Shield Bonus

What is shield bonus in melee defense (if melee with shield is an option)? Is it +2 for large shield and +1 for small?

Annie

It's +2 defense for large shield, and +1 defense for small shield. The Chiv MAA has a 0.5 modifier on it's large shield and thus gets only +1 defense. I don't know if other units have a 0.5 modifier. Cav only get a +1 defense from a shield. The pavise adds +3 to armor, but nothing to defense.

Then the www.totalwarassembly.com war accademy needs update. It listed the Order Foot as having +1 shield bonus. It does list when the shield bonus is added to melee or not. The Order Foot has shield bonus in melee, while the parvise doesn't have shield bonus in melee.

Annie
[edit: my misunderstanding. The number from TWA database is a MODIFIER, to multiply with the factor 2 or 1 (large or small shield) before adding to the defense stats)]

Most of the knights with shields have a 0.5 modifier. Chivs, Order Knights and Royals... You can see that as they have 7.5$ Armour... they get that 0.5 from the shield, but since the melee stats can't work with decimals it doesn't count there.

Well, the workhorse of the Elmoheads army the AUM also has a 0.5 modifier to his shield bonus.

It looks like you have to go on a unit by unit basis. Some foot units have a 0.5 shield modifier. The Order Foot shield modifier is 1.0, and the F1 screen confirms that the unit gets +2 to defense and +2 to armor.

Shields on cavalry never add more than +1 to defense and armor. In addition, some cav have a 0.5 shield modifier which means armor gets +0.5 and defense gets 0 since that parameter has to be an integer.

Um this may sound silly but does a unit that is getting shot at when they are marching away (in the back) still get a shield bonus? just curious (i iknow what common sence dictates but hey this is a game its easy to leave details like this out)

Swooooooooooosh

Swoosh,

Tested that with Tosa, and the shield bonus doesn't help armor rating toward the rear.

Untested are Strategy Guide statements that the bonus to defense provided by a shield is removed if the man is struck from the rear in hand to hand fighting, and that units with a shield and a two handed weapon put their shield over their back when fighting so the protection the shield provides switches to the rear.

Swoosh you can test this in SP quite easily... just attack a province with some spearmen with archers then you can wittle them down to move towards you but they will return to their place when they can't catch you, then you will notice they drop like flies compared to before.

Puzz, I have long wondered about the slung shields of the Varangians. Despite very interesting, they are of little value unless fired at at a nice range. It doesn't help to fire into a melee where they are thinking their shields will help, it won't as most men are not fighting and thus have their shields to the front...

Where are the sheild modifiers listed? Is there any hope that TWA will update, as LadyAn suggested?

Vex, you can dl an excel worksheet with all units in it, there you can find a column wich shows the modifier and another that shows the shield itself. That is the easiest way. You can also go into the crusader_unit_prod file and find the units you wan't. Remember to read the top text as to where the shield modifer is (it is just after either a NONE, SMALL, CAV or LARGE).

The TWA only shows the modifier, but generally the units with big shields in the picture have large shields, and all archers with shields, except Nizaris and Futuwwas (which have large shields) have small shields.