Polearm Unit Strategies
By: Foghladha
The Polearm Units include pikes, spears, halberds, glaives, and many other variants. They have both offensive and defensive uses and are one of the most crucial units to learn early on.
Polearms are natively strong against most Cavalry units, moderately good against melee units, and are weak to ranged units and Round Shield units.
Let me break these Polearm units into a few categories for you.
Anti-Cavalry
Welcome to the glue factory! They bring horses, and you make mince meat.
Shock Troops
These are the fast assassins that can help you remove heroes from the battlefield.
Support Troops
These units offer debuffs and disruption to enemies, making it easier for your deathball to win the skirmish.
Polearm Mastery
These tips and tricks will help you be more effective at using Polearm units
Remote Polearm Rotation
This is a little-known secret that works on most units that have a brace skill, including Symmachean Stalwarts. Occasionally, a patch will temporarily break the ability, but it usually gets fixed in an upcoming patch. What this technique allows you to do is rotate where your pikes are pointing to the direction your camera is facing.
Simply face the direction you want them to face, tap a formation button, then immediately press the brace command. Your unit will turn in place and point the pikes in the direction that you were facing. This works from afar, too. You can be standing on a castle wall and rotate your pikes remotely by facing the direction you want them to face.
Death Marching
If you stand at the back line of your Polearm unit and tap the block formation, they will advance 2 units in length, then brace again. When working with a deathball, you can move your pikes this way, slowly waiting for the damage numbers to subside, then move them forward again.
With 2 Polearm units working in collaboration, they can leapfrog each other 2 unit lengths at a time, protecting each other's advance. This is called a death march. Nothing but a trail of corpses and blood is left in your path.
Keep your head on a swivel
As a bracing Polearm unit, you have one priority. Kill cavalry. The weakness of any deathball is an ill timed Cavalry charge from the flank. This can wipe out your entire deathball.
If you are on Polearm duty, your one job is to prevent this from happening. Keep panning your camera, keeping your eye out for horses. The attack will likely come from behind the deathball or from one of the two sides. Any cavalry charging straight at a deathball is more comedic relief than a threat, but it does happen, so don't ignore the front.