Unit Size Difference

[Si GeeNa]

Having played the game in differing Unit Sizes, i've noticed how the strategic and tactical aspects of the game actually shifts. For example, Playing in Small makes Cavalry alot more useful and damaging.

Strategic

Huge
Huge units typically take 2 turns to build, various artillery types will take even longer. This means that there is a noticeable interest in the preservation of strength.

If i send out 10 units to battle, and i lose half of them, even if i have 5 provinces to replace the strength, i'll take up to 2 turns or more to do so.

However, if units are merely depleted, they can be re-built at the cost of only 1 turn. There might therefore be an inclination for the commander to withdraw his units so that they are not destroyed. Rather, the unit is depleted, even to the last man, and sent back to be rejuvenated.

Another aspect of this consideration is that huge units cost more to construct and maintain as well. This leads me to conclude that the advantage lies more and more with the richer factions. It is already naturaly so, it just makes the advantage more obvious now.

Small
Strategically, small to large units are barely different in their application. The only possible item of interest is that units that require 2 turns to build, ie artillery and berserkers, only take 1 turn now. This might prove to be an important slant to using units like berserkers, hashishin and VGs.

Tactical

Generally, huge units take up more space on the battlefield and since the size of the battlefield does not scale like units do, a knoll that can take up to 8 units of small size might only take 3 units of huge size. (phew, that was unnecessarily verbose)

Cav has a distinct advantage in the small size battles. Their damage inflicted often seems more critical to the receiving unit. Often, in the Huge battles, the cav charges into the flank of the unit, say, Men-At-Arms. The MAA suffers an initial loss of 14 men. It is a big loss already. But due to the nature of its size, it is able to sucker the cav in for at least 2 mins before it starts to rout.

In a small battle, the MAA suffers an initial loss to the cav. Within half a minute, it starts to rout.

This suggests that Huge units allow more slack to the human player to ponder and think. Decisions that can be crtitical or fatal in Small battles have a delayed impact. It is more forgiving than the Small batles.

Conclusion

Personaly, i have a penchant for the Huge game. It gives a genuine feel to the tactical command. But the decision of sizes is pretty much to the individual player. Certainly, there is no hard and fast rule, just general priciples in operation.

[hoom]

I really like playing at Huge size http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

It means you have to be more careful with your troops because if you merge or loose units, you need 2 turns to replace them.
You can have a quite powerful defensive army in one stack where on normal, you normally need a couple of stacks (I don't really understand why that happens but it does for me).
Its a bit annoying that there are very few places that you can still set up a proper hill defence though http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Varangian Guards take 4 turns

You get twice as many guys on the field at once http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Royal Knights are however still only 20 strong so they are not as strong (but late RK can still take on 200 strong spear units and win with minimal loss)

[Nelson]

I play a “huge” game all the time. Larger formations look better giving the battles a grander appearance. If the units require more care to maneuver so be it. Armies were and are ponderous things.

I also prefer the doubled build times. This requires more planning and slows the game down somewhat which IMO is desirable. It also encourages more retraining to reinforce veteran units to save time, also a good thing.

[Praetorian]

Bigger units also mean more peasants to kill in a rebelion, and thus getting interresting vices real quick. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Crash]

I've been playing small lately because I think it helps the poorer AI factions in the game at the strategic level, since it costs less money to build a unit.

Also, with with smaller units on the field, the battlefield becomes more realistic since the size of the army in comparison to the size of the battlefield is a better ratio. It's more likely that the opposing armies will fight in the center of the map since they won't be large enough to stretch their flanks to the edges. You will have to anchor your armies flanks and rear on natural terrain features such as woods, cliffs, mountains, buildings, etc, so it's much more realistic.

Calvary does become more effective against the smaller units of infantry, but there's a positive side-effect to that - you will be forced to rely more on large units of pole-arms/spears, which IMO is more historically realistic.

It's really a matter of personal preference, but I find that I enjoy the battles much more now because the action seems a lot more free flowing and historical. I now have to think more about where and how to anchor my flanks and protect my rear. On offense, it is challenging to come up with a plan of attack against an enemy army that is entirely on a hill or hidden in woods.

Nice post, Si Geena.

[tuopaolo]

I made Royal Knights be 40 strong http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif, doubling in size just like the other units on Huge.

[Yoko Kono]

i used to play small due to pc limitations but generally play normal now
an interesting point to make is that kings and princes are hugely valuable units on small but much less so as unit sizes increase
also on small size with the reduced upkeep costs you will find more individual units deployed in provinces( but the same amounts of actual men as normal) meaning reinforcements are far more common since, generally, a full army now can only field 480 men (16 units of 30 men man units) but the ai will still build to its economic capacity resulting, often, in 3 times as many reinforcements as men on the field
this poses several changes to the player mainly the need to manage ones forces more efficiently in battle and to withdraw tired or weakened units more often
it also has the effect of making cavalry far more decisive since with thier speed in the chase they can often ward off reinforcements before they can actually deploy
an interesting option to add would be to not only increase base unit sizes but also an option for base support costs so, for example, you could play with small units but say huge support costs keeping army sizes down for the player with a less capable pc, it would also be lots of fun to play huge armies with minimum support costs

[ChaosLord]

Hmm, I usually play on just the default size. 960 is a good round number, can get all my forces even. But I hadn't considered the cost and time to build of huge units. That would make raising armies more costly and battles more decisive, even more so with WesWs MedMod since mercs are limited to only certain provinces. An even bigger challenge for when playing the weaker nations.

[hoom]

Quote[/b] ]you will be forced to rely more on large units of pole-arms/spears, which IMO is more historically realistic
Umm, my experience with smaller units with rank bonuses (mostly runt units on huge) is that they can only cover a very narrow front & are easily flanked.
A 200 strong pike unit can be 50 men wide with full 4 rows rank bonus, but a 50 strong pike unit would only be 12/13 men wide.

I use pole-arms/spears lots in huge.

[Crash]

Good point Arrrse, but when using small units calvary will have only 20 men, compared with spear units that have 50 men. So a spear unit deployed 3 ranks deep can still be 16 wide. A calvary unit charging with 2 ranks is only 10 wide. So the ratio won't be very different using normal, large, or huge. Even at 4 ranks deep, the spears can be 12 wide.

[SirGrotius]

i like playing on small because i can become very personal with my units--i even name the individual soldiers okay, i don't.

[Pedders]

The 2 turn build on huge makes the use of mercenaries more likely as they can be purchased instantly to deal with a sudden threat. I know some players who would never use them on normal or small, but suddenly find them a valuable and realistic safety net on huge.

[The_Emperor]

I tend not to play on huge because the game can slow down enough in normal as it is

Having so many men on the field really lags me down for some reason (easily noticed in multiple army battles on normal for me), and I am running a P1800, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 64MB and a Soundblaster Audigy card

I prefer Normal.

[Oaty]

Quote[/b] ]Having so many men on the field really lags me down for some reason (easily noticed in multiple army battles on normal for me), and I am running a P1800, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 64MB and a Soundblaster Audigy card

I prefer Normal.

Have you tryed tweaking with sound and graphic settings made a huge difference for me. You have a slightly better system than me and I get zero lag once I turned the sound effects to minumum.

[squippy]

I only use huge for the many good reasons expressed above. I like big armies - feels more authentic.

[The_Emperor]

Quote[/b] (oaty @ Sep. 10 2003,04:00)]
Quote[/b] ]Having so many men on the field really lags me down for some reason (easily noticed in multiple army battles on normal for me), and I am running a P1800, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 64MB and a Soundblaster Audigy card

I prefer Normal.

Have you tryed tweaking with sound and graphic settings made a huge difference for me. You have a slightly better system than me and I get zero lag once I turned the sound effects to minumum.
I will try what you sugguest... But i do like my Sound effects, the Music can go I guess no need for that when you have a few well-known movie sountracks http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Hamburglar]

I play on Normal

BUT

I went and modded the game to make all units double the size. This lets them still all be produced in one turn.

I play with double size units because I like seeing thousands of men out there fighting. I modded the game because if you play Huge normally, everything takes two turns to build and this hurts the AI because they never "retrain" units. They just let them die off and then spend 2 turns building a new one.

[EatYerGreens]

This is another, very old, thread I found.

I just wondered, now that the technology has moved on a bit, how people's views on unit size are these days.

I haven't tried huge since my Shogun days and found the longer training times something of a nuisance. It's not the number of men on the field I'm concerned about, more the number of 'jobs' which can be done at any one time. 400 men in two units means only two attack/defend orders possible at one time. 400 men split into 4 to 6 units permits more attacks, or combination pin & flank maneuvres etc.

One question I still have about huge unit size:

What happens to castle garrison capacity, on huge?

Taking fort = 240 as an example, one spear unit would leave no room for anything else but a depleted unit or a maximum of 20 Cavalry, no?

Aha! Now there's a use for those depleted, but valoured, units... if only there was an anti-unit-auto-merging switch.

[Patron]

There is an anti-auto-unit-merging switch, you just have to keep alike units with a total of less than the units per 1 unit per 2 alike units in different stacks.

Unless of course you missed the auto-clean up units switch which can be openned with a load of other switches by clicking the arrow thingy next to the map. In which case, click that then do the above.

:sleeping:

[ichi]

*must . . . resist . . . urge . . . to make . . . bad . . . joke . . . about . . . fixation . . . on . . . unit size.*

[littlebktruck]

I play on default, as my computer may not be able to do much better. I'm getting a new computer soon, and I may move up to normal or the one above it. I don't think I'd do huge, though.

[Patron]

It's not how big it is, it's how you use it.

:bow:

[EatYerGreens]

There is an anti-auto-unit-merging switch, you just have to keep alike units with a total of less than the units per 1 unit per 2 alike units in different stacks.

Unless of course you missed the auto-clean up units switch which can be openned with a load of other switches by clicking the arrow thingy next to the map. In which case, click that then do the above. :sleeping:

Yes, I have that auto-tidy thing turned off already. It's just that sometimes I drop one stack on another and get a merge I didn't want. For instance, a unit which was 100, is now 56 (more than half size is usually enough to prevent merges) with boosted valour from a battle and I fail to spot a unit of 23, say, with no valour boost, in the other stack, giving me one of 79 but dropping the valour boost, thanks to the averaging.

ROFL @ ichi. Someone had to say it.

[VikingHorde]

I only play with huge unit size because battles has a more epic feel. Not long ago I had a huge battle as the byzantines vs. the turks and armenians (Hard/High/XL mod). Pretty fun to see two huge armys advancing towards you knowing they have 3-4 time more men ~;) . They attacked me from two sides, trying to sandwich me, so I had to divide my army in two as there was not the time to take out one of the armys before the other one arrived. In the end I wiped out both armys, only loosing 1/4 of my men. The battle would not had been as fun if the enemy only could field half the amount of men because of normal unit size (about 1920 vs 960 men per faction).

~:cheers:

[EatYerGreens]

Any answers to my earlier question about fort/castle capacities, on huge? Are they the same, or increased, in proportion?

[dgfred]

Any answers to my earlier question about fort/castle capacities, on huge? Are they the same, or increased, in proportion?


I'm still getting a grip on normal :embarassed: , sorry.