Investigation of unit build costs

[MajorFreak]

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.

[Kraxis]

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.

[MajorFreak]

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

[Kraxis]

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.

[player1]

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.

[MajorFreak]

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?