Out of character thread II

[econ21]

We're playing on hard/very hard, right? Any particular reason we didn't go with vh/vh?

Yes, I think it is H/VH - we did not go for VH campaigns because it makes the AI diplomacy more pyschotic. On VH, your relations with each faction are programmed to worsen over time. The same will happen with even H campaigns - so if we want real allies, we have to do things to raise our reputation and standing (e.g. avoid sacking cities; pay gifts) - but it happens faster with VH.

BTW: An important note for Governors and Chancellors - the Citadel testers have discovered that armour upgrades (and hence buildings that give them) are much more important than people might have thought. I think the discovery makes a leather tanner the highest priority build for most settlements (after maybe townguard buildings in cities for free upkeep). Gory details in the spoiler.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The +1 armour effect of each upgrade appears to be misreporting by the game. Testing by SMZ, Carl, Lusted and Foz implies that armour upgrades work as expected, in that each upgrade provides the reported type of armour (padded, light mail etc). The upgraded armour stat does not appear to be correctly reported, but the unit is still as resistant to missile fire as you would expect from a unit with that type of armour. Here is Lusted's summary of what armour stat corresponds (roughly) to each armour type:

Level 0: Flesh - 0
Level 1: Padded/leather - 3/4
Level 2: Light Mail - 5
Level 3: Heavy Mail - 7
Level 4: Partial Plate - 8/9
Level 5: Full Plate -9/10
Level 6: Advanced Plate - 10/11

The implication is that the lowest type of armoury is a great bargain - raising the armour stat of your initially unarmoured troops by around 3-4 points.

Discussion and original research here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79784