Self-imposed rules to prep for naval invasions

[Servius]

CA knows that naval invasions don't work and have included a fix to the bug that makes them impossible in the current game. Revoming this bug won't necessarily mean a huge increase in naval invasions, since a naval invasion is still just one option for the AI, and it has to determine if that's the most effective/efficient use of their land and sea forces.

Without knowing how frequent naval invasions will be, it appears the risk will exist after the upcoming patch. I don't want to start playing after the patch and have no idea how many 'homeland security' forces I should leave in Great Britain or the Carribean isles. So, how should our play styles change to address that?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Somewhat in the same vein, what was the troop-carrying capacity of the ships you can build in ETW? I feel kinda dirty every time I load a full stack of land forces onto a sloop. I'm pretty sure you could not fit 2,400 line infantry on a single sloop, right? So, how many troops, that are not part of the crew, could the following ships really carry?

Sloop
Brig
Indianman (British merchant ship)
Spanish Merchantman
6th Rate
5th Rate
4th Rate
3rd Rate
2nd Rate
1st Rate

I'll update the OP as you all respond with numbers.

[TinCow]

I'm pretty sure that most warships from that timeperiod were not used to transport troops at all. From what I've read, troop transport was done with separate cargo ships and these would in turn simply be escortd by the warships. Based on that, if you want to impose some kind of realism on your play style, I would say that you could only use 'trade' vessels to transport units. For a long time now the large PBM games in the Throne Room have imposed a custom limit on unit transport per vessels. We've been using 2 units per ship, and it's worked pretty well. So, combine that with the trade vessel transport rule, and you'd need 10 trade vessels to transport a full stack of units, which leaves another 10 slots open for warship escorts for the 'convoy' fleet. That seems like a nice balance to me.

[edit]A quick google search confirms my recollections. Troop transport was done with cargo ships or warships, but the warships were usually old and had almost all armaments removed to provide more space for troops and cargo. Thus, any warships transporting men would not really be able to fight anyway.

[AussieGiant]

If anyone has been on an actual replica 'ship of the line' or a real one (restored mind you), then you know there is absolutely no possible way a war ship of the time can house anymore people than the fighting crew.

TC's right on the money.

[Marquis of Roland]

I don't know if this makes it too complicated but the farther you transport troops, the less troops you can transport. I think even a frigate can carry around 800 infantry or so "en flute" (meaning some or all armament removed to make more space for transport), if it was a few days sail, say, from France to Ireland. If you're taking troops from Europe to America, obviously you can't keep conditions aboard ship as crammed and you also need to take on more stores.

Ironic gamewise - en flute means "as a fluyt", yet in-game fluyts are considered early game floating fortresses

[Dayve]

Floating fortresses? They're nothing less than modern day American aircraft carriers, fully loaded with fighter jets and anti-missile capabilities and other shinies.

If that's what Spanish trade ships were like back in the day, i'd hate to fight an actual Spanish ship of the line, designed for the sole purpose of battle!

[Servius]

The Fluyts were Dutch ships I think. The Indiamen are British and the Merchentman are Spanish.

Anyway, I guess the troop transport question has been solved. If I want to play fluffy, 1 merchant ship per every 2 land units.

So, what about homeland forces? How larger were the garisons on Carribean islands? Could any of the grey-bar 'Flintlock Militia' forces be counted as a home guard?

I want to try to start getting used to the impact additional trade ships and home guard forces will have on my economy.

In the end, this may just necessitate a stronger and larger navy that blockades enemy ports. If your foes are bottled up in their home port, you don't need to spend any $$$ on land-based defense forces for your island territories.

I wish there was a way for navies to destroy docked enemy ships. Right now, at least to my knowlege, the only way to force docked ships to fight is to land forces nearby, have them take the port, which forces the enemy ships out to sea, where your navy can engage them.

[TinCow]

So, what about homeland forces? How larger were the garisons on Carribean islands? Could any of the grey-bar 'Flintlock Militia' forces be counted as a home guard?

That's an interesting question. Land battles in the West Indies were relatively few and far between historically, generally occurring as distractions from the main campaigns in Europe, North America, and India. For this reason, the forces devoted to them were relatively minimal. Based on foggy recollections from some general histories I have read of the Colonial period, during peacetime, I think most minor islands (i.e. Martinique, Grenada, Trinidad) had something on the order of a single regiment of professional infantry. For game purposes, this would be a single unit of Line Infantry. Dragoons would almost never been appropriate, because these islands were too small and rugged to make cavalry useful. In addition, each island would have probably had militia that were double or triple the number of the professional infantry. These units would usually be supplied with extra arms and powder by the professional garrison during a time of war, but they wouldn't assemble except when fighting was about to occur. Since the auto-generated 'firelock mob' style units seem to have no discipline and no training at all, I wouldn't say they're appropriate approximations. Instead, it seems fair to substitute the normal musket militia unit for their historical counterparts, even though they wouldn't have been present as a standing army.

So, for a small island I think a realistic garrison would be 1 Line Infantry unit and 2-3 Militia units. A general could also be added without making it strange, though it would be best if they were bad generals who were exiled there, if you wanted to keep the realism. Since there was ALWAYS a fort on these islands with moveable cannons, it would also be appropriate to include 1-2 cannon units, though I would expect that howitzers and mortars would not have been commonly found. During war, you could realistically double or triple the professional infantry garrisons, though the militia would stay the same and cavalry would be missing. On larger islands like Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, I would take the above limits and then double them in all aspects (possibly triple for Cuba).

If you want to be REALLY realistic, do not recruit any professional military units in your colonies. Historically, pretty much all professional infantry were recruited in Europe and shipped over. In the game, this is easy to simulate by recruiting in Europe and using transport fleets to shuffle them to their destinations. This would also make it realistic that if an enemy attack occurred before you could get reinforcements out there, you'd be in trouble. Of course, any 'native' or otherwise 'local' military units could be recruited in the colonies while retaining historical balance.

[Marquis of Roland]

If that's what Spanish trade ships were like back in the day, i'd hate to fight an actual Spanish ship of the line, designed for the sole purpose of battle!

Actually, back then (or maybe back a little further lol) the Spanish galleons WERE their ships of the line. I remember on a earlier post on naval tactics, I mentioned that people were losing to fluyts and galleons because they didn't treat it as a ship of the line.

As far as warships go back then, everyone pretty much used the same, or similarly designed ships. Better designs were copied right away; for example, the French built better ships in general than the British, and as soon as the British would capture a new design they'd copy it or implement changes in their own design right away. What made the Royal Navy superior was their level of training and drill, both in gunnery and seamanship. The French couldn't practice as much since they were blockaded in port.

Anyway, back to troop transport. First off, what is 1 "unit"? I like to define mine as:
1 infantry unit - 1 battalion (grenadier and light infantry come in "half-battalions")
1 cavalry unit - 1 squadron
1 artillery unit - 1 battery

Going on this, 1 frigate can carry 1 unit of cavalry or infantry. 1 ship of the line-class hull (including indiamen, galleons, and fluyts) can carry 2 units of cavalry or infantry. Artillery batteries are obviously less in manpower and provisions needed for the voyage, so multiple artillery batteries can be carried in 1 ship(?)

@Tincow:
Will you count colonial line infantry as recruitable overseas? Because lets say I want to be REALLY realistic but the AI natives don't.....

[TinCow]

Will you count colonial line infantry as recruitable overseas? Because lets say I want to be REALLY realistic but the AI natives don't.....

Heh, depends on how complex you want to make it.

Colonial units make sense in some places and at some times. It generally depends on whether there was a large enough local colonial (read: European) population to support local recruitment into professional units. For instance, it would make sense for these types of units to be recruitable for the British in the '13 Colonies' provinces plus Canada right from the start of the game. Cuba might work similarly for the Spanish. However, the French should never be able to recruit these units from Martinique, because the population was never large enough to support a mass recruitment beyond a general militia drive.

Other areas, like the Central and South American provinces, and India might work if you put some kind of time limit on it. Maybe allow recruitment of 'colonial' units in those areas after 1750, or after you've owned it for 25 years, or something similar. The problem there is that is starts becoming too complex to keep track of easily. Maybe you could base it on religion. Perhaps you can recruit colonials from any province that is over 50% of the same religion as yours, to indicate conversion of the locals to your culture. You'd have to decide for yourself how you want to balance realism with entertainment.

[Kasagi Yabu]

Floating fortresses? They're nothing less than modern day American aircraft carriers, fully loaded with fighter jets and anti-missile capabilities and other shinies.

If that's what Spanish trade ships were like back in the day, i'd hate to fight an actual Spanish ship of the line, designed for the sole purpose of battle!

[Tully Bascombe]

I think a limit of one to two units/ship is probably reasonable. We need to consider scale here. Regiments of infantry at this time weren't generally 60 to 120 men, they were more like 600 to 1000 men, so each soldier in an ETW regiment represents 5 soldiers in real life. Likewise I'd guess that each ship in the game represents 3 to 6 ships. It would be reasonable to assume that a transport could carry 100 to 200 men.

[Didz]

So, how many troops, that are not part of the crew, could the following ships really carry?

The simple answer from a practical viewpoint is none.

As has already been stated warships of this period were built to accomodate the number of guns they had, not the number of crew required to sail them and mann those guns. Therefore, the crew had to be squuezed into whatever space was left after the guns were in place. This actually meant that there was normally not enough room on a warship to accommodate the crew, and it was normal practice for men to share hammock space e.g. as one man got out of a hammock to start his watch, then his mate would climb into the still warm hamock to sleep.

The only way room could be made available for troops was to remove all the guns (and the men needed to man them) This practice was often used to convert a frigate into a fast troop transport by the French but even rigged 'en flute' a frigate would barely be able to transport more men than its original crew compliment possible 400 - 600 men depending on its size. Liners were not used for this purpose as without their guns they had too much top hamper and became unsailable.

As for more organised invasion fleets I've done a bit of research on Quebec which was one of the most notable amphibious operations of the period and come up with the following information so far.

Quebec 1759 - either -
British naval landing 9,000 troops transported in 141 vessels (63 men per ship)
British naval landing 8,500 troops transported in 250 vessels (34 men per ship)
http://www.answers.com/topic/quebec-battle-of

What we don't know is how many of the vessels were warships and how many transports. The battle map cleary shows a division of Frigates, Saunderson's main fleet and a fleet of transports. So, not all the ships were used to transport troops.

A Serjeant-Major of Gen. Hopson’s Grenadiers confirms that dedicated transports were used on this occasison e.g. Louisbourg, June 1st, 1759 We embark’d on board the Transport Harwood, bound on the Expedition to Canada ... However, he doesn't say how many of his regiment were embarked on that transport, or how many transports were in the fleet, and as usual our trusty historian's have contrived to ignore the very factual information that ought to justify their existence. No doubts its there somewhere buried in the archives but instead of publishing it we get plagerised drivel, and as you can see they can't even agree on that.

P.S. I may have had a bit of a breakthrough as I have managed to fine an online copy of 'The Life of Captain James Cook' who apparently was part of Saunderson's Fleet at Quebec, and he does mention some facts. As follows:

He was involved in advising on the fitting of 'The Three Brothers' a quite large ship of 600 tons formerly used in the coal trade and now fitted out with stalls for 40 horses.

Saunders Fleets consisted of 9 x Ships of the Line, 13 x Frigates, 119 x transports (so an average 75 men per transport? - however, that is ignoring horse, cannon, amunition, stores, food and baggage.)

This a link to the book if anyone is interested.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m...snum=3#PPT1,M1

Annoyingly, there are lots of details of naval operations and numbers of ships involved, but this time the writer merely dismissed the military aspects of the campaign, referring to the embarkation and disembarkation of 'troops' without mentioning numbers, type or regiment. So, to get the facts one would need to find an equally detailed account by someone writing the life story of Wolfe and cross-reference the naval operation with the military operations to establish which troops were in involved in which operation with which ships. Annoying given that the author must have had the historical records showing which troops emobark on which ships and where they went.

More to the point somewhere there will be a complete list of the transports available during the campaign and what their carrying capacity was, as without such a document the logistic's and quartermaster staff could not possibly have determined which ships were needed for each operation and which units to allocate to each.

[Ordani]

There is no real way to model naval transport in ETW, I generally sent a full fleet just as not to lose the army. In actual practice you had dedicated transport ships which might carry 50-200 people over any meaningful distance; a good point of reference would be Dutch actions against England during the "revolution" prior to William of Orange and Mary QOS deposing James-whatever in 1688, in which an army around 15000 strong was moved that short sea voyage by around 180 ships of note and probably a good number more of smaller ones.

[Maleficus]

a good point of reference would be Dutch actions against England during the "revolution" prior to William of Orange and Mary QOS deposing James-whatever in 1688.

Am I misreading something here, or did you really just refer to Mary II of England as Mary, Queen of Scots?

[Ordani]

I just got off work, who knows where my head is :>

[TinCow]

Annoyingly, there are lots of details of naval operations and numbers of ships involved, but this time the writer merely dismissed the military aspects of the campaign, referring to the embarkation and disembarkation of 'troops' without mentioning numbers, type or regiment. So, to get the facts one would need to find an equally detailed account by someone writing the life story of Wolfe and cross-reference the naval operation with the military operations to establish which troops were in involved in which operation with which ships. Annoying given that the author must have had the historical records showing which troops emobark on which ships and where they went.

While doing some google-fu, I ran across this article on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneas_(troopship)

It talks about two ships that wrecked in 1805 off the coast of Canada. The ships were in a single convoy which was carrying the 100th Regiment of Foot, and that appears to be the only unit that was being transported. Of the two ships that wrecked, one carried "80 passengers, 40 soldiers, 30 crew and all the baggage and heavy equipment of the 100th Regiment" and the other carried "347 people consisting of soldiers of the 100th, many women and children from their families and the ship's crew." An article on the regiment itself states that a total of 271 soldiers perished on the Aeneas, indicating that most of the passengers were soldiers.

So, based on that, it appears that the two ships transported together about 300 soldiers and all of the equipment required for the regiment. If someone can provide some numbers on the standard size of an infantry regiment around that time, we should be able to estimate how many other ships were required to transport the rest of the unit.

[Kraxis]

On larger islands like Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, I would take the above limits and then double them in all aspects (possibly triple for Cuba).

If you want to be REALLY realistic, do not recruit any professional military units in your colonies. Historically, pretty much all professional infantry were recruited in Europe and shipped over. In the game, this is easy to simulate by recruiting in Europe and using transport fleets to shuffle them to their destinations. This would also make it realistic that if an enemy attack occurred before you could get reinforcements out there, you'd be in trouble. Of course, any 'native' or otherwise 'local' military units could be recruited in the colonies while retaining historical balance.

If we go by those big three, and perhaps Puerto Rico (though it isn't a seperate region ingame), then I would ramp up troops considerably. All of them, though little Rico to a lesser extent, had considerable issues with runaway slaves forming guerilla bands in the interior.

For instance the Maroons of Jamaica conducted lengthy skirmishing and two wars with the administration (offcially it wasn't thought as a war of course). In the western less developed part of the island there is to this day an area called Look-over-shoulder-county or something similar due to the frequency of ambushes, and it was common practice by mounted troops (dragoons?) to mount up two by two back to back. The reason I assume they are dragoons is because no sane cavalryman would use his precious horse this way. But a dragoon (don't get hung up on the name now, I mean troops of the original idea) being a simple mounted infantryman wouldn't be so fussed if it gave him an advantage.
The Maroon wars had European as well as local troops, even imported indian troops (in the end the Maroons became the ultimate slavecatchers for the admins, in return for freedoms that persist to this day). Also, fishermen and low class colonists were from time to time pressganged for the navy (I assume the 'local' West Indeas fleet).
All in all these big colonies acted like mini-countries, and they actually had the social structure for it, with poorer classes for rank and file (interstingly the British found a nice manpowerpool for their local armies in French exiled from Haiti after the loss of it), and plenty nobles/rich plantation owners living in the towns for the officer corps.

I would say that the big three in the game could hold 2 units of transported troops, two local raised Line Infantry/Dragoons and the militia mentioned. Cuba perhaps more. All in all a pretty hefty garrison if we are to include the artillery from the forts (which were numerous and well stocked with guns). The small islands no more than one Line and two Militia, perhaps even one since even just a few hundred armed men of the right age would require practically the entire population of those requirements.

[Didz]

So, based on that, it appears that the two ships transported together about 300 soldiers and all of the equipment required for the regiment. If someone can provide some numbers on the standard size of an infantry regiment around that time, we should be able to estimate how many other ships were required to transport the rest of the unit.

I can help you with that.

There have actually been several regiments in the British Army with the number 100, but the one in question was the third to carry that number and raised in 1804 and consisted of entirely Irish personnel.

When accepted into the British Army in 1805, it was known as The 100th County of Dublin Regiment.

The Regiment was ordered to serve in Canada in 1805. Half the regiment was drowned in a shipwreck off Newfoundland. The remainder served out the war in Canada, fighting the Americans in the northern campaign of the War of 1812. The regiment was renumbered as the 99th in 1816 and disbanded in 1818.

The important point is that the 100th County of Dublin Regiment was raised and trained as a Light Infantry Regiment, and was therefore likely to have been popular and probably found recruiting easier than a line regiment. So, assuming it was therefore close to full strength it would have consisted of 10 companies of 100 men (1,000 men) in total.

That more or less tallies with your figure of 467 solidiers involved in the incident on the two wrecked ships. Assuming division of the regiment was more or less equal then the other half of the regiment would have also been on two ships, suggesting that 4 were needed to transport one full strength battalion. In this case I'm assuming that the 100th in 1805 was a Regiment of one battalion. Which again ties in with your figures.

Afterthought:

Actually thinking about this. If we read the statement literally e.g. 'Half the regiment were drowned' then only 271 men drowned so that would make the regiment about 540 strong and severely under strength. But either way about 2-4 transports per unit seems about right in terms of naval transport.

[Mr Frost]

I can help you with that.

There have actually been several regiments in the British Army with the number 100, but the one in question was the third to carry that number and raised in 1804 and consisted of entirely Irish personnel.

When accepted into the British Army in 1805, it was known as The 100th County of Dublin Regiment.

The Regiment was ordered to serve in Canada in 1805. Half the regiment was drowned in a shipwreck off Newfoundland. The remainder served out the war in Canada, fighting the Americans in the northern campaign of the War of 1812. The regiment was renumbered as the 99th in 1816 and disbanded in 1818.

The important point is that the 100th County of Dublin Regiment was raised and trained as a Light Infantry Regiment, and was therefore likely to have been popular and probably found recruiting easier than a line regiment. So, assuming it was therefore close to full strength it would have consisted of 10 companies of 100 men (1,000 men) in total.

That more or less tallies with your figure of 467 solidiers involved in the incident on the two wrecked ships. Assuming division of the regiment was more or less equal then the other half of the regiment would have also been on two ships, suggesting that 4 were needed to transport one full strength battalion. In this case I'm assuming that the 100th in 1805 was a Regiment of one battalion. Which again ties in with your figures.

You forget the other 6 ships to carry their booze .

[Didz]

You forget the other 6 ships to carry their booze .

British ships were always built with adequate storage for alcohol, they would merely need to substitute some of the rum for gin. In fact they had enough spare to pickle Nelson's body in a spare barrel of the stuff after Trafalgar.

[Servius]

So...

2 120-man units / trade ship

OR

2 trade ships / 120-man unit

[Didz]

So...

2 120-man units / trade ship

OR

2 trade ships / 120-man unit

That depends what you decide on unit scaling.

Personally, I am going with 1 man = 5 men and 1 ship = 1 ship.

So, for me it works out at 1x Land Unit / 2 Trade Ships

[Kraxis]

Just note that Indiamen and their likes (not the eastern ones though) were extraordinarily large merchantmen. Many were no bigger than Sloops and Brigs, and Frigate-size would generally be a pretty decently sized ship.

How can I know? Well, the number of ships involved. Ships the size of Indiamen were investments on the scale of early 20th century atlantic liners. They were not common due to costs for the 'common' company. The Indian Companies obviously had the currency to get them made.

As a little pointer in the Gunboat War Denmark persecuted against the UK in the Napoleonic Wars she relied very heavily on gunboats (duh) and privateers. The greatest success came when an entire convoy of more than 100 ships were captured, by tiny little privateering ships with a handful of guns (and mind you not even military personel so pretty crappy in a fight). If even just 5-6 ships had been Indiamen or that size there wouldn't have been an incident at all... The convoy would have passed through safely, perhaps the odd ship captured.

Indiamen should easily carry 2 units.

[Servius]

I'm going with Kraxis then.

Were it 2 ships / unit, a full stack would require 40 ships, and since you can only have 14 ships per fleet stack, that would require 3 fleets

[Didz]

Indiamen should easily carry 2 units.

I disagree.

The Arniston was an East Indiaman, it was was requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1814 as a troop transport to bring wounded soldiers of the 73rd Regiment back to England from Ceylon.

It was wrecked and only 6 men of the 378 aboard survived and that included the crew.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arniston_(ship)

Assuming that a Battalion numbers around 600 men that still equates to 2 ships per battalion.

Incidently, the Arniston was 176' from stem to stern and 45' across the beam.

A further wreck of HM Troopship Birkenhead in 1845 reveals that this ship which was 210' in length and 37' across the beam was only carrying 643 people fully laden, no where near the 1,200 you would suggest.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_(1845)

[Kraxis]

The Arniston was carrying wounded and civilians... Obviously not the most 'compressable' passengers. Further it appears that the entire trek from Ceylon to the wrck was done with no ports of call, leading to less room for people and more required for stores.

In any case, the Birkenhead was a Frigate and was larger than the Arniston apparently. So the Arniston is not a comparable ship to the ingame Indiamen. You can argue that the Indiamen were of that size, however then you ignore the ingame possibilities, given that the Indiamen there are very clearly of ship-of-the-line size. Wrong or not, that is what we have to work with. And at the very least they are still very easily capable of carrying more than 1 unit per 2 Indiamen.

[Didz]

Well we will have to agree to differ. I've given you two perfectly vaild examples of 'actual' carrying capacity, if you still wish to go with the 1,200 men jammed on a deck idea then clearly I'm not going to persuade you otherwise, and at the end of the day its your game, so play it how you wish.

I'm going with the two trade ships per unit approach, with the possibility of an 'enflute' frigate carrying a single infantry unit for journeys of one turn duration. I will just need to be disciplined enough to switch 'fire at will' off and keep it off for that ship if its attacked.

[TinCow]

That depends what you decide on unit scaling.

Personally, I am going with 1 man = 5 men and 1 ship = 1 ship.

So, for me it works out at 1x Land Unit / 2 Trade Ships

I think this is the issue right here. We seem to have gotten decent numbers on the size and carrying capacity of historical ships, but we're in disagreement about what the proper unit scaling is. I don't see any reason we can't continue with our historical analysis to figure this out.

For gameplay purposes in the TW series, a full stack has become synonymous with a standard large army size. Anything under a full stack is generally considered a 'partial' army, and anything over a full stack is either overkill or used for attacking in multiple directions in a particular theater. Figuring out the scaling of individual units is a good experiment, but that system is not really that accurate because even when scaled up, 20 regiments isn't even close to the right size for a 'large' army of the 18th century. This means a proper approximation should be done on the basis of an entire stack, not just an individual unit. Thus, we should try and determine the average size of a typical pre-Napoleonic army, as that will allow us to determine a better scale for each unit.

We then use the same system on naval fleets, determining the average size of a fleet by expanding an in-game stack to match the size of a typical historical fleet. Once this is complete, we will have a universal scale that will allow a proper determination of how many in-game land units should fit on each trade ship.

[Didz]

For gameplay purposes in the TW series, a full stack has become synonymous with a standard large army size. Anything under a full stack is generally considered a 'partial' army, and anything over a full stack is either overkill or used for attacking in multiple directions in a particular theater. Figuring out the scaling of individual units is a good experiment, but that system is not really that accurate because even when scaled up, 20 regiments isn't even close to the right size for a 'large' army of the 18th century. This means a proper approximation should be done on the basis of an entire stack, not just an individual unit. Thus, we should try and determine the average size of a typical pre-Napoleonic army, as that will allow us to determine a better scale for each unit.

Very true, but from a game enjoyment an immersive aspect I like to assume that one unit is one battlation/regment/battery/ship. If nothing else it means I can name my units/ships and not have to keep reminding myself that they are just an abstract playing piece.

On that basis 1 man= 5 men, 1 gun = 2 guns, 1 ship = 1 ships works pretty well. A battalion in this period was about 1,000 men on paper, but rarely exceeded half that number in practice so 120 men = 600 men is about right. There is obviously no way this produces a viable approximation of an army except perhaps for some of the AWI battles like Yorktown (9,000 American's) (7,800 French)(7,073 British and Tories) which could be just about acheived with three unit stacks.

If CA ever produce a Napoleon Totalwar they will need to do a major rethink of the whole Order of Battle mechanism.

We then use the same system on naval fleets, determining the average size of a fleet by expanding an in-game stack to match the size of a typical historical fleet. Once this is complete, we will have a universal scale that will allow a proper determination of how many in-game land units should fit on each trade ship.

Well I've already done that to my satisfaction, but feel free to come up with some alterntive idea's. the problem I percieve is simply that game wise one ship is intended to be one ship, it even has a name. So, one could change that to something like 'Hornblowers Squadron' and assume that each ship represents say 5 ships, but then you run into problems of ground scale and range when you get into battle. Not to mention that the entire squadron will literally sink or swim as one entity.

I just think its best to keep things simple and live with the inaccuracy of the army and fleet sizes.

[TinCow]

While we're at it, it might be fun to explore proper historical army and navy composition as well. Assuming a full stack is a 'standard' size for an army, how many units should be line infantry, how many artillery, how many cavalry, etc.? For a full naval stack (assuming ability to build all types of ships), how many should be of each rate?