The Shield Problem(s)

[PaulTa]

I know this is a little off topic here, but in regards to the two handed units...

Just looking at the Stat's for Zweihanders or Gothic knights, I think it's ridiculous that a sword nearly twice as long is only given one extra point of damage compared to the swords of DFK.

[PwnageBot2000]

According to an old guide for the first medieval total war. it's true that shields only protect against missile fire, and infact, some are just for show (as discovered by testers).

[Revenant]

According to an old guide for the first medieval total war. it's true that shields only protect against missile fire, and infact, some are just for show (as discovered by testers).

That is not entirelly true.

In MTW, shields worked in H2H combat, it is sure thing.

Some shields did not work in H2H, there was an option for it in units datafile (Varangian guard, huscarles etc.)

And there was attribute for shield in unit´s text datafile, where was value for particular shield in particular unit. Some shields had wery low attribute.

But this is entirelly different thing, no such attributes in MTW2export_descr_units.txt.

[Lusted]

So what is the recommended way of fixing this? Adding shield value to defense skill, or removing shield value and adding it to skill?

[Musashi]

They all have side effects... Dropping shield and putting it into skill makes them more vulnerable to missile attack. Putting double into skill makes them overpowered for autocalc (Although it's probably the most perfect solution for actual battle). Adding it into armor makes them more resistant to missile fire than they should be, since it protects from all sides...

[Revenant]

So what is the recommended way of fixing this? Adding shield value to defense skill, or removing shield value and adding it to skill?

For now the best way is to remove shield value and add it to armor instead. But it weakens such tactics as shooting at said unit form behind.

@Musashi: You were faster :)

[Lusted]

They all have side effects... Dropping shield and putting it into skill makes them more vulnerable to missile attack. Putting double into skill makes them overpowered for autocalc (Although it's probably the most perfect solution for actual battle). Adding it into armor makes them more resistant to missile fire than they should be, since it protects from all sides...

So they're not really fixes, they're just making other things unbalanced.

If thats the case i dont mind about this bug, as even with it units are pretty well balanced in my LTc mod thanks to other tweaks i've made.

[The Stranger]

i think you should leave on the shield value because it works against arrows... but you should also add the same amount the shield distracts instead of adds to the defence value. Adding it to the armour wouldnt be that smart because it would greatly improve the effect of armour piercing units. Because the shield bug distracts points in their defensive ability and they will die faster i think that adding points to the defensevalue is good because they can now better defend themself...

[The Stranger]

I know this is a little off topic here, but in regards to the two handed units...

Just looking at the Stat's for Zweihanders or Gothic knights, I think it's ridiculous that a sword nearly twice as long is only given one extra point of damage compared to the swords of DFK.

IIRC their swords have the Armour Piercing bonus which makes their attack 2x more effective against armoured units.

[Lusted]

i think you should leave on the shield value because it works against arrows... but you should also add the same amount the shield distracts instead of adds to the defence value. Adding it to the armour wouldnt be that smart because it would greatly improve the effect of armour piercing units. Because the shield bug distracts points in their defensive ability and they will die faster i think that adding points to the defensevalue is good because they can now better defend themself...

But adding the shield value to defense skill will make things unbalanced for auto-calc. With the changes i've already made to unit balance in LTC(2handed bug workaround, light cavalry no longer able to route armoured sergeants, heavy cav toned down in the charge, spears good against cav), i do not think the shield fix is necessary.

[Musashi]

i think you should leave on the shield value because it works against arrows... but you should also add the same amount the shield distracts instead of adds to the defence value. Adding it to the armour wouldnt be that smart because it would greatly improve the effect of armour piercing units. Because the shield bug distracts points in their defensive ability and they will die faster i think that adding points to the defensevalue is good because they can now better defend themself...

Well, armor piercing units have the AP value applied to shield value too... Not just armor. So it doesn't really overpower AP units. Actually adding the shield value to defense skill underpowers AP units. But that's not a huge deal...

The main issue with adding it to armor is that it makes missile troops too ineffective since you can't use enfilade and flanking fire to overcome the shield value.

Personally my preferred solution is to put double their shield value into defense skill. This counteracts the negative value, and gives them the melee advantage that they would normally gain from the shield, leaves them with the shield value against missile fire, and basically doesn't overpower them at all in normal play. It makes them overpowered in autocalc, but I never autocalc a battle so it's no big deal to me.

[Vinsitor]

Personally my preferred solution is to put double their shield value into defense skill. This counteracts the negative value, and gives them the melee advantage that they would normally gain from the shield, leaves them with the shield value against missile fire, and basically doesn't overpower them at all in normal play. It makes them overpowered in autocalc, but I never autocalc a battle so it's no big deal to me.

I don't care about autocalc, this can be the best fix I think

[Carl]

Actually schiltrom should make them more vulnerable to arrow fire since no matter which direction I fire from the majority of the men I'm hitting would be taking shots in the rear/side.

In schiltrom they form a SOLID circular shield wall, an arrow fired on a flattish trajectory from ANY direction has to pass through someone with a shield BEFORE it can hit anyone in the back. It isn't POSSIBLE to hit someone in the back with arrow fire when they are in that formation with a flattish trajectory missile.

You can do it if you fire in an Arc, but if you do that you lose power because of the arcing affect which probably evens things out.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that they would suffer more losses as some arrow WOULD skim into peoples backs occasionally, but I don’t think the losses would be much worse.

Also, remembers this was a full stack of the best combined medium cav/HA available, (that I could find anyway), against LESS than a half a stack of decent Spear infantry, I'm pretty sure 2/3 a stack of Spear Militia with silver level armour would be able to replicate this result even with a proper working shield and newly lowered armour values.

Without meaning any offence, I’m interested in just how much you actually use non-HA armies? The shield fix REALLY neuters CAV now, and weather the cav do well seems to be down to their total attack value on the charge. This means that most HA can't freely slaughter infantry at will anymore, especially spear infantry. I'm getting the impression you only use all HA armies and only against the AI in most of your battles. Thus you haven’t encountered the effects of the shield fix to date as I’m finding weak cav to be really neutered. In my experience the Ai isn't that brilliant and could do much better. A Human could do much better with Sword & Shield and Spear & Shield units than the AI normally could.

I'll point you to here post by Foz where he says repetitive formed charges are required to beat high quality sword & shield Infantry. Most HA aren’t even as good as Border Horse in a fight from the stats, so they are in real trouble in melee against them.

The days of your HA simply shooting half the enemy army to death and then running the rest down with formed charges are well over IMO. The shield fix just makes it too destructive to your own cav to try, and as long as the enemy has more units that you they should be able to keep one facing each of your HA all the time.

I'm not trying to say that HA are useless, but that I anticipate HA no longer being able to take on much larger armies and win as they have been up to now. They will remain useful and powerful unit, but will have to be used in combination with other units to achieve the desired effect. Much like every other unit out there.

To get the full benefits of the shield fix you HAVE to take the shield value away as they don’t brace for a charge right for some reason if you don’t.

According to an old guide for the first medieval total war. it's true that shields only protect against missile fire, and infact, some are just for show (as discovered by testers).

2 points:

1. Theirs a diagram out their somewhere that says shields should work in melee.

2. They don't even work properly vs. missile fire ATM.

Personally my preferred solution is to put double their shield value into defense skill. This counteracts the negative value, and gives them the melee advantage that they would normally gain from the shield, leaves them with the shield value against missile fire, and basically doesn't overpower them at all in normal play. It makes them overpowered in autocalc, but I never autocalc a battle so it's no big deal to me.

And this explains why you still seem to be having so much success with HA in melee. If you don't zero the shield value, they don't brace properly and shield units are still massively underpowered vs. cav. I actually did the Defence fix, going as far as to double it in some cases and shield units NEVER braced.

@Lusted: Most of the changed you've made in LTC arn't needed if you fix the sheild bug because it actually makes units work without messing auto-calc. the only issue is 2-handed sword units which need a serious stats buff, (and do mess auto-calc up if you do).

[Vinsitor]

I don't care about autocalc, this can be the best fix I think

Mmm I think I was wrong before

In fact adding the double the shield to defence, it means you have 3 times the defence where shield bonus isn't applied and the defense bonus is (right side, and maybe the back too I think). Thus means that flanking would be less effective in melee combat, in exchange of some volley's hit from the right side.

[Lusted]

@Lusted: Most of the changed you've made in LTC arn't needed if you fix the sheild bug because it actually makes units work without messing auto-calc. the only issue is 2-handed sword units which need a serious stats buff, (and do mess auto-calc up if you do).

The only chance i've made in LTc that messes up auto-calc is my 2 handed bug workaround. The other changes have been through toher things that do not affect a units ability in auto-calc. The only way i would go about adding in the shield fix(adding in the shield value to defense skill but leaving in the shield defense as wel) would mess up auto-calc.

[Foz]

Personally my preferred solution is to put double their shield value into defense skill. This counteracts the negative value, and gives them the melee advantage that they would normally gain from the shield, leaves them with the shield value against missile fire, and basically doesn't overpower them at all in normal play. It makes them overpowered in autocalc, but I never autocalc a battle so it's no big deal to me.

If defense stats apply as purported to, this will really make the units whacky when they get flanked in melee. They have an extra defense from the right equal to twice their shield, while having presumably -2x their shield still on the left. I'm saying this: an 8/8/6 def unit has the following intended defenses in melee:

Front: 22
Right: 16
Left: 14
Rear: 8

Putting 2x shield in skill gives them file stats of 8/20/6 and stats in practice of:

Front: 22
Right: 28
Left: 2
Rear: 8

This to me is absolutely unacceptable, as melee flanking is very common. Putting shield into armour looks like (14/8/0) and in practice:

Front: 22
Right: 22
Left: 14
Rear: 14

This is a little more powerful unit, but does not cause the horrific see-saw of the skill points. Given that it ALSO does not mess up auto-calc as the calculated unit defense stays the same (skill point fix makes the unit have 12 extra armour in auto-calc), it gets my vote.

By the way, the reason we care about auto-calc is not only in case we ever use it, but also the fact that the computer uses it ALL THE TIME. Lusted, while your fixed stats may have the units performing reasonably well on the battlefield, they make autocalc absolutely horrible, as for instance 2H units that will perform great on the battlefield will have the strength of water when the computer autocalcs them because you watered down their stats so much to keep them from slaughtering bugged shield units. This will in turn be drastically affecting the AI's battles, and ultimately the composition of the armies that you encounter in battles with the AI, as the troops you face when expanding have often been around and fighting with various other computer factions for a while. It also may be affecting army composition if you have not costed the units with a very exact balance, as the AI presumably recruits based on the stats and not on actual battlefield performance, and so likely holds the units with nerfed stats in disfavor as a result. In general all this discrepancy you get from modifying stats to create battlefield balance without regard to stat balance will lead to a profound lack of any unit you nerfed the stats of in enemy armies you encounter, not to mention a likely overabundance of things like sword+shield infantry which will have their stats intact and thus typically survive AI auto-calcs mostly unharmed. This is exactly the sort of problem I'm attempting to avoid by balancing the units a different way, and again I feel that the few problems the proposed shield fix presents are absolutely miniscule compared to the destruction of the computer's perception of unit strength that stat rebalancing for battlefield performance (without maintaining unit attack/defense totals) inherently causes.

[Lusted]

Lusted, while your fixed stats may have the units performing reasonably well on the battlefield, they make autocalc absolutely horrible, as for instance 2H units that will perform great on the battlefield will have the strength of water when the computer autocalcs them because you watered down their stats so much to keep them from slaughtering bugged shield units.

2 handed units with my workaround for the 2handed bug(give them the JHI infantry animation and reduce attack) are the only ones in my mod to suffer this problem. I actually balanced them compared to both JHI and shield units.

Im also curious about whether you apply this fix to cav as well.

Plus doesn't your fix defeat the point of shields, which is better defense against missiles?

[hrvojej]

Personally my preferred solution is to put double their shield value into defense skill. This counteracts the negative value, and gives them the melee advantage that they would normally gain from the shield, leaves them with the shield value against missile fire, and basically doesn't overpower them at all in normal play. It makes them overpowered in autocalc, but I never autocalc a battle so it's no big deal to me.

This is what I am also using, though I also upped the defense skill of the units without shield to compensate for autocalc and AI building priorities. So far the battles have been playing out nicely with these changes.

[Carl]

Plus doesn't your fix defeat the point of shields, which is better defense against missiles?

No as adding it to the armour helps out there. YES it does mean AP missiles and C attacks are bit OTT. Missiles we'll just have to live with. (although the benefits against enfidle fire probably even things out overall). AP melee is partly why I add 2 extra to the defence skill. It helps make 2-Handers without stat changes a littlie less OTT against Shield units (i.e. they suffer some losses), and deals with non-2-hander AP melee units being really OTT.

P.s. What I meant is that you don't need to modify unit stats much with the shield fix or add mass to units. It also brings into play some really important balance points. Namely anything that doesn’t kill a Shield unit on impact will get an automatic Shield Bash inflicted. This never kills as far as I can tell. However, it does knock them out of charge mode. So non-AP/cav units that are charging shield units find them very hard work, as does weak, (i.e, HA), cav. That’s a big change TBH.

I'm not trying to knock the effort you've put in of course, just that I think the Shield fix deals with so many issues at once that many of the other modifications you've already made simply aren’t needed, although I can understand you'd resent abandoning so much hard work. It's annoying me how much modding I’m having to do to get a working game TBH.

[Carl]

This is what I am also using, though I also upped the defense skill of the units without shield to compensate for autocalc and AI building priorities. So far the battles have been playing out nicely with these changes.

BUT IF YOU DO THIS YO ONLY HALF FIX IT AS SHIELD UNITS STILL DON@T BRACE PROPERLY.

Sorry for shouting but a lot of people seem to have missed this very important point. It effect Shield Infantry and Spears against cav tremendously, as well as non-spear Shield infantry against anything in general.

[Foz]

2 handed units with my workaround for the 2handed bug(give them the JHI infantry animation and reduce attack) are the only ones in my mod to suffer this problem. I actually balanced them compared to both JHI and shield units.

Im also curious about whether you apply this fix to cav as well.

Plus doesn't your fix defeat the point of shields, which is better defense against missiles?

I Sure do. Everything with a shield stat gets it put into armour, then zeroed. It would be unfair to fix the spear units, but let the cavalry suffer the 8-point stat swing they would have in melee combat due to their typical 4-point shields. It also helps balance the lower cav units against the later ones. Many late units have more armour but no shields, and as a result the early cav were being absolutely butchered by late cav that had only a minor stat point advantage against them. It in fact removes many discrepancies like that that people had been noticing.

It actually doesn't defeat the point of the shield either, as the unit's improved armour stat protects it from missile fire as effectively as the shield points had been, perhaps even a hair better.

I'd suggest even if you don't intend to apply the fix permanently, that you play a session or two using my shield-fixed vanilla file with a 2H fix in place and maybe a pike fix too. It's substantially better than even I had anticipated it would be, and hard to exactly describe well. Much easier to experience.

@Carl: Thanks for the note about the units bracing when having shield-value zero. I had noticed them doing this when they received cav charges, but not that they were failing to do it when having a >0 shield number. Sounds like another reason the fix should be applied, as it's a non-obvious benefit of being able to zero the shield.

[Lusted]

I'm not trying to knock the effort you've put in of course, just that I think the Shield fix deals with so many issues at once that many of the other modifications you've already made simply aren’t needed, although I can understand you'd resent abandoning so much hard work. It's annoying me how much modding I’m having to do to get a working game TBH.

Well actually i think i've got a pretty good balance with the changes i've made, im not sure i need to incorporate this into my mod. and the changes i made weren't that time consuming(increased mass of spearmen, change to charge bonuses). The most time consuming was rebalancing the bugged 2 handed units after changing their animation tot hat of the JHI.

[Carl]

substantially better than even I had anticipated it would be, and hard to exactly describe well. Much easier to experience.

Yeah, that’s what I’m finding. Great fun but hard to describe.

Well actually i think i've got a pretty good balance with the changes i've made, im not sure i need to incorporate this into my mod. and the changes i made weren't that time consuming(increased mass of spearmen, change to charge bonuses). The most time consuming was rebalancing the bugged 2 handed units after changing their animation tot hat of the JHI.

I wasn't suggesting you had bad balance, just that the shield fix adds new balances that you can't achieve any other way because they rely on bracing that works, when braced shield units act as though they DO have better mass which really throws things. In addition they can actually nullify charges from many Inf units totally, I mean literally the enemy inf causes no kills when they charge in because the braced shield absorb it all. Cav and high stat Ap 2-handers can get through. But they are a special case. Without AP you need an attack in the 30+ range to get through defence 24 sword and shield units on the charge.

It helps give you extra defences against light cav, and as a result REALLY changes the HA dynamics.

Likewise I’ve never seen Spearmen fight effectively in Shilstrem with a shield value of better than 0. Although others seem to have them working so it could just have been me. I think I’ll start a separate thread on the matter as I’m not sure if that’s a shield bug thing or just me.

As Foz says, just give it a try for a session or two and see how it feels, even if you don’t like it you know you aren’t missing anything and can give an explanation of this in your mod readme.

[hrvojej]

BUT IF YOU DO THIS YO ONLY HALF FIX IT AS SHIELD UNITS STILL DON@T BRACE PROPERLY.

Sorry for shouting but a lot of people seem to have missed this very important point. It effect Shield Infantry and Spears against cav tremendously, as well as non-spear Shield infantry against anything in general.

Then reduce the mass of mounts, and you're set.

[Lusted]

One of the changes i've made in my LTc is mod is to remove the charge bonus for light cav so HA no loger own spearmen, and reduce hev cav charge bonus so they don't wipe out armoured sergeants in a single charge. But i've also increased the mass of cavalry to make charges feel more realistic. Now testing the shield fix i've found late shield sword infantry very resistant to cav, when they shouldn't be considering that they're swordsmen. That, plus the fact that ap units are far too effective against late era units with the fix aren't really endearing me to this

[Carl]

That dosen't do anything for the effects against infantry though (and they are very important). I'm also not convinced we'll see the on contact MAD that occurs with them properly braced. Of course if you've tested it and you do see this. Fair enough.

Finially, which is easier. Moving a sheild value to the armour. Or adding the Sheild to the Defence Skill, AND rebalanmcing 2-hander stats, (which messes up auto-calc), AND playing with unit masses, AND implimenting some kind of fix for the lost Effects vs. Infantry?

It's clearly easier to transfer the sheild to the armour and makes the units perform as intended when engaged from the front and sides, (assuming defence skill affects a 180 degree arc when the sheild is set to zero as appears to be the case with 2-Handers).

[Carl]

You need to put those charge bonusus back in or it will mes things up. Likewise AP 2-Handers SHOULD be massacering sheild units. Pikes and AP 2-handers are the best late infantry, they are also sluaghtered by cav and archers (unlike Sword and sheild units). Noble Swordsmen with the Charge Bonuses back in correctly can tack on Mailed Knights, but Anything better massacres them with some, (but not massive losses).

To test this objectivly you need to use a fresh file set with ONLY the sheild fix, swaped animations, and if you ant, the pike fix. Anything else will skew things massivly in some way towards IMBA.

[Lusted]

It's only cav charge bonuses i have reduced to stop them wiping out spearmen in 1 charge, but my reduction in cav charge bonuses has been sort of counteracted by my increasing cavalry mass.

[Carl]

It could still be having knock on effects. anything with an 8 charge stat, (or one with 6 and very good stats), should decimates Sword and Sheild units. Your statment makes me belive this isn't happening for you and thats what prompted my post.

Sorry if i was a bit over aggressive about it BTW.

[hrvojej]

It's clearly easier to transfer the sheild to the armour and makes the units perform as intended when engaged from the front and sides, (assuming defence skill affects a 180 degree arc when the sheild is set to zero as appears to be the case with 2-Handers).

But it's clearly less in the spirit of the game, IMO. The TW games have always been about units having different defense on different sides. If they now have the same value for all sides for both melee and missiles, especially if the skill applies in a 360 arc without a shield as you seem to imply, then I am playing an Age of Empires game and not a TW game any more. We might as well dump everything into armor and forget about it.

And btw, I didn't notice any difference with bracing/not bracing.