Confused - land_unit DB Balues and Actual In Game Value Not Matching?

[=HighXplosive=]

I have been editing the land_units table and lowering the melee_attack and raising the melee_defence of units in order to slow battles down.

So far, I have successfully lowered the melee_attack (dismounted_melee_attack and melee_attack) of all units. However while I increased the melee defence (melee_defence and dismounted_melee_defence) of all units, and while it is clear that this has had an effect, I noticed that the melee defence value in the land_unit table for every unit in my pack does not correspond to the actual value in the game. For example, a Legionary Cohort has 26 melee defence on the table, but 66 melee defence in game. This inconsistency was present on the vanilla land_unit table as well.

The question therefore is how exactly is the melee_defence stat in the land_unit table computed into the actual in game melee defence - whats the maths behind this?

[Sixela]

shields also contribute to melee defense my friend. So legionary cohort have shields that add 40 melee defense to the unit..

[=HighXplosive=]

Thanks. Out of curiosity, which table are the values for those shields located?

[crzyrndm]

unit_shields controls the stats granted by shields (armour, MD, blocking)