• This game uses a health system, not a single hit equals death system. This is important later, as archers are doing damage even when the first volley doesn't cause casualties.
  
  
• The heavier a unit is the faster it fatigues, fatigue gradually reduces a units stats and can prevent it from moving quickly.
  
  • Large shields seem to be fatiguing units more then small shields, as footmen have better stamina after long distance runs then spearmen in my latest batch of testing.
  
  
• Good positions and good armor are both key to success.
  
  
• Armors exact mechanics are unknown, and this has a huge impact on unit quality rankings. More armor is still definitely strong as its a readily abundant attribute.

• Units need all weapons they use to be provided before they will muster.
  
  
• Primary weapons need a house artisan blacksmith to be produced, which requires iron ingots and sometimes planks to produce weapons, the ingots in turn require fuel and iron ore to be made. For at least three jobs needed which your settlement doesn't automatically need by default, so making an effective militia without being settlement level 2 is unlikely, but still barely possible.
  
  
• No weapons can be produced at the community blacksmith building, which can only make tools.
  
  
• Shields and bows need a house artisan bowyer (For bows,) and a joiner (For either type of shield,) this requires planks to make each shield/bow.
  
  
• Polearms and archers are the cheapest units, footmen cost the most iron, and spearmen cost the most wood.
  
  
• To make artisan workshops, you need planks to start, so the sawmill workers I do not factor into my calculations here.

There is the storehouse shipment you get on lower difficulties, but this is sort of self explanatory: You can field most of one unit year 1 if you make a storehouse. Enough that you will survive the year.

As an example to talk about a unit quickly, here is a unit of unarmored polarms.

Polearms
• 2 Attack, 1 armor, 2 anti armor, 2 charge, 0 impaling, 0 shield. (10 mobility)
  
  
• HP values for units are hidden, but given a unit can take several volleys of arrows without casualties, then suddenly take 8 casualties on the sixth volley its simply almost guaranteed that it exists.
  
  
  • Speculative: There is at least more then 12 hp, as archers do 12 damage, but a possible health pool of 50 hp seems reasonable given the number of arrows it takes to kill someone, but the exact health pool is unknown until the true values are rigorously tested or mined
  
  
• Attack and anti armor are both offensive stats, attack being a raw damage score, and anti armor being a minor reduction in enemy armor effectiveness. On polarms, we do 2 damage and ignore 2 armor.
  
  
• Charge is a temporary damage bonus dealt shortly after charging, while impaling reflects charge bonus back at attackers while denying this bonus. Polearms have a charge bonus and no impaling, so they should take the initiative and charge the enemy.
  
  
• Armor and shield are a potential reduction against enemy attacks damage. Shields protecting only from the front, and armor being omni-directional. We only have 1 armor here, so this unit is quite vulnerable to damage, even from the front where they have no extra protection.
  
  
• A attack bonus exists for attacks coming from directly from behind a unit according to the wiki: Double damage, so getting hit from where your shield is unavailable hurts.
  
  
• A unit with 81 armor (Such as a decked out retinue) will eventually die to 1 damage attacks, so there is some mechanic by which armor has non-uniform efficiency.
  
• • Speculative: A probabilistic armor formula is HIGHLY likely here, as ignoring 2 armor against a 97 armor pool of a full men at arms would be useless... Unless the 97 armor was 0-97 armor on a roll, as ignoring armor rolls of 1-2, and partially ignoring a roll of 3 would be a large increase in anti-armor performance for just 2 armor piercing.
    
  • This means that polarms are likely deceptively lethal to poorly (But still slightly) armored units like brigands, as the enemy armor roll will almost never be effective against polearms without a large armor pool.
    
  • This isn't unlike how other formation tactics games have handled armor, so it is quite likely... And its also the only way that I can think of that is consistent in head to head combat testing. If this is confirmed, the value of your damage stat is unimaginably high relative to what you might assume.
  
  
• Hidden: Weight. Lots of armor will cause units to fatigue when moving, and lose effectiveness faster.

In the .960 beta

Mercenaries show a stat called mobility, so its possible that heavier units might become slower, however, I have only seen mobility 10 listed, and this stat does not display on militia unit cards.

Rule of thumb: Your fatigue gets worse as you armor more, but battles get one sided as the enemy will fail to wound you more and more often. Spearmen with mail can't travel very far, where as unencumbered footmen can chase other light units quite far.

The effects of armor seem completely identical with all units. This means that some units which struggle early game thrive when their defense gap with other unit types shrinks. Polarms die easy without extra armor, but late game their defenses are only about 29% worse then a footmen, while having far greater offensive capabilities.

• All families can equip helmets, but consistently units had the same armor with and without helmets.
  
• Some hit chance, hp effect, or other unknown mechanic might be at play here, I don't know for sure.
  
• Its possible that they increase the effectiveness of chest armor, rather then having an effect themselves.

• LVL 2 families can equip gambesons, which at 36/36 increase armor by 2. (5 for footmen, 3 for polearms, 7 for spearmen...)
  
• All tests were done with helmets. It is untested if shirts without hats has the full effects.

• LVL 3 families can equip replace and throwaway their gambesons, donning mail instead, which at 36/36 increases armor by 10. (13 for footmen, 11 for polearms/archers, and 15 for spearmen.)
  
• All tests were done with helmets. It is untested if shirts without hats has the full effects.
  
• Units with mail fatigue quickly, but are very, very tough.
  
• Realistically you wore mail over an arming shirt or gambeson, but in game its just a replacement your people will do automatically.

(As the unit cards are transparent and make for poor screenshot material, I'll leave them out here.)

Needs 1 spear and 1 large shield.
(1 iron 3 wood)

• 1 Attack, 5 armor, 0 anti armor, 0 charge, 10 impaling, 8 shield.
  
• NOTICEABLY fatigues faster then footmen when you have two units with the same armor side by side.
  
• If polearms were the manic "Always charge and kill' unit, these are the stable frontliners who should never charge and always take the enemies charge.
  
• Cheap in terms of iron and always modestly effective.
  
• Its poor stamina makes it a poor choice for chasing archers, but spearmen are also nearly immune to arrow fire from the front.

Needs 1 sidearm and 1 small shield.
(2 iron 1 wood)

• 2 Attack, 3 armor, 0 anti armor, 0 charge, 0 impaling, 3 shield.
  
• Able to stay effective after remarkably long runs.
  
• Moderately survivable, with a high attack that makes them very good early game for flanking manuevers.
  
• If you have both spears and footmen early on, have the footmen take a formation behind the spears, when the enemy charges the spears, have the foot men run sideways and flank.
  
• Becomes obsolete when you can afford to equip mail armor at level 3 houses, as the protection difference between polearms and footmen with medium armor is remarkably small. (11 vs. 16 total protection.)

Needs a polearm
(1 iron 1 wood)

• 2 Attack, 1 armor, 2 anti armor, 2 charge, 0 impaling, 0 shield.
  
• As we have covered them already, I should note that ideally they are like footmen in role almost exactly.
  
• Be extra careful to not take a head on attack with them.
  
• These are the cheapest early game melee unit, and also the weakest before armor.
  
• When you have heavy armor, they are beasts who can melt the enemy while taking few losses.
  
• I forgot to test if they fatigue slower then, or faster then footmen.

Needs a bow

• 0 attack, 12 Ranged Attack (5 outside of the beta), 1 armor, 0 anti armor, 0 charge, 0 impaling, 0 shield, firing range 60 meters.
  
• Useless in the first version, but as of the beta these guys are much more valuable then they get credit for.
  
• They might not kill first volley, but enemy units that have been shot clearly die far faster once they engage your melee troops.
  
• Arrow volleys can stun enemy units briefly.
  
• With micro they can get 3 volleys off before the battle starts, where you might have a casualty or three on the enemy side.
  
• The more your archers outnumber the enemy, the more you can stunlock them, kite, and micro for more volleys.
  
• Enemies almost immediately die if archers flank around back and shoot them from behind. (Its feasible that the rear-attack bonus works for arrows, but not fully tested.)
  
• Closer to square archer formations run at the enemy less and fire sooner for some reason (Unit corners being weird?)

You need iron to make melee weapons, its rather simple....

When things stop being simple is if your region has barely any iron, but this isn't hard to handle if you stay calm and don't take extreme measures.

• Artisan blacksmiths are a tough pill to swallow in games where you only have 100 iron ore.
  
  
• The solution is simple: Iron ingots are dirt cheap to import, and make many goods more valuable then them. So you can bring in iron ingots once your iron ore runs out.
  
  
• In .7.960 this is the only cost effective way to make weapons in low iron provinces, as paying thousands for the trade route for iron costs far more then 14-8 for each ingot you can get with no trade routes spent. This is to say, you always have options, but do not hit the processed goods trade route button, it isn't worth it.
  
  
• Don't worry about tarrifs, a family making good export goods will make hundreds of town wealth in exports. The traders bringing in vital raw material still gives some value added to your settlement.
  
  
• YOU AT MOST need 1080 iron, but realistically at 432 iron your militia will soft cap at gambeson/helmet/ok weapon, or only 216 if you skip the helmets. A poor iron region can field half of their units off of just their starting iron, so taking your iron early on and importing the remaining bit is far cheaper in .7.960 then making a trade route for importing any one weapon.
  
  
• Importing tiny bits of iron when you need more weapons to replace single digit numbers of casualties is not a big deal.
  
  
• Alternatively if your happiness explodes you might have more then twice the enemy bandit population in men, where you can probably defend yourself with archer micro in .7.960 with two full archer units per enemy brigand.

If you are ever curious hold tab while paused and hovering your mouse over a unit to see its stats. Most mercenaries/retinue show their stats before you rally them however, so I felt documenting their stats was less important because you always know upfront what you are getting.

As you will use a lot of militia, I felt it was of the highest importance to explain what you needed to know there. Still, using tab to measure stats will be useful, as you will usually have units with a mix of the armor levels, some having helmets, gambesons, or mail in a non-uniform pattern as different wealth levels of home work together in a single unit.

Still light mercenaries are halfway between having mail and gambesons, light mercenary archers have decent melee stats unlike militia ones, and retinue have comedic stats compared to the strongest militia.

Some other other units also have differing formations (Brigands having very poor cohesion for example) which makes raw stats deceptive and impossible to compare like for like

The overall stats are also listed on the wiki here:
https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Manor_Lords/Warfare

• Being in a deep formation, not being fatigued, and fighting downhill makes you stronger. The precise mechanics of effectiveness will take time to unearth.
  
  
• Cohesion seems to come from being in formation, which your units are best at when the formation is deep and they aren't moving. Two rank formations have about 17% cohesion where as 3 rank cohesion is in the 23% range typically. So having a little depth can save your men.
  
  
• Effectiveness is impacted by gradual fatigue, so a unit that has made bold moves will not be as effective, particularly if they are heavy.

Getting to the place where you want to battle early, and resting gives you a much better fighting chance against an enemy who has run over to fight you.

Taking better positions and flanking mid battle makes you much more effective at totally crushing the enemy.

Most of all, getting behind the enemy and shooting them in the back is never not satisfying.

• Units have less morale in areas of heavy fighting. They are less confident and more likely to flee when near a mountain of corpses. This isn't so bad that your men won't flee at their own badassary, but the mountain of corpses being the enemy doesn't make the fighting less traumatic. They are peasants in a sea of strange mens bodies.
  
  
• Forests have a -10 morale penalty for standing in them. Trees are spooky my dudes.

So I guessed armor is probabilistic based on tests with polarms, with armor piercing being taken from an armor roll rather then flat armor right, but as of now this isn't strictly known, but by what system the armor works matters quite a lot.

• A: Armor might be a hp pool of some sort. While this is unlikely, given polarms win in some cases where having 1/5th the hp pool would be suicide, but its possible that each point of armor adds hp on top of a base amount. This is the weakest possible armor formula, but in that case what on earth does armor piercing actually do.
  
  
• B: Armor is probabilistic, which is consistent with low damage units eventually killing medium armor units, but high attack units reasonably quickly routing enemies in spite of their low total statpool. The effectiveness of damage is non linear in this case, so a little increase in damage goes a long ways. This would explain why one unit has nearly 100 armor.
  
  
• C: Armor might diminish with fatigue, so a unit that starts invincible might eventually lose their defenses and get cut down. In which case, damage is much less valuable.

All three of these could explain the stat lines where low damage still works in spite of astronomical armor values.

In case A, armor and damage has a linear effect roughly, doubling damage doubles how quickly your target dies.

In case C, armor is far more important then damage as 10 armor is a huge chunk of your fatigue where all weapons you are immune to.

In case B, nearly everything in the game makes sense, but there is one consequence I want to make very clear. Armor will have a nearly linear effect on damage taken as past a point, it only decreases the probability of taking damage, but damage has a greater then linear effect when armor is greater then damage, as it increases both the chance of dealing damage, and the average damage delt per attack that breaches armor.

As, in a case where the enemy has 3 armor and you have 1 attack, the fight goes like this:
0,0,0,1 damage is possible just hitting the enemy if 3 armor is 0-3 armor on a D4.
For an average damage of 0.25.

With 2 attack, the roll goes as follows:
0,0,1,2 damage is possible just hitting the enemy.
For an average damage of 0.75. One damage up tripled our damage!

Armor piercing, like armor, would have an almost linear effect on damage taken at high levels.

With 2 attack, 2 ap the roll would go as follows:
1,2,2,2 for an average damage of 1.75
Or, if it is subtracted from base armor, you would get.
1,2, for an average of 1.5 damage.
If its the first, AP is strong versus all targets, including retinue, but if its the second, AP is mostly only useful against lightly armored targets, like footmen, as the retinues armor going from 97 to 95 would only be a ~3% change in damage output.

That two ap being taken as damage would have an extreme, and imbalanced impact.
With 4 attack, the roll would be:
1, 2, 3, 4 for an average 2.5 damage. Doubling our damage more then tripled our average damage once again...

As damage is doubled when flanking, you can see how quickly enemies break when they take four damage instead of two.

This starts being less significant when we look at high damage versus low armor, where suddenly the opposite becomes true. The stat that is lower always has a disproportionate effect on battles.

Lastly, there is the possibility of a damage floor of 1 existing, so one damage always bypasses armor, in which case the evaluation gets absurdly complicated and the biases are shuffled.

We don't know, and its possible the formula is something else.
My hypothesis is probabilistic armor simply because battles outcomes seem consistent with the math of probabilistic armor.

Still, unit rankings are impossible to make strictly real without this, because things like this, and how many seconds charge bonus and impaling lasts for matters a lot.