The Shield Problem(s)

[Foz]

I figured I'd edit the first post here for the benefit of those who may be jumping in in the middle of things. Basically, what follows is a bunch of discussion and research into how shields function in M2TW. You of course can read it for yourself if you like, but for the sake of saving people's time, I'll sum up what's been found for those who are just interested in that:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Shields provide their bonus against ranged attacks, but do not provide their bonus in melee combat.
- Shields actually seem to subtract their value from the unit's defense in melee combat.

This has prompted me to release an interim solution that attempts to fix the problems. Those of you interested in that will find it linked in my signature.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program: my first post indicating there might be a problem, in its entirety.

While testing Armoured Swordsmen against Dismounted Noble Knights, I discovered that the shield was not doing anything discernable in combat. Armour and Defense Skill numbers in the txt file were affecting unit performance correctly... but armoured swordsmen modified to have 22 shield and no other defense actually did a bit worse in combat than swordsmen with 3 zeros in the defense stats, a fact I initially blew off. You can read about this testing and findings here.

It apparently doesn't end there, however. In more tests trying to see if shields in general were affected, I began messing with Armoured Sergeant shield stats and pitting them against Mailed Knights. I used HRE armoured sgts which I controlled (left sit in initial formation to get charged into until one of the units routed) against English mailed knights. Here's what happened with different unit stat settings for the armoured sergeants:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Notes: I've listed primary defense stats as armour/skill/shield, just like the file does.
Armoured Sergeant Kills/Mailed Knight Kills. AS has 75 men, MK 40 mounted riders.

5/9/0:

34/48 HRE wins
40/37 HRE wins
37/42 HRE wins
38/34 HRE wins
38/36 HRE wins
-----
187/197

5/9/1:

26/32 HRE wins
40/55 HRE wins
40/50 HRE wins
40/51 HRE wins
39/47 HRE wins
-----
185/235

5/9/6:

36/62 HRE routs
31/64 HRE routs
34/60 HRE wins
35/66 HRE routs
35/58 HRE wins
-----
171/310

5/9/26:

25/70 HRE routs
28/67 HRE routs
16/68 HRE routs
17/72 HRE routs
18/73 HRE routs
-----
104/350

I began with dumping the shield points into the skill stat instead. The sgts performed admirably, sticking it to the knights with men to spare every time. IIRC this was a considerable boost over their vanilla stat performance against the same Mailed Knights.

I then set the shield to 6 to see what effect their default shield had on the unit with it's newly upped defense skill. Not only did it not give the sgts a defense bonus, but it apparently made them get hit more often in battle, taking heavier losses. With 6 more shield points, the unit lost more than half its battles (though both units were always near routing by the end) where it had not lost any at shield 0.

To test further, I went back and made shield 1. Sure enough, the values arrive between the results for shield 0 and the results for shield 6. To confirm the trend I thought I was seeing, I tested with shield pumped all the way to 26... and to my alarm, it did what I was by this point expecting: got the sgts horribly slaughtered.

Needless to say, this is not only bad, it's completely disturbing. First things first though: I'd appreciate if several people could run tests of their own to confirm this is in fact what happens. With these 2 units first to make sure I'm not going mad at the moment, but then with others too to see how widespread the problem is...

*edited to add better description*

[JCoyote]

Actually I was thinking of asking something like this in the 2h fixes thread. Perhaps the halberds are stomping the swordsmen not because they are overpowered, but because the sword's defense is nerfed?

[hrvojej]

Hmm, quite disturbing. It would be one thing if for example shields are only contributing to the missile defense while skill only contributes to melee defense, since we could try to rebalance things accordingly. But shields actually having a negative influence in melee means that everything we thought we knew about the stats goes out the window. I'll try to find time later today to do some tests on this.

[sapi]

This does not sound good....

[Musashi]

I've been saying for some time that I believed shields were only being applied against missile attack.

Granted, they make a BIG difference when you're under missile attack.

[Daveybaby]

Interesting.... and worrying.

[Goofball]

I've noticed the same thing in my Moorish campaign. Urban Militia have total defence rating of 22, so they should be able to stand up against just about any other infantry unit in the game.

Not.

They get chewed up by everything they face.

[Jagger]

My understanding is that shields have always had a separate category which applies only to missiles. I have assumed that close combat modifiers for shields are included in either armor or skill modifiers.

I would check two similiar units, one with shields and one without. Find out if either armor or skill modifiers are different. That would tell us where and whether the shield modifies close combat. It should modify one or the other.

Although it is possible, the shield animation may have an impact on combat as well.

[hrvojej]

Ok, I did my tests, and I am convinced that the shields are borked in melee.

Setting:
Dismounted chivalric knights, France, with shield stat 26
Dismounted chivalric knights, Hungary, with shield stat 0
All else was left as it was, so units were equal in every other respect (I think that they also use the same animation) except that this gave the French a 42 overall def and the Hungarians 16 overall def. I used vanilla animations and everything else was vanilla except the EDU, changed another unrelated unit's stats to make sure I am using the modified EDU with file.first switch, all battles were fought on very hard, grassy plain, normal unit size (60+general), I alternated control of the side for every other battle so it wasn't the difficulty level or the game simply liking the Hungarians, all I did was hit pause at the start and doubleclicked on the enemy then released pause, I did not speed up any of the battles, I didn't count the prisoners in the kills.

The Hungarians won each battle by a large margin. Raw data:

Hungarian kills/French kills
58/18
59/10
51/13
51/16
58/13
52/22
56/33
56/13
43/20
53/11

Mean of Hungarian kills 53.2 +/- 4.6, mean of French kills 16.9 +/- 6.8. Though it would be cool to have an even larger sample size, I think the effect is big enough that it's indiciative of something being wrong here. I won't have time to test it more, but I would be willing to do the stats analysis if anybody wants to continue with and/or contribute to the testing.

A few more notes:
On the occasion when the French killed 33, they got most kills from the charge. When they fled with only 43 killed their general was killed almost right away. I wish I could to the tests without general being in the unit, but it's nevertheless an equal factor for both sides. Btw, the Hungarian general didn't get killed in any of the battles. The animations didn't change as far as I was able to tell when I set the shield at 0 - the Hungarians still used the shield block animation.

The Hungarians usually killed around 52-53 when French general was killed early, and killed 56-59 when he lived and fled. A wild guess and a pure speculation: since the units' morale was 9, and the difference is around 10%, maybe that's how much more morale the general adds to its unit?

I also ran a couple of test battles when the Hungarians had shield stat of 0 and the French shield of 6. Well, the data are: 58/48, 52/38, 58/34, 61/56, 59/42. The Hungarians still won each of the five battles, but the French did much better - another potential indicator that the shield is a hindrance and not of help in melee.

So, foz, I think you should add it to the buglist thread.

Cheers,

[The Stranger]

this is news... this confirsm some tests ive run, this is prolly the reason (atleast one of them) why Janissary heavy infantry are so great, they mercilessly slaughter even the varangian guard, and the varangian guard stats are about 2x better

[The Stranger]

Hrvojej, I also think charge is broken, because when the player charge's he kills between 15-25 men, after that your unit gets totally massacred. and kills not more than a few man, around 25 when youre lucky but usually around 10 while you only loose 5-10 in the charge fase. I even saw my varangian guard which i upp with defence skills to 8, get pinned down and more than halved against turkish javelinmen, the varangian stats are great while the javelinmen suck.

and for the Janisary HI, they only get defeated by one unit, dismounted christian guard of the moors. Heavy Billmen, Varangian Guard, Scottish Noble Elite, English Armoured Swordsmen all get mercislessly slaughtered by JHI. the weird thing is that every single unit has better stats then the JHI and also kill more in the charge fase, 15-20 to 5-10.

ill post more stats tomorrow

[Foz]

My understanding is that shields have always had a separate category which applies only to missiles. I have assumed that close combat modifiers for shields are included in either armor or skill modifiers.

If you read the descriptions at the beginning of the export_descr_unit.txt file, it describes stat_armour_ex which apparently had plans to use 2 separate stats for a shield's effect on melee and ranged combat. However it fails to read the file correctly if you uncomment it in any of the units, regardless of commenting out the usual stat_pri_armour line or not doing so. The one actually in use has only one shield field, and therefore it presumably is supposed to apply to both.

Concerning how the stats apply to combat, the diagram posted here is probably the most useful: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...4&postcount=13

Ok, I did my tests, and I am convinced that the shields are borked in melee.

...

I think you should add it to the buglist thread.

Cheers,

Yeah, I was afraid of that. By the same token it's nice to see I wasn't tripping. As for adding it... done.

My big concern now, of course, is what can we do about it? I have 2 ideas at the moment:

1. Add the shield stat instead into the armour field, and wipe out the shield stat. It's easy, but it's not really good. It would bork unit defense in the right and rear quadrants by making it more than intended since it would essentially take the shield points and make them apply everywhere. This would take the fun out of shooting people in the back with HAs, and just do weird things in general. If zeroing the shield has the added effect of making the skill arc 180 degrees, this would also beef up the left defense too much, making the unit have its full defense from left, front, and right.

2. Add the shield stat into the skill field instead, but leave the shield number in its field too. Then figure out how to compensate for the shield's negative impact on melee combat, presumably with adding again a percentage of the shield points into skill. This is basically using skill to make up for the shield not working in melee. It would make the unit have correct armour from the front and rear, higher than intended from the right (b/c of the skill stat that represents parrying being inflated) and lower than intended from the left due to shield still not covering there. That's of course assuming that shield HAS an area of effect assigned to it, and that shield units don't just get the 180 degree cover field from skill that 2-handers apparently have. I can't say either of those for sure at this point, as few things seem to work in this game exactly as they are purported to. In either case this fix would be a bit strange.

I think the only real hope we have though is that the CA team fixes it in the 1.2 patch, as anything we can do to the unit file still seems to bork some other aspect of the unit.

If anyone else has other ideas or further thoughts on mine, as always share 'em.

[Revenant]

The question is if there is a reason to do something with it.

The vast majority of units in this game have shields, the others are:

1) Halberds, they have very low stats to compensate for shield "penalty" of said units

2) 2H Axes, they have bugged animation now, may be repaired in next patch. The solution with them is demo animation + change stats to balance them for now.

3) 2H swords, (only Forlorn Hope, Zweihanders and Dismounted GK) and they perform well against shield units, I think.

4) Pikemen, and they are weak unless in special formation, assault units butcher them, shield or not.

There are also some other units, mainly shooters (now i know why my pavise crossbows are so bad in close combat ), they can be changed, but nobody complained about them - regarding Pavise crossbows, I think the pavise on their back will really hinder them in CC :)

So my solution is to make changes to 2H units and nothing more.

[Spark]

This would also explain why high-end heavy cavalry with no shields seem to stomp high-end heavy cavalry with shields :\

Why am I not surprised that a bug like this could exist.

[Carl]

@Reverant: All Spear units have them too and they are a BIG part of the mid and early game units. it might help explain why they get so badly butchured by cav charges and peasents too. t probably also borks Scotlands Highland/Noble Highland Archers who get a big defence buff from their sheild and thus become decent line infantry in addittion to ok archers. (Yoeman Longbowmen have worse defence and Retinue Longbowmen have no AP on their CC attack so neithier are fully comparable to Noble Highland Archers, to say nothing of the comparision between Highland Archers and Longbowmen). I doubt te Scot are the only ones with good melee missile units that have sheilds eithier, i've seen a few javlinmen with impressive stats TBH.

[JCoyote]

Just a thought, since the shield not only doesn't seem to protect, it actually seems to hinder, are we certain that the shield problem isn't more like an inversion in the engine somewhere? Maybe the shield stat is getting turned around into a negative? That sounds likely and shouldn't be too tough to work around.

[hrvojej]

Upping the skill while leaving the shield seems like a good idea. But we would first need to know approximately how detrimental the shield is for melee. As an example of how to test it, my tests could be repeated with the Hungarians without shield at 8/8/0 and the French at 8/14/6, or the Hungarians at 8/2/0 and the French at 8/8/6, to see whether either of these modifications levels the field. Then we could have a better understanding whether the shield malus is proportional to the shield value, and potentially adjust the EDU stats accordingly for all units. Perhaps this would balance the battles better while we wait for the CA to give us the proper fix. And I sincerely hope they will - I can't really enjoy the game once I know something this major is broken...

I would do the tests once I have some time to spare again, but I don't know when that will be. So if somebody wants to jump in and do the tests in the meantime, that would be great.

[Revenant]

I did 10 battles on grassy plain. I choose Feudal dismounted Knights and Norman dismounted Knights, they both have the same stats.

I gave + 6 defence skill to Normans and took shield from Feudals. The V/D ratio was 6/4 for Normans, but the results were pretty tight, so at the start we can roughly estimate the defence skill compensate the negative bonus of shield, needs more testing of course.

[Revenant]

The bad thing is the fact computer probably calculates this as bonus for units with higher defence skill and shield, as the bar under map was in favor of unit with Shield + higher skill,

So this solution will result in bad autocalculating battles.

I hope they will fix it, but probably not in the next patch...

[Carl]

I just ran a few tests, (English Dismounted Feudal Knights vs DGK, Militia Spears vs Peasants, and Italian Spear Militia vs peasants), only ran the tests once though.

The conditions where simple: In one it was vanilla stats. In the other it had the shield value added to the defence skill, (but no extra to compensate for the shield hindrance).

The Italian Militia tests where inconclusive, but I think that’s because the Italian Militia in the default test killed about 10 more on the charge than with the modified stats and the peasants never recovered. (French Peasants BTW).

The English Dismounted Feudal Knights however showed interesting results. On both tests the knights won, but they took a LOT more losses with vanilla stats.

The Town Militia where even more decisive though. On both occasions the Town Militia Lost. On both occasions the Town militia lost their general late on and fled at 12 men left. HOWEVER, the Peasants had 28 left with vanilla settings and only 18 with modified stats. This IMO is pretty major, if those result where to hold true over a larger sample size then it would be a pretty good bet that the dominance of peasants over spears is more down to borked shields than problems with spars, I also hate to think what it does to their ability against cav as 6 out of their 7 defence comes from their shield so...

Finally my vanilla tests against DGK convinced me of something I’ve suspected for a while, the 2-handed sword animations are SERIOUSLY underpowered. The feudal knights really shouldn't have been winning on either occasion based on raw stats, let alone winning with no more than half losses. I suspect this is why so many 2-Handers get beaten so thoroughly by fixed Bill units and all Halberd units.

[Carl]

UTTERLY DECISIVE EVIDANCE IMHO:

I've got Bill units fixed with the Halberd Militia Animation. With that if you pit Heavy Billmen against Hasidim they slaughter the Hasidim for almost no losses. do the same test but with the Hasidim now having their 6 shield value added to their defence skill and they brought the fight right down to the very wire. their where 6 Billmen left and 1 Hasidim when the Hasidim routed. Both generals where also dead. I don't think a result of that magnitude of variance can be explained away as luck…

EDIT:

Additional Info:

Just tried Mailed Knights against Armoured Sear gents and Spear Militia (England vs. Scotland). Both the Knights and the spear units had the Shield value added to their defence.

Without the changes the Knights beat both units convincingly without having to pull out, (i controlled the spears BTW), the Spear militia were a total loss with almost no kills on the Knights, (all spears where deployed 7 and a half ranks deep, small unit sizes). The Armoured Sergeants killed 20 out of 33.

With the Changes the Spear militia now lost, (again without a re-charge), but this time THEY killed 20 out of 33 Knights before dying. With the Armoured Sergeants they beat them (with heavy losses). The Knights tried to pull out for a re-charge but I followed up and massacred them. down below 20 men left but was still pretty good going if you ask me, especially when you consider that only the very best knights have more than a slight stat increase over mailed knights.

Also the changes seemed to cut an average of 10 kills off the effects of the formed charge in addition to cutting the rate at which the Knights killed the spearmen.

I'm not only convinced of the shield issue now, but I’m also convinced it's responsible for most, (not all though), of the inability of spears to counter cav.

[Foz]

Seeing how the results have gone for people adding the shield into skill directly, things look very promising. I decided to go the other route and simply add the shield value into armour, then zero the shield number. My armoured sergeants against mailed knights now have absolutely epic battles. I've run it more than a few times with both units fixed, and the battles can go either way. The real joy of it is that 65 spearmen don't drop over dead on the initial charge. A decent amount do die on impact, but once melee is joined the sergeants swat the knights pretty well, and the battles typically come down to whether or not the knights can get out of the fray and setup for another good charge or three. The battles are so close that they ALWAYS try now, it's just a matter of whether the spearmen can get on top of them in time to prevent a full-on charge or not.

As for the fixes, I too suspect the shield is negatively impacting combat in the exact amount it's supposed to give a bonus for. The primary observation I make here is from my testing of armoured sergeants vs. mailed knights. I ran a number of runs with sergeants having 2x the shield value added into the defense skill (one to give the shield's bonus, the other to cancel the shield's current negative effect), and the battles with the knights end up feeling exactly the same as the ones I run with sergeants' shield added once to armour value, then shield zeroed.

I've also been thinking about which fix will prove better in the end, and wanted to share my thoughts:

1. Armoured sgts (default 5/3/6) in vanilla should have the following defense values if they were working properly:
a. front 5+3+6=14
b. left 5+6=11
c. right 5+3=8
d. rear 5
2. The skill fix (leaving shield at current value and adding 2x shield to skill) makes Armoured Sergeants (now 5/15/6) have the following defenses:
a. front 5+15-6=14
b. left 5-6=-1
c. right 5+15=20
d. rear 5
3. The armour fix (zeroing shield and adding 1x shield to armour) makes Armoured Sergeants (now 11/3/0) have the following defenses:
a. front 11+3+0=14
b. left 11+0=11
c. right 11+3=14
d. rear 11

Noting point 2b and 2c, we find the values are off by 9 in each case. Similarly 3c and 3d are off, but only by 6. It should be noted that 3 is more powerful in both cases though, where 2 is down 9 on the left and up 9 on the right. I personally prefer the rear to be borked rather than the left, as I'm much bigger on flanking than actually maneuvering to the rear, though I'm sure some people wouldn't agree. I also don't like the 21 point difference that the skill fix causes between the left defense value and the right number... it's simply ludicrous. Both units should perform mostly the same against missiles, as 5+6 = 11+0, which is the sum of the new applicable stats against missile fire in each case. The armour fix unit will have extra defense against missiles on its weapon side now, though... basically as if it could use its shield over there too.

The biggest thing I want to point out, though, is that the armour fix unit has the benefit of not borking the auto-calc at all. It seems to function based on the front (i.e. max) defense value of the unit, and so will assume the skill fix unit is insane in combat due to calculating its defense to be 5+15+6=26 where the armour fix unit still comes out to a nice neat 11+3+0=14. This fact, to me at least, immediately settles the dispute of which to use, and I have already implemented the armour fix on my entire file.

@Revenant: The point is that the bug is probably affecting almost every battle you have, and making everyone avoid all the spear units as well. Additionally, this bug is almost certainly the reason everyone thought the fixed 2h units were so overpowered in the first place. Why would you try to bend a solution around the problem when you could instead remove the actual problem?

I put it that way because I pitted armoured swordsmen with the armour fix against demo-animation dismounted noble knights as I had before... and they fared pretty well actually. In spite of the knights having 21 attack and the powerful armour piercing ability, the swordsmen routinely take 35 or so with them to the grave. That's about 7/12, up from only 2/12 of the enemy unit killed using unfixed swordsmen. That seems totally reasonable given how much more resistant to missile fire the swordsmen are, and the extra 75 per turn upkeep cost of the dismounted noble knights.

Have I mentioned how great it is for combat to take a little time now instead of units just dissolving away, too?

[Musashi]

I think you guys are jumping the gun adding shield values into armor or defense skill... You first need to actually prove that the shield is detrimental, and not simply a 0 value in melee. There hasn't been sufficient testing to prove this yet.

I would suggest someone take a unit that two factions have, and pit same unit vs. same unit (Say, Dismounted Chivalric Knights vs. English Armored Swordsmen, they have the same stats and animations), do a nice exhaustive test series (say at least 20 battles), and then change the shield value of one of the units to 0, and run that test series again, and see if the results have a noticable difference.

Oh and please use the grassy plain battlefield for all testing. Other battlefields introduce too much variability.

[Alcorr]

This has been confirmed, ok not directly, I didn't do any file editing, but I have noticed that shields are having a negative impact on a units combat ability in general.

Now this isn't very scientific but I pitted about 7 dis gothic knights vs. an equivalent cost armored swordsmen game (I think it was either 7 or 8 arm swordsmen).

Custom game, both sides charged straight at each other.

Now you would think that a 14/14 dis gothic knight would lose to a 13/22 armored swordsmen, since neither has any ap bonuses or such.

It turned out the dis gothic knights won by a ratio of about 50% dead compared to 85% armored swords dead.

Now I know thats not exactly a crushing defeat and alot of it can be contributed to random chance (I tried this 3 times). However, in several other similar tests I find that units not using shields continally do worse to same stat units that have the extra defence in armor or skill instead of shields.

[Musashi]

Dismounted Gothics have the uber effective 2h sword animation. Not an even test.

[Musashi]

Allow me to submit this as an example of why we haven't proven anything yet.

I just ran a test, Armored Swordsmen vs. Dismounted Chivalric Knights. These units have the same stats, and the same animation set.

I ran four battles controlling the Armored Swordsmen, and four battles controlling the Dismounted Chivalric Knights.

Here are my results. Men remaining at the moment of rout, AS/DCK.

Player controlling AS:
30/2
30/3
23/3
3/12

Player controlling DCK:
19/62
27/41
6/27
19/37


Note the variability in the outcome of these battles. More to the point look at the enormous differences in men remaining from battle to battle.

Now tell me random chance isn't a huge factor.

[sapi]

Hrvojej, I also think charge is broken, because when the player charge's he kills between 15-25 men, after that your unit gets totally massacred. and kills not more than a few man, around 25 when youre lucky but usually around 10 while you only loose 5-10 in the charge fase. I even saw my varangian guard which i upp with defence skills to 8, get pinned down and more than halved against turkish javelinmen, the varangian stats are great while the javelinmen suck.

and for the Janisary HI, they only get defeated by one unit, dismounted christian guard of the moors. Heavy Billmen, Varangian Guard, Scottish Noble Elite, English Armoured Swordsmen all get mercislessly slaughtered by JHI. the weird thing is that every single unit has better stats then the JHI and also kill more in the charge fase, 15-20 to 5-10.

ill post more stats tomorrow

Mate, this is a very old issue - varangian guard (like every 2handed unit which doesn't use a sword) are bugged and don't get kills except in the initial charge.

Nice research guys - i'll be adding this to the buglist when i get around to updating it and i'll make sure that it's brought to ca's attention (though i'm sure that they know of an issue as large as this)

[BigTex]

Disturbing to say the very least. More reason I'm playing EB till the next patch comes out, besides EB being a great game in and of itself.

I would like to point out though for those doing testing that animations are far more important generally speaking to the kill rate and overall effectiveness of a unit then just stats. Keep that in mind when comparing units, with not just different shield ratings and with different animation sets also, and their overall effectiveness. That is to say, JHI trump DFK not just becuase of the shield problem but becuase of the more effective kill animation. Also keep in mind the 2hd bug. Best to use nearly the same unit when doing tests like these.

Also I would suggest alternating who you play as during a test. You will generally get better charges then the AI can produce. Reducing the charge rating to 1 or even 0 may help also.

[sapi]

I'd also agree with that bigtex just said - make sure that you're comparing identical units (from different factions obviously) to make sure that the test is completely fair.

[Carl]

@Sapi & BigTex & Musashi:

Take a look at my Heavy Billmen (HB) vs. Hashashim result.

With a fixed animation on HB, the HB slaughter the Hashashim with few losses. With the extra defence from the shield added to the defence skill they actually hold the HB to a draw.

I also did some tests, (again one test each time), with the following units: Dismounted Conquistadors, Dismounted Feudal Knights, Armoured Swordsmen, Sword and Buckler-Men, and Dismounted Chivalric Knights.

In all these tests the upped defence skill units where able to wipe out approximately half the HB before routing. I'd therefore expect VHI, (Venetian Heavy Infantry), to beat the HB, or come very close.

Now that doesn’t necessarily prove that the shield isn't applying or that it's not helping them in melee, (removing the shield value from Hashashim and seeing what happens would though), however, it DOES seems to cure a LOT of the problems regarding the imbalances between Sword and Shield, and Spear and Shield units and everything else. So regardless it's a good idea IMHO. I've now tested with enough different units to convince me theirs a general trend towards better balanced units.

I'll now run off and test Hashashim with the shield taken away and tell you what happens.

However, to get this out before I run the test, (so people can't say I’m saying it in retrospect), their are 3 possible outcome in my mind:

1. No difference from when they didn't have the extra defence skill, (i.e. they get slaughtered whilst causing few losses). This means that the shield works and isn't a hindrance.

2. They do no different than when they had the extra defence skill with the sheild, (i.e. nearly holding the HB to a draw). This means that the Shield isn't kicking in, (or we'd see increased losses on the Hashashim from the lowered defence), but since where not seeing the Hashashim kill more the shield isn't hindering them.

3. They beat the HB. This first proves the shield isn't working, (in the same way as 2), it also proves that the Shield is probably hindering them. Although their may be some doubt as we don't know how "lucky" the HB where when I tried the single test with added Defence skill. It's also true that if they win by a small amount then it could still be down to random variance and might be better treated s a result 2.

Right I’ll go run the test.