Unit Sizes and speculation

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I'm wondering what the unit sizes will be for ground combat (funny that we'll have to start specifying between ground and naval combat). The armies of the time period were larger than those of the medieval period.

Medieval 2 reduced unit sizes presumably for performance, while Rome had larger units than Medieval 1. This is somewhat historically justifiable, as armies in the middle ages tended to be smaller than those of the time period in Rome, I think.

Will we see many more soldiers per unit in Empire? Or at least more than Medieval 1/2?

It would be nice to have very large units that were also individual. IE, 7th Line Infantry Regiment, etc. However, it would only really be worth it for really large unit sizes, I would think.

[Incongruous]

Yes It wuld be interesting to see if/how they would implement the regiments. Are there going to be different regiments with different colours and facings? That would be rather top nosh.
The ships too, having ships named differently would be nice aswell.

As for size, well remember this period was one of limited warfare, of indecisive battles, drawn out campaigns and man, many sieges. Armies were not as big as they would become by the time of the Revolution or Great/Napoleonic war. I expect that little adventure will be left for the xpan.

[pevergreen]

I'm hoping that you will be able to give them custom names. :grin2:

Probably 80 for normal is my idea. Sea? hmmm 40-60.

[Trax]

Armies were not as big as they would become by the time of the Revolution or Great/Napoleonic war.

There are some notable exceptions:
Malplaquet - ca 200 000 men on the field
Oudenarde - also ca 200 000

[Monsieur Alphonse]

As for size, well remember this period was one of limited warfare, of indecisive battles, drawn out campaigns and man, many sieges. Armies were not as big as they would become by the time of the Revolution or Great/Napoleonic war. I expect that little adventure will be left for the xpan.

Since the time of the Revolution is included there should be a system that allows bigger armies.

An other more interesting point is: will CA include something like the division / army corps system which was developed in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and was used by all the participants in the Napoleonic wars?

[Cornwallis]

If your referring to the American Revolution the army size was a bit of a joke compared to ones in Europe. And in the French Revolution the armies did not increase notably.

[General_Someone]

i would also like to see larger units but the graphics detail in empire may limit the size

[Charge]

Better to remove unit cards limit (from 20 to 100 aproximately, but make it really hard to gather so much troops).
Unit sizes make from small to very huge, depend on cpu.

[NagatsukaShumi]

What I would like to see is manpower, to restrict the amount of troops you can hire on more than simply a finances based system, I always wanted MTWII's populations to actually represent the amount you could hire in a more structured way to make it more easy to run out of men rather than having unlimited access, money permitting.

[Charge]

NagatsukaShumi

What I would like to see is manpower, to restrict the amount of troops you can hire on more than simply a finances based system, I always wanted MTWII's populations to actually represent the amount you could hire in a more structured way to make it more easy to run out of men rather than having unlimited access, money permitting.
That can be done in m2tw in edb by setting 2 0 2 0. This i'll make in my mod.

[Bijo]

Unit Sizes and speculation
I will most likely maintain that of the previous installments, but I estimate the possibility that it could be larger since hardware is of course becoming more and more powerful and affordable.

[Fisherking]

I would think that the detail required for much of the Naval aspects of the game would require smaller units but have the possibility of fielding more of them.

That said I suppose there are ways around that and unit sizes of about 100 might be appropriate for infantry.

It will be interesting to see how Naval combat handles troopships or if they just count them as riding aboard the warships. Wouldn’t it be fun to take out an enemy’s army with a few frigates while his powerful war ships are trying to get into position!?

[pevergreen]

Frigate Rush...kekekeke

[ninjahboy]

the more guns the better imo :D
building on m2tw's "none clone armies" i would love to seee different regiments and some distiction in different squads and stuff with the marching bands etc :P

[Darkarbiter]

the more guns the better imo :D
building on m2tw's "none clone armies" i would love to seee different regiments and some distiction in different squads and stuff with the marching bands etc :P
I'm pretty sure when you actually look at this supposedly none clone armies most of the units only actually have 2 models/skins which is usually a slight change of colour somewhere, a different weopen or a funky hat.

Obviously they can build upon this e.g. what they said they did in LOTR intro
Every man chooses from
3 hats
3 main body models
4 Weopens (whether they are different or just different looking axes is up to the unit)
This would remove the clone army aspect even further.

[pevergreen]

Size of those files is small, code is easy. Why not have hundreds?

Why not modify your own army like Mark of Chaos.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Each model and texture takes GPU memory, if you get GPU memory overflow you start getting extreme performance degradation. I don't mind clone armies or units with 2 different textures/models for the men if that's what makes me able to play the game without a new, very expensive PC.

Besides I mostly play zoomed out anyway...

[pevergreen]

Ah there you go. My tech knowledge is shown :sweatdrop:

I like being zoomed in. Massive kill streaks and such.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Ok!

About the topic: I'd like CA to use the same strategy map numbers of men for all unit sizes, but only different numbers on the battlemap for performance reasons! Population decrease by recruitment for example shouldn't depend on unit size, which is purely a graphics setting! So for instance let us recruit 50,000 men for a field army, and let 50,000 men be removed from the city populations when we do this, even if on the battlemap we'll only have say 6,000-10,000! Then, population decrease by recruitment will actually have a huge impact! Also, please make a complex recruitment system including temporarily hired levies (and later also traditional conscripts) which are only available on defense or for shorter periods of time, to make offensive blitzkrieg more difficult and the last stands so much greater!

[Darkarbiter]

Each model and texture takes GPU memory, if you get GPU memory overflow you start getting extreme performance degradation. I don't mind clone armies or units with 2 different textures/models for the men if that's what makes me able to play the game without a new, very expensive PC.

Besides I mostly play zoomed out anyway...
Yes I am aware of that. I thought I read somewhere that directx10 has some improvements on "Identical objects" (the example they gave is grass) so assumeably ETW would be using quite a lot less graphical memory then the previous two games. Regardless stuff will be faster and bigger and better by then anyway (I'm sure you could turn it off easily anyway).

[Fisherking]

Wow, that almost touches on the problem of attrition from disease and desertion too.

We play these games and wonder why it didn't happen that way. Well it was because armies tended to melt away from those problems. You send 20,000 men some place and can only use 4000 to 6000 by the time they are put into the field. Long sea voyages and strange new climates took a huge toll on manpower.

Something I read once about the French forces sent during the American Revolution I also found interesting was they were said to have been 70% Scots and Irish who had joined up to fight the English...just a side note.

My guess is that unit size should be around 100 for normal infantry and 30 to 50 for Marine units and ships landing parties. Yes ships should be able to land large portions of their crews for infantry work, and be stronger at melee and weaker at musketry than typical infantry.

[ratbarf]

Man, if I could competently control 30 000 men with Rome Graphics I would be happy. That said you would need killer UI and the ability to let the AI handle some of the more minor details. (Like detecting when a cavalry charge is happening and forming into a square from a line. If we had to micromanage as much as we do in M2 and Rome than keep the total armies small. It would ruin the gameplay by making you constantly change the formations of your troops every other second to stop them from being wiped out.) One more thing, if they did put in plague and desertion to as large an extent as it really happened it would totaly screw up gameplay. You spend a million dollars on an army of crack infantry, cavalry, and artillery and then three quarters either run away, get sick and can't be used when you need them, or they die outright and its a total waste of money....

[scsscsfanfan]

I'd really prefer the unit size bigger, at least same as RTW.
CA, please don't hard code the unit size so small, let us chose ourselves, people has performance issue can have the option to make it smaller, people wants an epic, can make it bigger, just give us more options...

[ninjahboy]

imagine 20,000men on each side blasting away at eachother - thatll blow the socks off the piddly 3000 on each side :P (at a time that is)

[ratbarf]

You will want to be able to control them decently though, if the units are too large it lowers your ability to fine tune tactics but if they are too small they make micromanaging an bitch.

[Bijo]

How large were average battles in that time anyway? They could go by that and tweak as necessary.

The point about large and small units is valid, though: movement capability would be severely influenced. If battles on the tactical map would be very large it would appear more "strategical than tactical".

[ratbarf]

Well, the battle of the plains of abraham was I beleive about 3000 british vs 5000 french and about 750 native/militia skirmishers.

The battle of Waterloo was what 75 000 british and allies vs how many french? Anyways for you average battle I beleive the causualties would be larger than you average 1v1 with normal units on M2. So if that helps. Your welcome. If it doesn't oh well.

[ReiseReise]

Unit size is secondary to number of units. In the current system the role of the player is more of every officer simultaneously rather than the general. Increasing the number of units increases the number of officers the player must think as and be aware of. Beyond a certain point it becomes difficult to do and the player must play more as the role of the general, losing a large amount of the control over individual units that makes the game as fun as it is. Too many units and it basically becomes watching a movie with very few decisions to make.
The size of the units on the other hand does not have this effect besides making units slightly more difficult to maneuver. There is still the same number of officers the player must be. So unit size becomes mostly a graphics performance issue rather than profoundly affecting the feel of the game. This is precisely why the size of units is selectable while number of units on the field is not.
For these reasons, in order to keep the feel of the game, I imagine the size of an army will remain the same but maybe could be increased to around 30. As for size of units they will also have to remain the same 50-100 since it is limited by graphics and any increase in capabilities will be used on eye candy. Niche market games can afford to sacrifice graphics for realism but this is a mass market title, and they cannot afford to make a game with 4 year old graphics in order to have numerical realism.
I say 'numerical' realism because the fact is battles in the TW series will never be realistic, simply because they would not be fun. Losses of 20% during any time period was either a crushing defeat or a Phyrric victory, and lets face it, we want to fight to the last man, and let no enemy escape alive.

[scsscsfanfan]

I really hoped M2 unit size was around 200-300 max man per unit, sadly it's only half of that, I can't even mod it to make the size bigger.
My point is, simplly make it an option for us in the future, anyone can choose what they like, I'm not looking for a maga size of 1000 man per unit, but at least the size around RTW would be enough.

[ninjahboy]

i think 10,000 per side would be a good number

[ratbarf]

i think 10,000 per side would be a good number

Even at Rome Level Graphics that would kill most computers. At the lowest levels I can put on 15 000 total in a segie map (with units at higehst and detail at lowest.) Mind you it was bitchin to play. (2000 romans vs 13 5030 Gauls besieging rome never gets old.) But at even medium detial level it chopped up the fps so bad it was like watching streamed dvds on dial-up. (At lowest though it ran quite smoothly)

[ninjahboy]

even so my demands are more reasonable than others :P

[Jeroen Hill]

When Napoleon restructered his army he would have 5 to 7 corps. Each corps could have a size between 10K to 50K personel. On average a french corps had 20K to 30K.

Corps were divided in divisions, who would be the effective fighting units. 4000 to 6000 personel, either infantry(plus artillery) or cavalry. A division usually had 2 to 3 brigades and each brigade had 2 regiments. A division also had 1 artillery brigade with 18 to 24 guns.

A french line regiment at max strength had 840 men, due to M.I.A., killed, wounded and deserters, average strength was 400 to 600 men.

Ok now corps' in an army functioned as mini armies. Basicly what I think CA is gonna do is let player armies, as we know them from MTW2 etc, present a corps. So 1 miniature on the map presents a corps. Multiple corps make an army. In real life corps' did engage on their own as well. Everybody knows the big army battles, Waterloo, Austerlitz etc. But there have been numerious fights with just corps vs corps.

Cause tbh, I doubt a full scale battle with several corps wont work, its just too big.

What I am curious about is how they're gonna implement the army structures below a corps. Divisions and brigades. A regiment is a unitcard I guess.

If you want to do some reading about Napoleon's army structures, unit types and formations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Arm%C3%A9e is an excellent reading.

Cheers,

[Incongruous]

Most of the game is played out before the changes to command structure.

[Censor]

Unit size is secondary to number of units. In the current system the role of the player is more of every officer simultaneously rather than the general. Increasing the number of units increases the number of officers the player must think as and be aware of. Beyond a certain point it becomes difficult to do and the player must play more as the role of the general, losing a large amount of the control over individual units that makes the game as fun as it is. Too many units and it basically becomes watching a movie with very few decisions to make.
The size of the units on the other hand does not have this effect besides making units slightly more difficult to maneuver. There is still the same number of officers the player must be. So unit size becomes mostly a graphics performance issue rather than profoundly affecting the feel of the game. This is precisely why the size of units is selectable while number of units on the field is not.
For these reasons, in order to keep the feel of the game, I imagine the size of an army will remain the same but maybe could be increased to around 30. As for size of units they will also have to remain the same 50-100 since it is limited by graphics and any increase in capabilities will be used on eye candy. Niche market games can afford to sacrifice graphics for realism but this is a mass market title, and they cannot afford to make a game with 4 year old graphics in order to have numerical realism.
I say 'numerical' realism because the fact is battles in the TW series will never be realistic, simply because they would not be fun. Losses of 20% during any time period was either a crushing defeat or a Phyrric victory, and lets face it, we want to fight to the last man, and let no enemy escape alive.

Excellent point. As the number of individual men within a unit increases, the maneuverability of that unit falls dramatically. Too many men in the unit and the best you can do is line them up and hope for the best. However, too many units and the battle becomes virtually impossible to manage for all but the best RTS players, and the game becomes a race of fingers rather than a contest of tactical skill.

I'm hoping they'll be brave and totally revolutionize gameplay, perhaps by giving each individual unit more autonomy so we can have larger, more complex battles without a huge increase in micromanagement.

[magpie]

Hi,I would like to see the player being in control of reinforcements entering the battlefield rather than the AI which from past experience of TW games has been less than usefull.Your favourite governor or general is usually killed when AI is in control.Regarding unit size make it optional if your comp can handle it i would like to see 10000+ armies available and hopefully a much larger battle map to manouver over.I think most of us would like to see the 20 unit size increased gives more options and for the modders a bit more freedom from hardcoded limits would be nice,after all we still have to buy the game before we improve it.regards magpie.

[ninjahboy]

im not asking for realistic 30K armies, 10K each side is about nice i think

[Galapagos]

I would like 15000-20000 per side.They should increase the units number and the unit size.I would like fighting big battles because i usually don't micromanage my troops(i don't see the point of it since the AI is rubbish).I would like seeing big armies clashing head on and forming a nice line of battle,then you could use some of your cavalry to obtain some tactical advantages ,maybe breaking the enemies line etc.

[geala]

It is impossible and nonessential to have as many men on the field as in the real wars. And it is not necessary to have 100 or more units; although so much units would be nice they would be very difficult to control.

Before the French revolution, for example in the Seven-Years-War, the armies counted from 20000 to 70000 on each side, 30000 to 40000 as a typical number. (Btw, at Waterloo Napoleon had 74000 soldiers, 33000 were with Grouchy, Wellington had 67700 Germans, British, Dutch and Belgians and from the Prussians 2 corps of about 30000 attacked while a third corps battled with Grouchy. But Waterloo was an exceptional battle.) Regiments, divisions or corps were not so important, they existed but mainly for organisation or as a bigger command structure in battles.

The actual fighting unit was the bataillon (sry for the non-English diction, it's batallion I think) or the escadron/squadron. Numbers of men were about 750 to 1000 per bataillon (a regiment had normally 2 or 3 bat.) and about 150 per escadron (about 5 formed a cavalry regiment). Of course there were differences around Europe. Tactical moves on the battlefield were managed by single bataillons/escadrons, much more often however by a multitude of these units together. It would be senseless to let an E:TW unit be a company (although such a unit with 120 to 160 men would have a correct number in the game), because companies only very seldomly had some meaning in the field. So one unit should be a bataillon. A regiment would be also possible, although the numbers would then really differ a lot from reality. As the real numbers could not be depicted in either case, perhaps 200 on large and 400 on huge settings for infantry and 40 and 80 for cavalry would be convenient.

18th c. warfare is all about moral and formation, so we need a certain number of controllable units. Perhaps 30 or 40 with much better formation orders than that now available in TW games would be nice in battle.

[Galapagos]

Well i would like to see the option "Very,Very,Very.......,Very Huge" with 1000 men per unit.But i guess this is only a dream.:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

[Dhampir]

It would be perfectly acceptable, historically speaking, for individual units to be roughly equivalent to a company (depending on when and where somewhere around 100-150ish)- just as they are on the "huge" unit settings for RTW and M2TW, iirc.

I would not expect massive battles with tens of thousands of soldiers per side- you'd need to go a decade in to the future to find a computer that would get decent frame rates. But a few thousand per side would be appropriate.

geala is correct that the fighting unit was the battalion, but battalion tactics were based around the company and brigade/regiment tactics around the battalion and so on (some countries used a regimental level of command, some didn't) and so on up. But it all boils down to what the company does dictating in process what the rest do.

As for regimental regalia- you can handle that like CA did for Spartan Hoplites- have a hidden resource for a city and that city recruits units that wear a certain regiment's uniform. Just as most regiments were localized. And since many regiments had as many battalions as they had troops, there is no problem with having fifty companies in your armies wearing the uniform of, say the 4th Foot, because there very well could have been at any given time.

On the battlemap, it wouldn't matter what uniforms your troops were wearing since tactics were based on the company level and an ad-hoc battalion formed from ten companies from ten different regiments would perform drill exactly the same as ten companies from the same battalion of the same regiment. And since each company in real life would have different levels of experience and whatnot, it would work out fine. If you put an inexperienced company on your flank and they rout, you're making a mistake a real officer would probably only make once.

[geala]

Dhampir, could you give some examples when individual companies played some role on the battlefield? Of course batallions consisted of companies, but that had no big tactical meaning. The batallion normally did not advance in company order.

Some situations when companies would perhaps be fine were carrees. Batallion carrees were strongly recommended (at least in the later Prussian army) and you could build it with one of the 4 companies on either side. And in Prussia the grenadier companies formed special ad-hoc batallions in case of war, which would be only possible with company-level TW units.

But if we have a TW unit as a company, we have perhaps 20 or 30 or 40 companies on the battlefield. That would equal 8 to 10 batallions in the case of 40 infantry companies, not so impressive. Even if you think of small scale battles in Europe, the feeling would be a bit strange. At Chotusitz 1742 for example, where the Prussians had only 23500 soldiers, there were 35 batallions and 70 escadrons. If a unit were a company we should really have 100 TW units in the UI and that would not be enough.

The biggest problem I see with the tradition. Many soldiers think of themself as part of batallions, perhaps regiments, but not companies. It would have no great meaning if I could raise and name a certain company. It would have a meaning if I had f.e. III./IR 15, the batallion which stormed the cemetery at Leuthen.

I have to concede that warfare in the will-be colonies often had another scale and companies would be sufficient. But for battles in Europe it would be a problem.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I think the strategy map should have real numbers for batallions etc, and that the battlemap unit sizes is a scaled version of that. So if you can max show units of size 100 for a unit intended to represent a batallion of 1000 men, 1 lost man on the battlemap = 100 lost on the strategy map, with some randomness being applied so losses aren't always exact, even hundreds. :2cents:

[Rhyfelwyr]

I want battles of around 50,000 men each side with MTW graphics!:clown:

[ratbarf]

An iteresting thing would be if you could have a kind of subdivision in the Unit Interface. Similar to how the group function worked in RTW and M2TW.

That way on the top of the list would be the Regiment. Say two or three. And you could give extremely generalised commands at this level, such as "take that hill" or "Secure our flank."

Then you would have Battalion level which would give more specific commands, such as taking a battalion to hold an area or attack at this point or this other battalion.

Then finally once the Battalion group button had been pressed the companies of the battlion woudl show up on the unit interface. This would allow for extreme micro managing for say charges and such.

This would give you three regiments with each regiment having three battalions and each battalion having 6-8 companies. Giving us a good way to control such large numbers using allies that (hopefully) actually work decently. Allowing us to effectively control 9000 men or so.

[Dhampir]

Dhampir, could you give some examples when individual companies played some role on the battlefield?

The entire 7 Years War in North America is the most obvious answer.


Of course batallions consisted of companies, but that had no big tactical meaning. The batallion normally did not advance in company order.

The drill which the battalion uses is based on the company level. When you move from a column- any kind of column- to a line- any kind of line- you don't move as a battalion but rather as individual companies.

I am not saying that Frederick had fifty companies marching around alone- merely that the entire tactical basis of warfare for the period was based around the company.

edit-


I have to concede that warfare in the will-be colonies often had another scale and companies would be sufficient. But for battles in Europe it would be a problem.

Missed this...

Indeed. But you reduce the tactics to the smallest denominator. Everywhere you go, drill is based around the company. I have a fairly extensive collection of manuals from Prussia, Russia (I don't read Russian but I had a professor scribble rough translations in the margins), France, Britain and the US. And while sometimes their deployments look different- they are all very much grounded on the company level.

-----

From a practical view, there is no way you're going to have more than a few thousand troops on each side on the map, so battalion-level recruitment is not in the cards.

[Charge]

Big battles MUST be in Rome, havent seen reason for this in Empire.

[geala]

The company was surely the nucleus of the armies. It was the smallest unit with a permanent administration "staff". The captain (Hauptmann) as the leader was the highest officer below the staff officers, known to his men and had direct contact with the non-commisioned officers who did the most for the deployment of the soldiers. So it is no wonder that many tactical advises dealt with the company. But on the battlefield the company had no meaning as an autonomous fighting body (exaggerated but true for most battles). Would you be pleased to give a company the command to attack another company? Other than in small scale warfare (colonial wars) that would create a certain disappointment within me.
But let's wait and see, CA will solve the problem.:idea2: :beam:

[B-DogKY]

(Btw, at Waterloo Napoleon had 74000 soldiers, 33000 were with Grouchy, Wellington had 67700 Germans, British, Dutch and Belgians and from the Prussians 2 corps of about 30000 attacked while a third corps battled with Grouchy. But Waterloo was an exceptional battle.)

How about the Battle of Leipzig 16-19 October 1813? This battle took 3 days (obviously) and involved approximately half a million troops. Waterloo not quite so exceptional, yeah?

[geala]

Leipzig was not a battle, but some battles. Of course there were some battles later and earlier (look at some posts in this thread) with more troops involved. Waterloo was exceptional because of the mass of troops in a small area (most troops per square metre ever in history due to some books about the battle; I have not prooved this) and the ratio of casualties. And it was decisive like only few other battles, wasn't it.

[B-DogKY]

Leipzig was not a battle, but some battles.

That's a bit silly. I suppose the battle of Gettysburg (american civil war) was really 3 battles of Gettysburg, just all fought in the same place? Like Leipzig, Gettysburg was kinda fought in parts, with divisions arriving piecemeal, and very little action until late the second day...