Been doing some research into unit stats and how it affects combat.

I found it
interesting and decided to share what I have learned. Most of it is probably
already know to you guys, but some might be new. Regardless I thought it
would be nice to have all of the resources in one place. So feel free to post
things to add or corrections and I will happlily adjust the information in the
OP.

So first combat, you have:

Melee Attack: This is the "chance" you have of hitting your opponent. This
statistic is stacked up against their melee defense.
Weapon Damage: The amount of damage dealt if the melee attack is
succesful.
Health: The hitpoints of a unit. Shows how much damage can be taken before
death.
Example: So lets say a unit has 30 melee attack does 40 weapon damage
with 5 damage being AP damage. And its going up agains a unit with 20
melee defense 60 armour And 30 hit points.
A die is rolled to see the amount of melee attack (between 1 and 30) and the
melee defense. (1-20) If the attacker gets 20 and the defender gest 15: the
attack goes through because 20 is higher.

There's also AP (armour piercing) damage. AP damage cannot be blocked by

armour. Most weapons deal some AP damage. Swords deal the least AP while
clubs deal the most.

AP damage isn't shown on the unit card but its part of the full weapon

damage shown.

Also in other total war games the armour steadily went down with each
strike. In this game its not clear if the armour goes down. It seems unlikely
that it does becuase of the hit points. Most people seem to agree that armour
doesn't go down with hits.

Now some random thing with weapon damage and armour. A number
between 0-40 for the attacker and 0-60 for the defender. Attacker gets a 34
and the defender gets a 50. All base damage is blocked. There's 5 AP damage
so that goes through lowering the bit points from 30 to 25.

Again the attacker swings. Getting just an 11 while the defender gets a 15.
Attack succesfully parried/blocked.

This time the attacker gets a 24 so its impossible for the defender to defende
this attack as the highest he can go is 20. The random number selected for
weapon damage is 37 and the random number for armour is 20. So the
armour blocks 20 damage leaving 17 Damage dealt. This leaves the defender
on 8 hit points.

This all goes on until the other guy dies.

I don't know what decides who attacks. As usually you one find one guy doing
all the attacking. But odour know if its completely random or if there's
something that influenced that.

Charge bonus. What that does is increase melee attack and weapon damage
on the charge.

With projectiles Shields have a block chance which was added patch 5. Before
it acted as extra armour and it still does. It also adds extra melee defense to
the total. This block chance only works against projectiles. Now they couldn't
model A block hitbox to the actual shield as that would require a lot of AI
changes as well as detailed hitboxes. All in all too performance intensive and
to would make projectiles a little more powerful. So what they have done is
add 3 simple squares. One in the front, the left and above. Any projectile that
hits one of those squares has a chance of being blocked. Anything from the
right side or back has no chance of being blocked. The highest block chance
for a shield in the game is 55% and that's for a kind of wicker tower shield.
Roman scutum a have a 50% block chance. Pikemen shields have a 10%
block chance.

The system isn't warhammer rules. Its total war rules.

Also just relelised this is an old thread. Why bump this?

Typically, it goes along these lines.

Melee Attack/Defence - Chance to hit/be hit.

Shield - ranged weapon defence.
Melee/Ranged damage - amount of damage done.
Health - how many hits you can take before you die.
Armour - reduces weapon damage taken.

So, for example, a Hastati stabs a Barbarian for 10 damage.

Roll done for Melee Attack/Defence to see if it hits.

Damage - Armour give a total damage done.
If that damage done is more than the units remaining health, the unit dies.

Now, x that by every man in combat.

If you're new to the TW series, and are unfamiliar with this name; Jack Lusted
is Creative Assembly's lead unit designer.
Original TWCenter.net Post
First post for a while and I want to take this opportunity to talk about the
changes we have made to the combat system and tweaks we have made to
the morale system as well.
Combat changes
There have been big changes to the combat system for Rome II. I will talk
about these changes in the context of some new stats: weapon damage and
health.
Weapon damage is split into two parts, base damage and armour piercing
damage (referred to as AP damage from here on out). AP damage is always
applied but base damage can be blocked by armour. Melee weapons and
projectiles have this damage split. Health is the amount of hit points a soldier
in a unit has, and damage dealt reduces a soldiers hit points.
This system gives us a lot more flexibility in how we balance units. Whereas
before an axe may have been set as armour piercing which would reduce
target armour by half, the new system allows us to give axes lots of AP
damage but little base damage so that most of their damage cannot be
blocked by armour. Other weapons may have the other extreme, lots of base
damage but low AP damage which would make them fantastic against units

with low armour but weak against more heavily armoured opponents.
All weapons do some AP damage so you can always guarantee that no matter
who is fighting who some damage will always be done, though this may be
very little.
Health has been introduced as the system that damage affects, most units
will have a similar amount of health (more for cavalry when mounted to show
the hit points of horses) and armour will be a bigger factor in a units
survivability as that can block damage whereas health can only absorb so
much.
Melee defence is still a factor and is matched against melee attack to
determine if a unit will hit and then see if it does damage.
Shields in Rome II do not just provide a bonus to melee defence, they now
can provide a bonus to both melee defence and armour when a soldier is
attacked from the front or left. How much of a bonus is given to melee
defence or armour is dependent on the shield a unit has in the database. So a
hoplite shield will give a big bonus to armour but less to melee defence due
to how it was held close to the body and could not be moved around lots, but
a celtic shield will give a big bonus to melee defence showing how it was
used much more actively.
Charge bonus now affects both melee attack and damage to reflect the
changes made to the combat system.
All these changes allow for a lot more flexibility and more depth to be
portrayed in the unit balancing and combat calculations. This system has
more depth to it than any previous Total War games whilst keeping the rules
simple so players can grasp what each stat means. All the complexity of the
previous system has been retained with more added to it
A brief note here on ranged combat. With the way we display arcs to show
the range of missile units, dynamic height based range bonuses are basically
impossible to do as it is entirely dependent on who the unit is targeting.
Instead we have implemented a damage bonus for ranged units firing down
on enemies, and a damage reduction for ranged units firing up on enemies.
This allows us to have an advantage for ranged units on high ground without
massively complicated code for dynamic firing arcs with very few benefits.
The new combat rules also have one v many combat coded into them. The
animations may look 1v1, but under the hood every available additional
attacker is factored in and will result in a person surrounded by enemies
dying a lot faster.
Morale Changes

There have been less code changes to the morale system, the big one being
a smoothing mechanism to soften some of the big jumps between different
morale values that can be caused by balancing. This, when combined with
units being in the wavering state for longer will allow players more time to
react to units in trouble and to try and boost their morale.
The morale values themselves have had a lot of changes, for example the
morale penalty from being under missile fire is much greater in Rome II to
emphasise the harassment nature of missile units and allow those ranged
units to be less focused on just killing opponents and so offer a wider array of
tactical uses. The morale effects for lost casualties and flanking have also
ben tweaked to help make the cause and effect of player actions more clear
in the battlefield and put more emphasis on good movement and positioning.
Unit Stat Scales
As some people noticed in the Teutoberg trailer, the stats for units are a lot
bigger now. This is because we are using a wider range of stats for units in
Rome II. For example in Shogun 2 morale may have gone from 4 to 15 for
most units (excluding heroes). In Rome II it can go from 10 to 75.
This greater range allows us much more granularity in the bonuses we give
from experience and in the campaign and also a greater range to
differentiate units over.
Additionally, I should point out that the Teutoberg video certainly showed
barbarian units breaking earlier and Roman units surviving longer than they
will do in the final game. We tweaked this for the video so that the guy
demoing it could actually get through the battle to the end without dying
horribly halfway through. It can be hilarious when that happens for the fifth
time in a row, but maybe not so much when we are trying to record a video to
show you.

Collision is done at an entity (soldier) level, not at an equipment level.

Armour is the chance to negate an amount of normal damage. AP damage
ignores armour and is always applied to a soldiers health.
Shields increase armour and grant a block chance against missile attacks
from the front and left. The bonus is constant.
Unit health is independent of armour and shield.