AGO — Mechanics

How combat works

The Medieval II engine's combat formulas were never officially documented; what follows is the community's settled understanding from fifteen years of testing, applied to the stats this site shows. It is the one part of this site not read directly from the mod's files.

Attack & defence

Each strike rolls the attacker's attack against the defender's defence. Defence is the sum shown on the unit page: armour + defence skill + shield. The three parts are not equal: the shield only protects the front and left arc (attacks from the right or rear ignore it), and defence skill counts only in melee — missiles are resisted by armour and shield alone.

Armour-piercing

Weapons with the AP badge halve the target's armour before the roll (skill and shield are unaffected). Axes, maces, crossbows and most siege ammunition are AP — the counter to heavily-armoured foes such as the dwarven elites with their level-7 plate.

Charge

The charge bonus is added to attack during the first seconds of contact, roughly until the formation collapses into the melee grind. A cavalry charge that connects at speed applies it with mass behind it — lances can double their effective attack on impact; the same unit stuck in prolonged melee falls back to its base attack.

Missiles

A projectile's damage comes from the ammunition, not the archer: the same unit hits harder with better arrows (the clickable ammo cards on the unit page show each projectile's damage and AP flag). Range and volume favour massed archers; armour blunts non-AP arrows badly, which is why crossbows (AP) punch above their paper attack.

Armour upgrades

Retraining at a smith adds +1 armour per level, to the cap the unit's own upgrade ladder and the faction's smiths allow — the caps differ widely by faction (see the faction cards and the smith chain on the buildings page).

Morale, fatigue and fear

Morale decides when soldiers run: casualties, flanking, a dead general and fatigue all drain it; units marked ∞ never rout. Fatigue also dulls attack and defence — heat is its main driver, so the unit page's heat stat matters in the south. Fear effects (the Nazgûl's dread, units that frighten nearby foes) work as a morale penalty aura.

Experience

Each chevron adds roughly +1 attack and +1 defence skill per two levels and a morale step per level — a gold-chevron militia regularly beats fresh professionals. Buildings that grant recruit experience (and the garrison veterans on the world page) start units up that ladder.

The One Ring

The Ring questline arms itself at turn 50. From there the Ring is found, kept, stolen and marched across the map through 16 scripted stages:

Inactive → Spawned → Kept → March to Black Gate → March to Mount Doom → Saruman Countdown → Saruman → Sauron → Destroyed → Bring to Council → Bring to Mount Doom (Player) → Bring to Sauron (Evil) → Bring to Sauron (Mordor) → Bring to Saruman → Bring to Isengard → Ringbearer left Grey Havens

Destroying it is not safe even at the end: an attempt at Mount Doom fails 20% of the time, with the Ring slipping away to resurface elsewhere. The Annals hold every Ring scroll the campaign can show; each faction's overview on this site notes what keeping the Ring unlocks for it (the smiths of several factions forge level-6 armour only for a Ring-keeper).

The Palantíri

Six seeing-stones are hidden in fixed settlements. Holding one lets its owner scry a distant area every 5 turns, revealing a radius of 7 tiles — or 15 for the three masters of the stones (Sauron, Saruman and Denethor).

Spy networks

Beyond individual agents, each faction can fund a standing intelligence network against a rival, upgraded in four levels. Each level's chance applies per turn, per enemy settlement or army, to reveal it on the map:

Raiding

Armies can raid enemy provinces for loot and slaves rather than besiege. A raided province needs 10 turns to recover before it can be raided again. Loot is 60% of the province's value (resources count ×2; a passive raid stance yields 85%), and slavers take 25% of the population. The season matters most:

Harvest-time raids (autumn) are four times as profitable as winter ones — the raiding factions (Isengard, the Goblins, the corsairs) live by this calendar.

The settings file (AGO.cfg)

The mod ships a plain-text settings file next to the launcher — AGO.cfg — with 31 player toggles. Defaults as currently shipped: