What determines how good a unit is?

[Diamondj]

I have long been aware that there is much more to unit effectiveness than just their attack, defense, and charge power. However, after I discovered a source that quantifies each unit's morale, range, and bonuses it still seemed like there are more variables to unit strength. For instance Garamantine infantry seems to be better than their low attack, defense and average morale suggests. Am I wrong about all of this or is there really more to unit effectiveness?

[Sakkura]

There's the weapon lethality and the unit mass (how good they are at pushing through the enemy formation). These stats are available on the unit cards, located in your documentation folder in the RTW\EB folder.

[Diamondj]

Are the attack and defense numbers still the most important by far or do any of the other variables approach their significance?

[beatoangelico]

lethality plays a very important role in EB: if there are 2 units with a very similar attack value (let's say 10) but one has daggers (0.04 lethality) and the other has longswords (0.225 lethality), the second one kills enemy units a lot faster then the first one and in the end is much more valuable. AP (armor piercing) is another value that affects attack, its value depens on the enemies that you are facing (heavy armored armies can suffer a lot from AP weapons). Morale is valuable but not so much in EB as in vanilla IMHO, unless you play on high/very high on battles and you are forced to sustain heavy casualities, but it's still important when the unit is facing multiple or superior units (playing with Roman legions and some hellenistic-estern levy is still very different)

[BerkeleyBoi]

Sorry to go a little off topic, but how important are the different defensive stats? Like which is more important, armor, shield, or skill or are they all the same?

[Sakkura]

Sorry to go a little off topic, but how important are the different defensive stats? Like which is more important, armor, shield, or skill or are they all the same?

Well, it depends on the situation. Armor is the best of the three defensive stats except against AP attacks; AP attacks ignore 50% of the armor stat. Armor protects against both ranged and melee attacks from every direction.
The shield rating is only used against attacks (both ranged and melee) from the front and the left; it does not protect the right side or the rear at all. The defense skill only protects against melee attacks.

[Diamondj]

Well, it depends on the situation. Armor is the best of the three defensive stats except against AP attacks; AP attacks ignore 50% of the armor stat. Armor protects against both ranged and melee attacks from every direction.
The shield rating is only used against attacks (both ranged and melee) from the front and the left; it does not protect the right side or the rear at all. The defense skill only protects against melee attacks.

Does that mean armour-piercing weapons don't affect shields at all?

[Sakkura]

Does that mean armour-piercing weapons don't affect shields at all?

Uhh, I'm not 100% on this but I believe they halve the contribution from the shield as well. Of course, that only applies when attacking from the left or the front; the shield is always ignored when attacking from the right or from behind.

[beatoangelico]

afaik AP weapons halves only the armor value, not the shield one, but maybe I'm wrong

[NeoSpartan]

hey fellas don't forget about the "Scare enemy infantry" this is freaking awesome! If ur the one doing the scaring

ex: Theuroporoi will rout having lost about 20-30 men/80!!!!!

[Diamondj]

hey fellas don't forget about the "Scare enemy infantry" this is freaking awesome! If ur the one doing the scaring

ex: Theuroporoi will rout having lost about 20-30 men/80!!!!!

Are you referring to any kind of naked unit

[NeoSpartan]

yep, and the ones painted in black (Sweboz)

Oh another thing to keep in mind is COST. Expensive units cannot be fielded in large numbers (especially if you are on a budget) this is more "important" in MP.
-ex: with a 30k budged simply by having 3 units that cost $3200 you have already used almost 1/3 of ur tresury and u still have 17 slots left to fill.

[hoom]

There is also strike rate statistic & the animations actually have some affect too.

[BerkeleyBoi]

There is also strike rate statistic & the animations actually have some affect too.

Is this how fast units swing their weapons? And how do you find out their strike rate? Which animations are best (in terms of their killing power, not how they look)