Lies My Rulebook Told Me

[Maraxus]

Hehe, I did a similar test before.
No, it's not simple.
Doh! I'm dumb.

In my last test (which made above thesis 100% sure, for me) I created a new shield - so I thought, I messed "#type" up (how the heck did I add 2 body armors to one unit?).

Damn, this so well explained the high efficience of Jotun Boulders and the very high death-rate of shield+nothing troops under fire and that lightning bolds ignore shields but blade wind does not...

[BesucherXia]

C'tis national spell Contact Couatl need Conj7, not Conj6 in the book (p188).

Besides, Mictlan has the same spell, but it is assigned to Conj6 just like rulebook says. This contradiction seems more likely to be a bug.

[Renojustin]

Blade Wind is a projectile attack, jotun boulders are projectile attacks, arrows are a projectile attack, anything that has an AOE is NOT a projectile attack.

If a projectile attack is parried by a shield, it is counted as a miss, and deals no damage. Secondary effects may or may not be counted, depending on the attack and/or effect. If it is not parried, damage is assessed against that unit's head or body, without the benefit of the shield (pretty sure).

Multiple projectiles in the same turn do not count toward reducing the shield parry, like multiple attacks count toward reducing the victim's defense do.

Hopefully that clarifies things!

[capnq]

WraithLord said:

Maybe my eye sight is not what it used to be but for the heck of me I haven't been able to find the date in that corner nor in any other, corner nook or cranny of the UI, for that matter.

Mouseover the season symbol in the corner; the date appears in a popup at the bottom of the screen.

You might need to go into video prefences and turn off that annoying "info boxes fade in" setting, or whatever it's called.

[TheDemon]

I know this is a very old thread (a very good thread mind you) but I have a correction to make

Originally Posted by Micah

The formula for missiles landing against shielded units overstates the protection that shields provide. p77

I've tested the manual formula and my tests indicate it is 100% correct and does not overstate the protection shields provide (and also that shield protection has nothing to do with parrying missiles contrary to other claims in this thread; it's all or nothing for missile parry). Keep in mind the manual formula uses total size in square, which is different from the unit's size. As in three size 2 units in the same square will each have a total size of 6 in the formula. This is in addition to a full square being more likely to have an arrow land on someone than a half-empty square.

Attached are the test files, including a map and a mod, if anyone wishes to try for themselves:

[Micah]

Formula for a full square for attacker is DRN + 6

Formula for defender with tower shield is DRN + 16

Expected hit rate for a -10 differential is 3%, so a block of 60 xbows should score less than 2 hits, a quick test is giving me way, way above that.

[TheDemon]

Well, I got the same results as you did during your "quick test" so I did some more test modding to figure out what was up.

Turns out the manual lies about two things. Firstly, unlike the manual says, the defender loses a tied parry roll. Actually I had noted this in my first battery of tests but failed to re-read the spreadsheet when I crossposted it here (it was a month ago).

Secondly, and much more importantly, a shield's -def/enc modifier is subtracted from the parry value before the parry value is put into the manual formula. So the correct defender's formula is actually:
2 + DRN + ((shield parry - shield enc) * 2) - (fatigue/20)

My previous tests had all been done using 0 -def/enc shields, which did not pick up this discrepancy.

Actually, the modding manual gives a hint that this happens when it says:

Final parry value is always the #def value plus #enc value and the #enc value is subtracted from the full parry value to give effective #def value.

So, modding a #def 2 #enc 5 shield got me a shield with 7 stated parry, -5 def, 5 enc, and it performed identically to my 2 parry, 0 def, 0 enc shield in projectile parry tests.

Xbow or Normal made no difference to the parry rate in any scenario.




Kind of interesting here to note that this means the Bucker performs exactly as it says it should with an effective parry of 2, Shield/Hide Shield/Turtle Shell Shield has an effective parry of 3, Kite Shield an effective parry of 4, and Tower Shield/Ice Aegis an effective parry of 5.

[Squirrelloid]

Minor Issue: The 'effects of dominion' (page 95 or 96) section mentions pretender stat dependency on dominion, but not prophet stat dependency.

[NTJedi]

Page_293 = Dominions 4 will be released by December 2011.

This is not true, but luckily I'm calm and patient.