Investigation of unit build costs

Alright, folks. done some searching but haven't found the R&D thread about this topic. Being mildly serious about "realism" and dabbling in modifying unit stats, i'm obviously wanting to know how CA went about calculating costs.


Before i get into the obvious stuff, i'll need to understand how important shields are versus defense skill versus other niggly things. That takes experience, and i have that, but what i probably need to do is hit the custom battles and use exaggerated unit stats and see how they do opposed.


After that i suppose it's just a matter of deciding how to keep the costs as close as possible to the way CA intended it.



inspiration for this thread goes to the Bastar-thingy-whatsit mercenaries.

Shields act as armour to the front and left, but are not affected by AP. Defensive ability act as that to the front and right, supposedly, but testing has been inconclusive at best on this.

why not grab some peasants, boost their defensive ability to the extreme and see if an attack from the left has better hits than the right? course, you'd need a patient multiplayer partner

Actually did this with Cilician Pirates (boosted their defensive ability to 63 and charged them with Companions), but when you try they tend to turn to face the charge. Very anoying. I tried marching them along, but then remembered that there are certain negative bonusses for that. In any event even the charge on the marching men didn't differ much depending on which side you charged. A handful of losses, so obviously it wasn't working as I hoped. When they stood still the Companions were stopped cold.

If anybody interested I at least know how upgrades are calculated.

For weapons, divide unit cost by 10 and round down.
For armor, divide unit cost by 10, mutiply by 1.5 and then round down.

that'll help thanks. hmmmmmm...as for the testing right/left defensive, didn't you think of archers? would they turn to face the archers even when controlled by another multiplayer human?

Yes, they indeed will. There is a nice horse archer tactics which involves constantly threatening the enemy's shieldless side with arrows. The infantry will turn even without human orders. This reflex maneuver can be very annoying.

What you often end up with is a circle of horse archers surrounding a dense clump of enemy infantry constantly turning and scared.

Because the infantry do turn and face the charging enemy you have no chance of proving if the defensive value is indeed only effective on one side (and the front of course).
But they only began to turn relatively late, and I'm not talking about the AI turning the unit, I'm talking about me controlling the infantry and the individual soldiers turning (not all of them of course only the first line or so).

okay, thanks. looks like i'll need a VERY patient playtester then. (a) fire one volley (b) opponent turns the reacting infantry unit back to where we want them (c) repeat

You can't use archery in the same way. Only armour and shield (left and front) affects ranged attacks, defensive ability gives you nothing (or at least that is what we think, no tests have been performed on it). So it is rather simple to work out, it is the melee that is hard to understand.
Also, the men turn on their own, but the unit stays in place, and since we can't control the individual men then it becomes hard to control them like this.

fascinating info, thanks