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Post by medievalthomas on Nov 7, 2019 22:33:00 GMT
Radical concept for fixing Pike (that might actually work):
Pike: Heavy Foot CF +4; MA 2BW; Rear Support +2 from other Pike; Drive Off v. Mounted (Recoil on Equals); but give Cry Havoc to Blades (Destroy on Equals); Pursue Foot. (Ancillary rule: Blades keep Cry Havoc v. Knights but lose Drive Off v. all other Mounted).
Reasoning: this gives double Pikes a +6 v. Foot & Mounted but with an advantage against Mounted of winning on Equals and a disadvantage v. Blades of getting Destroyed in a sustained melee. In game terms this is an effective +5 Combat Factor in Close (-1 for Overlap due to having to double up), so its an even fight v. Shield wall Spear and an even fight v. Blades except for Cry Havoc. If you can avoid the Overlap, you have a +1 advantage. And a single rank of Pikes gets a more reasonable +4 CF.
Against Mounted you have a effective +5 (+6 w/o Overlap) and so are not so much in danger of being Shocked by Knights (currently its an effective +3! v. +4 (+1 Rear support -1 Overlap) - great for Knights. And Pikes get Drive Off.
So what about Bows? We know what English longbows did to Scottish "pike" but those were much more powerful missile weapons than the "Bows" of DBA. Many Pike esp ancient used shields and in the medieval period it was common to have an armored front rank (sometimes dismounted knights). In addition some authors claim the "forest" of pikes offered some protection v. missiles. So I'm not sure we really need to handicap Pike as a +3 v. Foot (bear in mind that at DBA scale even a single Pike element represents lots of ranks of pikes).
About to go into the playtest lab...
TomT
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Post by paulisper on Nov 7, 2019 22:51:14 GMT
I like most of this - Pk return to close to their values in 2.2 - however, I’m not sure about the QK from Bd on ties. I’d be more inclined to roll with the fact it should be a slugfest between these two types and come down to overlaps and what happens on the flanks...
P
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Post by mthrguth on Nov 8, 2019 0:34:54 GMT
This is from Gabriel and Metz's 'From Sumer to Rome,' pages 72-73, but the section starts earlier and has much interesting information. For example, DBA allows 'ranging' or sweeping fire by bows at long range. But Gabriel's experiments showed that while 'ranging' is very practical at 250 yards, by 300 yards accuracy is falling off considerably. Without a ground scale, it is difficult to determine at what ranges bows should be allowed to gang up or range against targets in DBA, which also ignores command control issues. As the target gets closer, ranging, and even salvo fire becomes impossible because of the risk of hitting one's own bowmen! This is consistent with the DBA rule of not allowing bows to gang up at a bw.
"An analysis of target area hits shows that if 1000 archers fired in salvo, 220 arrows would actually strike individual targets within a densely packed infantry formation. Of these 120 arrows would find a vulnerable spot on an armored soldier. Approximately 1.8% would strike the soldier in the face and neck to cause almost instant death. Another 1.3 percent would find the belly and immediately incapacitate the soldier, and cause fataity through infection within 3 days in 85% of cases. 5.3% would strike the soldier in the thighs and legs, less than 2 percent of the wounds to the arms and legs would be fatal.....
Firing 5 salvos per minute over 5 minutes, 1000 archers could generate 2,750 casualties.
While the statistics are interesting, it must be said that such casualty rates simply did not happen.
And the reason was the shield. A wooden, hide-covered shield measuring 2 by 4 feet adds 1,152 square inches of protection, enough to protect the entire target area of the individual soldier, 1,059 square inches.
If the soldier were armored , the combination of armor and shield reduced the probability of an arrow strike to a vulnerable area to almost zero, and rendered arrows fired in salvo at range almost totally ineffective in generating casualties within an infantry formation.....the infantry formations of ancient armies had little to fear from archery fire."
This is from Gabriel and Metz's 'From Sumer to Rome,' pages 72-73, but the section starts earlier and has much interesting information. For example, DBA allows 'ranging' or sweeping fire by bows at long range. But Gabriel's experiments showed that while 'ranging' is very practical at 250 yards, by 300 yards accuracy is falling off considerably. Without a ground scale, it is difficult to determine at what ranges bows should be allowed to gang up or range against targets in DBA, which also ignores command control issues. As the target gets closer, ranging, and even salvo fire becomes impossible because of the risk of hitting one's own bowmen! This is consistent with the DBA rule of not allowing bows to gang up at a bw.
The longbow, of course is a great step up in penetration over simple bows as used by the Egyptians. I find many tests of longbow fire to be contradictory and not objective. Suffice it to say that at 20 yards I have seen a demo of longbow arrows easily piercing chainmail, but failing to pierce infantry plate from the late 100 years war period. But, with respect to Gabriel and Metz, the longbow at 20 to 25 yards seemed to easily pierce Viking shields. Roman infantry shields are attested to have been pierced at close range by Parthian reflex bows. But as noted above, salvo fire by ranked bows becomes problematic as the target approaches.
I'd urge anyone who wants to hep with DBA 4.x to read Gabriel's book.
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Post by primuspilus on Nov 8, 2019 4:41:43 GMT
The forest of pikes vs arrows has been debunked. There is video testing - they barely deflect any arrows at all. And the pikes will render the small shields carried to be pretty useless except close in, when the pike has been bypassed by enemy, or the pike dropped/broken
Whether Pike should be that vulnerable to Bow is, however debatable. The difference in 3 vs 4 when shot at by bows is massive. Perhaps if they are a CF of 4, as Tom says, then perhaps they should lose all ties if shot at, and possibly be destroyed if recoild by bow into rough or bad going?
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Post by greedo on Nov 8, 2019 4:55:42 GMT
I’m a bit unclear what the problem with pikes is that necessitates a fix.
I was under the impression that pikes were done well in 3.0?
Could be related to the de powering of all heavy infantry that was mentioned in the thread on how to fix 4Ax?
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Post by stevie on Nov 8, 2019 12:14:05 GMT
Thanks for the info on “From Summer to Rome” Mthrguth. I will try to obtain a copy and give this a good read (but it ain’t cheap). But I do have a quick question for authors Richard A. Gabriel & Karen S. Metz... ...if as they assert “the infantry formations of ancient armies had little to fear from archery fire”, then why did so many ancient armies bother to have large bodies of bowmen in their order of battle? Did they really train and pay for all those archers knowing that they were practically useless? Were ancient commanders stupid? This why I always take ‘modern day armchair historians’ with a pinch of salt. I much prefer to go by the actual battle accounts recorded by the ancient historians themselves. After all, those ancient scholars knew far more about ancient warfare than we today will ever know. As for ‘fixing’ pikes in DBA...I said my bit here: fanaticus.boards.net/post/17660/(basically, fix the bloody useless Ax class, then the pike battleline won’t be overlapped so easily!)  Some Helpful Downloads can be found here: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reference_sheets_and_epitomes
And here is the latest Jan 2019 FAQ: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ_2019_1st_Quarter
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Post by lkmjbc on Nov 8, 2019 13:30:40 GMT
Stevie...
This doesn't help the Swiss, Scotts, or other Pike armies... All underperformers.
Joe Collins
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Post by stevie on Nov 8, 2019 15:36:21 GMT
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Post by medievalthomas on Nov 8, 2019 21:13:16 GMT
Thanks for responses - this is just the sort of discussion (logical history/fact based and not this hurts my favorite army...) I'd hoped to start.
primus - thanks for info re "pike forest" I'd always considered this dubious but its much repeated. I'd understood that the shields carried by Macedonian pike were fairly effective (and they added leather bibs to help re missile weapons).
Mike - effectiveness of missiles in ancient/medieval battle is much debated. I'm in favor of retaining +2 Bow as long as we add +3 shooters from HOTT to represent medieval missile weapons. A longbow cannot penetrate a hardened late medieval breast plate with reasonable steel content at its thickest point (based on modern tests). But such armor was very rare until at least 1420 (harded steel arrow heads, however, were common by 1400) and even where available leg/arm armor could not be made thick enough to withstand close range hits (steel content of course was guess work for even the most accomplished armor makers and modern test showed it varied through out the period). Modern tests have shown you can make breast plates proof against even matchlocks. But the bulk of any medieval army would not have had such armor and even those who did suffered from blunt force trauma from non-penetrating hits and peripherally penetrations on less well protected legs/arms. This ability to engage even armored infantry with some chance of success distinguishes medieval missile weapons from ancient at least when used in mass. (Though I'd like to see more studies re poundage of ancient weapons, arrow head composition and other stuff to help understand this seeming difference).
I have heretofore retained the Pike getting -1 v. any Bow shooting concept for being shieldless but am leaning to dropping this concept and just making all Heavy Foot a universal +4 v. shooting. Still concerned this undervalues medieval pavise spearman v. shooting (as they would also just be +4). The power of medieval missile weapons is reflected in the many counter measures armies took against them.
The Cry Havoc ability for Blades v. Pikes represents the Blades getting "inside" the Pikes and thereby having a devastating advantage in melee - its something Machiavelli makes a big point of in his Art of War book and makes the Legionnaires v. Pike match ups a bit more dynamic. (Blades do not get this advantage v. Spears who also retain the Drive Off ability v. Mounted - which Blades should lose).
TomT
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