How to fine tune your balance; how combat sats work, etc.

[The Great Khan of Rome]

I've modded this game for quite a while now and I seemed to have got at least some idea on how the stats work and what the game does. This is mostly for EDU editors wanting to fine-tune their mods balance or whatever.

First the combat stats, amour, def, and shield. The total is what the unit attacks in melee in the front of the unit. The attack in the stat_pri and stat_sec is how much is reduced from this number. It's rather noting that the value in stat_pri and stat_sec, are maximum values, and therefore not static numbers. This is to make the combat more random and the minimum seems to be 0 or 1. If the unit is attacked from the back, only the armor is applied unless the unit turns around to face the attacking unit. Charge bonus is a multiplier of the attack when the unit's charge has finished. Charge attack is thus weapon attack, times the charge bonus. Weapon attack seems to matter a lot more than the charge bonus when dealing damage when charging.

Charge bonus is actually additive, not multiplicative. The minimum is 1. Charge attack is thus weapon attack, plus the charge bonus. Bracing bonuses (via *_spear, spear_bonus_*, and *_pike) may decrease this value for charging cav.

Amour is applied on all sides and in all situations. It is thus universal. The shield protects in the front and the right. This can be technically called "front armor", as that was it is functionally. This is, again universal if it is being attacked from the front. Next is the def. This decreases the weapons attack by the number in the def skill. Thus if it's equal or less than the def skill, it will fail and the attacked unit will get a chance to strike. This is only applied in melee combat.

Then there's mount effect, which mutates the attack, by adding or decreasing the maximum values of stat_pri and stat_sec, by the specified number, if the unit attacks or it's missile hits the specified mount. Most of the above still applies.

Spear in stat_*_attr also affect the maximum values of stat_pri and stat_sec, by decreasing the maximum to infantry by 1 and increasing the maximum by 4. It also applies bracing, which means that the charge bonus or charge attack (it's a cavalry unit), is lessened by the maximum value in stat_pri and stat_sec. Light_spear does this to a lesser degree. Spear_bonus_x increases the maximum value by the specified amount towards cavalry and decreasing the maximum towards infantry by the specified amount.

Next is lethality. This is more or less a percentile chance if the unit will deduct a hit point from the unit. You can learn more about percentiles here: https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/percentiles.html So for every attack, the lethality will increase until the individual model is dead or the attacking model is distracted. Every attack/damage on a model is retained, so there is no healing mid battle. In M2TW, this is replaced with "Skeleton compensation factor" in EDU. This is along with min delay between attacks, determines attack speeds and therefore DPS. The ranged equivalent for this is stat_fire_delay. For lethality, melee-hit-rate is used for melee and missile-target-accuracy for ranged units. It pretty much the same as lethality in RTW's EDU, except it can't be assigned for individual units, only general types (calvary and phalanx) or for combat situations (cavalry-vs-phalanx)


I hope this will be able to help some with their balancing.