history or whatever, tend to skimp on battle details which they would consider "obvious" to readers from their time. I mean a Greek writer wouldn't bother explaining how hoplite formations and fighting worked to his fellow Greeks since it's common knowledge.

What the fuck are you talking about nigger?

>He doesn't know about siege machines

Hehe.

>move in closer
There's no space for that.

You make the space, as long as you get past the points of the spears you're unstoppable.

Because the fucking Christians decided to burn all history that wasn't about their fucking kike desert religion

>spears have zero killing power beyond the tip
>don't rush head long into a formation of spears
>flank the faggots because you have superior maneuverability and beat their ass because they need to resort to their side arm

whoa.........

Yeah, I think maybe you're right.
Though I'm sure some battles of the Macedonian conquest of Greece would have at least some engagement like this, just that it isn't known.

Low effort bait.

3/10 you made me reply.

t. Korean still butthurt about the hyper war

I am not even a skavenfag but this is pretty sad when the power balance is so flipped gameplay/tabletop wise

the technology bullshit given to the skaven is absolutely appalling .

If I had been born korean I would've killed myself a long time ago.

kek

>climbing currently at a faster rate than the based finns and koreans

we're gonna be okay lads

"Careful with your words kid."
*emergy shoots out of hands*
"They'll get you hurt."
*shoots a magnetic force towards the spear men and causes the spears to fly toward their handlers*

*naruto runs past all the spear tips*
"hmph... to easy"
*unsheathes shortsword and wields it backhanded, swings and cuts the arteries of 3 shitty spearmen*
"i guess you should've stayed in bed this morning!"
*maniacal and nihilistic laughter*
"i'm pickle rick, morty"

Ah lindybeige, YouTube cancer is truly a great source of knowledge

Surprise. Total war isn't anywhere close to realistic.

Blob the enemy front with Clanrats and flank with Stormvermin and your Globadiers/Warpfire throwers. Clanrats are expendable and should be used for tying enemy units down and preventing them from moving. Skaven artillery is probably some of the best in the game also

>It's true that the swordsmen would have to make some sacrifice, but all it takes is for one or two spearmen to screw up to break the formation since the swordsman will be amongst them.

Except that spearmen also had swords and probably shields as well, depending on the era and place. Spear formations were the mainstay of battles for virtually all of history because they were simply better than other types of weapons. Really the only military to be successful without spear formations were the romans and their success was as much due to their superior battlefield organization and tactics, than any sort of technological advantage.

>hole left by the christian dark ages
This makes me mad every time, even if it's on a meme chart like that

It's the people who take what he says as fact (in spite of him clearly stating that those are just his thoughts and not gospel) that are cancer. I find his ramblings entertaining, it's food for thought.

>success was as much due to their superior battlefield organization and tactics
>superior tactics
So the tactic of going sword and board is superior to the tactic of using shitty sticks? OK.

The English too. Instead of spears they just put up wooden stakes in front of their longbowmen.

You know those cities had a really good reason to hold out for their dear life for as long as they could, right?
You're not just gonna leave all those people who are willing to pick up a spear and kill you in your sleep just prance away as if nothing happened. No, you slaughter some, enslave others, take all their weapons, push your settlers into the city so they'll fuck the widows and integrate into the cities' familiar structures and what-not.

And that's talking medieval era. Ancient wars were brutal in this regard. Ancient Greece, for instance, basically killed or maimed all the males in the conquered city state, burned the whole thing down, raped and enslaved all the women, then salted the fields/poisoned the water sources before making off. It's why finding stuff like Troy was so damn hard. Absolutely no one would willingly live in that place for centuries afterwards.

>Spear formations were the mainstay of battles for virtually all of history because they were simply better than other types of weapons

Pshh, if I had been there I would've shown it how it's done... It's very easy to defeat a formation of spearman, you just need to duck past all the spears and kick the spearmen in the shins until they die, people back then must have been retards not to think of that...

>Can't draw sword in time
> Your only defense against a swordsman in close combat is a shield and a spear which has now become a liability.
>have to frantically block with shield and fall back to get room to draw sword
>Formation successfully broken, your squad gets raped.

Well that's how they defeated Greek phalanx formations.

Spear formations required the unit to be rigid as fuck and suffers from mobility, and not to mention very vulnerable to flanking once being engaged by another unit.

The Roman testudo on the other hand was much more adaptive to combat situations. Of course that's not to say that Rome didnt have its fair share of catastrophic defeats before they learned to counter their enemies.

Jesus fucking Christ man
You got the cohesion part right, then just rambled some complete dogshit

Aren't spears a poor mans weapon?

The greeks got cucked by the Romans because they had been weakened by ~100 years of infighting before the Romans turned up and divide and conquered them with a 2-1 numerical advantage on the battlefield.
As always, strategy and resources matter vastly more than battles or equipment when it comes to winning wars.

Enlighten me then, /his/.

Yup, very effective against other serfs and lowlifes without shields and armor.

Garbage against anything else.

depends on the era

in the ancient era definitely not

medieval and up, probably yes

aside from that polearms were still more or less the best no matter what, even among the nobility.

It's accurate though, Romans switched to the maniple system when they realized Greek-style fighting really, really doesn't work well on uneven ground

Menace Below is the single most powerful ability in the entire game and you're allowed to use it up to thirteen times in every single battle.

Max out Skaven corruption, constantly fight battles, constantly raid. 160 Clanrats WILL kill an entire enemy ranged unit by themselves. You're allowed to just delete enemy units from the battlefield without even worrying about losing resources.

*Gets hooked off of his horse*

>you just need to duck past all the spears
That's what people actually did, genious.

>The sword-and-buckler men were placed in rear of the pikemen, with directions to run in with their short weapons, when the pikes should have got locked in a frontal crash. This was the same function which the haldberdiers were supposed to discharge in the Swiss service, but the short stabbing sword was much more effective than the halberd in a jammed formation, since the latter required not only strong arms but room to swing the ponderous weapon.

>Swiss halberdiers (right and foreground) trying to stop armoured Spanish swordsmen (left) who are cutting their way into a disordered pike block. Córdoba’s new infantry organization owed its success against the less versatile Swiss pike phalanx to the shock impact of massed arquebusiers, exploited by the agile offensive capability of the swordsmen, both underpinned by the solidity of their own pike block.

You may ask: why not just use swords and boards exclusively and ditch the pike? The answer is simple: it's not economically viable. A swordsman needs a metal sword, a metal shield and metal armor while a pikeman needs only a fucking stick.

AK-47 is a poor man's weapon. It can and will royally fuck you up when you happen to be on the receiving end of it with nothing more than your much more expensive and sophisticated taser.

>You make the space
It's not easy.