They won't brace when in Guard/Hold mode. Yiou must also be tottaly still, if you order them to move whilst reciving a chage they won't brace.

And defence on diffrent sides dosen't matter here. Leave the sheild value in and you get too high a defence on one side and almost no defence on the other. Lets also remeber that this is a GAME. It's meant to be a Balanced. With the sheild value still their and crazy defence values for sheild units and weakened 2-handers and other similar stuff the game isn't balanced at all, in or out of auto-calc. we allready know the sheild isn't working right against missile fire and may be effected by AP so theirs no point keeping it, and considering most sword units have a defence skill VERY similar to their sheild value, it doesen't actually change their left/right defence values by more than a point over what they should be with working sheilds. So with working sheilds you'd still be playing an AOE game not a TW game anyway. Except it isn't things like that that set the systems apart. It's the fact that the TW games actually include Startegy and complex Tactics as apposed to simpile ones. As an AOE player i can tell you that the fixed game STILL uses the rock/paper/scissors system that has dominated RTS so long, (with good rason). and at the basest level isn't much diffrent in terms of unit interaction in head on fights. It's things like Morale, Flank and Rear Charges, units instead of individual models and many other things that set the games apart. these introduce a lot of new tactics to the TW games that AOE can never have. The sheild fix dosen't change that one bit. it just makes units work more as intended.

p.s. it's 180, not 360.