Armour Values

[SFraser]

There certainly are some unusual discrepancies.

As for your other point I wouldn't know how the EB team go about defining the values, but I would say in my experience that the fighting performance and behaviour of most units fits the decription rather than the individual statistics fitting the appearance of the unit. Camillan Hastati versus Botroas is an excellent example of how slightly confusing statistics individually produce an excellent variety of behaviour that perfectly suits the unit description and historical information given. I'm not saying that is the premise from the outset, but I would expect some "creative license" with statistics in order to produce the desired effect.

I think what is important is the effect of the statistics themselves rather than what they are supposed to represent in terms direct equation to equipment. An unarmoured unit like Milnaht or even Gaesatae that is supposed to be immense in close melee is not going to fare particularly well in close melee when they have zero for their armour statistic. According to EB the Jugundiz with no shirt have an armour of 0, Botroas with no shirt have an armour of 1, Milnaht with no shirt but helmet have an armour of 5, Bataroas with shirt and helmet have armour of 6 and Drwdae in their chainmail have an armour of 10.

Like others have said I don't think wearing a helmet warrants +5 armour when a chain shirt does the same, but I don't think the differences can be rationalised in this way. It is a similar issue with shields, does a cheap wooden buckler used by slingers honestly give half the protection of a scutum? In terms of pure defensive value, surely something like a scutum should be giving a higher protection value than any other piece of equipment in the game? What would you rather bring to the battlefield, a massive and well designed human sized board of reinforced wood held at arms length, or go naked but for a helmet?

The nature of large shields like the scutum is that they are "almost" omni directional in that you can "hide" behind them, and in large groups they present pretty much a wooden wall with sharp objects sticking out from the gaps. The game doesn't account for this, so omni-directional combat ability of soldiers + styles + equipment must be factored into the armour rating or defense skill etc.

I wouldn't go around thinking of armour equalling the actual armour worn, but the defense capability of the unit from multiple directions. Likewise when wielding a scutum, a high shield value would only work in two directions for a single man and would not represent the actual capability of an entire unit wielding scutums.

I could be totally off the mark here, but if I was involved in something like EB I would be considering the weaknesses in the combat engine for representing abilities on the field of battle, in order to produce a more realistic end result. You don't want your Hastati with their wooden walls dying like flies because they are engaged from the front and being pelted by slingers from the rear, so only ten men turn to face the slingers and their ingame scutums offer no protection to the other hundred men not yet engaged and completely oblivious to the death being chucked at them.

When this happens ingame currently, the armour value of the Hastati is actually higher than the value of the shield, so the unarmoured Hastati are actually better defended than if they had 0 for all stats and had a shield facing the slingers (not entireally true due to AP + shield boni but you get the point). I think this is a clear example of how the shield itself is not directly represented by the shield value, but is abstracted for the units defence as a whole. Ofcourse this will result in imperfect consequences in other contexts, but the fundamental game mechanics themselves are not perfect.

In future I would like see more variables or "bonuses" involved in equipment and defence values, for example different shield sizes taken into account (light and heavy for example) and providing additional defence to the unit as a whole, but that kind of thing is for the future.