Alchemist's lab/school/university = uselesS?

I've been noticing that when the alchemist's lab/school/university upgrades its respective units, they add only to the melee attack and not the ranged attack.

Considering the primary attritube we're looking for in gunpowder and seige weapons is NOT melee, I don't really understand why it adds to the melee attack instead of the ranged attack.

This is, of course, considering that the ranged attack value does go up without showing up on the unit card.

Or, more likely, a design flaw that never got addressed by CA.

IIRC they give experience boni (chevrons). Chevrons increase accuracy, albeit one chevron increases accuracy only slightly.

If a governor is in town when an alchemy lab is completed, he has a good chance to get the alchemist anciliary (+4 hitpoints) tack on a custom armor (+4 hp) from building an Armorer and your general's unit becomes a wrecking crew.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Old Geezer

IIRC they give experience boni (chevrons). Chevrons increase accuracy, albeit one chevron increases accuracy only slightly.

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That's alchemist's guild, NOT the academy line of buildings.

So other than ancillary, the written "upgrade" never happens?

*taps finger waiting for factionheir's post*

These academic buildings are involved in a few general traits also - merely staying in a town that has an alchemist lab or better has a chance to make the governor intelligent, as is being in town when such building is complete.
More importantly, they prevent the trigger for the Ignorance trait, which is a very very nasty one, although a city hall can do that as well.

I think a few unique ancillaries also trigger from those... can't be arsed to check though :sweatdrop:

Other than that, I think they're supposed to give a missile attack bonus (missile units for the lab, then canon for the rest), but the export file I have lying around seems sorta screwy in that regard - then again, it quite possibly came from version 1.0 of the game (found it in my old "what the heck is up with the traits ?!" modding directory - I had to uninstall M2TW itself a few months ago to make some space).

There is the possibility of course that the "weapon_missile_gunpowder" bonus is a bonus to accuracy, not lethality, and thus has an effect yet is not shown on the unit scorecard, but not only is my Mechanics Fu extremely rusty, I never was very good with combat mechanics to begin with :}

The thing is, if you check the stats their melee damage goes up by 1, with no change to missle attack value. If it gave some sort of accuracy upgrade, why would it upgrade melee dmg in the first place? I still think this is another game flaw, but I can't be sure yet.

It's always a possibility, of course. I suppose it's a hard thing to accurately test...

For what it's worth, experience chevrons - while they do up the defense skill and melee skill values on the unit card - do not increase a unit's missile attack value either, yet they have been proven beyond any shade of doubt to increase missile kills (that is, for bows and crossbows - the quirkiness of gunmen rankswitching mechanisms back then made it hard to get reliable data IIRC). Wether it was caused by higher accuracy, higher lethality, better concentration of shots/volleys or whatnot has never been conclusively found AFAIK. Couldn't provide you with a direct link to the research post I'm thinking of, but search is your friend ;). Siege engines also fire much more accurately with XP, but their unit card doesn't show it.

With that in mind, it's not alltogether improbable that a weapon upgrade could make a difference without showing it on the unit card.

Caveat: I never tested gunpowder units with various chevrons to see if they get more kills. Archers certainly do get more kills and each chevron gives a little boost. The melee values go up 1 for the first chevron and for the first silver and first gold, I believe. I don't think anyone has tested to see if the intermediate chevrons help with melee kill, as the testing would be very problematic requiring such a large number of tests that almost any normal gamer's boredom tolerance would be exceeded.