Effects of Attack Value

[Kobal2fr]

OK, did the test with JHI, and again the results fly in the face of my understanding. First, I pit them against Highland Rabble upgraded to JHI stats. Both units took similar losses on the charge, but the JHI always won the following brawl, with 20-30 men left. I figured "well, maybe they have a reach advantage. Also, the peasants are not designed to fight in highly_trained formation, that might be it".
The problem is that most western highly_trained units are pikemen, who wouldn't do. So next I pit Lamtuna Spearmen (with JHI stats) vs JHI. The fights were less lopsided, but still the JHI won quasi-all the time.

The thing is, all those fights followed the same math : units reduced to 45-50 on the charge, then both reduced to 30ish during the initial melee, then the JHI stop taking as many losses as their opponents. I looked even closer, and I noticed that sometimes, JHI "turn" attacks. That is to say, they do a normal attack, their enemy blocks, enemy starts to attack, but then the Janissary blocks it AND follows the block with a killing blow, in one fluid anim. Seems to happen more often when soldiers are spaced out than in close knit melees. Could be a mere "attack made to look like a counter", of course, but it really looks like it's triggered by the opponent attacking them.

DEK vs NS resulted in DEKs getting smashed all the time, wether the DEK had Sword stats or Swords having DEK stats.

So there *is* something about animations, and the initial result was a fluke. And I'm an idiot, but that went without saying.

However, I do believe it still proves that while attack is determined by anim+stats instead of stats alone, the defense stats have the same "value" no matter what animation set is used. Or, to put it another way, that models who have a shield are not inherently more resistant that models who don't - high defense 2 handers parry/block just as often as they do, only using the butt of their weapon instead of the shield. Which gives us a sound basis for balance : pitting units with the exact same defense would allow us the quantify how much "attack value" each anim set really has, and we could balance from there.
So my time was not TOTALLY wasted. Was it ?