Pikeman Archive

I have found that one of our best weapons is landing a dizzy/knockdown on someone. However it is also quite harmful to us if we get hit by it. The problem I have is that I fight some people and no matter what I do I can't knock them down. Sometimes the dizzy lands but if I can't get them off their feet it doesn't matter. I will usually hit dizzy 1, knockdown 2, lunge 1 and hope it works. First question, is there anything else I can do to increase the chance I get them knocked down? I know that hitting dizzy until it sticks helps, but getting dizzy to stick isn't usually a problem, its the getting them off their feet. I also know that landing other states such as intimidate and stun might lower their ability to resist this so I will land those first.

Second question is how to best avoid suffering the very same fate I want to inflict on my enemy. My defenses versus are as follows; dizzy 55, knockdown 70 and posture down 50. Are these good defenses? I will also use knockdown foods that bring my knockdown defense up by like 90 or something depending on the food. I don't know whether it is that the food is sometimes bugged or that I am just constantly getting hit by the posture down attacks, but I want to figure out how to beat this. Anybody have any ideas?