Newbie questions or point me to a good newbie faq...

Don't quote me on this, I'm probably wrong in some areas, but this is how I understand things after a few hundred hours of play. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Also tell me if I'm not making sense.

1 - Charge bonus is an automatic bonus that a unit gains to its melee attack (chance to hit) and melee defense (chance to block/dodge) when it charges into an enemy. Charging means it has built up enough speed to be running. The buff lasts for a little while, not sure how long though. A common strategy with cavalry and monstrous infantry is to "cycle charge" where you charge them in, then almost immediately pull them out to get another charge.

2 - Probably if you're ending treaties too early it counts as treachery. If you break a deal with a faction within 10 turns of signing it counts as treachery. This includes if you make peace with them and then re-declare war. Also if you break a non-aggression pact with a faction, it counts as treachery to declare war on that faction within 10 turns. The game should tell you if an act is treachery when you make it and tell you how many turns are left until it's not a treachery.

3 - I think you're meaning damage in a battle vs damage in the campaign map? In a battle your units will take damage and it transfers over to the campaign map. On the campaign map you can heal a unit back to full regardless of how much damage its taken (unless the unit was completely destroyed). You get replenishment healing every turn on the campaign map, and it will often take several turns to heal a unit back to full (depending how injured it is). To gain replenishment in a campaign map you need to be in your territory or encamped. You get a bonus for being garrisoned in a city you control. If you're in enemy territory, you will not gain replenishment. Some areas like stormy oceans, swamps, corrupted regions, etc. can cause attrition damage to your army which damages them instead.

4 - I don't think any units have different ammo types, but if they did it would be on the left by their portrait icon as a toggleable ability. However you can toggle fire at will (if you want them to wait for your order to shoot), skirmish (if you want them to run away when a unit gets too close), and melee (if you want them to shoot or melee things) at the bar underneath the unit cards.

5 - This is where I'm not quite sure on the specifics, but I can share what I know. Melee attack is a unit's chance to hit an attack and melee defense is a unit's chance to block/dodge an attack. If you've ever played Warhammer on tabletop, think of melee attack as your hit roll and melee defense as your save roll. In your example of 20 melee attack vs 80 melee defense, the attacking unit would be very unlikely to hit because the defenders have such high melee defense, but they will still hit a few attacks. This basically means the attacking unit does damage slower than against a low melee defense unit, because it's hitting less. Melee attack does not interact with armor at all, only melee defense. Melee attack is only your chance to hit, not your damage.

Damage is determined by weapon strength (for melee attacks) or missile strength (for ranged attacks).

Armor is a percentage reduction, but I'm not sure quite the percentages. It's not a 1-to-1 reduction, 50 armor doesn't mean 50% less damage. There are units with over 100 armor. Most infantry have around 20-30 armor. The armor reduces damage taken by physical attacks (meaning normal, non-magical attacks). However, most attacks have a split of normal damage (which armor affects) and armor piercing damage (which ignores armor). Even a non armor piercing unit has at least 1 or 2 armor piercing damage. Units that say they have armor piercing attacks just means they have a higher amount of armor piercing damage on their weapon strength. So your archers with 20 weapon strength would still deal damage to a unit with 50 armor, but not as much damage as to a unit with 20 armor. They'll still always deal some damage I think.

/r/totalwarhammer Thread