More polearm units!

[fringe sleet]

In addition to cavalry units being too rare, I've noticed polearms being hard to come by. Should we get a bunch more cavalry from tomes, we should obviously also get polearm units to fight back against them!

If you are feudal, you only have your tier 1 peasants who evolve out of it anyway. Barbarians could get copper golems except those evolve to a shield unit also. That leaves these two cultures with skeletons, and the next most powerful up from that... gold golems?

My suggestions:

• Have an actual polearm unit that the copper golem can upgrade into. A bronze golem perhaps?
• What's more orderly than a row of pikes? Give us an Order tome with T3 or T4 polearms, an elite unit to fight dragons and dark knights!
• The Monster Hunter from AoW3, while not technically a polearm unit, is insanely cool. Would love to see them return!

[mild cloud]

Phalanx was great in 3, it could do with a return at Tier 4.

[barren kraken]

Return of Phalanx would be awesome

[wicked sinew]

Mystic culture has polearms too at t1. High has a t2 polearm. Industrious has a t2 polearm, and dark has a t2.

The idea that polearms are in any way rare is silly.

[versed merlin]

They are rare when you consider tomes. Only 2 tome units are polearms

And both of those are tier 1 - copper golem and skeleton

[fringe sleet]

Exactly, barbarians and feudal have no choices in polearms anywhere between skeletons and gold golems

It wouldn't be as bad if there weren't two polearms that evolve to shield units

[white copper]

golden golem is a t5 polearm :p

[fringe sleet]

Yeah, nothing between tier 1 and tier 5

[white copper]

most polearm are t2 tho

[fringe sleet]

For barbarians and feudal, no

[white copper]

well, you can't have everything

[fringe sleet]

I'm pretty sure every other basic unit category has at least 1 or 2 choices in every tier

Polearms don't

[white copper]

??

[fringe sleet]

Okay maybe skirmishers don't have a t4 but close enough

And you wouldn't "have everything" just because there's more options. There's limited time to research tomes and spend draft on units.

It's only uber late game that gets silly with everyone having every tome, but that requires its own solutions

I made this thread because I like pikes and they're generally underrepresented in games.

My first win was with barbarians where all my copper golems evolved out of polearms, and I didn't want to be a necromancer summoning skeletons. Pretty weird that I had no options just because of that.

[wicked sinew]

Pikes and polearms in general are not underrepresented in strategy games. In fact, there exist strategy games where they're the primary infantry weapon. I can't think of a single RTS or TBS made in the last 20 years and set in a historical or fantasy setting that doesn't have them featuring prominently. Except maybe, uh... warcraft. That's it.

[atomic girder]

Consider how much Tolkien is in this game, surprised no spears yeah LOL

[fast granite]

I think the OP means the only polearms are in cultures (except barb) and copper golem (not counting golden golem as its mythic), the same way for cavalry that uses your mount choice, the only options are the few cultural mounted units and tyrant knight.

Could see Phalanx return either in or (maybe give it shield wall & inspiring defense, as if it were a shield unit) and possibly Butcher returning in (Lifestealing trait that stacks with wightborn, maybe something on kill). I'd support more shield and skirmisher units in tomes too.

[atomic girder]

But there’s already a mod that adds pole-arms to feudal tier 2, dark, and something else.

Barbican will never get pole-arm, why would it ..??? They are BARBS

Unless this OP is hoping a Dev will see this?

[atomic girder]

Check out more cultural units mod for sure

[fast granite]

Thanks for the mod suggestion! I will say I was a bit surprised that barbs didn't have a polearm either - they are kind of based on orcs from prev games who had the "Impaler" and a spear is a much simpler weapon to make than an axe, so I think it still fits the barb theme. (I like the direction the devs took with barb though 😁 )

[atomic girder]

Hmmmm the main issue is that there is no spear and shield unit. There’s only sword/axe and shield.

Barbicans wouldn’t have pikemen, but they sure as hell would have shields, spears, ( we don’t javelins/throwing spears? ) and they’d def have a mount raider like the tier 2 ranger mounted unit but prob for tier 3 melee mounted

I’d love a spear one handed tbh, with a shield

[wicked sinew]

Such a unit has to have trade-offs. Either in the form of cost, or the assumption that it's a shorter spear as it certainly would be.

[fringe sleet]

Even when they are featured, they're often just meant as an anti-cav weapon while being suboptimal against infantry. In Total War games, for example.

I suppose strategy games are better at featuring them than rpg:s.
I like them here in aow4, just wish I hadn't lost all my polearms once they leveled.

I think literally just 3 more tome polearm units would be good (or one of them more like a monster hunter I mentioned), plus whatever new cultures have

Shield units with short spears would aesthetically be nice variety too

[wicked sinew]

In total war games such as Rome 2, pikes demolish equally priced swords as long as you keep the swords in front of them. They just fall apart when things go wrong.

Like... they did historically. And it makes sense. The spear is a weapon that demands drilled formation fighting to be at its most effective. Pikes doubly so.

[fast granite]

agreed! to me, one handed spear and shield should be considered a shield unit and be given cavalry slayer but not first strike or something. If we're talking about something like aow3 phalanx, as gloweye suggests above, should be high tier

[fast granite]

it would be interesting if pikes were more vulnerable to flanking, so there was incentive to cover the flanks with shields maybe, though I suppose they benefit from being in "Shield Wall" range already. though, this is kind of out of scope for the original topic, so I'll shush

[mild cloud]

More pikemen would be a great idea. In history, spearmen were by far the most common infantry, and it's kinda sad not to have them at useful tiers. And you can't fill your armies with just Gold Golems.

[broken zodiac]

I mean, adding Dragoons to the dragon DLC does sound like a good shoe-in... Although this close to release I imagine the core features are already locked in for it

Mostly I just want a starting polearm for my heroes tho!

[fast granite]

Dragoons being dragon themed knights with spears is more of a final fantasy specific thing (which I thoroughly approve of 😄 ) , it appears dragoon normally means mounted rifleman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragoon - A dragon themed spear unit with a rush attack might be on the cards though, because of the draconian chargers from previous games 🤞

[steep panther]

There's a lance starting item isn't there? Not sure if this is functionally a "polearm" in the sense as discussed here, need to check, but its a start 🤣

[broken zodiac]

Nah, I checked, they're just two-handed shock weapons that work on mounts 😦 I want my heroes to do the good counter poke!

[steep panther]

🥲

That's unfortunate. Well you have my backing as I'd love that as well!

[fringe sleet]

Just realized from the DLC trailer that there's a T2 tome with Bronze Golems, clearly a polearm unit.......

I'm not gonna claim they ripped it from me. Pretty obvious to make a bronze golem when you've got a copper/iron/gold already, but still.
I'm wondering if the copper golem upgrades into it, and if it does, would it do that without the DLC?

Happy to see more polearms!

[rigid jay]

Yeah, it's nice to see more golem support.

From the looks of it, we're getting a new T3 cultural unit in all of the factions too. I imagine the Feudal unit will likely be a polearm

[fringe sleet]

Oh, where was this mentioned?

[rigid jay]

It wasn't, but notice how the Reaver faction has two T3s

that implies the other cultures are getting another one

which is fantastic, imo

[versed merlin]

That's not a safe assumption at all

The reaver cannon is special and can't be produced normally

[meager furnace]

we won't get any new cultural T3 unit in the golem update

[rigid jay]

That's a good point; I didn't see that

forget what I said