EDU values for Romani units

Hello,

I've been looking at the stats of EB v0.81a for the Romani units and I have some doubts about some of the values:

- Velites should not have armor value. Like the text description says, they fight without armor (like the Leves) and they are Velites precisely because they are too poor to afford an armor. Also, they are too expensive when compared with the Leves (which have a spear as secondary weapon and thus can face light cavalry and overwhelm it with their numbers)

- Accensi should not have armor value for the same reasons as the Leves.

- The Antesignani has too much armor value, since the description text says they fight with lighter armor and they are considered Light Infantry. The armor should drop from 14 to 10.

- All heavy infantry in the late periods (M and I) should have armor 12 (or 14), while Medium Infantry should have 10 (or 12), to stay in line with the armor values in the Polibian period. Right now, heavy infantry gets armor 10 which is too low.

- The Cohors Evocata are veterans, so the best way to represent them would be to create them with default experience 2 (apart from any bonuses given by city buildings) and give the same values of armor and attack as the other heavy legionaries. If this is not possible to mod, then they are ok as they are.

What do you think?

Suggesting edu stat changes for units is very difficult to do. We don't use the vanilla system for assigning numbers, our own system is far more complex. Certainly there are still bugs in the edu stats, but whether these are some of them, and whether these are the answers, I couldn't tell. Our stat man is currently away, but when's back you'll get your answer.

Foot

And I wonder why

Polybian Triarii are worse than Camillian ones.

Pedites Extraordinarii stats are worse than Triarii but they require a higher MIC. Because of their attack rates?

Everyone gets a bit of armour just from having clothes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pharnakes

Everyone gets a bit of armour just from having clothes.

---

Not everyone. There are plenty of units that have an armor rating of 0...

JMRC,

I think you'll find due to inherant problems with relying on a shield=shield, armour=armour etc system is the cause of these 'discrepancies' in the EDU.

Some the the 'armour' value for the Velites would be from-

a) wearing a helmet,
b) some would be from their shield (to represent that men could turn in different diections to deflect attacks from other places other than just the front and left as in vanilla),
c) and also said units perceived skill at avoiding attacks in general ie- stepping out of the way (unlike in vanilla, where missile attacks completely ignore defensive skill).

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Quilts

Velites have an armour rating of 3 for wearing a metall helmet. In theory every unit that wears at least a shirt should get an extra armour value point for it, so Velites should even have 4.

The ordinary post marin cohorts have 10: 6 for chain mail, 3 for metall helmet +1 for check guards. The evocata have at least 2 more for wearing greaves, but I don't know were the other two come from .

The Antesignani's main armour is rated liked a muscled cuirass, thats 8, + 4 for metall hlmet with cheek guars and 2 for greaves.

Things as experience and quality of training is only relfected in higher attack and defense values not the armour rating.

For some units the stats differ from the system to tweak the combat system and better simulalate their historical performance. And of course there are still bugs in EDU or the system was adjusted since they were added and the old stats not changed.

At least for the roman units the MIC level mainly reflects the availability of these units, not their strength in battle.

It may be an idea to rename the defense categories. Its easy to do and could help answer many balance questions.

The first category "armor" should really be named "Defense vs. all attacks from all directions"

This is, of course, too long, but something more descriptive than "armor" is probably in order.

To be truly useful, it would have been nice if CA had 8 defense variables, 4 for each quadrant vs. melee and 4 for each quadrant vs. ranged.

This would make it much easier to make unit stats realistic. You could even give a stat bonus in the rear when a unit wears a shield on it back. But alas, one must work with what one has or get a degree in CS and move to Australia...

Quote:

---

It may be an idea to rename the defense categories. Its easy to do and could help answer many balance questions.

The first category "armor" should really be named "Defense vs. all attacks from all directions"

This is, of course, too long, but something more descriptive than "armor" is probably in order.

---

Maybe
Armour->Overall Protection
Defence Skill->Melee Defence
Shield->Additional Front Protection
?

I don't know if it's possible to alter the stat names. If you can figure out how to do so, please share here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by blacksnail

I don't know if it's possible to alter the stat names. If you can figure out how to do so, please share here.

---

Actually I've done it myself. In the strat.txt file there are lines such as "{SMT_ARMOUR}", "{SMT_DEFENCE}", "{SMT_SHIELD}" or "{SMT_HP}" with corresponding, changeable names.