Armor class (Age of Empires)

This article is about the old armor class systems in Age of Empires. For the new armor class systems implemented in Return of Rome, see Armor class (Return of Rome).

Armor classes are semi-hidden unit attributes in Age of Empires. They are necessary to make attack bonuses work correctly.

In-game references

The bonus attack and armor class system is not directly displayed in-game. The only way to directly see armor class bonuses and their values is with the use of the Genie Editor, which is the official program to edit dataset included in game files, from where the information of this wiki is obtained.

Comparison with Age of Empires II

Main article: Armor class (Age of Empires II)

Similarly to Age of Empires II, attack bonuses in Age of Empires work by subtracting the corresponding armor to the corresponding attack. Considering, for simplicity, the case where the target is a unit and there are no hills/cliffs, the damage formula is:

$Damage=\max\left(1,\sum_i\max(0,Attack_i-Armor_i)\right)$

It is a slightly different calculation for buildings though. Even though buildings in Age of Empires have 0 melee armor, melee units do not deal the full damage against them. This happens because buildings have 80% resistance against all attacks. Considering, for simplicity, the case where there are no hills/cliffs, the damage formula against a building is:

$Damage=\max\left(\frac{1}{10},\frac{1}{5}\sum_i\max(0,Attack_i-Armor_i)\right)$

Here i is each armor class (the formula includes the classes "Base Pierce" and "Base Melee").

Combining the values from classes 6, 10, and 17 and dividing by 5 in the end:

• The Catapult Trireme and Stone Thrower lines deal 10 bonus damage against towers and 28 bonus damage against all other buildings.
• War Elephants and Armored Elephants deal 5 and 7 bonus damage against all buildings, respectively.
• While unupgraded Villagers deal no bonus damage against walls and towers, Siegecraft gives them +125 and +20 attack against the classes 10 and 17, respectively. Hence Villagers with Siegecraft deal 2 bonus damage against walls and towers.

However, there are some important differences with respect to Age of Empires II.

Base armor

Contrary to Age of Empires II, where most units have 10,000 base armor, in Age of Empires most units have 0 base armor, meaning that any attack with a positive value will increase the damage against enemy units. The only exceptions are Palmyran Villagers, with 1 base armor, and most cheat units, with 10 base armor.

Since units are not meant to take bonus damage from everything, attack bonuses are usually triggered by giving the attacker a 0 value, while the target has negative armor. For example, the Cataphract has 0 attack against the infantry armor class, while Legionaries have -7 infantry armor (thus the Cataphract deals +7 bonus damage). Units dealing a smaller bonus damage will have a negative attack value (but still greater than the target's corresponding armor). For example, the Heavy Cavalry has -1 attack against the infantry armor class, thus it deals +6 bonus damage against Legions.

Naturally, the armor classes Base Pierce and Base Melee do not follow the rule above and their attack and armor values are defined in a similar way to Age of Empires II.

Armor classes

Unlike armor classes in Age of Empires II, the name may not correspond to the units having the armor class.

0

Official Name: Towers & Walls & Fire Galley

Proper Name: Fire Galley

Units with negative armor:

• Fire Galley: -5

Units having attack bonus:

• Ballista, Helepolis: 0

Notes: Contrary to what the name suggests, walls and towers do not have negative armor.

1

Official Name: Towers & Walls & Archers

Units with negative armor:

• Bowman-line: -2
• Mounted archers: -4

Buildings with negative armor:

• Walls and towers: -3

Units having attack bonus:

• Slinger: 0

2

Official Name: Explosion

Notes: This class exists to ensure that the attack of some cheat units is unaffected by armor, so they have attack against this class, but not against the Base Pierce or Base Melee classes.

3

Official Name: Base Pierce

Main article: Pierce armor#Age of Empires

Notes: Most buildings have 0 pierce armor, the exceptions being walls and towers:

• Small Wall, Watch Tower: 3
• Medium Wall, Sentry Tower: 4
• Fortified Wall, Guard Tower, Ballista Tower: 5

4

Official Name: Base Melee

Main article: Armor#Age of Empires

Notes: All buildings have 0 melee armor.

6

Official Name: Buildings

Proper Name: Buildings and Fire Galley

Units with negative armor:

• Fire Galley: -10

Buildings with negative armor:

• Towers: -50
• All other buildings: -140

Units having attack bonus:

• Catapult Trireme, Juggernaut: 35
  • Catapult Triremes and Juggernaughts have an attack against this class instead of Base Melee to ensure it is unaffected by armor, while at the same time they deal bonus damage against buildings, which is explained in the next section.
• Stone Thrower, Catapult, Heavy Catapult: 0
• Armored Elephant: -105*
• War Elephant: -115*

7

Official Name: Priests

Proper Name: Obsolete

Notes: This armor class was created to ensure Chariot units dealt bonus damage against Priests. Since the bonus damage was removed with update 38862, this armor class is now obsolete.

8

Official Name: Cavalry

Proper Name: Mounted units except Camel Riders

Units with negative armor:

• Chariot and elephant units: -4
• Scout, Cavalry-line, Horse Archer-line: -8

Units having attack bonus:

• Camel Rider: 0

9

Official Name: Infantry

Proper Name: Clubmen and Swordsmen

Units with negative armor:

• Clubman-line, Short Swordsman-line: -7

Units having attack bonus:

• Cataphract: 0
• Heavy Cavalry: -1
• Cavalry: -2

Notes: Slingers are not included since the Cavalry line is already strong enough against them. Academy units are not included either as they are meant to be a strong counter to all melee units.

10

Official Name: Towers & Walls

Proper Name: Towers

Buildings with negative armor:

• Towers: -35

Units having attack bonus:

• Armored Elephant: 0
• War Elephant: -10
• Villager: -150

Notes: This class ensures War Elephants and Armored Elephants deal bonus damage against towers in the same amount as against all other buildings. Walls do not have negative armor as they have the same building armor as the other buildings.

The following technologies grant attack bonus to certain units against this class:

• Siegecraft - Villager - 125

12

Official Name: Villagers & Gazelles & Medusa

Units having attack bonus: Lion: 3

Notes: This class exists to ensure that the attack of Lions is unaffected by armor. As the name suggests, it is meant to ignore the extra armor Palmyran Villagers have (and, on a smaller note, to give Gazelles anti-Lion armor)

17

Proper Name: Walls

Buildings with negative armor:

• Walls: -25

Units having attack bonus:

• Villager: -35

Notes: This class ensures Siegecraft gives Villagers bonus damage against walls.

The following technologies grant attack bonus to certain units against this class:

• Siegecraft - Villager - +20

Trivia

• The infantry/cavalry armor classes do not include all infantry/cavalry units, respectively.
• There is no specific armor class for siege units or ships, and all such units have 0/0 armor.