More on Frenzy skill

[Redpossum]

You can actually get the Frenzy skill on Warriors, Veterans, and Nobles as early as level 13. Here's how you do it -

For your first 3 promotions, take Swordsman, Drill, and Feint.

Next 3, take Adv Swordsman, Adv Drill, and Disciplined Formations.

Next 3, take Adv Feint, Expert Swordsman, and Expert Drill.

Next 2, take Expert Feint, Master Swordsman.

This will leave you at L12, with -

Master Swordsman
Expert Drill
Expert Feint
Disciplined Formations

When you make Level 13, Frenzy will be available.

Essentially, you are just rotating your promotions between Swordsman, Drill, and Feint, in that order, with a break in the sequence for Disciplined Formations at Level 6.

I have found this to be tremendously effective.

It is also worth noting that a unit with Expert Drill not only takes 3000 order points less to command, it actually adds +1 to order point recovery. Yes, it adds to order point recovery on your Leader.

Two units with Expert Drill are the equivalent of one level of the Quick Thinker skill on your Leader.

[sum1won]

Ive looked into that a bit, and it appears that master swordsmen and expert feint may be the only requirements- perhaps disciplined formations. My frenzied troops dont all have drill.

[fatetriarrii]

Forgive my ignorance, but what does frenzy do exactly? Is it a formation? Does it make your units harder to control?

[Redpossum]

Frenzy -

+5 Melee Damage
+5 Concuss
+6 to hit
+25 Morale
-5 Melee Armor
-5 Ranged Armor

It has no effect on the Order Cost of your units.

It seems to me like Frenzy boosts the unit's damage output by a noticeable amount, yet the -5 Armor doesn't seem to result in them taking any more damage. Perhaps this is because they kill their opponents faster.

Like the man said, sometimes the best defense is a strong offense.

[fatetriarrii]

Doesn't Defense just make it harder to hit your units, not make the actual damage any less? So therefore, the numbers would just come less often, not be smaller. Or maybe it is the other way around (I believe that is it). So it wouldn't look different from far away, but if you zoom in, it will be 5-7s instead of 1-2s or something like that...

[sum1won]

Armor lowers damage, agility decreases hits. Against high-powered attacks, agility is best. Aginst wussy attacks, go for armor.

[fatetriarrii]

Ahh.... Good to know

[honvedseg]

When you have a unit with a fairly low armor value already, and lower it further, you can only drop to 0 armor. You're probably better off trying to avoid the hits altogether, using "Protection from..." and agility increases, rather than bothering to reduce the damage from 15 points per hit down to only 13 with "Block", or spending precious Denarii early in the game to drop it to 11. In this case, a good offense is your best defense, since a destroyed enemy unit will deliver NO points of damage. If, on the other hand, you have a massively armored unit that's only getting popped for 2-3 points at a shot, the extra offense provided by Frenzy may not be worth tripling the amount of damage you take, whereas giving an extra level of "Block" might reduce it to where you only take that measly one point of concussion damage for each hit!

In short, the best upgrades to give one unit may not be ideal for another.

[Redpossum]

Gentlemen, with all due respect and courtesy, I must disagree.

Mind you, all the reasoning above is completely valid, in theory. But practical experimentation simply does not bear it out.

It is my considered opinion that Agility is worthless. It's either broken in the code somewhere, or just not weighted enough to be worth a fart, but in either case, it just doesn't help.

Armor reduces incoming damage, every time.

Agility, whether from Boots or Dodge skill, does nothing at all.

The "Protection From XXXX" skills, well, the jury is still out on those. I think those actually work to reduce incoming damage from the specified unit types.

[fatetriarrii]

Agility should ,ake your units dodge more hits out right. So just try taking the same map and some light infantry. Try fighting the same enemy with and without agility and the second time should result in less numbers appearing, but the ones that do appear should be the same size. Also, I believe I heard agility is percentage, giving units with higher agility a bigger bonus.

You could be right, though, as I have never tried it myself.

[sum1won]

Agility definitely helps. At least, advanced agility does. I have a cav unit with advanced agility, and they are definitely not easy to kill off.

[ashario]

Ive looked into that a bit, and it appears that master swordsmen and expert feint may be the only requirements- perhaps disciplined formations. My frenzied troops dont all have drill.

I tend to agree

I got Frenzy at L13 with my Warriors in the Celtic campaign. The skills they had up to L12 were

Expert Feint
Endurance
Master Swordsmen
Advanced Armour Penetration
Disciplined Formations

[honvedseg]

So far, I haven't found any reason to give "Armor Penetration" to a heavy infantry unit, since their damage can be boosted enough to exceed any armor rating in the game anyway. With a low-damage unit like militia or skirmishers, it might pay to have them at least able to scratch an armored opponent in melee, but that's about the extent of it.

"Protection from..." seems to work to some degree, but I'm still not sure how effective it is. The result may be tied to the unit's agility, so it might not be the same for two different types of units. I suppose it will be a while before someone releases a full mathematical formula for how combat is resolved, and where and in what order the effects and modifiers are applied.

[fatetriarrii]

We have already been told, by the admins and the guide (I think).

First, the attacker has a chance of hitting (Based on the Attack stat). I believe that this is out of one hundred.

Second, the defender has a chance of dodging (Based on their Agility stat). This I also believe is out of one hundred.

Third, Protection From skills allow the unit to dodge the damage just like Agility, but it is a seperate calculation.

Fourth, the damage is calulated as Melee Attack - Opponent's Melee Armour (can go no less than zero, so no healing freom your opponent's hits ). Then you add Concuss. So Concuss is only useful if your opponent's defense is greater than your attack anyway. If it isn't, I believe the attack boosting skills will add more damage than the Concuss ones.

Fifth, Anti-Something fits in there somewere as a chance to instant kill your opponent (I do not know if attack and agility modifiers matter). I don't know if Protection From applies to Anti ~ either.


For Ranged Attack, it is precisely the same, using Ranged ~something~ instead of Melee ~something~, and there is an instant-kill chance. The instant kill is probably subject to ranged attack chance (meaning that after you score a hit, there is a chance of instant kill rather than normal hit). I do not believe that Agility is calculated here, but I believe that Protection From and Anti ~ are included.

Trample just calculates the Trample chance, then the Trample Avoid chance.



Finally, Frenzy is available to:

"Dummy General" (what they use for enemy generals?)
Both Generals
Peasants
Militia
Warrior
Veterans
Fanatics
Light Cavalry
Nobles (both sides)
Elephants
Auxiliary Cavalry

To get Frenzy, according to the coding, the player needs level 6 and Master Swordsman, but Master Swordsman comes at level 11, so this realistically means that any unit with less than 13 levels (level 11, you can get Master Swordsman, level 12 you can get Frenzy, total is 13) does not have Frenzy. The computer might be able to skirt this rule, though.