Quote Originally Posted by the_foz_4
Well yes, and no. Yes because all the necessary things can be (and I'm sure have been by some players) incorporated into one file. No, because the generally accepted 2H fix does not require anything to be changed in the EDU file (export_descr_unit.txt, I realize this may not be a totally obvious acronym), but instead relies on replacing animations from the animation pack with other ones that make the units function correctly. The pike fix was outlined a few posts ago in this very thread, and is totally easy to accomplish, so I recommend simply modding my shield-fixed EDU to include the pike fix, and hunting down zxiang's 2h fix which you may have to jump to another board for, as I have never seen it on here.

Concerning the power of 2H units with the fix and vanilla stats: I still believe them to be tactically balanced using vanilla stats with the various fixes (including shield) applied. They have very high attack and charge values, and the AP stat, which means they will dominate in close combat. However, this is counter-balanced by being weak to cavalry and archers. In particular, a typical fixed 13/21 unit of dismounted knights will have 14 armor against missile attack, 7 vs. AP archers. On the other hand a 21/13 unit only applies 8 armor against missile attacks, down to 4 versus AP archers. There's a very noticeable difference, especially at close range. The difference against cavalry is even more pronounced. 13/21 units can go toe to toe with mailed knights, and in my experience can get about a 1:1 kill/death ratio, meaning the cav lose due to having the smaller unit. That's with the computer repeatedly recharging the swordsmen. 21/13 units on the other hand have hellacious fights against mailed knights. The knights plow into them, and they die in droves. They take some cav along to the grave, but lack the staying power to hold against the charge, typically losing maybe half the unit on initial contact and quickly being finished off by the knights who are now all among them. I've never seen the computer have to recharge them. It looks a lot like borked spear units used to against cav. So what I'm getting at is, yes fixed 2H beat any given melee unit you put them against, but they're supposed to, as you're given other solutions to beat them that you must learn to implement effectively on the battlefield. One of the biggest changes I anticipate will be in army composition, as many seem to focus too much on infantry units, and where we used to rely on other infantry to best them, we now will require non-infantry units as an effective balance against them. I also anticipate it will be much more clear to everyone which units are of particular importance to target with ranged attacks, as the units weak to it are the same ones that are most devastating in melee combat.

Concerning the somewhat odd shield results against ranged attack: Does anyone think it's possible that the shield value is only applied against a given attack if hit detection indicates that attack has struck the shield portion of the unit? I don't think it would be in the realm of things we can possibly prove, but it would be one possible explanation for the apparent result that AP archers fare slightly better against units with shield stat intact than they do against the same unit but with the shield points dumped into armor. Essentially this would mean that the rest of the man's non-covered parts benefits from the added armor, and would affect some 50-75% of incoming missiles, as I'm guessing the shield covers between 25% and 50% of the man's surface area.
I wholeheartedly agree with this.