What do you guys think? With everybody and their mother going for scouts with their starting barracks could an effective counter be spearen with your two starting barracks.

With the low health comparitively they are going to get hurt bad by archers but otherwise they will be able to hold better against the scouts they most doubtable would have to protect your archers.

Or would the best option be going for at least one barracks of pikemen after archers going on the 3rd barracks before going for balis

you will found out by yourself very soon mech
everybody goes for scouts in the first phase of the game because they are fast and take the resources first. With spears you will always be the second.
After that most of the players upgrade to advance meele & range. So I don't think it's a good strategy. You should test that on low res maps, because most of the players goes with scouts & archers for the first 20 turns.

Last Edited : Tuesday, 8 July 2008 - 02:23

If you want to know whether spears are a good counter to scouts just ask chunky, whose spear army I was able to decimate with my primarily scout force (a handful of archers, but not many). There were other factors, but the short answer to your question is a resounding no.

A ten pop of spears attacking a 10 pop of scouts will leave the scouts with 5 units left...thats right, five units. If you don't believe me, do the math yourself with the battle calc. The argument is that spears are "cost effective" vs. scouts, i.e. you'll lose more units, but since your units cost less, your enemy will actually lose more gold. That sounds well and good, but the object is to win battles, not gold, and if your army is outclassed you're going to lose a lot more units (and resources) through that battlefield loss than you've "gained" by using crappy troops.

At their max (i.e. all upgrades), scouts train at 2 per turn; spears train at a little over three. So, you'd think, 9 spears do well against 6 scouts (and they do), but it isn't that simple. You'll probably go 10 stack for 10 stack (at best) and we've seen that already that's a win for the scouts. The fact that the scouts have a movement advantage means that (in the open field) they will be the ones swarming your spears (not the other way around), which is key. In order for the spears to have the advantage they have to bring superior numbers to the table. They cannot do this in closed terrain, due to the 10 pop limit, nor can they do this in open terrain (since the scouts have a large movement advantage). Thus, as is my point, in no battle situation (open or closed) do spears have a true advantage over scouts. Any player with a solid grasp of tactics will use his scouts in such a way as to always maintain the advantage against spears. At best, spears can hope for equality (with a slight unit cost advantage), but once archers are thrown into the mix their life only gets tougher. The opponent may build squires to counter, in which case neither your archers nor your spears can do much. You're forced to upgrade to falsh or, the irony of ironies, start training scouts yourself. No one unit should be able to counter both of your troop types, and you won't be able to go squires yourself because the other player probably still has a sizable force of scouts.

Players go all scouts for a reason, they are by far the best of the basic melee troops and will have the advantage over any other starting troop choice, it really is that simple. Pikemen are the first spears that have a true presence on the battlefield, but even then their weak defense is a liability more than their good attack is an asset. Macemen are great defenders, but that's an entirely other topic. I've been looking for variations myself, but scouts give you more power and versatility than any other basic level troop...to train anything less, in hopes of gaining some short term advantage, is only going to screw you over in the long run, once your spears become worthless (i.e. archers show up in numbers and squires appear).

Pikemen are a touchy subject...back in the old version (where the max stack was 999) they were a major part of my army, but now I find them highly suspect. The fact that squires can counter both your archers and pikes makes such an army very vulnerable. Having a few pikes in the mix can be helpful, but players don't usually train "a few" of any unit, as you must then waste a turn of production to retrain he barracks. If your opponent really has that many cavalry, you're probably better off spending the resources to get expert melee and using macemen. Remember, everything I said about spears still applies: if they don't have the numbers advantage they won't do well, and securing that against cavalry is an iffy proposition.

Bottom line, they're easily countered and, even in the most ideal of circumstances (all cav, no ranged) will have a tough time proving an advantage unless they are facing only scouts and can prevent swarming tactics. Including a few units may be helpful, but include too few and they'll be easily neutralized by the opponents ranged before doing much damage. These troops only do one thing well, and even then it's a qualified well, and that's take out cavalry. Cavalry does many things well, including take out other cavalry. If you pick spears or pikes be prepared to be caught with your pants down should the situation change, as your rock troops are probably the weakest troops in every other area. Again, if you really have your heart set on cavalry counters (in the mid-late game, I absolutely feel the only counter to early scouts at this point is scouts yourself), go macemen, as they'll at least be usable throughout the game.


Just so we're clear again, all these comments are directed towards camp and duel games, not battles.

That was a sweet exposition, thank you.

totally agree with bloodbarons tutorial :]

well now im going to lose to laur! well i will try to fight with the spearmen!

Mreak can sing a song about my 30 or 40 stacks of pop1 spears to block his three or four pop7 HCs... Finally his HC was slaughtered by my Marks and Falchs...

that is much later in the game so i gues 1 pop is where to go since they can kill a number equal to their # of stacks

Well, let's not take funker's example too far , HC are great troops in closed quarters because they can bring the most damage to the table, but they still only get one attack per turn, no matter how powerful. His point is that 4 stacks of hc are going to take a full ten turns to work their way through 40 1 pops of spears...they simply can't kill them any faster. The point here was more about the necessity of support units, i.e. ones that can handle fodder and "last hit" severly weakend troops, than standing up for spears. It takes a very special situation, like the one he described, for that tactic to be viable with spears...normally, the opponent would just mop up your units in 3-4 turns, since 20+ damage stacks are easy to form in the late game.

If those had all been 1 pop HC's the situation would have been much different .

i find pike are helpfull in the ealy stages of a duel or camp as the calvery bounus they get makes them alot stronger defensivly then they look

no player enjoys taking a pike retal whith his scouts if they are more usfull in duels then camps i think as the scout deternce will usaly let you push to at least the middle of the map and alow you to take thoes resorce buildings well he counters

also as you have pike scout and range in your army you know his most likly counter will be squier and pike so you can plan the next step usaly whithout even waiting for his squier to apper

the ability to force your opponet to counter in a predictable manner is good stratice point for pike imop

but all that blood said is on the money