Total number of units in a battle

[MrBeAr]

According to the official faq at:
http://www.totalwar.com/community/medieval/medfaq.htm

"You can have over 25,000 soldiers if you want to put 8 armies of 16 units of 200 men each on the battlefield."

Is this the max limit in an 8 player game only (1 full army per player?), or for the singleplayer campaign also? That way you could attack a province with 1-2 armies from the north,south,east,west at the same time.

Does anybody know what will happen if an attacker has 7 full armies and the defender has 5? Will they get to place 4 full armies each (for a total of 8) or will the attacker get more units on the battlefield to reflect his superior numbers, i.e. 5 vs 3 with both having 2 armies in reserve.

[Nelson]

In a battle, you the player can never control more than one army and then no more than 16 of its' units can be on the field at one time.

[AvramL]

Remember that the said total of units on the field is just that: on the field. Meaning you could have many more reinforcements. I think.

[Saki]

It would be very nice if you could define your point of entry fot refreshments to come on to the battle field.


opps found this on the faq after i posted:


Q4. I'm going to assume most or all of us on the forums are familiar with Shogun's problem with this aspect: 1) You couldn't choose which units would come in next [yes I know that's the old version]; and 2) You couldn't choose where on the battle map your reinforcements would appear. Will this be rectified in M:TW?
A4. You can choose where you're reinforcements will come onto the battlefield and you can choose when to bring them on. This means that they don't arrive one at a time but can be queued up to come on as a group. Also, you can cycle the order of your reinforcements so you choose which ones come on.



[This message has been edited by Saki (edited 08-05-2002).]

[MrBeAr]

Why has CA opted for this approach in singleplayer, limiting your units on screen at any one time to 16?

Granted, it would probably be difficult to keep track of things with multiple armies under your command at the same time, still I feel the player should be allowed to decide.

One way of doing this would be to have an option to set "max units on the field under your control" and have it default to 16 (1 army) but could be increased to 32 (2 armies)or 48.

This "max 16" limit greatly favours a defender, especially during a siege:

Player A attacks with 32 units, 4 of which are siege machines. Player B defends a castle with 16 units, all infantry/cavalry. If player A deploys all of his siege machines, he will be numerically inferior if player B decides to sally forth to destroy Player A's siege machines.

This might lead to players adopting a new tactic: withdraw siege machines from the field after they run out of ammo to "make room" for additional troops to mount the assault. IMHO this is plain stupid and poor design.

[Toda Nebuchadnezzar]

But thats just it. Think about lag-time even on a custom battle. SO many units even on a top of the range computer will cause lag especially if the computer can have the same as u. Thats 96 units ur talking about on one field all at the same time!!! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/eek.gif

Also its very hard for the beginner to manage 16 units all at the same time, so anymore would be impossible. I agree with your idea of setting the max per side and so on which would help the problem but I still think 16 is enough.

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Jaguara-Spoken like a TRUE SPAMMER Toda!

No Fear Legend.

[Papewaio]

Quote Originally posted by MrBeAr:

This "max 16" limit greatly favours a defender, especially during a siege:
[/QUOTE]

Which I actually like. A seige should be verydifficult. And if you are talking about SP the AI needs all the bonuses it can get.

[Hirosito]

yeah especially cos in castles it doesn't really know what to do (judging by the demo that is)

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Hirosito Mori

Hirosito the Baptist of the Babbiest Babe Thread.

Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

[MrBeAr]

Quote Originally posted by Papewaio:
Which I actually like. A seige should be verydifficult. And if you are talking about SP the AI needs all the bonuses it can get.[/QUOTE]

I agree that siege should be difficult to
a) reflect the difficulty of overcoming the defences (historically)
b) "reward" the defending player for having invested his precious resources in fortifications (instead of using those same resources on more troops)

The "max 16" unit limit is a poor solution, though. If I have a grand army, I should be able to field it at once, not send in bits here and there to lay siege.

An alternative approach would be for CA to do more thorough research on the various fortifications with the end result being something like this:

Fort_level Ratio_Atk#/Def#
1 1.5
2 2.0
3 2.5
4 3.0
5 4.0

So for an attacker to successfully lay siege to a level 3 fort, he would on the average need to have at least 2.5x the strength of the defending garrison. To achieve this "ratio" defending units could get their stats boosted and/or fortification strength could be increased.

[MrBeAr]

Quote Originally posted by Toda Nebuchadnezzar:
But thats just it. Think about lag-time even on a custom battle. SO many units even on a top of the range computer will cause lag especially if the computer can have the same as u. Thats 96 units ur talking about on one field all at the same time!!! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/eek.gif
[/QUOTE]

If I had to go for either the new "improved" unit gfx and max 16 units per side, or the old shogun gfx and 48 units per side, I know what I would pick. That's just me though http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif



[This message has been edited by MrBeAr (edited 08-06-2002).]

[Papewaio]

Mr BeAr have you ever played Utopia?

[MrBeAr]

Quote Originally posted by Papewaio:
Mr BeAr have you ever played Utopia?[/QUOTE]

*plays ignorant*

Yes I have and so can you: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1215

Next question? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif