Shield values

[Diamondj]

I was just wondering if there was a reason that in general EB shield defense values are so low. It seems like it would be more accurate if armour was generally less important and shields were more important.

[Watchman]

The better armoured a man was, the less need he had for a shield partly also because good enough arm defenses achieve much the same effect in hand-to-hand - a logic culminating in fully armed starkly shieldless heavy cavalry like cataphracts (who typically at most had a small "buckler" strapped to the arm, and even that was rare), or pretty much all European horse from the Late Middle Ages onwards (although they later lost the armour too...).

[Diamondj]

The better armoured a man was, the less need he had for a shield partly also because good enough arm defenses achieve much the same effect in hand-to-hand - a logic culminating in fully armed starkly shieldless heavy cavalry like cataphracts (who typically at most had a small "buckler" strapped to the arm, and even that was rare), or pretty much all European horse from the Late Middle Ages onwards (although they later lost the armour too...).

I can appreciate that, but in EB even the less armoured and cheap troops generally have armour values that are much higher than their shield values. This seems counter-intuitive since if true it would have almost meant that ancient soldiers would rather be struck in the chest than on their shield.

[Watchman]

You might notice those fellows tend to have ye olde brainbox covered in iron. Plus the shield value doesn't get halved by AP weapons, and AFAIK counts double against ranged attacks... and then there's the defense skill which for shield-carrying troops will in practice mostly represent deft use of the device.