Military Hardware

There are three types of equipment that you can equip your army with: weapons, armor, warmachines and deflectors.

Weapons and Armor

Weapons and armor are two kinds of equipment that all troops except mages can use, in order to add to their damage and defense respectively. All troops use them in the same way, so it doesn’t matter if you have an army of pure fighters, or archers/clerics or whatever mix of troops you prefer.

Not all races get the same bonus to damage and absorption from weapons and armor; it depends on their racial modifiers for each one of them. The race with the best w/a use modifiers is Dwarves, followed close by Minotaurs. Some races do not use weapons or armor at all: this means they have zero usage modifier for that kind of equipment. The mods for the usage of w/a for each race show at the table that follows.

Weapons and armor are stored in the barracks and the armories of your kingdom. If you don’t have enough store room for your w/a, the excess w/a that cannot be stored will slowly rust away (be destroyed that is!) as you take turns. So have in mind to always keep more store space than your equipment requires to be sure you won’t lose them. In addition, armories protect a part of your equipment from looting by enemy thieves. This means that if you have w/a of high % its better to keep lots of armories to ensure that they wont be looted; if not, then you got to have a good anti-loot defense (rangers and thieves).

Now, for spells concerning the use of weapons and armor, Possessed Weapons and Living Armor can slightly increase your racial mod of w/a usage, but they have big mana requirements to be effective. They also can be dispelled, so it’s better to use them on attack rather in defense, unless you have great Spell Steal Barrier or Dispel Barrier on top to ensure that they will probably not be removed.

As for the score they add to your kingdom, it’s like this: one 100% weapon and one 100% armor together have the same score as a 100% fighter. On a race that has both w/a mods 1, one weapon and one armor of 100% each have the same damage and absorption as one 100% fighter. This means that for such a race two 100% fighters are the same as one 100% fighter equipped with 100% weapon and armor. One would ask “why not keep two 100% fighters instead of one equipped with w/a?” The answer is simple: weapons and armor do not eat, so you can have more damage/absorption with fewer troops to feed. All the above mean that weapons and armor are better to be used by races with w/a mods 1 or more, or else they add more score than what their damage/absorption bonuses worth.

A note on immunity: the approximate formula to figure your effective W/A quality against a Vamp or WW (the only races w/ immunity) is: EQ = Q / (Q + 4*R) where EQ = effective quality against your target with researched W/A of 'R', and your own quality, Q. Therefore, if you have 400% weapons against a vamp with 100% studies, they're effectively 200% weapons. Also, the number of wins the Vamp/WW has affects the formula by giving them an effective study of approx. 100% per 40 wins. Hope this helps the number-crunchers out there.

Warmachines

Warmachines is a kind of equipment that adds great amounts of damage to your army in military conflicts and bombards, but contributes very little to your defense. That means that they do very much damage but have very small absorption. Generally, about 2.5 clerics/warmachine of the same % can balance its absorption for military combat (for example a 2000% wm needs 2.5 clerics of 2000% to balance the absorption – note: one 2000% cleric is the same as 20 clerics of 100%, or 10 clerics of 200%, or 5 clerics of 400% and so on). In bombards the absorption of 5 clerics is needed to match the damage of one warmachine of the same % as the clerics. One basic thing one should know about wms is that each one needs some laborers to man it, in order to be active in combat. Unmanned wms do not participate in combat and so do not add their damage and absorption to your forces. The number of laborers needed to man a warmachine depends on the race of one's kingdom and the % of the warmachines the kingdom possesses (meaning the % of the warmachines available, not the studied % or base %). Another important point is that wms, in contrast with weapons and armor, are used in the same way from all races - there is not such thing as wms racial usage mod.

Warmachines are stored in armories, but not in barracks, in contrast to w/a that are stored in both. If you don’t have enough store space, the excess wms will rust away while you take turns. Armories also protect some wms from looting, just like they do for w/a.

I would also like to note that the Orc and Ogre special Bloodlust, does not double wms’ damage in the game anymore, as it used to do some years ago.

Deflectors

Deflectors are the exact opposite of the warmachines: they add too small damage and too much absorption. Whereas a warmachine adds 5 damage for each 100% of its effectiveness, a defelctor adds 5 absorption for each 100% of its effectiveness. Everything else conserning warmachines about storage, manning and usage are exactly the same.

One big difference that deflectors have from warmachines (besides adding big amounts of absorption instead of damage) is that defelctors can only be created by gnome kingdoms.

The Smithy...

Every race studies the equipment in different %s than the others. Each race has a Build Equipment Rate, which is for study and building of each one of the three kinds of equipment, weapons, armor and warmachines (for gnomes deflectors as well). The formula is simple: [equipment study mod] = [racial base study mod] * [racial Build Equipment Rate]. For example the 400% Build Equipment Rate of the dwarves means that a kingdom will study 4 times easier compared to other normal study sections (for example study Economy). For example, lets say that a dwarf kingdom has 100% economy and 100% weapon study (base). It studies for one round economy getting 10% skillup (getting to 110% economy). Then it studies one round weapons; it will get 40% weapon skillup (getting to 140% weapon study). The same of the above example is true not just for weapons but for armor, warmachines and deflectors as well.

You can produce more equipment per turn the more laborers and smithies you have, and the more you have studied your construction skill. Also remember that the greatest the % of the equipment you produce, the more they will cost for you to make them.

Note: The difference in damage/absorption of a 200% w/a/wm from a 100% one is much greater than in the case of a 5100% from a 5000%. This happens because the functions that give the damage and absorption are not linear with the % of the equipment.

Other Sources of Equipment

There are many ways to get equipment of good %, even if your racial base % sucks. The spells Create Weapons and Create Armor are there to help mana races make many w/a with their mana, and the spell Enchant can increase the % of the equipment in your kingdom (but take into account their big mana requirements). Another way is to directly buy from the Open Market if you have the gold to spend, but know that high % equipment is usually too expensive. But if you are a light-fingered Halfling, it’s not difficult to relieve someone else of his burden...

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Written by Doom. Article taken from Shadowmere Compendium