Weaponsmiths or armourers?

[Nelson]

Having an element of mystery is in its way more realistic - Oda Nobunaga didn't know what the precise impact of increasing his ashigaru's armour or lengthening their spears was - he just knew that more is usually better.

Bingo! The various upgrades improve the men somehow, either offensively or defensively. (Not that there’s anything wrong with sorting out the math.) Ultimately it comes down to piling morale deficits onto the enemy force until they break. I always want my guys to have the greatest staying power. In game terms that means high morale and armor. I don’t much care how long it takes me to kill them as long as the other people quit fighting first!

For more offense I rely on my generals to get the infantry commander attack bonuses.

[Jarmam]

Any simple roll of dice in combat would provide plenty of randomness.

Let me give an example of why I get frustrated by being ignorant: In the good old 1995 days there was an excellent turn based strategy game called Warlords 3, wherein your units would have a "str"-rating of x (between 1 and 9). They could move x spots per turn and take x (1-4) hits before dying in a fight. Now the combat system was that a dice was rolled, the unit's str was added to the result of the dice and the loser took a hit. The dice being rolled was the randomness - a dragon str 9 hp 3 could get flattened by a simple group of light infantry str 2 hp 2 if they were lucky enough with the dice rolled.

However, as it always was with such things, the dice being rolled could be anything you wanted in the particular game - from... I think it was a 8-sided dice to a 50-sided if you like a bit of randomness to spice things up. Naturally this meant that in campaigns the dice would vary in size depending on the map. Thus, you might wish to improve a certain unit's str to increase their chance of winning massively in a 8-sided dice-map, but you would much rather add more hp or more movement to a different unit to increase its chance of winning in a 50-sided dice game (as its almost a 50/50 who takes the hit, a hit point is about 25 times better than a str point in such a case on a mobile unit working alone, as a surviving unit gets all its hit points restored).

The thing here is that while its random, there is logic behind the madness. I cannot control whether my units do well or not, but I can understand the randomness and how it works - all the mechanics are clear. Its like playing poker to a certain extent. Sure I don't know what cards you have, but I know you have a combination of the 52 in the deck.

Not knowing what charge bonus does (does it affect 1 attack? For 3 seconds? What if you just run into a unit and don't specifically order a charge) or how attackskill works vs defense+armor (why do Katanas beat Naginata Samurai when the Naginatas have more attack+defense+armor - is it attack being more effective, defense or armor being less effective or what gives?) just means Im drunkenly stumbling around in the dark as to what Im doing. If I think attack+defense+armor equals chance to win a direct melee fight, but your Katanas humiliate my Naginata, it feels like you just pulled out a joker and beat my full house with a "lolapallozza"-combination that works in this particular casino. I wouldnt know what just happened or why it happens consistently (aka not as a function of randomness). Such things bother me :p

But until someone finds out how these things work I will settle for improving armor on anything that cant shoot. Except maybe Yari Cavalry... that depends whether or not charge is any good, but since I dont know I guess giving them more +attack would make them significantly better against enemy samurai archers and katanas that wont easily break and rout due to morale shocks.

[faker01]

I always want my guys to have the greatest staying power. In game terms that means high morale and armor. I don’t much care how long it takes me to kill them as long as the other people quit fighting first!

When the other have to quit first, wouldn't it make sense to try to balance the stats?

Not knowing what charge bonus does (does it affect 1 attack? For 3 seconds? What if you just run into a unit and don't specifically order a charge) or how attackskill works vs defense+armor (why do Katanas beat Naginata Samurai when the Naginatas have more attack+defense+armor - is it attack being more effective, defense or armor being less effective or what gives?) just means Im drunkenly stumbling around in the dark as to what Im doing. If I think attack+defense+armor equals chance to win a direct melee fight, but your Katanas humiliate my Naginata, it feels like you just pulled out a joker and beat my full house with a "lolapallozza"-combination that works in this particular casino. I wouldnt know what just happened or why it happens consistently (aka not as a function of randomness). Such things bother me :p

It seems a Katana has a bonus against infantry and a yari has a big bonus against cavalry.
I also don't like not to know, how everything is calculated, but my tests seem to confirm, that one factor of the chance to kill in mellee is :attack/(def+armor) and for ranged 1(unkown factor(bow?)+armor)

[Jarmam]

It does seem like Katanas have a bonus against infantry, but what's weird is that the units with bonuses against cavalry have that listed as a specific individual stat - if Katanas have the same vs infantry, why isn't this stat listed? Is it hidden or integrated in how attack skill works vs defense+armor? It could be (edit: No it couldn't apparently) - I can give nothing but a half-qualified guess.

Argharhghahraha, ignorance is bliss? Who said that!?

Edit: I went and tested Katanas vs Naginatas and the results baffled me - especially vs Monks

The Katanas and the Naginatas broke completely even during the charge (within 2 kills of eachother) in all 3 tests I ran and all three times the Katanas would slowly crawl away in terms of kills until they were about 10-12 ahead of the Naginatas at which point the Naginatas gave up and ran with their remaining 55ish guys against the 65-70 Katanas. Expected results despite the Naginata having superior combat stats at first glance.

The monks, however, I did *not* expect to lose vs the Katanas and they didn't... exactly. They won by morale alone. They won the charge by about 8 guys (7, 8, 8) but then started losing troops despite having more 2 attack skill than Katanas as well as 1 more defense+armor. Only when Warcry was ready did they turn the tables around after the Katanas had more than equalized (being ahead by around 5 guys at the time of Warcry in all three scenarios). At Warcry the monks pulled away again and ended up with 40, 40, 39 against 35, 33, 38 Katanas. And lo and behold, when Warcry ended on the Katanas they started catching up... and catching up... and you guessed it, they actually overtook again. The Katanas do not have 15 morale like the monks, though, so with a headcount lead of 3, 2, and 6 their remaining 24, 21 and 23 guys gave up and ran despite the monks having only 21, 19 and 17 guys left.

IGNORANCE! I DONT GET IT!

Edit 2:

I tested again with me having the monks as to avoid Warcries and it's a travesty to say the least. Three times I ran it and the results make no sense to me:
Breakeven at charge (20 died from each) = 46 Katanas rout the 32 Monks
Monks win the charge by 10 guys = 32 Katanas rout the 19 Monks
Monks win the charge by 6 guys = 36 Katanas rout the 24 Monks

[faker01]

Maybe there where 2 hidden stats(percentage, one against infantry, one against cavalry) and it didn't work as wanted, so a 3rd or maybe also a 4th stat was added. Maybe there were no bonusstat for mellee against infantry and it was added later(and not changed in the ui?)
Maybe someone, who reads the files can say more.

[frogbeastegg]

Weapon types do get different bonuses. Katana gets a strong anti-infantry bonus. Yari get a strong anti-cavalry bonus. Naginata gets a mild anti-infantry and a mild anti-cavalry bonus. Thus, as specialised killers yari and katana units are superior, whereas naginata are capable of performing well all-round. If the game didn't set bonuses in this fashion, naginata units would render the rest obsolete.

Naginata warrior monks are set up as shock troops. Katana are designed to kill steadily, and they get a bonus versus the monks. Wave versus rock; if the wave cannot drown the rock swiftly, the rock will outlast it.

[Maltz]

Interesting. Can someone confirm the existence of the "anti-infantry" stats maybe by looking at unit information (as a modder)? Not sure why the developers would include anti-cavalry but leave out anti-infantry.

[Jarmam]

Weapon types do get different bonuses. Katana gets a strong anti-infantry bonus. Yari get a strong anti-cavalry bonus. Naginata gets a mild anti-infantry and a mild anti-cavalry bonus. Thus, as specialised killers yari and katana units are superior, whereas naginata are capable of performing well all-round. If the game didn't set bonuses in this fashion, naginata units would render the rest obsolete.

Naginata warrior monks are set up as shock troops. Katana are designed to kill steadily, and they get a bonus versus the monks. Wave versus rock; if the wave cannot drown the rock swiftly, the rock will outlast it.

We can agree on the necessity of a katana-to-infantryface-stat, but its quite strange and quite unnecessary that they've hidden it.
Also it makes sense to label Monks as shock troops simply through their terrifying Warcy ability, but Katanas bring a bigger charge bonus and lower defense stat (even including their innate 5 armor) - its simply impossible to know what the design philosophy and effective role is by looking at their stats as Katanas scream shock trooper more than Monks do, which really beckons the display of their assumed innate bonus vs infantry. At a glance I would think the Naginata Samurai as the slow killer and the No Dachi as the insane man's version of Katana Samurai for hitting the right spot hard enough.

Also the Naginata Monk vs Katana charge results baffle me again now that I think about it... why do the Monks consistently win or at worst break even if they have 3 less charge bonus? If charge bonus is a simple +attack skill for x seconds, x attacks or first attack one would think the Katanas would either win through their +infantrystat or at the very least break even with the Monks - but they don't. What gives? I am really getting curious as to what exactly charge bonus does.