The Shield Problem(s)

[Jambo]

You'll have to clarify your question a bit. Defense would be the generic term for whatever sum of numbers applies to the unit's defense from any given direction against a particular kind of attack. The individual stats that comprise it for each unit are Armour, Skill, and Shield. For instance, Armored Sergeants have defense listed 14 on their info sheet, which is their front melee defense rating. This is the convention applied in the game. That number is arrived at by adding the unit's armor, skill, and shield, which all apply from the front in melee. Armor applies to all sides of the unit, skill to the front and right, and shield to the front and left. Additionally, armor and shield apply (in the same directions they do in melee) against missile attacks as well, while skill is ignored against missile fire. Hope that clarifies the terms and their interaction for you, but of course feel free to ask further questions or rephrase the current one if I haven't covered what you were trying to get at.

Sorry, I meant "skill" instead of "defence" then.

[Musashi]

Carl: I've played with schiltrom vs. missile fire with the unmodded game, and it does suffer badly. I never play on any settings other than Huge unit size, as far as I'm concerned there is no other unit size setting. But in my experience schiltrom has a unit get massacred under missile fire, because even when they're firing on a relatively "flat" trajectory approximately half the missiles fires in a given volley will go over the front facing ranks and hit the men behind them.

[Carl]

YES, but sheilds don't work right against NON-AP missile fire in vanillia eithier, you can expect SIGNIFICANT reductions once sheild ARE working.

The unit size thing is being hard headed IMO, most people don't play on that size as their comp simply can't handle it from what I can tell. Remeber, the larger the unit size, the more likliy a miss is to still hit somone enyway. On smaller unit sizes, many of those hits in the back will be misses on the smaller unit sizes as they'd sail rght over-head. This is true in AND out of Sciltrom BTW.

iIm, not knocking your results though, i'll trust you as i can't handle above normal in non-seige games and small in seiges games because of jumping. (allthough i probably could run a test the jumpiness starts at around 3500-4000 models). However it is worth remebering that your results are probabky getting skewed in your favor by your choice of huge unit size compared to normal, (which is also probably what they tested and balanced the game at IMHO).

[Musashi]

Most people's rigs can run huge unit size if they turn off shadows. Shadows are a huge performance hit, and they don't add much to the looks of the game, so I always turn them off.

[Ulstan]

Thats not a fair comparison at all! We all know that longbowmen are professional soldiers, not milita. Militia ARE peasants..they are farmers that work part time as soldiers to make extra money.

Well, fine, what is the professional spear armed infantry unit for that same period then?

[Carl]

Most people's rigs can run huge unit size if they turn off shadows. Shadows are a huge performance hit, and they don't add much to the looks of the game, so I always turn them off.

Mine can run it, but not with full stack armies!

And I don't consider my PC THAT out of date yet, (allthough it DOES need an update). Plus if given a choice between more guys (and the pathing problems it induces), or less men and better graphics and pathing. 'll go for the better graphics.

[Musashi]

Yeah but shadows are something you don't really even notice, so it's not like it makes the scene much prettier.

My rig is quite out of date, 64 meg GeForce card, 1.7ghz processor, 1.5 gigs of ram, but I can run huge unit sizes with two full stack armies with no problems whatsoever. Even when the men pile into one siege tower.