I DOMINATED With Pike & Shot Tactics In Bannerlord!

I wish there was a pike formation option for formations. The tight pike formation with the first 2 rows pointing out and acting as a pointy barricade. This was effective against Infantry just as much as being a defense against cavalry. Their only weakness was missiles

Search casualties for allied troops from American friendly fire in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Which Med mod are you using looks great!

I mean medieval strategy aside, just per the bannerlord mechanics, a shield infrantry in the middle would just do better. Their shields would protect from the onslaught of the cavalry better and they can sustain shots, while you can use two formations of archers to the sides with the same effect.

El borracho 😂like if you see it too

I subscribed and couldn't stop watching these tactical videos! Im running a playthrough myself and was wondering if this is a mod? Wish I could command my army like this. lol

How does one zoom out to overview like this during a battle (vanilla)?

I really wanted to like that game but it didn't have enough formation command depth and fidelity and the AI was just too stupid even with mods. Seeing AI loose tons of troops because they're switching formation constantly was just too infuriating especially when I tried to play as a soldier. Plus the lack of ranged friendly fire. At least no melee friendly fire makes sense in the context of the game design but not having ranged ff just eliminates a major, I would say core tactical gameplay element. And since the AI can barely do what little there is to do I have no expectation that anything like that will come except from a passionate mod team.

how do you set up these simulated battles?

I know nobody will see this but just in case they do, how are you watching the battle and giving commands from a Birds Eye view

Name game?

how can you have a bird eye view?

Ramsay Bolton wished he was Longshanks … archers ! But sire we will hit our own troops?!… yesss but we’ll hit theirs too!

What's the mod you are using for the camera angle?

Since your main source of damage comes from archers, replacing pike with shield would be an improvement.
I normally min max it to 2 groups of 50-100 heavy shield carriers in the front with a slight gap and the rest with archers at the rear.
Sometimes I dismount my calvaries in front of my front line to add an extra layer of meat shield if my enemy have a lot of horses.

There wasnt pike and shot in medieval warfare but there was the Swiss pike square

There was me, Fagin!,

Friendly fire can be actually easily modded into the game if you are interested in testing it. Just add MissileWithPhysics="true" to the weapon flags of ammo such as arrows and bolts. But be warned, AI does not understand that it can team kill and it will do so with extreme prejudice (archers will kill 25% of their own archer formation for example).

How did you get the bird eye view

F1+F3 stands unshaken

Honestly, I think the real missing ingredient here is effective field artillery. Shred infantry squares with grazing shots, stop cavalry charges cold with canister. Slaughter anyone trying to storm fortifications en-masse. Like the other comments are saying, combining unit types to cover for weaknesses was nothing new in the early-modern era. It was the level of refinement and the scale of production we saw with gunpowder technology that really shaped the battlefield in that period. Artillery went from being exotic one-off pieces you hired mercenary crews for, to an entire dedicated branch of your army with standardized bore diameters, shot weights, powder charges and so on. Handguns went from being expensive, despised novelties to being a cornerstone of how the infantry and cavalry fought.

Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.

Is there a sandbox mode for this game if so how do I do that ?

I once tried a mod that implemented teamkills, to make the battles more immersive.. It just looked absolutely ridiculous. My men were killing each other by accident through mele hits in an extremely high rate.. The mod however does not affect skirmishers and archers. It seems these units never hit allies, no matter what.
The worst is during the sieges, when armies clash in a tight location.. Units start massacring each other as much as their teammates.

So . . . in other words you're just doing an English Hedgehog from the Hundred Years War?

I've been running the mod called 'Guns and Powder', which is a Napoleonic warfare mod. Was looking for exactly these kinds of tactics, so thanks as always Strat! It's gonna be some radness. Austrian Jaegers FTW!

The mod itself doesn't have Napoleonic pike units, so I have been variously using Khuzait spearmen, etc, for the pikes. I think I have settled on the Sturgian Heavy Spearman as my pike guy (Vlandians have been replaced with Napoleonic Austrians, so no Voulgers unfortunately). Also, the Napoleonic cavalry are Uhlans, Hussars, and Cuirassers, which... are difficult to know how to use properly. The Uhlans have an actual lance, whereas the others only have one-handed swords, so I'm amassing Uhlans, but honestly I still don't know how to use them properly.

I am guessing you're into that sort of stuff. Anyway, cheers as always my man.

This seems like what the AI does when you give them command of mixed melee and ranged. They'll push the archers out to volley, then pull them back whenever melee and cavalry get too close, where they'll fire from the backline, then push back out in front of the melee when it's safe to volley again. It's usually why I F6 them: They do a better job of microing what I wanted them to do, so I can do whatever I want to do.

I've been playing pike and shot since bannerlord dropped, I've written a few guides on it on the subreddit as well(probably nearly impossible to find them). It's a great way to play the game. I simplify it even further, and keep it more historical, by mixing the pike and crossbows into the same unit. I'll typically run 2-4 blocks (depending on my army size). It's very effective to create enfilading fire opportunities. Central blocks will receive enemy infantry, and then flanking blocks will advance beyond the infantry line, and be able to pump nearly point blank xbow fire into the flank/rear of the enemy infantry line, while being protected from other infantry/cavalry due to the pike mix in the block.

You can achieve all sorts of real worldly type tactics with this. Oblique attacks can be extremely effective. Overload one side, but remain in oblique order. Set up so your oblique wing is on the shieldless side of the enemy line. Then you just pump bolts into their unshielded side.

Lot's of fun. Glad Strat is doing something similar.

this is like tercios of spain formation

Its all about combined arms warfare. Its as old as war deapite commonly attributed to the modern era. Its just the different arms were artillery, heavy infantry, skirmishers, archers, amd cavalry. The specifics changed over time but the idea of combining and coordinating different unit types to cover each other's weakness is a classic

I mean, in fairness, Fian Champions basically just shoot pikes from their bows. I have yet to see anything in vanilla that beats Fian Champion spam.

I've been playing this way since Warband to great effect. Rhodoks never die.

Heyo! How do you set your troops from this perspective? Reminds me on total war. How do i play it this way?

What mods do you recommend to get a near Toltal war esc commander control over troops?

I’ve been playing a lot of chivalry 2 and it has me wondering why the game can’t be better? Bannerlord had so much potential but it’s just wasted

Okay, so historian here. The tercio formation originally had crossbows instead of gunpowder weapons and it still had great success. So yeah, pike and shoot is doable with crossbows

This is the tactic of the Spanish tercios in the early times

Im the worst commander😂 I mean I'm pretty good but a dead commander after only a few minutes is useless. I played Alexander style when I should be more Ceasar and stay away from the front line🤣

Crossbows we’re used in like and shot warfare though?

IRL, a formation of pikes is more efficient in a dense formation, a hightest number of man in the tightest space equal bigest wall of pikes and solid/impassable formation. Then add shooters in mobile formation to come and go around the pikesmen and you optimize the strategy (you will need long range shooters to compensate the travels time. Try it like this in the game. (sorry in advance, english is not my first language)

Loose formation defeats the purpose of pikemen. Pikes worked by forming a wall to stop frontal attacks.

Now i wonder: would this work in mount and blade with fire and sword? its a historic setting with gunpowder but i dont know if the games Orders would allow it.

PUT YOUR PIKEMEN IN THE FOREST U WILL LOSE ALOT LESS MEN TO CAVS

Pike and Shot formations where used during medieval times before gunpowder. The best example i can give are the English with the Longbowmen/Billmen formations against the French Knights.

Bro playing eu4

This tactic would still work very well with friendly fire. There's no avoiding the chaos it would cause on friendly units at that point, but that's when you just treat your spear infantry as expendable. And honestly, they are. Infantry are cheap to recruit, cheap to upgrade, easy to upgrade, and can easily be recruited in large numbers. I haven't seen any other practical uses for a spearwall such as this in Bannerlord - compared to just fielding a mass of Fians and KG - so, nice job with the strategy.

Pike and shot was invented in the time of pikes and crossbows and mainly implemented by the swiss.
You said that whit realisum it will not work, but you forget that cavalry never ran into big pointy objects.
Also pikes couter infantry even if they are whit shields as we have seen in medieval times or in the greek sarisa phalanx.
The pike and shot formation was pikes infront and crossbows behind them so there wasnt friendly fire. The swiss formations where the best in Europe for many years.

More like this

Try this again but put the pikemen in a square or shield wall formation

I thk the best strat would be to put 1 row of shield in front and put pikes on scatter form behind.

This would block arrows and enemy infantry, which pikes are vounerable to, while stopping cav affecting the form. Then, just move the 2h infantry where enemy cavs are stuck.

As for cavs charging at archers, I just put my own cav right behind the archers so they are stuck there. Then my archers usually finish them off.

Additionally, when using horse archers, dont just charge them. Put them behind the enemy shields so they get clear shots. Great for stacking up kills. (Accuracy falls dramatically when left on charge due to speed and hence, poor dps).
If u have bunch of Khuzait elites, place them on unprotected enemy archers to wipe them off.