Slitherine

I've been doing a fair number of skirmishes with Bow and Bill/Elizabethan foot formations. I'm confused as to why opposing infantry formations (either pike keils or early pike and shot) are still benefiting from armour in melee. Do the heavy weapons not get their metal smashing bonus against keils? Or is their bonus reduced to whatever proportion of the unit they make up - as in, do traditional Bow and Bill formations get greater melee bonuses vs armour than Elizabethan foot, who only have 25% bills?

I scanned the manual for "heavy weapon" and wasn't really able to get clarification on this, and I always keep detailed tooltips on.

Thanks in advance for the responses. The Tudor armies are pretty fun, but very hard to use successfully against Pike-heavy forces...

Only the 25% heavy weapon will get the armour smashing effect

Okay that makes sense. I couldn't tell because the tool tips didn't say anything about heavy weapon, but I suppose I could tell by seeing what the enemy unit's armour bonus was.

I also wasn't seeing a heavy weapon melee bonus listed; is that bonus only against non keils?

SnuggleBunnies wrote:I also wasn't seeing a heavy weapon melee bonus listed; is that bonus only against non keils?

Yes - there are other exceptions too - see the melee POA table in the manual - section 11.2.2.

Also I think you will find the exceptions listed if you CTRL-L click on your unit.

So they are! Thanks for the speedy responses Richard.

So, why do swordsmen's get +POA against non-steady Pike, but heavy weapons don't? Isn't the idea similar, that a collapsing formation can be exploited by troops armed with shorter melee weapons?

SnuggleBunnies wrote:So, why do swordsmen's get +POA against non-steady Pike, but heavy weapons don't? Isn't the idea similar, that a collapsing formation can be exploited by troops armed with shorter melee weapons?

The sword and buckler style is different from the heavy weapon style. We deemed that the former merited the POA as it was specifically designed for this purpose and the latter didn't. It's a close judgement call - we could have decided the other way.