The Shield Problem(s)

[Carl]

@The_Foz_4:

re: Re 1: I'll have to do some more tests myself, but TBH I think the shield bug is actually that the shield value simply isn't being applied to the front area. Defence skill doesn’t help vs. arrows anyway though. It's meant to help out against Melee AP attacks. The entire point of Shields over armour is supposed to be that they are resistant to AP, so I wanted to try and replicate that without messing auto-calc up much. More than 2 extra to defence would have done that.

re: Re2: I was actually trying to replicate the feel of sword and shield units from when I tried adding the shield value to the defence skill. Like that they still got beat pretty hard by 2-handers, (caused a few kills mind), but took an absolute age to die, which I really liked as it meant even if you couldn't spare a support unit immediately, you had a chance. Your fix shortens the death time a littlie bit and I was trying to lengthen it again. It mostly worked too. With Spears my problem is with peasants beating Spear Militia, no offence but the Peasants are a quarter the price and a quarter the stats, they really shouldn't be winning those fights, spear penalties or not. I don't have anything against them causing MAD to spear Militia, or even taking an age to kill. I just don't think they should be beating a unit that’s 2 stages further up the tech tree, costs 4 times as much and has over 4 times the stats. With the change it's roughly MAD for peasant vs. Militia Spearmen, although it seems a bit luck dependent.

Re: re3: I did this actually because I found cav a bit too good against spears without it. Border Horse where beating Spear Militia, (Spear Militia REALLY benefited from the change), Mailed Knights where beating Armoured Sergeants/Italian Spear Militia, and Hospitaller's where suffering a lot less losses to them. Papal Guard as listed where actually tested without the change (I missed it and noticed when looking at the stats randomly). With it they get a touch better, (but not much, doesn’t seem to benefit them as much). I'm still not totally happy with the performance of Spear Militia, but I’m loath to tweak much more for fear of messing auto-calc up or going overboard. As I can't really apply a change to them and not to other spear units without messing up internal balance between different spear units.

re: Re Other 2: Glad you liked it, it was what I’d being wanting to see and what people over in the MP forums have been asking for since before I joined, (I lurked as a non-member for a couple of weeks).

Heavy Swordsmen vs. Cav is interesting too. You tried Vargarian Guard vs. a cav charge yet as they have an armour value similar to that of many swordsmen, whilst still having a high attack AP, good animation 2-Handed Axe on top.

Would you be willing to pass comment on my contention that 2-handed swordsmen seem to be performing well below their stats? It would help if I knew if I was the only one finding them a bit UP.

[Revenant]

Would you be willing to pass comment on my contention that 2-handed swordsmen seem to be performing well below their stats? It would help if I knew if I was the only one finding them a bit UP.

I do not think they perform below their stats. I upped attack of Zweihanders for 7 points (now they have attack 21, defence 11) and tried them against Sword and Buckler men (attack 13, defence 19) and they usually managed to beat them. They have charge 6, compared with SBM 3.

They also have Skeleton compensation factor 1.3, whatever it is (probably some bonus number because of their slow attacks)

I compared them with SBM because both are late era units with the same building requirement and also with the same upkeep.

[Carl]

When I said stats I also meant cost and I tend to use the MP cost as in campaign they are also balanced by Upkeep which is a tricky thing to take into account.

DGK get Massacred by by Heavy Billmen, (HB is my short version). Considering the stats, DGK should lose once you take the AP factor into account (the DGK chave an effective Defence of 9 at this point). But not by the amount they do. Maybe it's just me though or maybe fixing the sheild value. Add to that the cost diffrance, (allthough TBH, most fixed 2-Handers and Pikes are worth about double their actual cost IMHO, they've been costed according to bugged performance), and really things look very odd. I geuss I need to do more tests TBH.

[Foz]

While I have not worked with 2H sword units nearly enough to comment on whether or not I believe they underperform, I would tend to believe that they perform fairly accurately at their listed stats as I have no reason to believe otherwise. What I will say, however, is that those stats look rather low for what the unit costs. If I had to guess, and this is a real shot in the dark, I'd suggest that in a vain attempt to make one of the few correctly functioning types of units in the game perform on the level with the various borked ones, the devs may have nerfed their stats. Somewhat amusing then that the numerous borked units perform at acceptable levels compared to each other with fixes in place, leaving the few units that worked right originally horribly underpowered. Of course this is pure speculation, but it's my best educated guess at what may have gone on.