Armour Upgrades

[Korinthos Hoplites]

This is a vanilla issue but I hope you can (and are willing to) correct it. As you have probably noticed in M2TW armour is divided in different levels.
In vanilla:
-padded: 4 def
-light mail: 5 def
-heavy mail: 7 def
-partial plate: 8 def
-full plate: 9 def
-advanced plate: 10 def

These are the values for the original unit armour, but, if you upgraded the armour, say, from light mail to heavy mail your unit would gain 1 def, instead of gaining 2 (to make 7, the heavy mail value), this could get really annoying when upgrading unarmoured units because it's a big leap from 0 to 4.

DarthMod does give more armour to units (+2 apparently) but doesn't correct this. I would suggest making it realistic:
-increase the cost of armourer buildings
-increase the cost of upgrading unit armour
-whenever a unit's armour is upgraded it goes to the next level, instead of gaining 1 def point

This may cause slight balance problems (militias getting too powerful), but you would also have to pay more for the upgrade.

EDIT: it's a bit odd to see a unit with 3 armour wearing heavy mail while another wears padded and has 4 armour, or worse, 6 if you're using DarthMod...

[Korinthos Hoplites]

Any thoughts?

[DARTH VADER]

I have a feeling that armour upgrades are giving secret enhancements to units than only the visual stats.
Only a sense not proof and in order to test someone can melee 2 units that have same stats but the one has +1 armour upgrade more.

Then the bias in favour of it will show how much benefit it gains after all.

[JaM]

i did it diferently. I changed all armor values to 1 padded,2 light chain,3heavy chain,4 partial plate,5full plate,6 adv plate, 1 small shield, 2 medium shield 3 large shield and lowered all attack values (-50-60%) With this even +1 makes a difference and its worth to upgrade

[Time Commander Bob]

Contrary to popular belief armour upgrades are not broken in any way whatsoever; the unit cards that display armour for upgraded units are.

Don't believe me? Ok, in a custom battle pit one group of Sergeant Spearmen (SS) with one armour upgrade versus one group of Italian Spear Militia(ISM). According to the game the stats are SS: A7 D10 C3 VS ISM A7 D13 C3. Surely the odds are in the ISM's favour? Well, as I found out it is an even battle, with the sergeant spearmen winning 50% of the time. I repeated this battle again and again and in what I call and "even-scenario" (which is both sides charging eachother at the same time) the casaulty rate of the units is so alike, (ie when one has 60 men left the other has 61, ten seconds later when one has 50 men left the other 49) you would think that two of the same unit were attacking eachother. In fact, if you count the armour upgrade of sergeant spearmen as equivalent to 4, the stats are exactly the same.

To strengthen my point, when I tried SS with no armour upgrades versus ISM, the ISM almost always won, even in situations in-favour of the SS (like the ISM standing still and letting the SS charge them).

Similar results can be found with sergeant spearmen with light mail versus armoured sergeants.

The reason why people think "armour upgrades are broken\not worth it" is because of the mis-leading unit cards which confuses many people. The unit cards stats are so mis-leading that they even manage to confuse the battle's odds: for example, in my SS versus ISM fight, the battle odds where stacked slightly in favour of the ISM, even though the fight was an even one.

Each Total War has its mis-leading part. For instance in RTW the amount of each upkeep for the soldiers was deducted from a settlement's income according to population. This led people to believe that "bigger cities lost money" which was untrue; the big cities took a lot of the army upkeep which is why they appeared to lose money. M2TW's big confusion seems to be armour upgrades.

To conclude: armour upgrades are fine; modders should find out how to "correct" the unit cards.

[hammi]

Contrary to popular belief armour upgrades are not broken in any way whatsoever; the unit cards that display armour for upgraded units are.

.. snip..

To conclude: armour upgrades are fine; modders should find out how to "correct" the unit cards.

Incorrect.

While perhaps true in the melee but definetly broken in regarding arrows.

In this thread, http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=73795

an interesting test was posted that I quote:

Originally posted by Dopp

Really doesn't seem that way when I tested it. Peasant archers vs. pikemen in all 3 armor levels, 5 volleys repeated 10 times for each level. Effect was negligible. Pikemen in steel breastplates dropped almost as fast as those in their t-shirts, an average of 30 losses vs 32 for unarmored after 5 volleys. Armored pikemen (stuff that comes with armor) took very few casualties in comparison, around 18. Adding 3 to the base armor of pikemen (giving them 6 armor with all upgrades) made them just as resilient to arrow fire, 20 losses on average.

On the face of it, the upgrades seem to be the RTW +1 armor per level system. It doesn't seem likely that there is any "hardcoded" armor level system ingame. I wish someone with an official line would comment on this.

I don't know if anything can be done about this, except tell CA that the armor upgrades do not work against projectile damage.

[Time Commander Bob]

Incorrect.

While perhaps true in the melee but definetly broken in regarding arrows.

In this thread, http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=73795

an interesting test was posted that I quote:

Originally posted by Dopp



I don't know if anything can be done about this, except tell CA that the armor upgrades do not work against projectile damage.

Hmm, I did a test which was peasant archers (me) versus an AI pike miltia unit.
I did these battles on grassy plain (flat) and in clear weather conditions.
I turned skirmish mode off my peasant archers and left them firing at the advancing pike militia. When the pike militia had gotten into contact with my peasant archers, I paused the game and counted how many men the pike miltia had left. I did this five times for each armour level. These are my results:

Armour Upgrade:
0(no armour) - 39, 38, 39, 36, 32 Average: 36.8 pikemen left
1 (leather) - 43, 45, 44, 54, 42 Average:45.6 pikemen left
2 (light mail) - 44. 55, 46, 57, 58 Average: 52 pikemen left
3 (heavy mail - 57, 62, 53, 61, 59 Average: 58.4 pikemen left

Judging by this, I'd have to say that armour upgrades do in fact help noticeably against missiles, unless you can get some battles which suggest otherwise.

[JaM]

Th true is that armor upgrades are broken,but unit animations are weird too. So you can have even battle between those two units,but if you put them against peasants without armor, peasants will win everytime... the only way how to chck armor upgrades is to test units under missile fire as here the unit animation dont play a role. Right now Armor upgrades are not worth the price what is a shame, because units looks much better with them... there is no way to fix that as armor upgrades are hardcoded. The only way is rework everything from scratch and lower all attack and defence values so even +1 upgrade will mean something. If the values are halved, +1 addon means the same as the +2 for vanila unit.

The other possible way is the way i saw in "Road to Jeusalem Mod" but that way you will still see those next level upgrades in incorect way as well you can only add +3 to one unit so that way you will be limited to just one upgrade posibility per unit.

Third way is to remove them from game completely (way the LT1956 did in hisSPQR mod for RTW) but with this you will loose a lot of nice units only seeable through upgrade.

[DARTH VADER]

I beg for someone to try to play beta 1vs1 battle against identical armoured and not armoured upgraded opponents.

I repeat that there are internal mechanics not seen in unit cards as mentioned by Time Commander Bob

[JaM]

Time Commander Bob: But try archers against Italian militia with 4 armor(padded), and then against upgraded unit +1 (armor 1 padded) with same shield. and you will see, that italian militia will survive much more than your upgraded unit to padded.

[Time Commander Bob]

Time Commander Bob: But try archers against Italian militia with 4 armor(padded), and then against upgraded unit +1 (armor 1 padded) with same shield. and you will see, that italian militia will survive much more than your upgraded unit to padded.

I have tried this, Italian Spear Militia (no upgrades) and Sergeant Spearmen (with 1 armour upgrade). I did the same sort of test as the pikemen one, with clear weather. As soon as the SS or ISM had reached the Peasant Archers I was firing them with, I counted how many men the SS or ISM had left.
Here are the results:

SS: 57, 58, 62, 57, 56 Average: 58
ISM: 57, 63, 57, 62, 59 Average: 59.6

So, very little difference there, but I just know that one test isn't enough for you sceptics, so I did another one. This time it was comparing Sergeant Spearmen (with 2 armour upgrades) and Armoured Sergeants (no armour upgrades). I used the same method as the above, in exactly the same conditions.
Here are the results:

SS: 63, 61, 65, 68, 66 Average: 64.6
AS: 62, 65, 65, 68, 63 Average: 64.6

That is indeed quite scary that they have the same average, not even I expected it to be that close.

To conclude: My tests show that armour upgrades seem equivalent to natural armour of the same type.
Of course, I welcome any counter-arguments that I can test (what's next, the fact that armour upgrades might not be as good as natural armour versus siege engines?)

[hammi]

@Time Commander

Thanks for the test results, quite interesting. I'll be happy puppy if the armor upgrades actually work.

Seems that we have a conflict with your results and Dopp's though. Quite frankly I have absolutely no clue at the moment what would be the cause for the difference.

I'll muse over it and I guess I have to setup a test too. A bit different from both yours and his, of course. 2 tests from 3 should then offer similar results and hopefully guide us to the right direction.

[Korinthos Hoplites]

Of course, I welcome any counter-arguments that I can test (what's next, the fact that armour upgrades might not be as good as natural armour versus siege engines?)

LOL Thanks for testing, I'm currently unable to play

[JaM]

Time Commander Bob: Dont want to kill your optimism, but both units have same shield with 6 armor value, so 6 missile attack value of militia archers will have quite a hard time to negate that. Try testing units without shields or use stronger bowmens

[JaM]

I dont have much time now for more tests, but this was posted earlier by dopp>

Really doesn't seem that way when I tested it. Peasant archers vs. pikemen in all 3 armor levels, 5 volleys repeated 10 times for each level. Effect was negligible. Pikemen in steel breastplates dropped almost as fast as those in their t-shirts, an average of 30 losses vs 32 for unarmored after 5 volleys. Armored pikemen (stuff that comes with armor) took very few casualties in comparison, around 18. Adding 3 to the base armor of pikemen (giving them 6 armor with all upgrades) made them just as resilient to arrow fire, 20 losses on average.

[JaM]

Time Commander Bob: If you think about it, it dont make sense to have some secret armor resistance linked with unit look. Such a thing will require to have a file of some sort or the whole thing is incorporated in exe file. IT is hard to believe, that they did such an enormous change (to RTW engine) and if this is true it may totally prevent Modders to create new units. (if unit upgrade armor is in exe file and you add new unit, your upgraded looks will be not associated in exe with correct resistance ...)

With all this in mind, i really doubt that there is a some sort of secret values that are not in EDU file. Empirical tests are quite tricky, they often make people believe what they want to believe. 5 attempts are not enough to make it statistical (you need atleast make 100 attempts to make some averages) IT just dont make sense, as CA advertized that M2TW will be much easier to Mod than RTW, so why would they make such a big limitation to mod scene?

[Time Commander Bob]

Time Commander Bob: If you think about it, it dont make sense to have some secret armor resistance linked with unit look. Such a thing will require to have a file of some sort or the whole thing is incorporated in exe file. IT is hard to believe, that they did such an enormous change (to RTW engine) and if this is true it may totally prevent Modders to create new units. (if unit upgrade armor is in exe file and you add new unit, your upgraded looks will be not associated in exe with correct resistance ...)

With all this in mind, i really doubt that there is a some sort of secret values that are not in EDU file. Empirical tests are quite tricky, they often make people believe what they want to believe. 5 attempts are not enough to make it statistical (you need atleast make 100 attempts to make some averages) IT just dont make sense, as CA advertized that M2TW will be much easier to Mod than RTW, so why would they make such a big limitation to mod scene?

I think that you misunderstand me. I don't think that the armour is linked with unit-look; I think that in armour terms 1=4, 2=5, 3=6=7. It's not that I think the game looks at the armour and goes "ah chain-mail, armour 5", its that the unit card seems to be lying.
If you look in export_descr_unit, you will see that some lines are semi-coloned (ie, they don't do anything). One of which is this:
;stat_armour_ex 0, 4, 5, 7, 1, 0, 0, flesh
This mentions armour upgrades and the armour value it gives (getting rid of the semi-colon makes the game crash).
If only CA had decided to go ahead with this it would end the confusion. So far this supports the idea of armour upgrades not being as good as natural ones, but scroll down a little further and you will see this line:
armour_ug_levels 0, 1, 2, 3
The first number represents the starting armour and the rest the 3 upgrade levels (this is pike miltia I am looking at)
Then scroll down to a unit that has "natural" starting armour. Aventuros, for instance has this armour_ug_levels line:
armour_ug_levels 2, 3, 4
So when the game reads an armour_ug level of 2, it translates it to light mail, which it checks what armour value it is, which is 5.

At first I thought that the armour_ug_levels made the first number of the stat_pri_armour line useless. I tested this by giving pike miltia and armour value of 20 and putting them against Aventuros. What happened was that the pike miltia won comfortably, but still took about 15 casaulties. I then did the battle again, this time giving the pike miltia 1 armour upgrade and they still won, but only took a maximum of 10 casaulties. With 3 armour upgrades the pike miltia only lost 3 men.

I then increased the armour value of pike miltia to 23 to see if it was the same as a armour value 20 pikeman with 3 upgrades. The test was the same as the ones above and the 23 armour pikemen took around 10 casaulties, a noticeably different casaulty rate to armour value 20 pikemen with 3 upgrades (where a death was a rare occurrence).

The fact is M2TW armour values currently have 2 systems running and that it is not as simple as "armour upgrade = +1 to current armour".

[JaM]

1=4, 2=5, 3=6=7 line dont make sense. if they really did that, they are assuming their armor values as the only right and this prevent modding, because it is imposible to do anything with armor values. That is what i cant believe they did.

[DARTH VADER]

For me if I was CA I would apply bonus percentages for every type of upgrade

So for example overally I would give 20% bonus for padded and 40% for mail for example so identical armour with different upgrades would make a difference...and I think this is the case here...but we cannot see it in text.
After my modification in Darth stats I see overally a huge improvement in battle endurance and upgrades help it more.

[JaM]

And thats what i'm not sure. They newer used percentage for anything in past games. For me it looks like they wanted to implement upgrade system but they didnt made it until release, so they disabled all lines in EDU and left it as it is. maybe they are working on it to be a part of this February patch. Atleast i hope so...