What exactly does "good stamina" do?

[Duke Smellington]

Sounds like a silly question I know. Presumably it gives a unit, well, better stamina than those without the trait. But I did a quick experiment in a custom battle where I made one unit with "good stamina" and one without repeatedly run back and forth across the map and there appeared to be no difference in how quickly they tired. To clarify, I mean that their statuses changed from "fresh" to "warmed up" and from "warmed up" to "winded" within a couple of seconds of each other. I put this small difference down to my timing in issuing the commands and that the routes wouldn't have been identical.

Does good stamina just give soldiers greater endurance when fighting, and not when travelling?

[Maklodes]

I haven't tested this myself, but my understanding is that while good stamina/hardy units tire at the same rate as other units, they recover more quickly. Maybe you could check and see whether the good stamina unit goes from winded back to warmed up back to fresh more quickly?

[UndrState]

Could you let us know what happens? I'm curious.

[Aeratus]

Just to clarify, "good stamina" is just a unit description. It is not an actual in-game trait and has no in-game significance.

The actual trait is "hardy" and "very hardy," and this affects the rate of getting fatigue, and the regeneration of stamina when in a fatigued state. The difference between normal and "very hardy" is very noticeable in long battles.

[Duke Smellington]

Oh! Don't know why I didn't think of that. It looks like you're right:

I played a custom battle with one unit each of Norse Swordsman (regular stamina), Dismounted Huscarls ("Good stamina") and Dismounted Feudal Knights ("Good stamina"). I ran them across the map until they were all "exhausted". This time I noticed a difference in how quickly they tired, the NSs reached exhaustion slightly before the DHs, who reached exhaustion slightly before the DFKs. To me it was a few seconds difference but the battle was running on x6 speed so the difference may have been as much as a minute. I also ran them in formation which means once the NSs became "exhausted" they had to run a bit longer because I was waiting for the DFKs to become exhausted too - I don't know if that makes a difference. I'm assuming not and that "exhausted" basically means a stamina of zero that can't fall any further.

Once they were all exhausted I stopped them and timed how long it took them each to recover and got some very interesting results. The DFKs recovered to "fresh" in exactly 3 mins and DHs shortly after in 3:08. At this point the NSs were still "very tired" and took 6 minutes to reach "warmed up" and 7:14 to reach "fresh". Multiply these by 6 to get real times and that's a staggering difference! NSs take ~43 minutes to recover whereas DFKs take just 18.

I may be able to explain the slight difference between the DFKs and DHs. Because the three units ran in a line formation with the DFKs in the centre the DHs and NSs would have had to run slightly further than the DFKs each time they turned at the edge of the map (in order to cross to the other end of the line). However, as I ran them all to exhaustion anyway this would make no difference under the assumption that "exhausted" is as tired as they can get (i.e. stamina of zero). But that's only an assumption .

So... good stamina is awesome! That quick recovery would gives units a big advantage in any extended melee. A particularly good scenario might be a long siege defense when it would be feasible to sally out your DFKs, battle them to exhaustion, withdraw them, wait for them to recover fully and then send them out again within the battle time limit. This wouldn't be easily achievable with units that have normal stamina.

Thanks so much for your suggestions! I'm glad I understand this now and I hope it's useful to you too

[Maklodes]

Thanks for doing the tests and sharing your findings!

Side note: It's always struck me as slightly funny how many units encased in heavy mail and plate armor lugging around big shields have good stamina while their lightly clad counterparts don't. Dismounted men-at-arms clad in partial plate can jog around for longer than sergeant spearmen wearing no armor or mercenary crossbowmen wearing padded gambesons before they feel tired.