The Shield Problem(s)

[The Stranger]

I tested with trebizond archers too... i can post the exact results if you want to... but it comes down to this every battle 6 volleys, 5-12 kills... whatever you change to their defense

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

By defense, you mean shield? or shield + armour? or overall defense?

Louis,

[Foz]

Yep. Add it to the defence skill stat and Town Milita can do MAD on Peseants and Militia Spearmen can beat them, (just), lets not even mention what it does for Sword & Sheild units agaisnt fixed Bill units and JHI. Pikes still pwn, but i'd geuss not as hard, (never tried them before I Implemented the fix into my units file).

Try them with twice the shield amount added into the skill field or shield added to armour then shield zeroed. I bet the spears will win the fight like you'd expect from how the vanilla unit sheet reads.

Can you put in a negative value for the shield in the statfile? Curious to see if that is possible.

Not sure... but if you can and do, it will probably bork the unit's ranged defense instead then, so this is no solution.

Odd results you have there Stranger, directly conflicting what I found from letting crossbow militia fire on a stationary unit of swordsmen. I only ran once each setting, but got good enough looking results with different shield values that I didn't do more - the shield cut down the swordsmen losses due to the crossbow's full ammo complement the higher it was set.

As for the newest results by Rev... oh *expletive deleted*

I saw someone post before that it might be easier to list the things in the game that work correctly than to list bugs - and sadly, it may actually be correct.

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

[Carl]

I'll go off and run some archer tests too as those results are defintly VERY worrying.

p.s. @Your Reply Foz: Thats what i'd expect and i've been tempted to increase the Defence skill of all sheild units a furthar 2 points to try and compansate without borking Auto-Calc any more.

[Revenant]

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

Hey, I know how the stats are organized. I also checked the stats of the units when i was selecting my armies. The unit with shield + upped defence skill has defence higher than the other unit of 12 points. Only thing I should mentioned is that both units had charge 1 despite I changed it to zero in datasheet .

[Foz]

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

Lol... my bad. That comment was meant for The Stranger to check those things, since he is having the TOTALLY off the wall archer unit test results that apparently reflect none of his changes to the file. My apologies Rev. I didn't (and still don't) mean to step on any toes, it's just difficult to tell who knows how much on here, so I'm trying to take some precautions by eliminating potential sources of error.

Your stuff is intriguing Rev, though I'm not totally surprised since the AI is involved.

@Stranger: My only idea here is to make sure you check that stuff I listed, though I don't have any idea why your game would list the stat changes but not apply them...

[The Stranger]

hmmm i cant find the problem... im going to sleep... :P i made a total idiot out of myself... its stupid though... what i change in the building files is aplied...

[Carl]

Well just to confrim it I did some tests with Retinue Longbowmne shooting at DGK. 7 volleys each time:

Basic

13
26
24
24
24

No AP

19
16
17
11
10

Ap and 20 Missile Attack

40
30
32
29
39

Pretty clear to me. Didn't check the effects of defence as i'm willing to assume AP works as advertised and modifies defence anyway.

[BigTex]

Knowing that animations truly are what most units draw their power from. Has anyone taken the time to look at the attack and kill animations of the same units, with and without a shield stat? It may be that the shield stat somehow slow's them, or somehow adds an interupting parry movement that lock's them from really attacking. Need to go off to work so I can't test this atm.

Also The Stranger, common problem. Make sure your .bat file is correctly worded and it's located in the M2TW folder.

[Foz]

Testing results are coming out right now. I've got the following units having at each other:

Dismounted Feudal Knights, England
stat_pri 13, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 14, 6, metal
stat_mental 9, normal, trained, lock_morale

Dismounted Norman Knights, Sicily
stat_pri 13, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 8, 0, metal
stat_mental 9, normal, trained, lock_morale

I'll be controlling (letting sit) the DFKs.

Pre-combat mouse-over shows 13/27/1 (atk/def/cha) as DFK stats, 13/15/1 for DNK, which is as expected. Results are DFK kills/DNK kills.

01. 59/61
02. 53/61
03. 61/43
04. 57/61
05. 61/43
06. 51/61
07. 54/61
08. 61/39
09. 45/61
10. 47/61
11. 47/61
12. 39/61
13. 49/61
14. 49/61
15. 61/58
16. 61/59
17. 45/61
18. 37/61
19. 51/61
20. 61/43
---------
1049/1139

Difference of 90 kills, 90/20 = 4.5 kills per test run advantage for the DNK, which from observation appeared to be due to getting a few extra kills when they charged into the stationary DFKs. As the result favors the unit with shield removed instead of the one with equal skill added, one would conclude that if anything the shield detracts a little more than its indicated value, but from my observation and how close these results are, I feel good saying it detracts a roughly equal amount. We'll know if my observation is correct as soon as I run off results for the vanilla units. If they come out roughly the same, I win