Thank you all for your continued support! Please enjoy this video on the proper understanding of Armor and Armor Piercing stats in Medieval 2 Total War!

I really wish developers would actually write full effects of units ingame such as gunpowder ignoring shields. A more readable game is a better game imo. It's so silly not to put it in.

Late period units losing their shield because gunpowder ignores shield value completely makes so much sense... this game is such a great simulation.

I played medieval for almost 8 years, I knew there was some kind of difference but never knew how. Thanks

Lots of very useful info here! Thanks for posting it Shewey. Fun fact: Musketeers and Arquebusiers have a fire by rank animation when put on skirmish mode. One rank will kneel and fire while the other reloads, while without skirmish mode one man shoots and then runs behind the other as he reloads and takes his place. Besides getting the first shot off, skirmish mode activated on these unit tends to speed up their firing rate and can be a good way to get an advantage in a gun-based skirmish. : )

For maximum fun(tm): use a mounted gunpowder units (spanish dragoons, camel gunners, reiters, mounted thunder braves) - they can fire above the heads of infantry in front of them, ingore all but half of armor and can outrun almost everything in game. What's more, gunpowder cav can fire in its entire units, not just front 2-3 ranks. And because you fire over the head of infantry, you can apply that gunpowder morale penalty right before the ranks clash. You can also do this with mounted crossbows, though it's a lot less effective. Apaches are especially brutal when doing this, koitsenkoos, shaman warcry and mounted thunder braves stack on so many penalites most units rout the second they touch your front ranks.

In Rome Total War, the military guide tells you that shields only work from the left flank. I guess that's the source of the misconceptions.

One minor note at 8:43, the engine doesnt calculate halves, it always rounds down, so the defense would be 17 if im not mistaken, minor point sorry to be nit picky.

Everyone who plays this game needs to see this video. I wish there was more videos like this.

I've read (on twcenter forum, I believe) that 3.5 armour would be 3. There are no halves, it's rounded down to whole numbers.

AP+Gunpowder = -75% shield and -75% armour Gunpowder alone = -0% armour and -50% shield AP alone = -50% shield and -50% armour In case anyone wondered about the actual code doing this

I'm glad you talk-people-through these mechanics. Some folks, even reviewing the FAUST, might not apprehend all of the implications; good job. I'll add this: Attack > Defense, the 2 stats do not 'cancel each other out'; were this untrue, Armored Sergeants (Att7/Def14) would never be able to kill each other.

Cool guide. 2 things to bring up though: 1: Gunpowder ignoring shields must be something hardcoded. Since they use the same type of AP as every other AP unit in the files. So it's more of a seperate innate ability of them rather than part of the AP ability. 2: This wasn't addressed in the video. But it's worth bringing up. Armour upgrades and attack upgrades (not chevrons, the attack upgrade only) give a +2 stat increase instead of a +1 stat increase like the game tells you. For example if a unit with 5 armour gets and upgrade and it shows 6 it's actually 7. If you get another upgrade for the same unit it will show 7 but it will actually be 9.

Gotta tell ya, Shewey, I think this is an excellent video. I've been playing this game (it's the only game I have time for) for 5 years now off and on. I took a year or so away from the game because I was spending too much time on it. My playing time is limited now but I sure enjoy a good siege once in a while. After becoming somewhat recognized by some who play this game, several clans asked me to come and join their ranks. I was offered training by those in the clans. For various reasons I declined these nice offers. One of the main reasons I didn't join was that I didn't want to spend time on training. I just wanted to play and hopefully learn a few tips in order to be somewhat competitive. The main reason for playing this game was to try to keep my mind sharp. I'm one of the older players but I'm not to the point of doing word find puzzles or coloring books for the elderly (and I never want to be). I wasn't born with a mouse in my hands like so many of the younger players here so I found a few strategies that helped me win a game or two against younger and quicker players. I've seen a few of the videos made by each of the M2TW KZfaqrs. Your channel is very new but it already has content I have seen nowhere else. As a defensive player, I've always looked at the defensive numbers of units but I have never learned what you have taught in this video. I know all of the top tier players know these things and most of them are kind enough to let me play with them but my priorities lie elsewhere so I don't have time to dig up information like this or even study it at great length. The videos you have posted thus far make it obvious why you are one of the top tier players. Since I try to use strategies to make up for my lack of quickness, this video was very helpful. I will probably watch it weekly until I understand it all well enough to be useful. Thank you for being willing to share this information. God's blessings... (Matt. 6:33)

thank you man. played for 15 years. and yet hand no idea or right understanding

Fantastic video. Great job, looking forward to the rest

not tryna say anything bad about medieval or anyone, but thank god for Warhammer's complex-ass damage calculating system. Knowing what unit cards mean in Warhammer have made this so much easier to comprehend. Like seriously, every time someone swings at someone else, like 5 calculations have to be made by the ai. still, medieval doesn't do a very good job at explaining stats and I'm glad you made this vid.

Great video! Simple and straight to the point, love it!

Wow I’m glad I clicked this video. I just downloaded Medival 2 on my iPhone and I needed to Know this!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks man

Thanks, always wondered about this. Been playing for many years.

This is the best playlist for learning this game

Thanks for the great video, subscribed.The system is similar to Rome 2 but in rome 2 the unit stats and details are more clear and shown, while in med 2 is only in description like "does piercing damage" lol thats all. Such a pity the developers did not fix some bugs in the definitive edition that would cost them few effort like make pikes work fine, show more details in unit stats, fix cav pushthrough bug, and also allow formation change like rome ctrl+forward/back/left/right keys. Then med 2 would be super awesome. I play and stream Medieval 2 a lot but never was interested in competitive or in detail, this video was suggested to me by youtube so great channel you got for in-detail mechanics of this game My highlights from the video: 11:21 - all gunpowder units ignore the shield defense

nice breakdown. i'm still learning this game in 2021

I have discovered this video once again. Thank you for demistifying this detail of the game.

God I love this stuff, thank you for making it

great video thank you for making

I should train more mounted crossbowman.

Well done sir

After thousand hours now i learn it

Great video thankyou

Thanks!

Tried to explain this numerous times to Pixelated Apollo that the later period forces of France especially their cavalry were fully armored but used no shield simply because of the uselessness of it against gunpowder.

WONDERFULL EXPLANATION....after years of battle of course I realized that hitting or attacking ANY unit from flanks and rears IS better...now I know PERFECT details for THAT....I am just sorry you forgot to mention details on how flaming missiles impact with numbers here...that would 'complete' this great video knowledge ! :)

tip top video. Thankyou

Excellent. I must browse your other videos. What I have been wondering is what does “5 Attk vs 6 Def” actually mean. How are the results is the attack actually calculated? I know that it doesn’t really make any difference to my gameplay (i.e., take the most advantageous position available and try to kill whatever is in front of you) but I’m curious.

A very good explanation - glad you made it. :) Though, could you explain how to get gunpowder units to fire? I feel like a lot of the time when they are on the walls, they just do not fire at all which is very unfortunate as often you'll need to use your ranged troops on the walls to thin the enemy army before they get inside.

I believe defense skill also makes the block recovery faster. I tinkered with different units and I can definitely see the change. Low skill units are only blocking, high skill units are blocking and attacking back. That’s why two handed units are blocking all the time, they all have a very low defense skill. They can’t recover fast enough to attack.

Great video, very useful. Thanks for posting. But there’s some serious maths issues at 10:56 where somehow 6+3.5=10.5 🙃

Thanks.

There's a reason to the saying "the first invention to make men equal was gunpowder"

Very good video 👍👍

I'm a couple years late, but one thing that I need to ask about is Flaming Arrows. What do they do exactly? I suspect the extra damage is a myth and it's actually referring to DPS. No doubt it's doing morale dmg, but does it affect armor or damage? Many thanks for shedding light on all else! :)

Ok, I thought this beloved game has a clearly dead community, nowadays. It is very nice that there are still pple caring for this game. I am a HUGE fan of M2TW. I was the basic developer of a mod of vanilla MTW2, which was called "La Guerre de Cent Ans". Ah, great times tweaking the defense of units and the such. Good video! You reminded me of the analysis I did with my friends back then edit> here you are, in case (thin chances!) you are interested in that mod: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gMyEgJChzdO6nqM.html

Very nice vid! Could you perhaps explain how charge bonus affects the dice roll against defense? Lets say i have an attack of 5 and charge bonus of 4, does it mean that my dice roll is 0-9 or that my dice roll gets +4 after the roll (so creating a range of 4-9)? How long does the charge bonus last for?

trully, for a bullet, it matters not if you are a knight of 20 years of training or a dirty peasant with a pitchfork, it will pierce you the same regardless.

remember lads gunpowder 2 ranks deep with skirmish mode on use kneel fire instead of the stupid walking fire by rank nonsense allowing you to halve charging knight units before retreating behind your line as thier fire rate is like 3 times higher

Pah-vaise not Pavis old boy, when referring to the crossbow men.

Thanks. A few questions that I still have after scrolling through the first dozen comments--how do you count the effect if a group of spearman choose to go in schiltron formation in which way they always face you no matter where you attack? and how about one second after you charge into their back and some soldiers turn around to fight you face to face so that the effect of halfing the shield only last one second/one hit?

What about pavies crossbows who have shields on there backs?

I'd like to find a vid or doc about how offensive and defensive stats subtract from each other

I'm from the future and I'm wondering if later or previous games have armor work the same way?

Lets say 2 horse archers are shooting each other but one of the horse archers are running away and the other is chasing. Is the one who is running away going to get the shield bonus ? Note that when running away the archer on the horse makes that weird rotation in which he rotates his body towards the enemy to shoot his arrow.

Love to sub

Does melee attacks on flank ignore or give a 50% debuff to shield too ? How does that work ?

That is nice an all but what is the hit chance of a 10 attack unit vs a 10 defene unit? how much value is it really to have more attack? does one attack raise the hit chance by 10 % 50 % 100% ??

How do the general attack stat interact with the enemies total defense?. Ie the attack is 10, and the targets defense is 5. How does the math work out for damage/killing?

Ok, does shield size matter? e.g. buckler vs heater vs kite? I heard it does. Or it's one more misunderstanding? 2. Maybe i missed this in this vid, but... how pavise work? Does it protect front like other shields (despite visually on back), or they protect back, unlike other shields? 2.1 Crossbowmen reload animation. Does it calculate as they really turned back for a while or it's just visual animation?

"The Faust" pdf has totally different (lower) stats. Anyone knows why?

Anyone has any idea how does the chance of scoring a killing blow works in M2? for example 5 atk vs 5 def is 50% or some other number? what about 5 atk vs 20 def? also, does AP really gets you .5 armor values? or does it get rounded up/down?

Is defensive skill unchanged when melee attacked from rear/flanks?

But does anyone know the exact formula that calculates the attack's effect? Is that Attack/(Attack + Defence) = hit probability?

What about the varangian guard they have shield on their back so, will shooting them from the back will less damage ?

i thought gunpowder ignored shields, at least according to this video

Pavise crossbow men fighting in melee and javelin men missle attacking from behind 😉

The only thing I want to know is how the game treats uneven armor values when affected by AP attacks. If 13 armor is hit by an AP attack, that would be 6.5 effective armor. Does it count that as 6 armor or 7? Or does it just straight up use the 6.5 value? Not that it matters that much, I don't think. The difference between one point more or less of defense must be barely noticeable.

How does the pavesee works? The reduction from behind is apply there?

Shewey, are you sure that Half means a decimal place? Or would 7 instead be reduced to either 3 armor or 4 armor :)

Hey, will you come back, do you have a new channel? I enjoy your content, would like to see more, if you wont come back can you answer this so i dont keep my hope alive?

Came here because I wanted to learn the mechanics of the base game so I can better understand the stats of units in the sub mod Divide and Conquer (DaC, a LotR mod). Thanks! Also, I assume the effective defense is the hit points of a unit? As in, a if a unit does 9 damage and a unit has 12 effective defense, then the unit would need to deal 9 damage twice before it overcomes the 12 effective defense and kill it? Also, the Hitpoints stat is how many times the unit has to be killed before actually dying? Such as, if it has 12 effective defense but 2 hitpoints, then the each soldier would need to be killed twice in order to actually die?

I thought when a unit is climbing a ladder, it loses its defense skill? Is that the case?

So if an archer shot a feudal knight in the back they would die from one arrow?

Yeah but, what about cannons ? You didn't mention their armor piercing 🤔

The way you pronounce “Pavise” pains me.

TLDW: (information from video 15:58): - muskets/firearms ignore shields and half the armor - armor piercing attacks ignore half the armor (how about shields?) - armor protects from all directions against all attacks (melee, missile) with reduced effectiveness against firearm and armor piercing attacks - shield protects: 100% front, 50% sides, 0% back and firearms (video doesn't mention shield vs armor piercing effectiveness!) - defense skill only works in melee This is the only video result in google when searching for "medieval 2 armor upgrade", and after spending 20 minutes listening repeatedly about the same basic concepts I still haven't learned anything about armor upgrade. It's good many people find the video "short and concise", but for "Expert Guide" level, I found it repetitive and tedious saying and re-summarizing the same concepts over and over. Just skip to 15:58 to get the last summary. Some questions: - what is the shield effectiveness against Armor piercing attacks? - How do the numbers work? What does 13 attack vs 13 defense mean? What does 13 vs 3 and 3 vs 13 mean? How do they impact the gameplay? - What do the armor upgrades do? Some sources cite that upgrading unarmored units to lvl1 padded armor gives them the actual padded armor protection (i.e. 4 armor) despite the game displaying 1 armor) - 14:50 why does the peasant damage of 1 matter against the archer missile damage of 5-6? That really confused me!