Slitherine

I've been trying out Nikephorian Byzantines recently, with their mixed defensive spear and bow units. Before that I was a fan of the Late Achaemenid Persians, whose Immortals saunter around in a mixed offensive spear and bow combo.

Neither seem to work. Immortals look grand in their green and gold costumes -- I always take them just because they look nice -- but they're mediocre in combat. The Byzantine spear/bow units are just plain awful. What's going on?

Specifically, these combination units don't seem to get the offensive or defensive spear POAs, leaving them very weak in close combat. And of course they only shoot with 2 dice, making them even worse in shooting than an ordinary archer unit.

Why would armies have bothered with the complicated task of integrating spearmen and archers if the result was so useless? Why would the elite guardsmen of what was, in its day, the greatest empire the world had ever seen, organise themselves into dysfunctional units?

Am I missing something?

While the mixed HF spearmen and MF .archers units do not get the spear PoAs, their spears negate lance and sword PoAs. In addition,they count as HF not MF vs mounted so are much more likely to survive against mounted charges in the open.

Chris

But if they were true spear units, they'd be at +POA against swords and lancers, therefore they are much worse than the mixed units. They are broken in the game and will hopefully be fixed in 2.0. As they are, I would never take them if I can avoid it.
I think there was some army that had LS swordsmen HF mixed with MF bows, they on the other hand are an excellent unit. As are Dailami, which are MF impact mixed with LF bows. Absurdly, the bow support doesn't cost anything for these units, so you get free bonuses for nothing. This means they're broken as well.
The mixed units should be heavily revamped, since they clearly don't work as intended, unless the intention was to cripple certain armies and make other armies almost unbeatable.

If you want to use the Byzantines with the infantry as true spearmen, try using the Thematic Byzantine(later) list where they are classified as protected foot defensive spear with supporting LF archers. This list does not get as much of the superior cavalry and kataphraktoi but especially at lower point levels, e.g. 400 points, should play similar to the Nikephorians but with true spearmen.

Chris

(Apols for the slight necro, here)

Rare weapons combinations should perhaps be hard to use effectively. Ultimately, it wasn't an effective weapons system in history, or it would have been copied more often.

Spear and bow would be quite effective in-game against horse archers, I would imagine.

I think that the mixed unit should be worked on as it would be used in a REN game. There being a ton of mixed Pike and Shot type units in those games.

All it should really do is give the unit an ability to fire. They should not be penalized in any way. Just increase the cost of the unit. Do not cause it to be less able to fight in Inf vs. Inf battles. The missile weapon part of the unit would stand in the back rank anyway or retire to the back rank. So what if anything did they have in the melee anyway? And numbers didn't matter in ancient warfare. It was always the point of attack and will to stay and fight. The back rank of ANY formation rarely fought.

They cost more points already - so why should they be at a disadvantage? I would just say that they should fire with LESS ability than a full missile unit.

Should i mix the melee and bow units because everytime i tried to improve my unit it just getting worst and worst and worst.