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When are they viable? Specifically as France? I used to send these guys all thr time on nilla and just watch as 12 pikes and 2 falcs sieged my opponents base down in under a minute. But aside from troll strats are they ever viable? I was thinking they could work vs very melee heavy civs such as China and Aztec. What are your thoughts?

yes they work vs china/aztec. however saving 1000g will slow down your unit spamming, and your opponent may catch this timing.
also, cuir is strong. so i usually train 5-10 halberdiers instead of sending swiss pikemen: they're enough.
however, swiss is a must to dutch. as dutch doesnt have good hand cav.

Couprider wrote:yes they work vs china/aztec. however saving 1000g will slow down your unit spamming, and your opponent may catch this timing.
also, cuir is strong. so i usually train 5-10 halberdiers instead of sending swiss pikemen: they're enough.
however, swiss is a must to dutch. as dutch doesnt have good hand cav.

I was thinking of a build for France vs China. Basically involves grabing an extra tp in colonial since China can't really contest and then use the extra XP to send 1k coin and 12 Swiss pikes almost back to back. Haven't tried it though, so I still have to test. I think might be too slow, and it may cause pop issues.

China will have mm and 9 musk out before you come. So wont be very good

He didnt say you push straight away

They are good for base trade

This reminds me of the vanilla days in 2012-2013 where I always sent these as French vs Jim's Otto because he'd always go jan abus and never kited, so I won quite a few games by straight FFing and sending these things.

Its actually a pretty good shipment given that swiss are like 3 times as good as pikes. But pikes arent that great.

The swiss pikes once saved my game vs the Sioux, of course, the opponent got overconfident and rammed his cav into them and then came horrible losses.

I should mention that you should get the arsenal improvement for hand infantry hp for that extra boost.

This may possibly be the best melee unit card in the game, except for the fact that none of the civs with access to the card really need it. Does Spain get this card? If so it might be viable for them too.

Great piroshiki often use them.
Hand infantry performs well vs china. Chinese cav are just too strong, and they only need 29s to train a batch (Cuir needs 60s!). cav＋skirm+hand infantry is usually better than cav goon skirm.
When i play german i always go dopple+uhlan+skirm cuz uhlan lose hard to chinese cav. And even black riders cant hold them sometimes.

I had this silly strat as Spain on Saguenay in my MS days when I would FF, gather 1000 coin in transition, build houses with the 400 wood, send Swiss pikes and 2 falcs, shipping them over to the back of the enemy's base in a caravel then Attack moving the TC. Once TC is down I run back to caravel and spam lancers.
Ah my gimmick strats were bad

milku3459 wrote:I had this silly strat as Spain on Saguenay in my MS days when I would FF, gather 1000 coin in transition, build houses with the 400 wood, send Swiss pikes and 2 falcs, shipping them over to the back of the enemy's base in a caravel then Attack moving the TC. Once TC is down I run back to caravel and spam lancers.
Ah my gimmick strats were bad

Op new meta

The unit itself is very good - for a melee anti cav unit, it's just that heavy infantry (except Musketeers) generally aren't that good. Goons are just quicker and safer, black riders may be better if you want to put a merc anti cav unit in.

milku3459 wrote:I had this silly strat as Spain on Saguenay in my MS days when I would FF, gather 1000 coin in transition, build houses with the 400 wood, send Swiss pikes and 2 falcs, shipping them over to the back of the enemy's base in a caravel then Attack moving the TC. Once TC is down I run back to caravel and spam lancers.
Ah my gimmick strats were bad

I think its good i used to do it too lol, but I would just ship 2 falcs first

Jeedos wrote:The unit itself is very good - for a melee anti cav unit, it's just that heavy infantry (except Musketeers) generally aren't that good. Goons are just quicker and safer, black riders may be better if you want to put a merc anti cav unit in.

One reason I prefer Swiss pikes is because my micro is crap Swiss pikes can body block instead of having to kite, but ofc with micro black riders are considerably better.

sdsanft wrote:

Jeedos wrote:The unit itself is very good - for a melee anti cav unit, it's just that heavy infantry (except Musketeers) generally aren't that good. Goons are just quicker and safer, black riders may be better if you want to put a merc anti cav unit in.

One reason I prefer Swiss pikes is because my micro is crap Swiss pikes can body block instead of having to kite, but ofc with micro black riders are considerably better.

There are 3 civs who can send Swiss Pikemen (the standalone Age 3 card): French, Germans and Dutch.

French have musketeers and hussars, both of which are common and often used to bodyblock. French also have skirms and goons.
Germans often mass Uhlans as a form of bodyblocking. They also have War Wagons and less commonly Pikemans/Dopps
Dutch are given with Ruyters, Hussars and occasionally Halbs.

All 3 of those civs can also send Black Riders.

I can understand the reason to send them for nice siege and good HP (for a pikemen) but their fundamental job (as a means of taking out cav) is performed better by en masse other infantry, goons or black riders.


Poor micro is never an excuse to choose sub-optimal routes or inferior units. If your micro is poor, practice or play the scenario which tests your micro.

Jeedos wrote:

sdsanft wrote:

Jeedos wrote:The unit itself is very good - for a melee anti cav unit, it's just that heavy infantry (except Musketeers) generally aren't that good. Goons are just quicker and safer, black riders may be better if you want to put a merc anti cav unit in.

One reason I prefer Swiss pikes is because my micro is crap Swiss pikes can body block instead of having to kite, but ofc with micro black riders are considerably better.

There are 3 civs who can send Swiss Pikemen (the standalone Age 3 card): French, Germans and Dutch.

French have musketeers and hussars, both of which are common and often used to bodyblock. French also have skirms and goons.
Germans often mass Uhlans as a form of bodyblocking. They also have War Wagons and less commonly Pikemans/Dopps
Dutch are given with Ruyters, Hussars and occasionally Halbs.

All 3 of those civs can also send Black Riders.

I can understand the reason to send them for nice siege and good HP (for a pikemen) but their fundamental job (as a means of taking out cav) is performed better by en masse other infantry, goons or black riders.


Poor micro is never an excuse to choose sub-optimal routes or inferior units. If your micro is poor, practice or play the scenario which tests your micro.

Well, atleast as french (but also German and Dutch I assume) you usually want to stay ahead in skirm count so you can't afford to stop producing skirms for musk/dops/halbs, also, goons can't body block well so for example if you're using falcs (which can't kite unlike skirms) you need something to body block (cav aren't always the best option either because they are generally fewer in numbers and you want them in the front lines tanking). Obviously Swiss pikes piles are situational but to say they can never be used is unfair.

Also, Spain can send Swiss pikes iirc and since they usually have a lot of pikes/rods anyways Swiss pikes work well.

Swiss arent that bad but saving up the 1000g for something that is just a unit shipment just seems to hard/risky. France has too many great cards and doesnt really ever need swiss pikes. Spain's playstyle is too aggressive to be able to save up 1000c. Dutch can ship swiss pikes as a niche shipment. Sometimes having strong melee infantry to body block, for example against china or spain, is really nice. Also I kinda like it if you need some siege and dutch doesnt have the 2 falc shipment so makes swiss more of a consideration to break sth like an agra fort or port tcs.

popping swiss pikes on top of enemy's cav can be game winning, but it's a high risk play.

Che_Jerom wrote:Swiss arent that bad but saving up the 1000g for something that is just a unit shipment just seems to hard/risky. France has too many great cards and doesnt really ever need swiss pikes. Spain's playstyle is too aggressive to be able to save up 1000c. Dutch can ship swiss pikes as a niche shipment. Sometimes having strong melee infantry to body block, for example against china or spain, is really nice. Also I kinda like it if you need some siege and dutch doesnt have the 2 falc shipment so makes swiss more of a consideration to break sth like an agra fort or port tcs.

well said

Jerom wrote:Swiss arent that bad but saving up the 1000g for something that is just a unit shipment just seems to hard/risky. France has too many great cards and doesnt really ever need swiss pikes. Spain's playstyle is too aggressive to be able to save up 1000c. Dutch can ship swiss pikes as a niche shipment. Sometimes having strong melee infantry to body block, for example against china or spain, is really nice. Also I kinda like it if you need some siege and dutch doesnt have the 2 falc shipment so makes swiss more of a consideration to break sth like an agra fort or port tcs.

lord piro uses merc frequently and it works! 3v-700g-700w-600g-swiss
i used to beat his skirm pike cannon with age 2 musk hussar/cossack easily, but when he uses swiss i can't cav can't touch them at all, and even musks can hardly beat them in melee fight.

Used them today as spain vs german, they got rekt by landsknecht with merc combat.
Rip.

If only lands had area attack...I did them in a German mirror combined with an xbow pike rush. After a while I stopped making pikes because the 4 lands just pwned all uhlans

I tried ship swiss pike as france vs gibson ottomon vault, and it failed horribly