Holy Cow - Armor Upgrades

[Kazakh]

He means the defense... but i think it's a feature rather than a bug.
Usually you can upgrade to full plate only if you already have partial plate (it wouldn't make sense to upgrade archers or other 'fast' non-armoured untis to heavy armor), right? There's no big difference between partial and full plate, like there is no big difference between light and heavy mail, hence the same increment of only 1 point. But some units like militia pikemen that starting with no armor can upgrade all the way up to partial plate get +3 armor...

[akodo]

That sounds pretty reasonable. If a heavy swordsmen unit has 11 armor and spear militia 2, than its logical that one level of upgrade shall give them one point of armor, never mind if its light mail or full plate.

[sapi]

But that's not how the game works it, you see.

For example, militiamen (with padded armour) have 3 defense from armour, and peasants have 0. Now, it's logical that upgrading peasants to padded armour would give them +3 defense to bring them equal to the militiamen, but it only gives +1.

Thus, you can be up to some form of mail in looks when the unit has only gained armour equivalent to padded leather.

[Kazakh]

It's a simple rule, the first upgrade gives you +1 armor, the second +2 and so on.. to make things simple. Maybe it's a balancing issue, at CA they thought peasants should never be as good as militia. If you think that's not realistic, let's say peasants get smaller and simpler padded armors. Anyway that's only my opinion, i'd like to see a mod about that.

[pevergreen]

Ive heard its possible, but no one has been bothered to go through and manually change each one
eg
Spanish_town_milita 0 1 2 3
Spanish_spear_milita 0 1 2 3

It would take a long time.

[Musashi]

It's not possible, because the line that would allow it can't be uncommented without crashing the game.

In other words, the engine won't support it.

At least, not unless someone finds a workaround.

[Lorenzo_H]

I have the Heavy Armourer or whatever the one that costs 10000 florins is called, but it still apears that my soldiers only get a bronze armour symbol. Why is this?

[General Zhukov]

I have the Heavy Armourer or whatever the one that costs 10000 florins is called, but it still apears that my soldiers only get a bronze armour symbol. Why is this?

Some units that already have heavy plate can only be upgraded once or twice more by the high level armorer.

[Quillan]

Not every unit can have the same number of armor upgrades. The number each can have is determined by the files. Most can have 1, some can have 2, and a very few can have 3. It can be a rather drastic difference, too. Spanish Tercio Pikemen can have 2 armor upgrades. The second should put them in half-plate for an armor rating of 6; it actually gives them a 2. But as Musashi said, people found the line that shows what the armor should be with the upgrades, and it's commented out. Removing the semicolon in front of the line causes the game to crash. I don't know if it's an unfinished feature or something they just couldn't get working and left in the files.

[Vladimir]

...Now, it's logical that upgrading peasants to padded armour would give them +3 defense to bring them equal to the militiamen, but it only gives +1.

No . It's not D&D. You wouldn't throw equal quality leather armor on a peasant that you would on a militiaman.

[Snoil The Mighty]

I would expect that the reason the defenses still vary a bit is that the defense number is supposed to reflect the fact that defense is also imparted by training, weapon type and so on. So I don't have a problem with militia and peasants both wearing leather armor and still having different defense numbers for gameplay purposes, just as a for-instance.

[Eltharon]

Well, take italian militia (4 armor, excluding shield). They have padded. Now take Pikemen with plate armor. The pikemen have 3 armor. A unit that starts with no armor can have max armor upgrades and it still wont be higher then leather armed militia. Thats the problem.

[dopp]

Defense skill is separate from armor. The armor is clearly intended to be consistent; padded is always 4, light mail is always 5 and so on. Just scan the units file, it's consistent all the way through. It's not D&D, but partial plate for a peasant shouldn't be poorer than mere padded armor for a militiaman (3 vs 4).

Most armor levels are just +1 so it's usually not a big problem, but the first armor level, padded, is 4 compared to 0 for unarmored. Thus any unit which starts unarmored is gimped compared to units which are recruited with armor. This includes most "modern" units, militia, peasants and many Muslim units. The idea is that they start off useless but you can upgrade their performance through their armor, but now you can't do so effectively because the feature has been disabled. Hence the complaint that pikemen in partial plate are not noticably tougher than before is actually quite true; they only have a fraction of the armor they should be getting if they "followed the rules consistently" (3 instead of 7).

Quickfix: give all unarmored units 3 points of armor. The first upgrade will then give them 4 points, the second 5 and so on, bringing them more in line with the armored units. They'll be a little tougher than they 'should be' to begin with, but since even the AI rapidly builds leather tanners to upgrade them it won't be noticable after the first 10 turns or so.

Open the export_descr_units file. Bring up the 'replace' function and search for:

stat_pri_armour 0

Replace that with:

stat_pri_armour 3

This should give all unarmored units in the game 3 points of armor. Now do a search for:

armour_ug_levels 0

Change the stat_pri_armour back to 0 for any unit that doesn't have values following that line, because it can't be upgraded in the first place. This includes merc units like Swiss Pikemen, all ships, light African soldiers and so on.

Run the modded file. The changes should appear ingame immediately.

Edit: Pikemen go up only to heavy mail, not partial plate. A lot of 'modern' units wear breastplates for their heavy mail upgrade.

[Spark]

On a side note regarding defense rating and armor rating;

The way I understand it is that a person getting attacked from the front gets to use his full defense rating (armor+skill+shield), whereas an attack to the shield side checks armor+shield, an attack to the non-shield side checks armor+skill for defense rating, and an attack to the back only checks armor rating.

i.e. unit with 5 armor, 4 skill, 3 shield (total defense: 12) would get 12 defense from the front, 9 from the left (shield side), 8 from the right (weapon side) and 5 from the back.


So if you have a unit not using a shield, does the "skill" defense rating apply to both left and right hand sides, or do you just get a 0 for attacks to the left side?

i.e. unit with 7 armor, 5 skill (total defense: 12) would get 12 defense from the front, 12 from the right, 12 from the left, and 7 from the back? Or would you just get 7 defense from the left side?

(p.s. this is from the last page of the FAUST linked here)

[econ21]

Most armor levels are just +1 so it's usually not a big problem, but the first armor level, padded, is 4 compared to 0 for unarmored. Thus any unit which starts unarmored is gimped compared to units which are recruited with armor.

I rather like your workaround, but the gimping unarmoured troops (that remain unarmoured) is a feature, not a bug, IMO. Giving unarmoured troops armour 3 rather than armour 0 will considerably weaken the effect of armour compared to what CA intended. I remember being taken about in MTW at how much of an advantage having some armour was. But if you think about it, it's not unreasonable - apparently, even Medieval padded armour offered pretty good protection (e.g. against missiles) and so chainmail was often worn over a thick undercoat.

I would rather CA fix the gimping of unarmoured troops that get armour upgrades properly by making incremental padded armour give you +4, not +1; and so on for later upgrades etc.