The Shield Problem(s)

I figured I'd edit the first post here for the benefit of those who may be jumping in in the middle of things. Basically, what follows is a bunch of discussion and research into how shields function in M2TW. You of course can read it for yourself if you like, but for the sake of saving people's time, I'll sum up what's been found for those who are just interested in that:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Shields provide their bonus against ranged attacks, but do not provide their bonus in melee combat.
- Shields actually seem to subtract their value from the unit's defense in melee combat.

This has prompted me to release an interim solution that attempts to fix the problems. Those of you interested in that will find it linked in my signature.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program: my first post indicating there might be a problem, in its entirety.

While testing Armoured Swordsmen against Dismounted Noble Knights, I discovered that the shield was not doing anything discernable in combat. Armour and Defense Skill numbers in the txt file were affecting unit performance correctly... but armoured swordsmen modified to have 22 shield and no other defense actually did a bit worse in combat than swordsmen with 3 zeros in the defense stats, a fact I initially blew off. You can read about this testing and findings here.

It apparently doesn't end there, however. In more tests trying to see if shields in general were affected, I began messing with Armoured Sergeant shield stats and pitting them against Mailed Knights. I used HRE armoured sgts which I controlled (left sit in initial formation to get charged into until one of the units routed) against English mailed knights. Here's what happened with different unit stat settings for the armoured sergeants:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Notes: I've listed primary defense stats as armour/skill/shield, just like the file does.
Armoured Sergeant Kills/Mailed Knight Kills. AS has 75 men, MK 40 mounted riders.

5/9/0:

34/48 HRE wins
40/37 HRE wins
37/42 HRE wins
38/34 HRE wins
38/36 HRE wins
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187/197

5/9/1:

26/32 HRE wins
40/55 HRE wins
40/50 HRE wins
40/51 HRE wins
39/47 HRE wins
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185/235

5/9/6:

36/62 HRE routs
31/64 HRE routs
34/60 HRE wins
35/66 HRE routs
35/58 HRE wins
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171/310

5/9/26:

25/70 HRE routs
28/67 HRE routs
16/68 HRE routs
17/72 HRE routs
18/73 HRE routs
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104/350

I began with dumping the shield points into the skill stat instead. The sgts performed admirably, sticking it to the knights with men to spare every time. IIRC this was a considerable boost over their vanilla stat performance against the same Mailed Knights.

I then set the shield to 6 to see what effect their default shield had on the unit with it's newly upped defense skill. Not only did it not give the sgts a defense bonus, but it apparently made them get hit more often in battle, taking heavier losses. With 6 more shield points, the unit lost more than half its battles (though both units were always near routing by the end) where it had not lost any at shield 0.

To test further, I went back and made shield 1. Sure enough, the values arrive between the results for shield 0 and the results for shield 6. To confirm the trend I thought I was seeing, I tested with shield pumped all the way to 26... and to my alarm, it did what I was by this point expecting: got the sgts horribly slaughtered.

Needless to say, this is not only bad, it's completely disturbing. First things first though: I'd appreciate if several people could run tests of their own to confirm this is in fact what happens. With these 2 units first to make sure I'm not going mad at the moment, but then with others too to see how widespread the problem is...

*edited to add better description*

Actually I was thinking of asking something like this in the 2h fixes thread. Perhaps the halberds are stomping the swordsmen not because they are overpowered, but because the sword's defense is nerfed?

Hmm, quite disturbing. It would be one thing if for example shields are only contributing to the missile defense while skill only contributes to melee defense, since we could try to rebalance things accordingly. But shields actually having a negative influence in melee means that everything we thought we knew about the stats goes out the window. I'll try to find time later today to do some tests on this.

This does not sound good....

I've been saying for some time that I believed shields were only being applied against missile attack.

Granted, they make a BIG difference when you're under missile attack.

Interesting.... and worrying.

I've noticed the same thing in my Moorish campaign. Urban Militia have total defence rating of 22, so they should be able to stand up against just about any other infantry unit in the game.

Not.

They get chewed up by everything they face.

My understanding is that shields have always had a separate category which applies only to missiles. I have assumed that close combat modifiers for shields are included in either armor or skill modifiers.

I would check two similiar units, one with shields and one without. Find out if either armor or skill modifiers are different. That would tell us where and whether the shield modifies close combat. It should modify one or the other.

Although it is possible, the shield animation may have an impact on combat as well.

Ok, I did my tests, and I am convinced that the shields are borked in melee.

Setting:
Dismounted chivalric knights, France, with shield stat 26
Dismounted chivalric knights, Hungary, with shield stat 0
All else was left as it was, so units were equal in every other respect (I think that they also use the same animation) except that this gave the French a 42 overall def and the Hungarians 16 overall def. I used vanilla animations and everything else was vanilla except the EDU, changed another unrelated unit's stats to make sure I am using the modified EDU with file.first switch, all battles were fought on very hard, grassy plain, normal unit size (60+general), I alternated control of the side for every other battle so it wasn't the difficulty level or the game simply liking the Hungarians, all I did was hit pause at the start and doubleclicked on the enemy then released pause, I did not speed up any of the battles, I didn't count the prisoners in the kills.

The Hungarians won each battle by a large margin. Raw data:

Hungarian kills/French kills
58/18
59/10
51/13
51/16
58/13
52/22
56/33
56/13
43/20
53/11

Mean of Hungarian kills 53.2 +/- 4.6, mean of French kills 16.9 +/- 6.8. Though it would be cool to have an even larger sample size, I think the effect is big enough that it's indiciative of something being wrong here. I won't have time to test it more, but I would be willing to do the stats analysis if anybody wants to continue with and/or contribute to the testing.

A few more notes:
On the occasion when the French killed 33, they got most kills from the charge. When they fled with only 43 killed their general was killed almost right away. I wish I could to the tests without general being in the unit, but it's nevertheless an equal factor for both sides. Btw, the Hungarian general didn't get killed in any of the battles. The animations didn't change as far as I was able to tell when I set the shield at 0 - the Hungarians still used the shield block animation.

The Hungarians usually killed around 52-53 when French general was killed early, and killed 56-59 when he lived and fled. A wild guess and a pure speculation: since the units' morale was 9, and the difference is around 10%, maybe that's how much more morale the general adds to its unit?

I also ran a couple of test battles when the Hungarians had shield stat of 0 and the French shield of 6. Well, the data are: 58/48, 52/38, 58/34, 61/56, 59/42. The Hungarians still won each of the five battles, but the French did much better - another potential indicator that the shield is a hindrance and not of help in melee.

So, foz, I think you should add it to the buglist thread.

Cheers,

this is news... this confirsm some tests ive run, this is prolly the reason (atleast one of them) why Janissary heavy infantry are so great, they mercilessly slaughter even the varangian guard, and the varangian guard stats are about 2x better

Hrvojej, I also think charge is broken, because when the player charge's he kills between 15-25 men, after that your unit gets totally massacred. and kills not more than a few man, around 25 when youre lucky but usually around 10 while you only loose 5-10 in the charge fase. I even saw my varangian guard which i upp with defence skills to 8, get pinned down and more than halved against turkish javelinmen, the varangian stats are great while the javelinmen suck.

and for the Janisary HI, they only get defeated by one unit, dismounted christian guard of the moors. Heavy Billmen, Varangian Guard, Scottish Noble Elite, English Armoured Swordsmen all get mercislessly slaughtered by JHI. the weird thing is that every single unit has better stats then the JHI and also kill more in the charge fase, 15-20 to 5-10.

ill post more stats tomorrow

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jagger

My understanding is that shields have always had a separate category which applies only to missiles. I have assumed that close combat modifiers for shields are included in either armor or skill modifiers.

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If you read the descriptions at the beginning of the export_descr_unit.txt file, it describes stat_armour_ex which apparently had plans to use 2 separate stats for a shield's effect on melee and ranged combat. However it fails to read the file correctly if you uncomment it in any of the units, regardless of commenting out the usual stat_pri_armour line or not doing so. The one actually in use has only one shield field, and therefore it presumably is supposed to apply to both.

Concerning how the stats apply to combat, the diagram posted here is probably the most useful: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...4&postcount=13

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hrvojej

Ok, I did my tests, and I am convinced that the shields are borked in melee.

...

I think you should add it to the buglist thread.

Cheers,

---

Yeah, I was afraid of that. By the same token it's nice to see I wasn't tripping. As for adding it... done.

My big concern now, of course, is what can we do about it? I have 2 ideas at the moment:

1. Add the shield stat instead into the armour field, and wipe out the shield stat. It's easy, but it's not really good. It would bork unit defense in the right and rear quadrants by making it more than intended since it would essentially take the shield points and make them apply everywhere. This would take the fun out of shooting people in the back with HAs, and just do weird things in general. If zeroing the shield has the added effect of making the skill arc 180 degrees, this would also beef up the left defense too much, making the unit have its full defense from left, front, and right.

2. Add the shield stat into the skill field instead, but leave the shield number in its field too. Then figure out how to compensate for the shield's negative impact on melee combat, presumably with adding again a percentage of the shield points into skill. This is basically using skill to make up for the shield not working in melee. It would make the unit have correct armour from the front and rear, higher than intended from the right (b/c of the skill stat that represents parrying being inflated) and lower than intended from the left due to shield still not covering there. That's of course assuming that shield HAS an area of effect assigned to it, and that shield units don't just get the 180 degree cover field from skill that 2-handers apparently have. I can't say either of those for sure at this point, as few things seem to work in this game exactly as they are purported to. In either case this fix would be a bit strange.

I think the only real hope we have though is that the CA team fixes it in the 1.2 patch, as anything we can do to the unit file still seems to bork some other aspect of the unit.

If anyone else has other ideas or further thoughts on mine, as always share 'em.

The question is if there is a reason to do something with it.

The vast majority of units in this game have shields, the others are:

1) Halberds, they have very low stats to compensate for shield "penalty" of said units

2) 2H Axes, they have bugged animation now, may be repaired in next patch. The solution with them is demo animation + change stats to balance them for now.

3) 2H swords, (only Forlorn Hope, Zweihanders and Dismounted GK) and they perform well against shield units, I think.

4) Pikemen, and they are weak unless in special formation, assault units butcher them, shield or not.

There are also some other units, mainly shooters (now i know why my pavise crossbows are so bad in close combat:idea2: ), they can be changed, but nobody complained about them - regarding Pavise crossbows, I think the pavise on their back will really hinder them in CC :)

So my solution is to make changes to 2H units and nothing more.

This would also explain why high-end heavy cavalry with no shields seem to stomp high-end heavy cavalry with shields :\

Why am I not surprised that a bug like this could exist.

@Reverant: All Spear units have them too and they are a BIG part of the mid and early game units. it might help explain why they get so badly butchured by cav charges and peasents too. t probably also borks Scotlands Highland/Noble Highland Archers who get a big defence buff from their sheild and thus become decent line infantry in addittion to ok archers. (Yoeman Longbowmen have worse defence and Retinue Longbowmen have no AP on their CC attack so neithier are fully comparable to Noble Highland Archers, to say nothing of the comparision between Highland Archers and Longbowmen). I doubt te Scot are the only ones with good melee missile units that have sheilds eithier, i've seen a few javlinmen with impressive stats TBH.

Just a thought, since the shield not only doesn't seem to protect, it actually seems to hinder, are we certain that the shield problem isn't more like an inversion in the engine somewhere? Maybe the shield stat is getting turned around into a negative? That sounds likely and shouldn't be too tough to work around.

Upping the skill while leaving the shield seems like a good idea. But we would first need to know approximately how detrimental the shield is for melee. As an example of how to test it, my tests could be repeated with the Hungarians without shield at 8/8/0 and the French at 8/14/6, or the Hungarians at 8/2/0 and the French at 8/8/6, to see whether either of these modifications levels the field. Then we could have a better understanding whether the shield malus is proportional to the shield value, and potentially adjust the EDU stats accordingly for all units. Perhaps this would balance the battles better while we wait for the CA to give us the proper fix. And I sincerely hope they will - I can't really enjoy the game once I know something this major is broken...

I would do the tests once I have some time to spare again, but I don't know when that will be. So if somebody wants to jump in and do the tests in the meantime, that would be great.

I did 10 battles on grassy plain. I choose Feudal dismounted Knights and Norman dismounted Knights, they both have the same stats.

I gave + 6 defence skill to Normans and took shield from Feudals. The V/D ratio was 6/4 for Normans, but the results were pretty tight, so at the start we can roughly estimate the defence skill compensate the negative bonus of shield, needs more testing of course.

The bad thing is the fact computer probably calculates this as bonus for units with higher defence skill and shield, as the bar under map was in favor of unit with Shield + higher skill, :thumbsdown:

So this solution will result in bad autocalculating battles.

I hope they will fix it, but probably not in the next patch...

I just ran a few tests, (English Dismounted Feudal Knights vs DGK, Militia Spears vs Peasants, and Italian Spear Militia vs peasants), only ran the tests once though.

The conditions where simple: In one it was vanilla stats. In the other it had the shield value added to the defence skill, (but no extra to compensate for the shield hindrance).

The Italian Militia tests where inconclusive, but I think that’s because the Italian Militia in the default test killed about 10 more on the charge than with the modified stats and the peasants never recovered. (French Peasants BTW).

The English Dismounted Feudal Knights however showed interesting results. On both tests the knights won, but they took a LOT more losses with vanilla stats.

The Town Militia where even more decisive though. On both occasions the Town Militia Lost. On both occasions the Town militia lost their general late on and fled at 12 men left. HOWEVER, the Peasants had 28 left with vanilla settings and only 18 with modified stats. This IMO is pretty major, if those result where to hold true over a larger sample size then it would be a pretty good bet that the dominance of peasants over spears is more down to borked shields than problems with spars, I also hate to think what it does to their ability against cav as 6 out of their 7 defence comes from their shield so...

Finally my vanilla tests against DGK convinced me of something I’ve suspected for a while, the 2-handed sword animations are SERIOUSLY underpowered. The feudal knights really shouldn't have been winning on either occasion based on raw stats, let alone winning with no more than half losses. I suspect this is why so many 2-Handers get beaten so thoroughly by fixed Bill units and all Halberd units.

UTTERLY DECISIVE EVIDANCE IMHO:

I've got Bill units fixed with the Halberd Militia Animation. With that if you pit Heavy Billmen against Hasidim they slaughter the Hasidim for almost no losses. do the same test but with the Hasidim now having their 6 shield value added to their defence skill and they brought the fight right down to the very wire. their where 6 Billmen left and 1 Hasidim when the Hasidim routed. Both generals where also dead. I don't think a result of that magnitude of variance can be explained away as luck…

EDIT:

Additional Info:

Just tried Mailed Knights against Armoured Sear gents and Spear Militia (England vs. Scotland). Both the Knights and the spear units had the Shield value added to their defence.

Without the changes the Knights beat both units convincingly without having to pull out, (i controlled the spears BTW), the Spear militia were a total loss with almost no kills on the Knights, (all spears where deployed 7 and a half ranks deep, small unit sizes). The Armoured Sergeants killed 20 out of 33.

With the Changes the Spear militia now lost, (again without a re-charge), but this time THEY killed 20 out of 33 Knights before dying. With the Armoured Sergeants they beat them (with heavy losses). The Knights tried to pull out for a re-charge but I followed up and massacred them. down below 20 men left but was still pretty good going if you ask me, especially when you consider that only the very best knights have more than a slight stat increase over mailed knights.

Also the changes seemed to cut an average of 10 kills off the effects of the formed charge in addition to cutting the rate at which the Knights killed the spearmen.

I'm not only convinced of the shield issue now, but I’m also convinced it's responsible for most, (not all though), of the inability of spears to counter cav.

Seeing how the results have gone for people adding the shield into skill directly, things look very promising. I decided to go the other route and simply add the shield value into armour, then zero the shield number. My armoured sergeants against mailed knights now have absolutely epic battles. I've run it more than a few times with both units fixed, and the battles can go either way. The real joy of it is that 65 spearmen don't drop over dead on the initial charge. A decent amount do die on impact, but once melee is joined the sergeants swat the knights pretty well, and the battles typically come down to whether or not the knights can get out of the fray and setup for another good charge or three. The battles are so close that they ALWAYS try now, it's just a matter of whether the spearmen can get on top of them in time to prevent a full-on charge or not.

As for the fixes, I too suspect the shield is negatively impacting combat in the exact amount it's supposed to give a bonus for. The primary observation I make here is from my testing of armoured sergeants vs. mailed knights. I ran a number of runs with sergeants having 2x the shield value added into the defense skill (one to give the shield's bonus, the other to cancel the shield's current negative effect), and the battles with the knights end up feeling exactly the same as the ones I run with sergeants' shield added once to armour value, then shield zeroed.

I've also been thinking about which fix will prove better in the end, and wanted to share my thoughts:

1. Armoured sgts (default 5/3/6) in vanilla should have the following defense values if they were working properly:
a. front 5+3+6=14
b. left 5+6=11
c. right 5+3=8
d. rear 5
2. The skill fix (leaving shield at current value and adding 2x shield to skill) makes Armoured Sergeants (now 5/15/6) have the following defenses:
a. front 5+15-6=14
b. left 5-6=-1
c. right 5+15=20
d. rear 5
3. The armour fix (zeroing shield and adding 1x shield to armour) makes Armoured Sergeants (now 11/3/0) have the following defenses:
a. front 11+3+0=14
b. left 11+0=11
c. right 11+3=14
d. rear 11

Noting point 2b and 2c, we find the values are off by 9 in each case. Similarly 3c and 3d are off, but only by 6. It should be noted that 3 is more powerful in both cases though, where 2 is down 9 on the left and up 9 on the right. I personally prefer the rear to be borked rather than the left, as I'm much bigger on flanking than actually maneuvering to the rear, though I'm sure some people wouldn't agree. I also don't like the 21 point difference that the skill fix causes between the left defense value and the right number... it's simply ludicrous. Both units should perform mostly the same against missiles, as 5+6 = 11+0, which is the sum of the new applicable stats against missile fire in each case. The armour fix unit will have extra defense against missiles on its weapon side now, though... basically as if it could use its shield over there too.

The biggest thing I want to point out, though, is that the armour fix unit has the benefit of not borking the auto-calc at all. It seems to function based on the front (i.e. max) defense value of the unit, and so will assume the skill fix unit is insane in combat due to calculating its defense to be 5+15+6=26 where the armour fix unit still comes out to a nice neat 11+3+0=14. This fact, to me at least, immediately settles the dispute of which to use, and I have already implemented the armour fix on my entire file.

@Revenant: The point is that the bug is probably affecting almost every battle you have, and making everyone avoid all the spear units as well. Additionally, this bug is almost certainly the reason everyone thought the fixed 2h units were so overpowered in the first place. Why would you try to bend a solution around the problem when you could instead remove the actual problem?

I put it that way because I pitted armoured swordsmen with the armour fix against demo-animation dismounted noble knights as I had before... and they fared pretty well actually. In spite of the knights having 21 attack and the powerful armour piercing ability, the swordsmen routinely take 35 or so with them to the grave. That's about 7/12, up from only 2/12 of the enemy unit killed using unfixed swordsmen. That seems totally reasonable given how much more resistant to missile fire the swordsmen are, and the extra 75 per turn upkeep cost of the dismounted noble knights.

Have I mentioned how great it is for combat to take a little time now instead of units just dissolving away, too? :smile:

I think you guys are jumping the gun adding shield values into armor or defense skill... You first need to actually prove that the shield is detrimental, and not simply a 0 value in melee. There hasn't been sufficient testing to prove this yet.

I would suggest someone take a unit that two factions have, and pit same unit vs. same unit (Say, Dismounted Chivalric Knights vs. English Armored Swordsmen, they have the same stats and animations), do a nice exhaustive test series (say at least 20 battles), and then change the shield value of one of the units to 0, and run that test series again, and see if the results have a noticable difference.

Oh and please use the grassy plain battlefield for all testing. Other battlefields introduce too much variability.

This has been confirmed, ok not directly, I didn't do any file editing, but I have noticed that shields are having a negative impact on a units combat ability in general.

Now this isn't very scientific but I pitted about 7 dis gothic knights vs. an equivalent cost armored swordsmen game (I think it was either 7 or 8 arm swordsmen).

Custom game, both sides charged straight at each other.

Now you would think that a 14/14 dis gothic knight would lose to a 13/22 armored swordsmen, since neither has any ap bonuses or such.

It turned out the dis gothic knights won by a ratio of about 50% dead compared to 85% armored swords dead.

Now I know thats not exactly a crushing defeat and alot of it can be contributed to random chance (I tried this 3 times). However, in several other similar tests I find that units not using shields continally do worse to same stat units that have the extra defence in armor or skill instead of shields.

Dismounted Gothics have the uber effective 2h sword animation. Not an even test.

Allow me to submit this as an example of why we haven't proven anything yet.

I just ran a test, Armored Swordsmen vs. Dismounted Chivalric Knights. These units have the same stats, and the same animation set.

I ran four battles controlling the Armored Swordsmen, and four battles controlling the Dismounted Chivalric Knights.

Here are my results. Men remaining at the moment of rout, AS/DCK.

Player controlling AS:
30/2
30/3
23/3
3/12

Player controlling DCK:
19/62
27/41
6/27
19/37


Note the variability in the outcome of these battles. More to the point look at the enormous differences in men remaining from battle to battle.

Now tell me random chance isn't a huge factor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

Hrvojej, I also think charge is broken, because when the player charge's he kills between 15-25 men, after that your unit gets totally massacred. and kills not more than a few man, around 25 when youre lucky but usually around 10 while you only loose 5-10 in the charge fase. I even saw my varangian guard which i upp with defence skills to 8, get pinned down and more than halved against turkish javelinmen, the varangian stats are great while the javelinmen suck.

and for the Janisary HI, they only get defeated by one unit, dismounted christian guard of the moors. Heavy Billmen, Varangian Guard, Scottish Noble Elite, English Armoured Swordsmen all get mercislessly slaughtered by JHI. the weird thing is that every single unit has better stats then the JHI and also kill more in the charge fase, 15-20 to 5-10.

ill post more stats tomorrow

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Mate, this is a very old issue - varangian guard (like every 2handed unit which doesn't use a sword) are bugged and don't get kills except in the initial charge.

Nice research guys - i'll be adding this to the buglist when i get around to updating it and i'll make sure that it's brought to ca's attention (though i'm sure that they know of an issue as large as this)

Disturbing to say the very least. More reason I'm playing EB till the next patch comes out, besides EB being a great game in and of itself.

I would like to point out though for those doing testing that animations are far more important generally speaking to the kill rate and overall effectiveness of a unit then just stats. Keep that in mind when comparing units, with not just different shield ratings and with different animation sets also, and their overall effectiveness. That is to say, JHI trump DFK not just becuase of the shield problem but becuase of the more effective kill animation. Also keep in mind the 2hd bug. Best to use nearly the same unit when doing tests like these.

Also I would suggest alternating who you play as during a test. You will generally get better charges then the AI can produce. Reducing the charge rating to 1 or even 0 may help also.

I'd also agree with that bigtex just said - make sure that you're comparing identical units (from different factions obviously) to make sure that the test is completely fair.

@Sapi & BigTex & Musashi:

Take a look at my Heavy Billmen (HB) vs. Hashashim result.

With a fixed animation on HB, the HB slaughter the Hashashim with few losses. With the extra defence from the shield added to the defence skill they actually hold the HB to a draw.

I also did some tests, (again one test each time), with the following units: Dismounted Conquistadors, Dismounted Feudal Knights, Armoured Swordsmen, Sword and Buckler-Men, and Dismounted Chivalric Knights.

In all these tests the upped defence skill units where able to wipe out approximately half the HB before routing. I'd therefore expect VHI, (Venetian Heavy Infantry), to beat the HB, or come very close.

Now that doesn’t necessarily prove that the shield isn't applying or that it's not helping them in melee, (removing the shield value from Hashashim and seeing what happens would though), however, it DOES seems to cure a LOT of the problems regarding the imbalances between Sword and Shield, and Spear and Shield units and everything else. So regardless it's a good idea IMHO. I've now tested with enough different units to convince me theirs a general trend towards better balanced units.

I'll now run off and test Hashashim with the shield taken away and tell you what happens.

However, to get this out before I run the test, (so people can't say I’m saying it in retrospect), their are 3 possible outcome in my mind:

1. No difference from when they didn't have the extra defence skill, (i.e. they get slaughtered whilst causing few losses). This means that the shield works and isn't a hindrance.

2. They do no different than when they had the extra defence skill with the sheild, (i.e. nearly holding the HB to a draw). This means that the Shield isn't kicking in, (or we'd see increased losses on the Hashashim from the lowered defence), but since where not seeing the Hashashim kill more the shield isn't hindering them.

3. They beat the HB. This first proves the shield isn't working, (in the same way as 2), it also proves that the Shield is probably hindering them. Although their may be some doubt as we don't know how "lucky" the HB where when I tried the single test with added Defence skill. It's also true that if they win by a small amount then it could still be down to random variance and might be better treated s a result 2.

Right I’ll go run the test.

Carl, you're not getting my point. I'm not saying the shield helps in melee. I think it's fair to say that testing bears out that shields are useless in melee. I just dispute the conclusion that they actually HURT a unit's effectiveness. I don't believe we have enough data to make that conclusion yet.

Sorry, misunderstood you.

Just done my tests and some intresting data came up.

With the sheild AND extra defence skill the Hashashiem tended to inflict eithier heavy losses or a near draw before running off. More towards the draw in general.

Without the sheild they inflicted draws, one defeat, and one heavy losses result on the HB.

I also re-ran it with defualt stats as I wanted to check my variances their too. Tended towards low to modarte losses on the HB.

I don't know if the sheild is hindering things as much as some people claim, but it's having some minor negetive effects at the least IMHO. I don't think it's as bad as some people claim though.

I think the severity of the issue may be exaggarated simply because the only way to definitely test something like this (without hundreds of samples) is to raise the stat by an arbitarily large amount; while this is fine for testing we have to remember to take into account the massively inflated stat when analyzing the results.

Good Point Sapi.

"Heavy Billmen against Hasidim they slaughter the Hasidim for almost no losses"

I know it is a typo but I couldn't help thinking of some old Hasidim fellow in Brooklyn brokering a deal for sme diamonds and then getting chased down and hacked to death by Monty Python-like Billmen. :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapi

Mate, this is a very old issue - varangian guard (like every 2handed unit which doesn't use a sword) are bugged and don't get kills except in the initial charge.

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could you then explain to me why JHI totally slaughter every unit...? they use a non sword 2handed weapon... actually the same as the varanigian guard...

has any of you checked what for effect the shield value has on missile fire? before we all start to change things... high shield value might have a big impact on that... so if that is the case... downing the shield value to 0 isnt such a good idea

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

could you then explain to me why JHI totally slaughter every unit...? they use a non sword 2handed weapon... actually the same as the varanigian guard...

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They probably use halberd animation(there is the cool trip attack:), which is very effective. For example Halberd militia has very low stats and is very capable unit too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

has any of you checked what for effect the shield value has on missile fire? before we all start to change things... high shield value might have a big impact on that... so if that is the case... downing the shield value to 0 isnt such a good idea

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There are two solutions. The first one is to transfer shield into armor and armor protects against missiles too. The second is to left shield there, but compensate in raising defence skill, no difference again. But we can test it.

The problem with transfering it to the armour is that it's effected by AP weapons which drasticly changes a number of intended balances.

Any foot unit with a sheild giving 6 defence, (most of the dedicated CC units), will suffer a 3 point defence drop against AP attacks, thats quite a big drop and will defintly mess stuff up IMO. It also has big implications for raking fire and HA firing from the rear.

Really we can't come up with a solution that works and dosen't mess up the Auto-Calc ourselves. I've come to the conclusion you can't have a working Auto-Calc whilst still having everything balanced.

For the sceptics:

The same setup as before (post #9 of this thread), Hungarians vs. French.

Hungarian kills/French kills

52/4
51/14
56/16
52/14
50/17
49/10
49/7
57/13
53/14
41/21

When pooling the results together, the sample size is 20, which is sufficient.
Hungarians won them all, never lost a general, killed 13 French generals. Mean of Hungarian kills 52.35 +/- 4.7, mean of French kills 14.95 +/- 6.15. Variances are equal, test power is 1.0, 95% confidence intervals are cca. 43-61 for Hungarians and cca. 2.5-27.25 for the French, there's less than 1 in 10000 chance of obtaining these results by chance alone. The probability of getting 20 wins in a row by chance alone with everything else being equal is also less than 1 in 10000, and also 1:10000 for killing 13 generals while losing none. And this is for units which nominally had 16 def vs. 42 def, or if shield had no effect on melee then both had the same def of 16!!

The shield has a negative effect on melee. The problem is how to fix it.

Cheers,

edit: sorry, to be perfectly accurate, the chances are 1:10000

Well, now we know why peasants are better in hand to hand than professional spearmen, or why pikemen are so tough Vs infantry swordmen... And so on.

That is...

I don't know whether I shall cry or laugh.

It would be interesting to test the impact on a shooting contest. Give the AI a bow and let it shoot you?

Louis,

Quote:

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Well, now we know why peasants are better in hand to hand than professional spearmen, or why pikemen are so tough Vs infantry swordmen... And so on.

---

Yep. Add it to the defence skill stat and Town Milita can do MAD on Peseants and Militia Spearmen can beat them, (just), lets not even mention what it does for Sword & Sheild units agaisnt fixed Bill units and JHI. Pikes still pwn, but i'd geuss not as hard, (never tried them before I Implemented the fix into my units file~;p).

Wow, this is certainly interesting. First the 2H animation bug and now the shield effectiveness bug O.o

I think even if shields do nothing in melee, something is borked, but if they are actually hindering people in melee (as seems evident) that would explain a lot of the goofiness we see.

Can you put in a negative value for the shield in the statfile? Curious to see if that is possible.

Carl, please stop testing by just adding the shield value to the defense skill field. Every single unit in the game will perform better with this done, provided it has any shield points, so it proves absolutely nothing that a unit modified like this does better in combat.

I would also like to point out that my testing of armoured sergeants vs. mailed knights already helps neutralize one of the most random factors - the charge. I've noticed especially that spear units charge very oddly. Against cav, mostly they stop to group up before charging, but are overrun before getting up to speed and brandishing weapons. That's with a single-click charge. With a double-click charge they are considerably better about getting shield up and weapon out at the right time, but again still sometimes charge in without having weapons and shield set (i.e. fail to have a charge trigger), only to be completely slaughtered. The easiest fix was to not issue a single command to the unit during combat. I did absolutely nothing except set the unit to run speed while it was sitting still in order to chase the knights better when they try to recharge, which should make the situation vary not at all from run to run as I issue no commands. The end result is that my runs for each stat set looked practically identical, down to when the knights would pull out, where they would go to, how the spearmen chased after them, how many of each unit were lost on initial contact... pretty much every way imaginable. The 1 exception from that first post is the first entry under 5/9/1, the 26/32 entry. This one I recall in particular, because it went a little differently. The knight general was killed on charge impact, causing his unit to rout early. Even so, the results appear to be on their way to the typical kill ratio for that stat level.

That leads to another factor that can be removed, though: the morale factor. IIRC, the EDU lists a possible morale factor that locks morale in place so the unit is unable to rout. This seems very promising as it would force combat to the last man instead of allowing the early endings we sometimes get currently.

As an additional note, switching sides in a battle is not a good way to go about things. The idea in testing is to isolate the effect of stat changes to only one of the units in the combat. This means you must do everything identical in your runs, only changing unit stats for ONE of the units for some of the runs in order to gauge what effect that change has on the combat. The idea is that the AI should be forced as much as possible to do the same things in combat, to make the stat change the only possible reason for any difference in combat results.

I think later on (when I'm at home) I'll run some tests using 2 identical units like the DFK and DNK that Revenant mentions in post #18. I'll be doing the following:

1. Units with vanilla stats except: charge set to 0, morale locked if possible to implement. With charge 0, charging should have no impact, which means I can safely leave the unit in my control sit without adversely affecting it... which is exactly what I intend to do.

2. One of the units will have shield value added to skill (+6 skill pts I'm guessing), the other will use 0 shield (probably this is -6 shield pts), so I'm testing to see if skill points equal to shield has the same effect on a unit that removing its shield does. A result of dead even battles will illustrate that positive skill points directly equal negative shield points, i.e. that shield points operate exactly in equal magnitude but the opposite direction than they should. I hypothesize this will be the case, with let's say less than 10 of either group ever surviving the combat.

3. I'll then run a control test to make sure the units are in fact even in vanilla. This should be more important than just noting how even their combat is with #2 stats, as the vanilla stats have to provide results similar to those with #2 stats applied to show the correct relationship between positive skill points and negative shield points.

4. All tests will be run with default custom battle settings. I select grassy plain and hit go, select the 2 factions, pick each unit, and begin battle. I have been doing this already whenever I test, but wanted to be clear what my practices are.

@The Foz: I've allready come to the conclusion that the sheild is borked.

All i was saying is that with the fix i prefer in place, spears give cav and peseants trouble.

In addition, as i pointed out before it DOSEN'T MATTER weather sheilds are borked or not to me, (when i first posted this i though that sheilds where borked but wasn't 100% sure BTW), adding the sheild value to the skill value balances the sheild equpied units out against the 2-handers nearly perfectly IMHO.

It dosen't really matter weather sheilds are working or not. Adding a value equivelent to the sheild value to the sheild units defence skill creates a much more fun and balanced game IMO, (but only IMO).

My only point was that if you DID add the sheild onto the skill then units with sheilds (depending on weather they where spear equiped or sword/mace/axe/hammer equipped), they did much better against cav/2-Handers, especially the really powerful ones.

The idea with Lock morale is good though.

I also ran some Hasashiem tests in case you hadn't noticed where I DID do a scientific test to see if sheild where working.

I've run some tests...

Spanish Musketeers (14 rangedamage, AP) vs Feudal Dismounted (20 Armour, 0 Defense, 20 Shield)

I display the total kills made by my musketeers after 4 volleys, because after 4 volleys the enemy is so close it will charge and the melee will begin.

37 (1st fight)
38 (2nd)
29 (3rd)
35 (4th)
31 (5th)
*********
Now I shall display the results of the same battle only now the Dismounted Feudal Knights have a TOTAL defense of 0 (0 armour, 0 defense, 0 shield)

30 (1st)
32 (2nd)
27 (3rd)
32 (4th)
35 (5th)

I don't know how missiles work then... but it seems like armour nor shield has any significant effect...

Ive also run some tests with rebizond archers and the results were all more or less the same, about 8 kills after 6 volleys... I've changed everything in their defense stats possible but the results remained the same...

Test with some non-AP archer unit. Musketeers can shoot through a lot of armor.

I tested with trebizond archers too... i can post the exact results if you want to... but it comes down to this every battle 6 volleys, 5-12 kills... whatever you change to their defense

By defense, you mean shield? or shield + armour? or overall defense?

Louis,

Ok, I did some tests, as the_foz_4 proposed, I used exactly the same conditions as was his proposal (including morale off). Difficulty was on normal.

I used Dismounted Feudals (charge 0 , shield 0) and Dismounted Normans (charge 0, Shield 6, defence skill + 6)

I ran 10 battles. I controlled Normans at first.
Results: They won in 9 battles from 10! The remaining number of soldiers:5,16,11,35,7,3,7,31,22. In the battle, where Feudals won, 17 of them remained.

One thing I noticed was the fact the computers soldiers enter combat differently from mine soldiers. Computers unit attacked "from move" - they moved and suddenly attacked. My unit moved, then halted in close proximity of enemy and then charged. So this is something we must calculated with.

Then I ran another ten battles, but controlled Feudals, nothing changed.
Results: They won in 9 battles from 10! (what a surprise...) The remaining number of soldiers: 16,27,18,11,18,8,22,6,7. In the one battle, when Normans won, 7 of them remained.

Conclusion:

In the first set of battles, 137 soldiers remained on victorious side, in the second, 133. I think the results are pretty similar, so the shield probably really give penalty to defence as high as is its number.

But then we have the massive discrepancy between win/loss ratio of human vs. computer controlled unit with supposedly similar stats...

I will do another set of tests, this time with units using vanilla stats.

But it seems that even the computer ability to control units is bad.

Hmm this would be another biggie, if proved with conviction.

i think i have another one.

i thought i'd run some tests with retinue longbowmen. the numbers are the kills scored by my longbowman after 6 volleys.

Retinue longbowman (8 attack AP) vs Dismounted Feudal (20 armour, 20 defense, 20 shield)

14 (1st battle)
5 (2nd)
17 (3rd)
5 (4th)
10 (5th)

so then i thought instead of changing the defense stats of the dismounted nobles, what would happen if i lowered the attack of the longbowmen... so here are the results... they will be shocking

retinue longbowmen (attack 0, i removed armourpiercing) dismounted feudal remained the same as above.

in my first battle my longbowmen scored 15 kills after 6 volleys... i found this so shocking i ran down to post this... i shall continue further tests but plz maybe someone else can do a similar test... maybe im just tripping

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Carl

Yep. Add it to the defence skill stat and Town Milita can do MAD on Peseants and Militia Spearmen can beat them, (just), lets not even mention what it does for Sword & Sheild units agaisnt fixed Bill units and JHI. Pikes still pwn, but i'd geuss not as hard, (never tried them before I Implemented the fix into my units file~;p).

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Try them with twice the shield amount added into the skill field or shield added to armour then shield zeroed. I bet the spears will win the fight like you'd expect from how the vanilla unit sheet reads.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ulstan

Can you put in a negative value for the shield in the statfile? Curious to see if that is possible.

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Not sure... but if you can and do, it will probably bork the unit's ranged defense instead then, so this is no solution.

Odd results you have there Stranger, directly conflicting what I found from letting crossbow militia fire on a stationary unit of swordsmen. I only ran once each setting, but got good enough looking results with different shield values that I didn't do more - the shield cut down the swordsmen losses due to the crossbow's full ammo complement the higher it was set.

As for the newest results by Rev... oh *expletive deleted*

I saw someone post before that it might be easier to list the things in the game that work correctly than to list bugs - and sadly, it may actually be correct.

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

i continued with the same stats as above and fought 4 more battles

results are 19 kills, 15 kills, 15 kills, 14 kills

i ran another test. because your tests confirmed that the shield value isnt added but distracted i also changed the feudal knigts stats. also because i feared that the melee stats may have been switched for missile stats i lowered those too.

Retinue (0 missile attack, 0 melee attack) Feudal (60 armour, 0 defense, 0 shield)

i only fought 2 battles because i thought the results are clear as it seems

1st battle: 15 kills
2nd battle: 9 kills

it seems that missile fire is totally random... its weird but not entirely gamebreaking

I'll go off and run some archer tests too as those results are defintly VERY worrying.

p.s. @Your Reply Foz: Thats what i'd expect and i've been tempted to increase the Defence skill of all sheild units a furthar 2 points to try and compansate without borking Auto-Calc any more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by the_foz_4

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

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Hey, I know how the stats are organized. I also checked the stats of the units when i was selecting my armies. The unit with shield + upped defence skill has defence higher than the other unit of 12 points. Only thing I should mentioned is that both units had charge 1 despite I changed it to zero in datasheet .

this is weird... because the longbowmen gave such a weird result i tried this.

Feudal dismounted (total attack 0, Total Defence 0) DFK (TA 0, TD 0)

result killed 47 enemies lost 57 men... your units still fight even if all their stats are 0

but what was even weirder is that i fought with those 0 stats feudal knights agains normal stats byzantine infantry... I WON?!?!

i killed 40 lost 11...

I'm starting to fear that somehow the game doesnt implements the changes i make even though i do save the changes made in the text files...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

this is weird... because the longbowmen gave such a weird result i tried this.

Feudal dismounted (total attack 0, Total Defence 0) DFK (TA 0, TD 0)

result killed 47 enemies lost 57 men... your units still fight even if all their stats are 0

but what was even weirder is that i fought with those 0 stats feudal knights agains normal stats byzantine infantry... I WON?!?!

i killed 40 lost 11...

I'm starting to fear that somehow the game doesnt implements the changes i make even though i do save the changes made in the text files...

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Do you check the stats of the units before battle?

hmmm i think all i just posted can be denied... somehow my game shows the changes... but doesnt change anything... im not sure what happend

i do check the stats... shows what i changed in the text... but somehow it doesnt change...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by the_foz_4

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

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Lol... my bad. That comment was meant for The Stranger to check those things, since he is having the TOTALLY off the wall archer unit test results that apparently reflect none of his changes to the file. My apologies Rev. I didn't (and still don't) mean to step on any toes, it's just difficult to tell who knows how much on here, so I'm trying to take some precautions by eliminating potential sources of error.

Your stuff is intriguing Rev, though I'm not totally surprised since the AI is involved.

@Stranger: My only idea here is to make sure you check that stuff I listed, though I don't have any idea why your game would list the stat changes but not apply them...

hmmm i cant find the problem... im going to sleep... :P i made a total idiot out of myself... its stupid though... what i change in the building files is aplied...

Well just to confrim it I did some tests with Retinue Longbowmne shooting at DGK. 7 volleys each time:

Basic

13
26
24
24
24

No AP

19
16
17
11
10

Ap and 20 Missile Attack

40
30
32
29
39

Pretty clear to me. Didn't check the effects of defence as i'm willing to assume AP works as advertised and modifies defence anyway.

Knowing that animations truly are what most units draw their power from. Has anyone taken the time to look at the attack and kill animations of the same units, with and without a shield stat? It may be that the shield stat somehow slow's them, or somehow adds an interupting parry movement that lock's them from really attacking. Need to go off to work so I can't test this atm.

Also The Stranger, common problem. Make sure your .bat file is correctly worded and it's located in the M2TW folder.

Testing results are coming out right now. I've got the following units having at each other:

Dismounted Feudal Knights, England
stat_pri 13, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 14, 6, metal
stat_mental 9, normal, trained, lock_morale

Dismounted Norman Knights, Sicily
stat_pri 13, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 8, 0, metal
stat_mental 9, normal, trained, lock_morale

I'll be controlling (letting sit) the DFKs.

Pre-combat mouse-over shows 13/27/1 (atk/def/cha) as DFK stats, 13/15/1 for DNK, which is as expected. Results are DFK kills/DNK kills.

01. 59/61
02. 53/61
03. 61/43
04. 57/61
05. 61/43
06. 51/61
07. 54/61
08. 61/39
09. 45/61
10. 47/61
11. 47/61
12. 39/61
13. 49/61
14. 49/61
15. 61/58
16. 61/59
17. 45/61
18. 37/61
19. 51/61
20. 61/43
---------
1049/1139

Difference of 90 kills, 90/20 = 4.5 kills per test run advantage for the DNK, which from observation appeared to be due to getting a few extra kills when they charged into the stationary DFKs. As the result favors the unit with shield removed instead of the one with equal skill added, one would conclude that if anything the shield detracts a little more than its indicated value, but from my observation and how close these results are, I feel good saying it detracts a roughly equal amount. We'll know if my observation is correct as soon as I run off results for the vanilla units. If they come out roughly the same, I win :smile:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Revenant

But then we have the massive discrepancy between win/loss ratio of human vs. computer controlled unit with supposedly similar stats...

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Did you do your tests on medium difficulty? If so, the medium difficulty level might be slightly biased towards the player, and therefore the player wins more often. I though that the best way to counteract this was to use the very hard difficulty for the tests, since if anything it should be biased against the player (even though from what I've gathered from the forums on VH the battles are in fact balanced). This is also a problem if all of the test runs are done by player controlling only one side - the effect of difficulty level cannot be discarded, which is not the case if you alternate which side you are controlling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BigTex

Knowing that animations truly are what most units draw their power from. Has anyone taken the time to look at the attack and kill animations of the same units, with and without a shield stat? It may be that the shield stat somehow slow's them, or somehow adds an interupting parry movement that lock's them from really attacking.

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I watched closely all my test runs, and though I have no numbers to show for this, from what I've seen the animations were the same. The French simply got slaughtered really quickly after the charge.

EDIT:
For missiles, the things are a bit more complicated. I think they actually have to hit the model of a man in the target unit unit before the att vs. def is even compared, and I think that the hit rate is dependent on more than just stats. Also, you have a lot more variables to consider: the general scatter of the projectiles, the speed of the target unit if it's moving, the actual density of the soldiers in the target unit, the spatial arrangement of the firing unit (perhaps the shooters are blocking each other), perhaps even angles (I seem to get almost no kills from those 90 degree 'high shots'), etc. While some of these things could be affecting the melee as well, it is my impression that they would more pronounced when trying out ranged combat. Hence, if the effects are small, whoever tests this would have to be very careful to control for as many of the things as possible and also to do a lot more test runs because of the larger inherent potential for variability. Of course, another thing that would help would be to push the stats to the extreme in an attempt to increase the effect size.

Cheers,

Results part 2. This time it's the same 2 units, but both set to have the same stats. I used the stats from my proposed armour-fix for the shield problem, since that was the easiest. The actual stats should not matter at all except that they are identical for the 2 units I'm testing, but for the sake of completeness, the defense of each unit is now 13 armour/8 skill/0 shield. As always, results go DFK kills/DNK kills.

DFK 13/8/0 vs. DNK 13/8/0

01. 38/61
02. 61/30
03. 44/61
04. 61/36
05. 56/61
06. 61/57
07. 56/61
08. 44/61
09. 61/41
10. 34/61
---------
516/530 difference 14/10 = 1.4 advantage to DNK.

The advantage of DNK is not quite as high as the previous 4.5 per run, but it is close enough to easily be considered a similar result. Likewise I suspect that the armour-fixed units I used here are operating at a higher effective front defense rating (an effective 21 instead of the effective 15 anticipated in the previous DFK vs. DNK test), thus meaning the advantage gained by DNK from having the initial charge into a still unit of DFK would be substantially lessened as we see here. All signs point to the shield stat directly giving minus defense points in close combat.

I'll hopefully run the other 10 of these tests at some later point as I'm tested out at the moment...

the_foz_4: so your proposal for now is to direct convert shield value into armor?

The shield seems to be working as intended against missile fire, as is armor. I ran lots of peasant bowmen target tests when researching the armor upgrade problem and units with shields were consistently tougher. Spear militia and pike militia both have 1 skill and no armor, yet the spears take 30% less casualties on average from normal missile fire due to their 6 points of shield. If they have armor in addition to a shield (like Italian spear militia with 4 points of padded) then it can cut their losses by 50%.

Melee is a very tricky thing to test. Often one side gets hopelessly muddled and doesn't even strike back when charged, giving the attackers a 'free' strike at the enemy, regardless of whether you set the charge bonus high or low. This tends to mean that combat tests are inaccurate as the side who didn't bug and charged successfully first inflicts disproportionate casualties. I've run tests where vanilla JHI massacred everything and tests where they got stomped badly. Unless a dev comments on this, I am reluctant to rely on combat tests to prove anything major.

I'm not great at testing these things so i'd like to pass on a proposal.

Can someone test (with identical units obviously, dfk and dnk seem to be the popular ones) a unit with 0/5/0 attack/shield/skill vs a unit with 5/5/5 (i think we shouldn't use 0 as it seems to be unpredictable) and then 0/0/5 vs 5/5/5 instead of doing both modifications at once....

The test results we're getting are interesting but imo in no way a fair test (as more than one variable is often changed).

If you want to test adding shield to def skill, test with just shield, then just skill, then shield + skill

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Revenant

the_foz_4: so your proposal for now is to direct convert shield value into armor?

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It sure is. Both fixes have the disadvantage of borking other aspects of the unit left/right/rear defense as I mentioned in a previous post. As dumping shield into the armour stat keeps the game's impression of the unit's defense value the same, it should end up being the fix that maintains the current functionality of auto-calc, where skill-fixing the units presumably will make auto-calc heavily favor units that have high-valued shields. This is due to the game calculating defense as Armour+Skill+Shield, arriving at a value that has 2 times the shield added into it with the skill fix. You can tell that for the purposes of figuring out balance the game uses the shield stat correctly... because when you boost the shield stat of a unit and nothing else in a 1v1 mirror match (like the DFK v DNK I've been testing), that unit will be noticeably favored in the blue and red bar at the bottom of the screen at the start of the battle.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapi

I'm not great at testing these things so i'd like to pass on a proposal.

Can someone test (with identical units obviously, dfk and dnk seem to be the popular ones) a unit with 0/5/0 attack/shield/skill vs a unit with 5/5/5 (i think we shouldn't use 0 as it seems to be unpredictable) and then 0/0/5 vs 5/5/5 instead of doing both modifications at once....

The test results we're getting are interesting but imo in no way a fair test (as more than one variable is often changed).

If you want to test adding shield to def skill, test with just shield, then just skill, then shield + skill

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I may do so tomorrow if I'm really motivated... but I sorta doubt it. I might actually want to play the game one of these days, lol. It'd be really cool if someone else could do it. If not then I'll probably get to it soonish.

As for the "add shield to skill" thing I hear everyone mention, I don't call that a fix at all. There is clearly some detriment associated with shield usage. Adding shield to skill will give the unit the defense it should already be getting from the shield, but does nothing to account for the extra detriment of the shield stat. So while it is better than vanilla, this will still leave your shield units underpowered in combat. The skill fix I've mentioned is to add TWICE the shield into the skill field, and IMO it makes the units behave how you expect based on their stats. No more of this town militia being stomped by peasants garbage, or cavalry just plowing through spear units like they're not even there. It makes things act intuitively how the stat sheet says they should, which is one main reason I am set on thinking I've assessed the situation correctly.

The other has nothing to do with testing, and everything to do with my experience writing code. The sum of that experience tells me that in cases like this, the thing that almost always is at fault is that the programmer put the wrong sign somewhere in the code or omitted one that was needed, and so something gets subtracted instead of added or vice versa. So in my estimation there is a relatively small chance that, having noticed that the shield has some sort of negative effect instead of a positive one, it would be in any amount other than the amount of the shield field.

In any case, I am satisfied enough with the various results to stick by my assessment of the situation until evidence appears to the contrary.

Also since some of you are undoubtedly wondering how the heck I found the time to mod my entire EDU file with the armour fix, I'll just say that... I didn't. I wrote a program to do so. I'll see if I can find time to get it posted sometime tomorrow in case other people would like to apply it. Should I post a fixed EDU file, or the exe that fixes the file?

i can do it... i found the problem :P... this time i shall have real results ;)

Having just stepped back into the forum after about 2 months I have to make the following point.

Keeping in mind the 2 handed issue and now this shield issue;

Can you all imagine the delicate balancing act that has had to be done on play testing with these two issues not working correctly in the background this whole time!!??

Just think about it for the moment....assuming CA knew about both issues from the beginning...how do they compensate to get the game out on schedule, but somehow re-balance the gameplay to reduce the effect of these two "issues" so they don't become real "show stoppers"?

I pray that CA already knew about this "issue", because if they find out now by reading this post, then it wont be corrected in time for the next "update".

I still want to see vanilla vs 0 shield testing exhaustive enough to prove that the shield is (Or is not) a detriment. If it's just not any help in melee, I don't care... I'm fine with it only being applied to missile fire. I'm only concerned if it actually hurts in melee, and the only way to prove that is vanilla vs 0 shield tests with identical shield bearing units. The 0 shield stats should be vanilla stats, with just the shield zeroed out, and not added into something else.

Try the sheerwood archers that have 0 shield points against feudal knights and you'll see the usulessness of the shield:furious3:

That doesn't prove anything. They're different units.

I decided to do a truly controlled test, by copying the entry for dismounted chivalric knights, and pasting it as a new unit called "test knights". Two units with exactly the same stats, same unit entry in the modeldb file, and therefore same animation set, everything.

I got a little over halfway done with my control set (Vanilla stats with the charge bonus zeroed out) but unfortunately medieval has decided to stop working for me now.

Musashi,

I'm not really sure I could accept shields just working for missile fire only.

That's simply not viable in my opinion.

The mere fact they could be detrimental in melee combat is laughable. I'll be interested to see how your test goes once you have the game back up and running.:2thumbsup:

I hate to say it... but I'm convinced. I ran a 20 battle control set. The difference in performance between the two units was negligible. I ran my test set and quit after five battles. It was obvious. Suddenly the unit that I zeroed the shield on was winning by 30-50 kills reliably.

Clearly Shield value hurts a unit's performance in melee. I still can't say whether this is because it applies a negative to armor, or because it introduces an extra animation that slows their attack rate however.

For the sake of completeness, this is my control set data:

Code:

---

#############################################
## Control Set                            ##
#############################################
## Test ##  DCK  ##  TSK  ## Win ## Loss ##
#############################################
##      ##        ##        ##    ##      ##     
##  1  ##  119  ##  107  ##  X  ##      ##
##  2  ##  120  ##  111  ##  X  ##      ##
##  3  ##  116  ##  100  ##  X  ##      ##
##  4  ##  100  ##  116  ##    ##  X  ##
##  5  ##  106  ##  119  ##    ##  X  ##
##  6  ##  112  ##  119  ##    ##  X  ##
##  7  ##  119  ##  105  ##  X  ##      ##
##  8  ##  100  ##    97  ##  X  ##      ##
##  9  ##  120  ##  109  ##  X  ##      ##
##  10  ##    96  ##    97  ##    ##  X  ##
##  11  ##  118  ##  108  ##  X  ##      ##
##  12  ##  113  ##  119  ##    ##  X  ##
##  13  ##  115  ##    96  ##  X  ##      ##
##  14  ##  118  ##    97  ##  X  ##      ##
##  15  ##  119  ##  108  ##  X  ##      ##
##  16  ##  120  ##  111  ##  X  ##      ##
##  17  ##  118  ##  108  ##  X  ##      ##
##  18  ##    95  ##  118  ##    ##  X  ##
##  19  ##  112  ##  119  ##    ##  X  ##
##  20  ##  109  ##  119  ##    ##  X  ##
#############################################
## Tot. ##  2245  ##  2183  ##  12 ##  8  ##
#############################################
## Mean ## 112.25 ## 109.15 #################
#############################################
## W/L Ratio  ###############    3:2      ##
#############################################

---

As you can see it's within the tolerances of "normal distribution" for a 50/50 system.

The first five battles of the test set looked more like 90/50, 100/60, etc. I just threw in the towel.