[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by velk:
I have just been making an armor item with their natural protection on it and giving that to them, but I think there are some differences in how it stacks in the game

The sim correctly models armor protection stacking with natural protection. However, it does NOT correctly model multiple sources of natural protection... because I'm not really sure how that works. So if you give a human a barkskin amulet in the sim (name=Barkskin_Amulet nprot=10) it will correctly give him 10 natural protection, like in the game... but if you give him multiple barkskin amulets, or a barkskin amulet and marble armor, it may be slightly off. As long as there is only 1 source of natural protection the sim will be exactly correct.

To give a unit natural protection, you modify the base creature (in Creatures.txt) and put in "nprot=5" or whatever value you want. Of course, that will modify all units that use the creature... for example, if you give the creature "Human" natural protection 5, then all units that use "Human" as their base creature will have natural protection of 5. That includes all the independant infantry types, for example.

If you just want to give natural protection to a single unit, then your method of giving a custom item is best. So to give a Tien Chi Pike Footman natural protection of 5, but not affect the other pikemen, you can make a new item:

name=Tough_Skin nprot=5

And modify the pikeneer's equipment:

name=TC_Footman_Pike creature=Human weapon=Pike item=Full_Leather_Armor item=Helmet item=Tough_Skin

Of course, you could also make a new creature, instead, and give it nprot=5.

To be very clear:

"nprot" means natural protection - this is for creatures and magic items like barkskin amulets
"aprot" means armor protection - this is for all armor that has a protection value
"tprot" means total protection - don't ever use it, it is calculated automatically.