Armor and Hitpoints

[Rurik the Chieftain]

How exactly does armor and hitpoints work? Does armor subtract damage from attacks, or ignore attacks below a certain strength? Do hitpoints only subtract 1 no matter how much damage is dealt, or are they directly subtracted by the damage dealt?

Anyone who answers with be greatly rewarded with...self-satisfaction.

[lars573]

I think the way it works is that how well a individual soldier can servive in combat is the combination of his armour value, defense skill (the soldiers individual skill at keeping enemy pointy things away from his fleshy bits), and his shield. I seem to remember some one here stating that the combat in TW games works like an RPG when a soldier attacks another, , there is a combat roll of his attack value verses his opponents defense value, this is for 1 count'em 1 soldier in a unit of 80 or 120 (it's repeated for every guy in the unit). If the attack succeds then it takes away 1 hit point from that particular soldier in that unit. But since most guys only have 1 hit point it means they die. But if the unit has 2 or 3 hit points it will take 2 or 3 sucessful attacks to kill 1 soldier of the unit. IIRC Arcani and most chariots types have 2 hit points and elephants have 3.

[Ludens]

I am not sure how it works in R:TW, but I guess it is the same as in M:TW and S:TW. Each individual soldier has 1 hitpoint and each successful attack (a hit) by a melee or missile weapon subtracts that one hitpoint from the target. In most cases the target will die, but elephants, chariots, generals and a few other units have more hitpoints so can take more hits. Armour and defence reduce the chance that an attack is successful (while attack and charge bonuses increase it), thus making an attacker score less hits.

Artillery weapons off course kill even when the target has more than one hitpoint. It would look rather silly if a general survived been hit by a catapult rock.

[Red Harvest]

IIRC Arcani and most chariots types have 2 hit points and elephants have 3.

Most chariots have 3 hitpoints, some 2. Elephants have 10 or 12 depending on type (12 and 15 respectively pre-patch.) Bodyguard units and some special units have 2 hit points. The high mulitiple hitpoints make elephants nearly invulnerable to normal missile attack (archery of non-flaming variety, slingers, javelin, pila.) This is counter to history unfortunately. Elephants are more vulnerable to cavalry than missile units (non-flaming) and that is so backwards as to make my head spin. It is hard to mod the tendencies out, since the are deeply engrained in the game engine.

High hitpoints = arrow sponge since it takes alot of accumulated damage before the first kill occurs. Armour protects from missile attack, but defensive skill does not. So the high armour value for elephants also artificially raises the bar for missiles (so I've modded them to up defensive skill, but reduce armour.) Shields also are used as defense to frontal missile attack.