Strategy Thesis of the Week: Pikemen counter Knights

For the lulz!

But actually I think there are still a few points to make and some of them being actually kinda important. While Hera is obviously right with all his claims around his "Knights counter Pikemen"-claim, the actual claim is still technically wrong and I think it's somewhat important to understand how that is possible (as it seems contradictory).

Well, also Hera said he would like to someone proving him wrong and to apply critical thinking. So here we go.

Disclaimer: That stuff is rather supposed to be thought provoking than 100% true (same as Hera did with his claim obviously and I'll go for some clickbaitish headline now and then to get the discussion rolling. So, feel free to give your opinion and don't be too angry about me. Also I want to add that my view will, in some cases, not translate into top-level-meta because the time-windows and their use is tighter up there, but with a current Elo of ~1700, my experience should be somewhat applicable for 99% of the player base.))

If anyone missed the topic, here you can catch up. (Guess it's fair to mention here that Nili took his video down and apparently it was the idea of his editor, not himself. Anyway, I don't want to comment on this kinda ridiculous drama, but just want to add to the discussion about Knights.)

Pikemen are always cost-effective against Knights.

I think that is pretty much the plain, technical thing to point out here. There is no moment in the game where normal Knights are cost effective against normal Pikemen. (Maybe Lithuanian or Berber Knights can be, Sicilian Knights can surely be, but if you have regular Knights you will be not cost-effective against normal Pikemen.)

This is not self-explanatory by the way, because it's actually different with Crossbows and Elite-Skirmishers. In early Castle Age Crossbows are actually cost-effective against Elite Skirmishers, because the upgrades are so expensive. If you want to counter 5 Xbows with Bodkin Arrow through Elite Skirms, you need 122% of the ressources, before the nerf it was even 134%. Against 10 Xbows it's still slightly more than same ressources. Against 40 Xbows, it drops down to 68%, so the Skirms become very cost-efficient later on.

With Pikemen, you jump in with 77% of the ressources against 5 Knights. (If Bloodlines is free (= Franks), it is slightly advantageous for the Knights here.) Against 10 Knights you're quickly under 70%, so generally Pikemen are a much more cost-effective counter than Elite Skirms. (I have not done the maths for non-Bloodline-Knights, they might look a bit better, but usually you do Bloodlines on your way to Castle anyway.)

(I will do a post soon where I present all of the numbers for different units and such, don't want to overload this post here with informations.)

Then why Hera says that Knights are a counter to Pikemen?

So to quickly summarise Hera's idea why Knight would still "counter Pikemen":

  • mobility
    • you can pick the fights
    • you can dictate the pace of the game
  • offensive utility
    • you can destroy buildings with Knights
    • you can kill villagers
  • healing
    • healing Knights is super valuable
    • healing Pikemen is a less probable option because you can't disengage as easily

Those are all very valid points.

There were a few more points which were not great in my opinion:

  • "Knights win 1v1": but they have double the cost , so that isn't relevant at all. (This is only good to know when to judge when to pick fights.)
  • "Pikemen-upgrade is costly and you require maybe additional buildings": same for Knights, you always do Bloodlines, you always make additional stables. it's the reason why Pikemen are less cost-effective early than later, but as showed before they're still cost-effective to begin with.

I'd also say that the point abut healing is mostly relevant when Pikemen are misplayed. You should never take fights with Pikemen that you lose. You can only apply the healing to the Knights when you won the fights, which should not happen. Or you disengage middle of the fight, but then the Pikemen can be healed as well. (Maybe not all of them bc of lower HP, dunno if that is a big enough factor to consider it.)

None of that is too relevant for the thesis though. It's still correct that the Knight-player is overall, probably, in the better position than the Pike-player.

All counter-units are shit. (That's why they don't cost gold.)

The thing that I actually found irritating about this discussion: How is that supposed an insight which is a) a new discovery and b) specific to Knights? Hera's argument works for literally every power unit in the game, because that is exactly the difference between a power-unit and a counter-unit.

The power of a power unit is that it has offensive utility, that it can be the backbone of a strong composition, perhaps that it scales well. A counter-unit has nothing of that, but it's sole utility is to win against a specific power-unit.

I felt like Hera didn't explain how Pikemen (don't) work, but he explained what a counter-unit is in AoE2.

Before you have the eco to spam trash-units, they will always set your eco back without adding value to damage the opponent eco much. They will only do well against a specific units and then they will only work if the opponent makes the mistake to fight when he should not. (Even Crossbows can just run back.) And you die once the opponent adds a complementary unit. They help you to survive a specific thing, that's about it.

That applies for Pikes against Knights but also for Skirms against Archers and Xbows, for Skirms against Cav Archers and mostly also for Longswords against Eagles or Light Cav as a defense against Monk rushes.

Unit counters unit. Strat counters strat. These are not the same.

An important distinction here is what a unit does versus how good a strategy is. The fact that Pikemen counter Knights does not mean that it's (always) a good strategy to go Pikemen immediately against. A Knight-strategy can counter a Pikemen-strategy would be the better sentence probably.

That's very important distinction especially for teaching the game, because "Knight counter Pikes in early Castle Age" suggests that you never should make Pikes there. "a Knight-strategy can counter a Pikemen-strategy" suggests that it could be the wrong step and that you need to further assess other variables here to make a good decision.

Also it's important for many situation to know that the unit still works in a fight. It's the circumstances and the utility that makes the difference.

Generally, on lower levels, I see much more often that people lose to pikes because of a lack of Pikes rather than because they go too much into Pikes. I think Hera implicitly and intuitively refers to the common Knight-strat of Pro's which is usually 2 stables and 2-3 TCs behind with no idle TC. On lower level you have many Knight plays on lower eco that are very all-in and that changes the situation quite a lot.

When to make Pikes?

So the question is when to make Pikes or generally counter-units. The main point of counter-units is

  • that you sometimes have to do them beause it's your only chance to survive some power-spike.
  • that you sometimes can use them to secure your base against a more expensive aggression to create or sustain an eco lead.

In the video it seemed a lot like the first case, because Valas was more than 2 minutes earlier to Castle Age which is just a terrible position for Kingston and likely game ending right away, especially against Franks. I wonder what alternative Hera would have suggested there. (The fact that Kingston was still on even terms in eco and army in late Castle Age seems like it worked kinda well. That Valas won in the end doesn't really tell us much when he was so far ahead already at the beginning there.)

More importantly, "Knights counter Pikes" sounds like it's never valid to do the second thing here. Now I might be wrong about this, at least when it comes to top level play, but isn't that wrong? Is it not perfectly possible in some situations (specifically with good eco civs and a secure base) to just open Pikes against Knights, put more ressources into economy, get a slight eco lead by that and then add your own Knights or a UU? On lower levels that is definitely a possibility I think.

It's probably good to know that exactly that approach can cost you the game, if you can't secure your base, if you take some bad fight(s), if the opponent does the right steps. But that applies to many viable strategies and most of the time it's about choosing the right situation for a strat rather than generally labeling one strat as good and the other as bad. It depends?

Then also, you may achieve the same thing more effectively with Monks but then this only works to a certain degree. If your opponent goes up to 10, 15, 20 Knights, you don't want to have a pure Monk defense, I think.

Especially when an opponent is extremely all-in or you have a big eco-lead already, there is often a situation where you only have to survive a few minutes of heavy Knight aggression and that's where you always should invest into Pikes or not? When you make people believe that "Knights counter Pikemen", how are they supposed to survive that?

How to play Pikemen (and other counter-units) early on

While Hera brought up the valid points of mobility and offensive utility in favor of Knights (and power units in general), there is another point in favor of counter-units:

You have defensive buildings and walls

  • which reduce the use of mobility
  • which helps you with taking fights and make them even more effective
  • which make it easier to add Monks and Siege succesfully

As additional defender's advantage you have also the opportunity to trap the opponent and you have your re-engagements quicker available, so basically a permanent slight numbers advantage.

So what's important is that you use these advantages. Make sure you don't have to run around with your pikes everywhere on the map, but that you can focus on a certain area. Use TC's to secure areas further away and don't put too many vils there. Wall up with more than Palisades in the areas that are far away from your pikes. Perhaps add Monks to scare away Knights from your walls. Add a small number of mobile units to counter-attack in case that their base is much more open then yours. Avoid hills or use them for your advantage.

Probably many more things that are important to make defensive plays work out well. But the general bottom line here is: Counter-units have overall less utilitiy than power-units and don't do the job by themselves. You can use them though in the context of a defensive approach in combination with buildings, good positioning, good decisions and a good base design.

I think Viper or MbL have many games where they showcase that very well.

Or do I miss a point that makes Pikes generally worse than Skirms or similar counters?

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Other theses:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/x9em1j/strategy\thesis_of_the_week_gurjaras_are/)

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/webbap/strategy\thesis_of_the_week_bengalis_are_an/)

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/tonxr4/strategy\thesis_of_the_week_burmese_redemption_is/)