Armour (character stat)

Armour, identified in-game with the icon, is a character stat and translates to how much of a reduction in missile fire and melee attack damage a character or unit can have. However, it does not include:

• explosive missile fire damage, such as catapult-like units
• impact melee attack damage, such as a cavalry-like unit charge bonus damage
• armour-piercing damage, as the name implies, pierces through the armour
• any combination(s) of the above exceptions, for example, explosive armour-piercing missile damage

In general terms, the more armour a unit has, the less damage it will take from missile and melee attack sources. It is strictly related to damage reduction and entirely separate from melee defence, for example, which is the likelihood of hitting with a melee attack. Therefore, armour only affects the second stage of combat, after it has actually landed or hit. Armour is closely associated with weapon strength for melee attacks and missile strength for missile attacks.

Armour can never be less than 0 so if an ability or trait causes the armour value to be negative, it will default to 0 instead. There is no maximum armour cap.

Heavily-armoured units (> 50) can survive some punishment whereas lightly-armoured units (< 20) can stack huge amounts of damage very quickly and die. Therefore, average armour values vary between 20 and 50.

The actual damage reduction is a random percentage between the armor value and half of the value. For example, a unit with 100 armor will reduce any incoming damage by a random value between 100% and 50%, as long as that damage can be reduced by armor. This means that the average damage reduction is 75% of the armor value. A unit with 100 armor will block 75% of blockable damage on average. Each point if armor up to 100 blocks .75% non-AP damage. Each point of armor from 100 to 200 blocks .25% of incoming damage. 200 armor or more means a unit takes 0 non-AP damage. Even though armor values are not capped, any increases past 200 armor provide no extra resistance.

Because of armors subtractive nature it actually winds up having an exponential effect on effective HP at higher levels. For instance, going from 98% non-AP damage block (at 192 armor) to 99% non-AP damage block (at 196 armor) will double effective HP vs non-AP damage with only 4 points of armor increase. Whereas going from 75% non-AP damage block (100 armor) to 76% non-AP damage block (104 armor) only provides roughly 4% effective HP with the same 4 points of armor. This is partially accounted for via the extreme scaling of sub-100 armor values, but ultimately does not change the exponential nature of armor in general. The takeaway being that stacking armor to extremes will cause each subsequent armor point to be exponentially more valuable than the last.

Armour is a dynamic stat so it can be increased or reduced through a number of unit abilities, traits and effects.

In-game description

How resistant a unit is to missile fire and melee attacks.

Related effects

There are some notable armour-related effects, such as:

• Shielded

See also

• Combat