Captains

[PBI]

When a unit contains a captain on the battlefield, do the captain's stats depend upon the unit he is in, or are they constant for all units?

I had assumed the latter was the case, but I was experimenting with creating a unit along the lines of the Kensai from STW, i.e. a unit of just one man, who is all but invincible in melee combat. So I modded the Scottish Noble Swordsmen to have a unit size of 4 and stats of about 100 attack/100 defense, and put them up against a full unit of Armoured Swordsmen.

I had assumed that since they were the only unit and thus contained the captain, the captain would be much weaker than the other 4 men and would be killed much more quickly. In fact, he was the last man left alive, although he didn't seem to kill as many enemies as the others. Is it maybe the case that the defense values of the unit are added to base value for the captain, but not the attack values?

[FactionHeir]

He will be as strong as the unit he is in from what I know.

[Philbert]

From my experience doing test battles, the captain is always fully armoured in italian plate armour, making him much tougher than the men he is leading. This makes sense because when he dies, the battle is usually lost.

[ataribaby]

From my experience doing test battles, the captain is always fully armoured in italian plate armour, making him much tougher than the men he is leading. This makes sense because when he dies, the battle is usually lost.
I agree with Philbert. The full/advanced plate must give him an armour score of between 7 and 9 plus whatever defense skill he has. Whether that would be a standard value for all captains or relative to the specific unit he is leading I don't know.

I've always harboured the thought that captains have at least one extra hit point - they seem so hard to kill compared with the squaddies, and often end up going Rambo-solo. I suppose the test would be to have an advanced plated unit as the captain's unit and see how he fares.

His standard sword, from looking at DFKs and DCKs must give him an attack of about 13. When I've watched a captain fighting, he'll always give a good account of himself kill-wise. But I suppose if you've modded your unit to have Seven Samurai 20+ attack then he's not going to look as effective. In other words I reckon a captain's attack is a standard value based on his weapon - a standard sword.

[Old Geezer]

The captain does not necessarily move at the same speed. When I was testing various pikemen units against spear and sword units' movement rates by having them march in line, the captain was attached to a pike militia which outwalked him (and the sword and spear) by about 30 percent.

[PBI]

Mmm, I've seen this too, when the captain is leading a unit of peasants or other light troops. When the unit runs away, the captain can't keep up with the rest of his men and gets left behind. Serves the fool right really, spending all that money on his fancy armour but not bothering to equip his men with anything more than pyjamas.

Maybe I'll try increasing the number of HP of the units to try and counteract the extra HP of the captain.