Shieldwall

[Mischief]

Any verifiable effect that this has? Increase to mass? Overall defense? Is there more to it than bunching up the unit into a tighter formation?

[Jambie Lionheart]

It doesn't add to stats it just tightly packs the troops together to form a damn near unbreakable meat shield. It excels at holding positions. Especially in city defence settings. As for stats though, I'm fairly certain it does nothing.

[Chi Chi]

IIRC most (all?) formations in Rome: Total War don't give a benefit in stats. Stuff like Warcry or Rally will though. Rome and Medieval 2 relied a lot more heavily on the animation system to impact combat results so literally having tighter formations will provide benefits.

In the case of the shield wall you are getting a literal wall of shields.


From a Vice article:

"When I spoke to Creative Assembly's Kevin McDowell, art director on the original game, on Three Moves Ahead, he mentioned that one of the quirks of Rome was that unit animations controlled movement and combat rather than the other way around. It made Rome a trickier game to rebalance in its own day, because small tweaks to unit behavior had to be executed through animations rather than on a stat sheet, but it also gave Rome a distinctive feel, and keeping things like that has been a priority for the team doing Rome Remastered."

Later games shifted from an animation first to stat first style. Which is where you end up with very clear +25% bonuses to arrow defense or whatever that they tell you about.

[Dahoota]

In the original Barbarian Invasion, shield wall had the effect of doubling the value of the unit's shield defense value. I assume this was carried over.

As it also tightly packs the unit together, so it increases the number of men attacking each enemy. Which is vicious when the unit is armed with spears, with multiple ranks attacking simultaneously - it can murder cavalry faster than a phalanx. It's much harder for a cavalry charge to disrupt the formation toom

But this also has the downside of making a rich target for missiles, especially if you get hit by artillery, you can lose half the unit to one hit. This is counteracted partly though because shield value against missile fire gets doubled again as well.

While it's kinda useless in open field battles as it leaves you very open to being flanked, it's *AMAZING* for fighting in city streets, both attacking and defending sieges. Also on bridge battles too.

Something that changed in the remaster is that units can now run in shield wall formation, they spread out while in motion but form up automatically next time they stop. Which makes it more flexible than phalanx formation, and not tedious to use having to toggle manually all the time.

[Raven]

Originally posted by Dahoota:

In the original Barbarian Invasion, shield wall had the effect of doubling the value of the unit's shield defense value. I assume this was carried over.

As it also tightly packs the unit together, so it increases the number of men attacking each enemy. Which is vicious when the unit is armed with spears, with multiple ranks attacking simultaneously - it can murder cavalry faster than a phalanx. It's much harder for a cavalry charge to disrupt the formation toom

But this also has the downside of making a rich target for missiles, especially if you get hit by artillery, you can lose half the unit to one hit. This is counteracted partly though because shield value against missile fire gets doubled again as well.

While it's kinda useless in open field battles as it leaves you very open to being flanked, it's *AMAZING* for fighting in city streets, both attacking and defending sieges. Also on bridge battles too.

Something that changed in the remaster is that units can now run in shield wall formation, they spread out while in motion but form up automatically next time they stop. Which makes it more flexible than phalanx formation, and not tedious to use having to toggle manually all the time.

Hey there. Do you have any kind of documentation at all, even a quote, to support that shieldwall actually doubles the shield stat?

I also, respectfully, have to disagree that this is what it does in the original RTW:BI.

Firstly it is confusing, but the original RTW:BI never tells the player what SW does explicitly. Your advisor gives you the, I'll say historical rundown, (makes you slow, strong from the front/vulnerable to flanking), but it never explicitly mentions stats or tactics against specific enemy types, (like cavalry).

The problem to this day, with RTW:BI's shieldwall is that it is an utter mess. Firstly, it -does- in fact put your soldiers closer together, but the moment enemy contact is made, if you just observe, the frontline gets magically PROJECTED forward into the enemy formation. Utterly bizarre and counter-intuitively, this puts your individual soldiers deeper into enemy ranks and AWAY from their allies, making them, on an individual basis, surrounded by more enemies than they can contend with, which gets them killed more often.

I am doing thorough, rigorous testing right now with the original RTW:BI and it is as frustrating a thing as it always has been, because while it looks really cool visually, it just does not work as intended. Your units end up disorganized not because of enemy attack, but because the physics wig out and surge your units forward randomly to their deaths.

Secondly, with the sole exclusion of missile units, phalanx pikemen, and hoplite spearmen, the original RTW engine has never, ever supported a unit being able to attack from 2 or 3 ranks behind the front line. Even though they -should- be able to, as spearmen. That's how it works in reality, but it's never worked that way in RTW or RTW:BI's engine, UNLESS they were in a special formation that specifically overlapped spears, or were just throwing stuff. This has always been the case; you can run the OG titles and try it out for yourself. All non-phalanx units have the exact same melee range, and any unit of non-phalanx spearmen can only engage the man right in front at kissing range.

This was a disappointing aspect about the old system, but it's how it works. It never made sense that Triarii fought at peasant shiv range, but that's just how it always went down. The (advisor) does claim that spearmen are best for defense, but it never tells you why that is. Perhaps spears get a flat bonus in defense in stats, but none of that is ever told to the player. Anyway, yeah, that's how it'd work in reality, and why spearmen are so deadly in close order, but in the old engine that just was never simulated in this way. They fought like swordsmen, face-to-face, and only mutually supporting if they physically surrounded an enemy in close range.