building vikings?

[I of the Storm]

This does not equate to paying more. You pay the same upkeep per head, and you get more men for free when you train them. A 200 man units cost the same upkeep as two equivalent 100 man units.

I did not say otherwise. All I said was that a unit on huge cost twice the upkeep of a unit on normal size.

The number of units is not a factor. The number of men is. Also, with all due respect, it is clear that you have not played on huge units much if you think that this gives "smaller scale engagements". Battles on the huge units setting are truly epic and always have been since the days of STW, right through to the latest TW games. I would prefer 4 two hundred man units of spears to 8 one hundred man units any day of the week. All the latter has over the former is more individual units, but no more men.

Seems we have a misunderstanding. When I said 'small scale' I wasn't talking about the number of men on the battlefield. I never was, see above. I was talking about the number of units sustainable by one faction at a given time. So let's say England can pay the the upkeep for 1000 fyrdmen, 600 archers and 240 hobilars. On normal size it would be able to field 10 units fyrd, 10 units archers and 8 hobilars. On huge it would be 5 fyrd, 5 archers and 4 hobilars. While in both campaigns that would be 1840 men, in one it would be 28 units, in the other 14. You still need to garrison your provinces somehow so that leaves less units for your field army.

To summarise I don't see "units per battle as a factor" nor do I see the AI deploying less units or battles being any less epic on huge units. Also the one most important point is the units per battle limitation. Because only 16 units can take part in any one battle at any one time, regardless of the unit scale, the huge unit size clearly has more men per battle every time. Give it a try and you won't be disappointed.

Well, I do see number of units per battle as a factor. Tactically there is a big difference in commanding a 10 unit army vs. a 12 unit army and commanding a 16vs16 or even a multiple stack battle.
It may be some time ago but I've had a couple of huge setting games too. And from what I remember it took significantly longer (couple of decades) before the AI or myself were able to field a good 16 unit army (and garrison the realm properly) let alone fielding multiple stacks.

Anything can be exploited but retraining is not the biggest exploit it's made out to be. If you want to play fair with the AI, then do not retrain and enable the "tidy up units after battle" option. This ensures that your battered units are automerged like the AI's. If you play with this off and manually merge your best high valour units together, then you are taking advantage of a bigger exploit than retraining.

I couldn't agree with you more.