The Emir sat up, suddenly interested. “You’re saying a rabble of peasants with clubs can beat my holy knights?”
“My lord,” Al-Rashid whispered, unrolling a massive, meticulously drawn parchment. “I have finished the calculus of blood.”
Al-Rashid pointed to a column of tiny numbers beside a drawing of a hooded figure. “The Assassin. Speed: 18. Attack power: 40. Hit points: 50. The Lord’s Swordman, by comparison, has a speed of only 12, attack power of 35, but a robust 120 hit points.” stronghold crusader unit stats
He moved his finger to a sketch of a chainmail-clad knight. “The Templar. Cost: 40 gold. Armour: a staggering 5. He can take an arrow to the chest and barely grunt. But look here—” he tapped a footnote, “—his attack speed is glacial. One swing per 48 frames of combat.”
The Emir stared at the scribe. Then he smiled, a cold, hungry smile. The Emir sat up, suddenly interested
“Exactly!” Al-Rashid’s eyes gleamed. “But the counter is not what you think. You would send archers. But archers have a pierce value of only 20. A Templar’s armour negates it entirely. No. The true killer of a Templar is the Maceman .”
“Prepare my quill, little mouse. We have a crusader lord to teach… that his ‘brave knights’ are just slow, overpriced units with a fatal weakness to a 2-gold torch.” “The Assassin
He unrolled a second, blood-stained sheet. “Maceman. Cost: 20 gold. Attack: 25 (crushing type, ignores 2 points of armour). Speed: 14. He’s weak against arrows. But against a slow, armoured Templar? He lands three hits for every one of the knight’s. It’s not power that wins. It’s frames .”
The flickering torchlight of the Arabian library cast long shadows on Al-Rashid’s face. He wasn’t a lord, a general, or even a soldier. He was a scribe —and his latest obsession was driving his Emir to distraction.
“This, my lord, is the real stronghold. Not stone and mortar. But numbers. Speed values. Attack cooldowns. Your enemy knows how to shout ‘For the King!’ I know that a Pitch Ditch does 15 damage per second and that fire arrows have a 70% chance to ignite it.”
The Emir chuckled. “So? My Hashishin will stab him in the back before he raises his sword.”