Regarding Shield Strengh

[Asphyxion]

So, I've been playing quite a bit, mostly as Romans and encounters some weird stuff in regards to balance and realism in terms of shields. I love the game in general but this is just a small thing that's been bugging me. I guess more people had the same deal but I just found it a tad unrealistic that a testodo formation can take casualties from slingers, they're slinging a stone, it shouldn't really benefit to breaking a high quality shield. I get why a javelins would but really not stones. What would make sense is that slingers=basically no damage to shields, Arrows=intermediate damage to shields, Javelins=high damage to shields. To me slinger damage is highly overpowered. Slingers should be a unit that is great against unarmored units without shields only i.e. archers.A roman shield basically will cover all important areas on the body from a hail of stones, makes no sense that trained soldiers die from them imo.

It would be interesting to find out more how the shield strengh works in depth if anyone has that information available. And also how one can manually adjust shield strengh for different races, it's clearly apparent to me that romans should have a higher value here then hoplites ranging from both core to elite units. That currently does not seem to be the case since Shield Bearers take limited casualties from slingers.

Please refrain from posting how you think the game sucks here, I'd like a serious discussion in regards to the theorycrafting behind shield strengh.

[rx7t3_gio]

+1000

[kesmai]

they add shield+armor= total armor. then health is added (not individual, but for the whole unit this time).
slingers have a valueprojectileap which is randomly calculating armor penetration from 0-100% with in a 20% starting bias.
so if the stats are thrown (dice) and the armor is penetrated, then HP is deducted from the unit value. this results in e.g. pretorians dying even if they have a armour value of 150 bcouse the whole unit loses HP and the soldiers are just "switched" out on the map.

[Varg]

Yep. They added a HP-system that kinda ruins much of the strategy.

[Artemis]

Originally posted by Asphyxion:

So, I've been playing quite a bit, mostly as Romans and encounters some weird stuff in regards to balance and realism in terms of shields. I love the game in general but this is just a small thing that's been bugging me. I guess more people had the same deal but I just found it a tad unrealistic that a testodo formation can take casualties from slingers, they're slinging a stone, it shouldn't really benefit to breaking a high quality shield. I get why a javelins would but really not stones. What would make sense is that slingers=basically no damage to shields, Arrows=intermediate damage to shields, Javelins=high damage to shields. To me slinger damage is highly overpowered. Slingers should be a unit that is great against unarmored units without shields only i.e. archers.A roman shield basically will cover all important areas on the body from a hail of stones, makes no sense that trained soldiers die from them imo.

It would be interesting to find out more how the shield strengh works in depth if anyone has that information available. And also how one can manually adjust shield strengh for different races, it's clearly apparent to me that romans should have a higher value here then hoplites ranging from both core to elite units. That currently does not seem to be the case since Shield Bearers take limited casualties from slingers.

Please refrain from posting how you think the game sucks here, I'd like a serious discussion in regards to the theorycrafting behind shield strengh.

If you look at real life slingers from ancient times then the damage they could do is fairly accurate. They could hurl stones a bit smaller then a tennis ball, 190-250 meters. (and as up to 400 meters!) Alot of the stones were pointed, so they could penetrate flesh, kill horses, and break wooden shields. Ammunetion were made of rock, clay and lead. Slingers were a very deadly force in roman and greek warfare. (and other countries also)


But from a game perspective, yeah. they need to reduce the damage. They are too good. They have very good range, good damage, doesnt cost alot. but then again, If you charge any type of uinit into them, they shatter and flee almost instantly. But this is the main reason to why you must have cavalry in your army. while your front takes the blows, your cav sneaks in the back and takes them out.

[daniu -TLG-]

I'm not entirely sure about the shield mechanics, but I think it's added to the armor value of the unit at one side. The problem with that approach is that armor-piercing weapons will easily pierce that - which is okay for body armor because the projectile will hurt the body after piercing the armor.
For shields however, that should not be the case. Even if armor-piercing weapons can pierce shields, the energy will have gotten lost doing that so there won't be any damage they can do anymore.

So IMO armor-piercing should not be applied to the shield's armor value.

[Asphyxion]

Cheers for the responses.

Originally posted by Artemis:

Originally posted by Asphyxion:

So, I've been playing quite a bit, mostly as Romans and encounters some weird stuff in regards to balance and realism in terms of shields. I love the game in general but this is just a small thing that's been bugging me. I guess more people had the same deal but I just found it a tad unrealistic that a testodo formation can take casualties from slingers, they're slinging a stone, it shouldn't really benefit to breaking a high quality shield. I get why a javelins would but really not stones. What would make sense is that slingers=basically no damage to shields, Arrows=intermediate damage to shields, Javelins=high damage to shields. To me slinger damage is highly overpowered. Slingers should be a unit that is great against unarmored units without shields only i.e. archers.A roman shield basically will cover all important areas on the body from a hail of stones, makes no sense that trained soldiers die from them imo.

It would be interesting to find out more how the shield strengh works in depth if anyone has that information available. And also how one can manually adjust shield strengh for different races, it's clearly apparent to me that romans should have a higher value here then hoplites ranging from both core to elite units. That currently does not seem to be the case since Shield Bearers take limited casualties from slingers.

Please refrain from posting how you think the game sucks here, I'd like a serious discussion in regards to the theorycrafting behind shield strengh.

If you look at real life slingers from ancient times then the damage they could do is fairly accurate. They could hurl stones a bit smaller then a tennis ball, 190-250 meters. (and as up to 400 meters!) Alot of the stones were pointed, so they could penetrate flesh, kill horses, and break wooden shields. Ammunetion were made of rock, clay and lead. Slingers were a very deadly force in roman and greek warfare. (and other countries also)


But from a game perspective, yeah. they need to reduce the damage. They are too good. They have very good range, good damage, doesnt cost alot. but then again, If you charge any type of uinit into them, they shatter and flee almost instantly. But this is the main reason to why you must have cavalry in your army. while your front takes the blows, your cav sneaks in the back and takes them out.

That does ofcourse make sense. The feeling I get is that it would be nice to have an even more clear distinction between high quality shields and low. Sure, these stones might be able to destroy a shield which are used by city levy infantry but as far as I know high quality Roman and Greek infantry for that matter used heavily reinforced shields.

And regarding the cav I should increase my armies from 2-4 units to maybe 4-6 even and then field 12-14 Hinf and 2 Seige(Giant Ballista). A vast majority of nations loves to field heavy ranged firepower while I prefer melee personally. But really, there's nothing better then seeing Praetorian Cav cut straight throught enemy ranks making them flee in a matter of seconds. =)

[Xander Tyrann]

basically they dont actually have a shield, its just an armour buff on the front and left. slingers do a small amount AP damage regardless of where it hits or what armour the unit has. Tetsudo just buffs armour.

i think they need an addition ranged defence or shield stat that will give a chance to deflect ranged damage, similiar to how melee defence works. theres no such stat according to jack lusted.

- Shields only apply against attacks from the front and left
- In melee they provide a bonus to melee defence and armour
- Against missiles they give a bonus to armour
- Projectile collision detection is done against a soldier as a whole, we've never done it based on the shields themselves. Such collision modelling simply isn't doable with the scale of our battles.
- Armour blocks normal damage but AP damage is always applied, this is true for both melee and missile combat.
- The balance of testudo is being looked at and will be adjusted

[GirthQQuakes]

Slingers already got nerfed when they shouldnt have been. Theyre currently worthless except very early in a game against weak units.

The testodo is broken from what I've been told.

Historically speaking, slingers were quite deadly in this time period. They did not fire pebbles, but rather large, crafted projectiles larger then a softball. Remeber the longbow is another 1000+ years away.

[Xander Tyrann]

yeah, testudo is broken because there is no way to buff itthat wouldnt buff a loose formation or seriously nerf ranged units, short of adding a new mechanic into the game for shield users.

[KhanIndustries]

Here is the post of them explaining how it will work:
http://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1dh4z4/rome_2_update_via_jack_lusted_combat_changes/

When you read it you say "sounds good on paper" but then you notice the problems when playing. Like the gentleman above stated, each unit has an AP rating that does damage regardless so they are doing that much damage no matter what.

The best way to see this in action is to simply walk a high armor unit up to an enemy arrow tower (level 1 or 2 walled city) and just observe the results a good 2 or 3 times. You'll see it. It's all messed up, it's gamey; you may as well just put a health bar above their heads.

This is why you saw posts about people claiming slingers just melting praetorians while others were responding with "they don't do that much damage". What happened was basically the same thing you saw from the arrow tower. A unit was getting its health or something knocked down and at first no big deal... but then it reaches a threshold where they start to drop very, very quickly.

You'll start to learn that if you want to have a melee heavy force and find yourself up against an army of slingers, have 1 unit slightly ahead of your line as you charge soaking up all that slinger damage and then as soon as he starts to take casualties, run him away and don't use him for any further engagements as his "health" is now low and any further hits will result in many deaths.

It needs to go back to where heavily armored units had a chance to take no damage from some weapons or something along the lines of Xander's suggestion of a ranged defense. Sure there is a chance they will bypass the armor on a successful check but to give a 100% chance that it will deal x damage no matter what even if the unit has 150 armor is horrible and this is why testudo is basically useless. Like I said, you mine as well just put health bars above them because that's what appears to be happening with the AP always = x damage so -x health.

I know the old TW Rome had AP for axes and such and hey, that's cool I get that. But to give AP to every single unit in the game... you just as well save all the resource usage from stat comparisons and just say this unit does x damage vs. that units y health which isn't very TW like.

Because of the AP on every weapon now, the days of watching those rare occurances where a group of guys were putting up what seemed like a heroic defense despite being surrounded and "beating" the odds.. are over.