detailed units stats questions.

[darth_napo]

1. do all units have some kind of Hit Points? how much are their hit points?

2. what does attack skills really mean? I mean for example what does attack point = 1 mean? does it mean that every time the unit punch an enemy unit it will deliver some kind of damage for 1 point?

3. what are the effects of attacking animations? are the effects only depended on how fast the animation being executed?

4. what about defense skills? (like question number 2)

5. just like question number 3.

6. how do the game decide a unit executing attacking or defending animation during a fight?

7. what if unit A that have attack skills = 5 attacking unit B that have defense skills = 5 (assume that unit B never counter attack)? will unit B killed in 1 punch (now assume that unit B doesn't have any armor or shield)? or is it just make unit B losing some hit points or something?

8. what do the differences between armor and shield in the game? assume that the attacker doesn't have armor piercing weapon and the defender is in defensive stance/animation, will 5 armor points be as good as 5 shield points?

9. how is the ranks between these from best to worst : a unit that has defense skill = 10 but only 3 armor and 3 shield, a unit that has 8 defense skills but 4 armor and 4 shield, a unit that has 6 defense skills but 3 armor and 7 shield, a unit that has 6 defense skills but 7 armor and 3 shield - all those assuming that the attacker doesn't have armor piercing weapon.

those are what's in my mind right now, sorry if it rather complicated.

[Lusted]

1. do all units have some kind of Hit Points? how much are their hit points?

Yes, unless stated otherwise all units have 1. The units with 2 hp are Generals Bodyguards and Hasashim i believe in vanila.

2. what does attack skills really mean? I mean for example what does attack point = 1 mean? does it mean that every time the unit punch an enemy unit it will deliver some kind of damage for 1 point?

It's actually attack factor, it's the value used when calculating the success of a hit. It's not a direct 1 point damage, this is not an rpg with weapons dealing out 9 damage to a guy with 20hp.

3. what are the effects of attacking animations? are the effects only depended on how fast the animation being executed?

Basically yes.

4. what about defense skills? (like question number 2)

Defense skill is a value sued in melee which adds to a units total defense, the higher it is the more likely a soldier in a unit will survive a hit made on them.

5. just like question number 3.

There aren't really any defense animations.

6. how do the game decide a unit executing attacking or defending animation during a fight?

Generaly it's the units in the stand ready stance being hit buy a guy doing an animation, and then vice versa, msot likely done at a certain percentage chance.

7. what if unit A that have attack skills = 5 attacking unit B that have defense skills = 5 (assume that unit B never counter attack)? will unit B killed in 1 punch (now assume that unit B doesn't have any armor or shield)? or is it just make unit B losing some hit points or something?

Like i said above it's not like an rpg, it's not like the stats in an rpg.

8. what do the differences between armor and shield in the game? assume that the attacker doesn't have armor piercing weapon and the defender is in defensive stance/animation, will 5 armor points be as good as 5 shield points?

If attacked from the front in melee yes. If attacked from the left or right side only half the shield value is counted and from the rear none of the shield value is counted.

9. how is the ranks between these from best to worst : a unit that has defense skill = 10 but only 3 armor and 3 shield, a unit that has 8 defense skills but 4 armor and 4 shield, a unit that has 6 defense skills but 3 armor and 7 shield, a unit that has 6 defense skills but 7 armor and 3 shield - all those assuming that the attacker doesn't have armor piercing weapon.

If from the front as the total defense is always the same there would be no difference. From the side and rear those with lower shield values would fare better.

[Miracle]

The combat mechanics are very, very complex but hopefully this should give you an idea of how they might work:

Chance to Hit

(Note that this is merely theory and not fact)

Attack and Defense determines the chance to hit of a soldier's attack animation. The chance to hit formula probably looks like this:

Chance to Hit = Attack/(Attack + Defense)

For example, if a soldier's attack is 11 and the target's defense is 16, his chance to hit would be 11/(11+16) = 40.7%. That means the probability of the soldier killing his opponent would be 40.7%. He has a 59.3% probability of being parried or blocked by his opponent's weapon, shield or armour.

Before or during a soldier's animation, your computer uses a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to pick a number between 0% and 100%. If it falls between 0 and the Chance to Hit, the soldier successfully kills his opponent. If not, either the soldier attacks again or his opponent attacks.

Alternatively, this may be another way the game calculates Chance to Hit:

CtH_1 = Attack/(Attack + DefenseSkill + Shield)

This computes a soldier's chance to get past his opponent's weapon parrying and shield blocking. If CtH_1 is successful, CtH_2 is commenced. If not, a new combat round starts.

CtH_2 = Attack/(Attack + Armour)

This computes the soldier's weapon's chance to penetrate the opponent's armour. If CtH_2 is successful, the opponent dies. If not, he is covered in blood, staggers back and a new combat round starts.

CtH = CtH_1 * CtH_2

This is the chance the soldier has to kill his opponent before the attack animation begins. For example, let's say a soldier has 11 attack and his opponent has 7 armour, 3 defense skill and 6 shield.

CtH_1 = 11/(11 + 3 +6) = 55%
CtH_2 = 11/(11 + 7) = 61%

CtH = CtH_1 * CtH_2 = 33.6%

This is less than the 40.7% obtained using the first formula.

Animations

The above only applies to attack animations. There are other animations as well:

• Weapon parrying animation - the soldier attempts to parry an attack with his weapon. The success rate depends on either his total defense or defense skill.
• Shield blocking animation - the soldier attempts to block an attack with his shield. The success rate depends on either his total defense or shield value. Shieldless units don't have this animation.
• Forward bash animation - the soldier attempts to knock back his opponent with either his weapon, left forearm or shield. At the moment I don't think this actually has any effect.
• Staggering animation - this happens when an opponent gets through a soldier's parrying and blocking but does not penetrate his armour. The soldier staggers back and slowly recovers. If his opponent attacks again during this time the soldier has no chance to parry or block.
• Death animation - the soldier dies after his opponent has penetrated his parrying, blocking and armour.

The duration of the attacking, parrying, blocking and bash animations plays an important role in deciding the outcome of a duel. For example, short polearm/axe units have very lengthy attack animations so they usually opt to use the bash and parry animations instead. This makes them much weaker than their stats would indicate.

Defense Components

Armour, defense skill, and shield all have their advantages and disadvantages, so they don't all hold completely equal weight:

• Armour protects against both melee and missile attacks from all directions equally, but is reduced to 50% by AP weapons and missiles
• Defense skill protects against only melee attacks from the front and sides equally
• Shields protect against both melee and missile attacks 100% effectively from the front and 50% effectively from the sides. Gunpowder missiles ignore shields

The importance of each defense component depends entirely on a soldier's particular battlefield situation.

[darth_napo]

^ thanks, how do you know that?
what about cavalry/infantry charges, how do they work? how about the infantry/other mounted soldier that receiving charges from cavalry/infantry?

[Ciaran]

Educated guess, because basically we don´t know.

The charge value is added to the attack value for the duration of the charge (as long as the unit tooltip says "charging"), that´s why Knights are so devastating in the initial few seconds while after the charge effect expires their performance drops. Infantry also has the charge effect, by the way, but of course it´s a lot less than the cavalry´s.

[Lusted]

Also with cav charges the mass of the mount also plays into the calculations somehow.

With spearmen receiving charges being stationary and ready when receiving a charge means that their bonus v cav comes into play.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Lusted does this mean that the extra charge bonus of 8 is checked by the extra anti cav bonus of 8 which most spears have? Does the anti cav bonus also work when the spears are attacked from the rear?

[Miracle]

Lusted does this mean that the extra charge bonus of 8 is checked by the extra anti cav bonus of 8 which most spears have? Does the anti cav bonus also work when the spears are attacked from the back?

The anti-cav bonus applies only to attack, not defense.

When spearmen are braced I believe their effective mass increases which means enemy cavalry charges are less devastating.

When pikemen are braced, their mass increases drastically and they are able to keep cavalry at a safe distance (unless the horse leaps over).

Again these are educated guesses so feel free to investigate things yourself.

[econ21]

Attack and Defense determines the chance to hit of a soldier's attack animation. The chance to hit formula probably looks like this:

Chance to Hit = Attack/(Attack + Defense)

We do know in STW and MTW, the chance to hit was a function of the difference:

(Attack - Total Defence)

And lots of other modifiers: the Brady Games Strategy Guide to MTW has a very nice chapter on the battlefield mechnics written by a CA designer and lists three pages of modifiers.

The chapter says that if the difference is 0, then the kill chance is 1.9%.

Every factor above (below) 0, the chance of a kill is raised (lowered) by 20%.

Puzz3D has hypothesised that for RTW (and I assume M2TW), a similar calcuation is at work but given the wider spread in stats, the adjustment in kill rates maybe 10% per point rather than 20%.

Lusted does this mean that the extra charge bonus of 8 is checked by the extra anti cav bonus of 8 which most spears have? Does the anti cav bonus also work when the spears are attacked from the back?

I suspect the charge bonus of 8 is negated by the spears being braced and frontally attacked. The extra anti-cav bonus swings in over and above that negation.

So basically, charging cav vs swords:
cavarly get a +8 to their kill chances
infantry get a +0

Charging cav vs braced spears (frontally):
cavalry get +0 to their kill chances
infantry get a +8

At least that is how I understand it worked in STW/MTW.

I suspect if spears are attacked from the back, they won't immediately attack back. But when they do turn and strike back, they will get a +8.

I suspect mass may have a role in affecting how long the charge bonus applies. In MTW, there was some push-back effect, where cavalry stands a chance of bowling down several opponents, getting a charge bonus against all. (I think there was a MTW patch which added this). If they are stalled and get bogged down, they lose the charge bonus.

[FactionHeir]

1.02 removed much of the charge through multiple ranks feature. So cav hardly ever get to hit the rank behind the first. Even with peasants (who did not benefit from shield fix)

Every unit has a specific mass rating. Most spears have 1 or 1.2 for the higher spears. Heavy infantry generally has 1.2 as do most pikes. Peasants and early missile units have 0.8

[andrewt]

1.02 removed much of the charge through multiple ranks feature. So cav hardly ever get to hit the rank behind the first. Even with peasants (who did not benefit from shield fix)

Every unit has a specific mass rating. Most spears have 1 or 1.2 for the higher spears. Heavy infantry generally has 1.2 as do most pikes. Peasants and early missile units have 0.8

Except cavalry charges the place where the infantry was and not where the infantry is. A missile group put on skirmish is actually the best against taking charges.

[FactionHeir]

Not quite, it depends on the waypoint updates where they end up charging.
If you set it lower than the default 20 in the descr_pathfinding, cav does where the infantry was and not is more often.
Skirmishers do sadly break up cav charges quite well for the most part, but whats even better against a cav charge is having a few stragglers in your broken infantry formation.
Nothing like having your men of one unit drawn out across the four corners of the battlefield (happens very often when the AI siege attacks you and gets routed)
Really, I think the way cav charges are now with no more charging through makes loose formation perfect against a charge.

[Kobal2fr]

Well, cav charges still suffer from the Aura of Death sometimes - instead of jamming their long sticks in the chests of the guys in the first rank and stopping, they just... keep on charging, running in place and killing every infantryman their model touches. Happens a lot when my spearmen try to intercept charging knights by charging into them : both units just charge in place, and the spears die in droves, going from 75 men to 30 in seconds.

Which is a bit problematic because since Xbows can't skirmish worth a bean on account of them insisting on finishing their hour-long shooting animation before running away from threats, the only way to protect them is by charging spears through them... And since they're Xbows, you can't deploy them behind the spears either :/

[Aradan]

Here's the deal in RTW, as research by the Fourth Age: Total War team shows:


The "chance to kill" formula goes like that:

chance_to_kill = dlf * const * lethality *1.1 ^ (ATK - DEF + BNS)

and the "chance to hit" formula is the same but without lethality. That should give you the analogy of atk and defense and also the info that each point of those changes the result by 10%.
dlf is the difficulty level factor. 0.7 for Easy, 1 for Normal, 1.5 for Hard and 2 for Very Hard. If you do the math you'll see that this is what gives the combat modifiers of -4, 0, 4, 7 to the AI depending on battle difficulty setting. The constant is some number, the value of which, though of little importance since it's fixed, is still a matter of debate. Two good guesses would be either 0.19 or 0.095, the latter of which gives a max 77% chance to kill on VH difficulty.

Reagrding animations, their speed matters as well as their impact deltas, which in the case of spears and 2handed weapons are rather bigger than usual.

Cavalry (and generally unit) mass has no immediate effect on damage, it does however help, because it gives more penetrating power to the unit and allows for better utilisation of the charge bonus. In proper melee, it just helps push the enemy, no significant difference...

When 'ready'/spears-braced the spearmen also negate and reflect the cavalry's charge bonus back to the cavalry, apart from their usual ant-cav bonus.

I don't know exactly what's the differences between RTW and M2TW, but their engines seem much closer than say MTW and RTW, so most if it must be the same or very slightly different. For example in RTW defense skill counts only from the front and right side and shield only from front and left side, while you say that in M2TW they both apply to both sides. Also in RTW the shield bonus gives protection equal to twice its value against frontal ranged attacks. I don't know how this works in M2TW.

Hope this helps.
Cheers!

[pike master]

are the animations actually determining the battle or are the results figured out through random chance computations then acted out on the battlefield?

[HighLord z0b]

are the animations actually determining the battle or are the results figured out through random chance computations then acted out on the battlefield?

I think it's a complicated combination of both.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I heard the "difficulty level factor" no longer applies in M2TW. On E/M/H, the player's units get morale and stamina bonuses. Its only balanced on VH battle difficulty. There's no difficulty modifiers which affect the success of kills though.