Unit Size Question

[Relic]

Quick Question,
Historically which unit size is most accurate?

Thanks.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

A regiment would normally consist of some 600 to 750 men. If you think of a unit as a company size unit and ignore its name as being a regiment, grouping four companies (regiments) of line infantry and one grenadier company would give you a standard regiment. In that case a 160 strong line unit would be most realistic.

Or you should by a HAL 3000 computer, ignore the pathfinding problems and mod the units size to 600 or 750 men

[A Very Super Market]

None of them are realistic, since they are all too small to really emulate 18th century battles. However, huge should be the closest, since I think small and medium cause individual men to have more than one "hitpoint"

[Bob the Insane]

A Infantry Brigade was up to 1000 if at full strength (which, I understand, they rarely where)...

A Regiment is a name for one or more Brigades often used for recruitment. For example you can have the Highlanders Regiment, with Brigades named 1st Highlanders Regiment, 2nd Highlander's Regiment and so on. Regiment can also be interchangeable with the term Brigade just to make things even more confusing...

I have had great difficulty finding an average size for Cavalry regiment, but 400-500 I think is about right...

Nor am I aware if the Brigade formed up as one unit or not. In RTW the huge unit size for Roman cohorts was 160. Now a cohort was 5 time bigger, but the method of deployment was two centuries stood next to each other and they where 80 men each so the 160 man unit was a good size if you ignored the Cohort naming.

As Monsieur Alphonse points out if you think of the units as Company size then it all works pretty well...

[zelda12]

A Infantry Brigade was up to 1000 if at full strength (which, I understand, they rarely where)...

Do you mean Battalion?

If so then you are correct, they were very rarely at full strength. And at least for the British two Battalions usually formed a regiment, (the exception being the Guards Regiments who had considerably more Battalions in each regiment). The usual operating status, at least towards the end of the 18th Century was for one Battalion to be on campaign and the other back in England recruiting and training men to replenish the other Battalion. However even with this most Battalions during, for example, the Peninsular war rarely managed to muster more than 600 fit men, and often it was far lower.

[Marquis of Roland]

He means battalion.

[NimitsTexan]

What you have to keep in mind is, TW games, just like all wargames, use a "scale," where a figure on screen, for all practical purposes, represents multiple "real" soldiers. The difference, of course, is that where most wargames use fixed scales of 1:10, 1:20, or 1:40, TW scales flucate based on setting, options, etc.

However, to make the games "work" as anything remotely historical, you have to accept that each figure in game represents somewhere between 3 and 20 real soldier. And, of course, the closer you get to 1:1 scale, the more realistic, so Ultra unit size is going to be the most realistic for simulation battlefield action.

[Bob the Insane]

Do you mean Battalion?

umm.. yes...

[Jazzy]

Quick Question,
Historically which unit size is most accurate?

Thanks.

The infantry units in ETW vanilla are on ultra of about regimental size in a scale 1:10. Cavallery is not entirely exact in this ratio.

I have made a thread about this question. It contains unfortunately a lot of grammatical and orthographic mistakes but it may be worth to go through.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=114099

[NimitsTexan]

Of course, Cavalry units tended to be smaller than infantry organization . . . perhaps nto 40%-50% of an infantry battalion, but smaller none the less.

In general, I rationalize the game on a 1/10 scale, with each unit in game represent 1 Regiment/2 Battalions, or 2 Batterys of artillery. Using that scale, you can work out that 1-4 unit represent a brigade, and a full stack is about 2-4 divisions.

Of course, the logic breaks down a little in American theater (as at a 1/10 scale about 1.5 stacks would represent the maximum manpower committemnt of any the European powers to that theater, yet we generally require 2-3 times that much to handle the various Indian nations, but it works out quite nicely in the European theater).

For example, say you wanted to recreate the French III Corps [one of the smaller corps] from Waterloo in one stack. It would work out to:

1 General
12 Line Infantry [or 11 Line Infantry, and 1 Grendadier]
1 Light Infantry
3 Chasseurs â Cheval
1 Foot Artillery
1 Howitzer
1 Horse Artillery

[Jazzy]

If you consider that the Five Nations had hardly more than 10'000 people at that time, then Native American stacks are real mass migrations.

xxx

You can also mod units using the Pack File Manger to either battalion, squadron or company for
the grenadiers in a scale 1:1. Full-stacks are then of course smaller than corps closer to demi-brigades with support.

I have normally in a stack under my "battalion mod" now:

1 general
8-12 battalion of musketeer
1-2 "batteries"
2-4 squadrons of cav
and some support (light, gren, militia etc.)

=> 4-6 rgt inf à 2 bat
=> 1 rgt cav à 4 sqd

I deploy them in two encounters and reinforce or exchange the units after a while:

1. encounter 6-8 bat + art/cav
Intervall
2. encounter 2-4 bat + cav/art

The tactic of my battalions is normally a linear approach and with the option to develop a crossfire. I rarely use a column tactic with two battalions following each other but normally only for bayonet charge in problematic terrain.