what mean attack and defense rating?

I played RTW for several weeks but I can't understand exact meanings of these important attributes. Manual says nothing about unit attributes. Also I have no experience of other Total War games.

I think defense rating is something about 'how hard to hit(the higher the better)' because generally elite units have higher defense rating and chariots and elephants have very low defence rating.

As usual, I thought attack rating is about 'chance to hit' but units like ornagers have very high attack rating but seemingly very inaccurate.


Please somebody enlighten me!

Attack rating would be better looked at as "chance to do damage". The onager isn't terribly accurate, but if it hits, it has an insanely high chance of doing damage (which it should). Think of attack vs defense like this - someone swings a sword and hits you. Now, they may have hit your shield, or armour, and not done any damage. Or they may have actually wounded you. I'm not sure of the actual mechanics, but it's very likely they do something like a random number + attack vs random number + defense. If the first is higher, it does damage, if the second is higher, it does not.

Bh

In STW/MTW melee was calculated in this way: 1.9% x 1.2^(attack value -defense value). That gave the chance to hit for each soldier attacking an enemy soldier. The defense value was based on skill, weapon, armor and shield.

There are some differerences in RTW and one point of attack/defense doesnt count as much so the values in RTW are generally in a much wider range. And the kill rate is also higher.

But we dont know the precise calculation for RTW and there are some new things as for example the pikemens ability to keep enemy spear/swords at a distance.


CBR

Defense is broken down into:
Armour, Defensive Skill, and Shield

When fighting melee, I believe all three are used in figuring the defense. However, shields might be excluded for some units in some situations (I don't know, but in MTW this happened for units that could not use their shield at the same time they used particular types of 2 handed weapons.)

When facing missile attack from the front, both armour and shield ratings are used, but "defensive skill" is not (sort of the "you can't dodge a bullet after it is fired" approach.)

When facing missile attack from rear or some flanks the shield rating is also dropped since it is not in position to protect the man.

Armour ratings (without upgrades) range from 0 to 11 for the units I have seen. I'm not sure of the range on defensive skill. Shield ratings are from zero (no shield) to 5 for certain large shields--typically 2 for a small shield, and 4 or 5 for a large.

Attack has various components:
Missile attack, melee attack, and charge bonus.

These are rather self explanatory, missile is for the missile aimed at your target, melee is for hand-to-hand, and charge is added to the hand-to-hand stat when the unit is charging and disappears from the attack when the charge ends.


Other special stuff:
Combat bonuses vs. specific units, mount effects, special unit effects on morale/etc., formation effects (phalanx, wedge, loose, skirmish, etc.)

Defensive skill is hand 2 hand only. Also i believe min chance to hit/kill is about 5%, based on edited units I.E 100+ defence. (depends on if the enemy unit can live awhile though).


PS the spellcheck is Rubbish your better of using Microsoft word, IE this one couldnt pick up that enermy ~:confused: was meant to be enemy. :laugh: :laugh: