EB Unit Sizes

**vartan** · 03-02-2010, 20:41

Can anybody safely say which unit sizes are comparable to real-life instances? What I mean is, can anyone say that each unit in the game, on a Large, or Huge, or other setting, represent a fifth, or tenth, or other fraction of the real number of men of that soldier type in real armies?

sorry if causing confusion

-V

**Andy1984** · 03-02-2010, 23:39

For Hellens and Romans, I'd suggest the infantry units are pretty much on a 1:1 scale to actual units. Polybian legionary units e.g. weren't much bigger than 60 soldiers, while phalanxes I believe were lined up in Seleukid armies in blocks of 16*16=256. Velites and accensi units with half the amount of soldiers into them as legionary Polybians seems realistic as well, given they were only lined up in 6 (instead of 12) rows. (I have this info from Montvert, The Seleucid Army, which might contradict other sources though.) However, during Polybian times, the size of legions and of Seleucid phalanxes greatly increased, perhaps even doubled. I can't remember whether that meant more soldiers in a Polybian principes unit or more principes units.

The scale of armies on the other hand would be much bigger. The AS is known to have field as much as 16.000 soldiers at Magnesia, which is impossible to achieve due to RTW-limits (and possibly due to the limits of your pc as well). Several elite cavalry units in the Seleucid empire seems to have been little more than 1000 cavalrymen strong. The cataphracts e.g. only numbered 1500 men. This should also give you an idea of the ratio cavalry-infantry in those armies. :)

kind regards,

Andy

**vartan** · 03-03-2010, 00:04

So is it safe to say that on Large, a 1500 man army would represent a 15.000 strong army in real life? or is it supposed to be on huge?

**Andy1984** · 03-03-2010, 00:43

I'd say that depends on how you wish to play the game. The RTW-engine is favouring many small-scale battles over truly epic (more historical) battles. Two or three land battles and the fate of an army or even empire would be decided in history. In the game: you'd have to fight dozens of battles to achieve just that. If you want your biggest battles to represent let's say Magnesia (something like 2 stacks vs 2 stacks or so), I'd say a 1:3-ratio on huge unit settings seems ok to me. (I'm always surprised as to how AAR's tend to multiply the numbers of soldiers by 20 or more.) This ratio should probably be even lower if you wish to multiply the in-game casualties of all these dozens of battles to more historical amounts, as more fights lead to more deads. Seeing as it is easy to have in game dozens of high-end cavalry units, the ratio could be as low as 1:1 for cavalry, and a little higher for infantry (on huge unit settings). If there were around 5000 argyraspidai in the AS at a given point in time, and your in-game armies have 5 units (huge settings) of these argyraspidai, that would imply a ratio of only 1:4. And that is for Roman or Hellenistic standards. I don't think Gauls would have been capable to field thousands of high-end cavalrymen irl, while they can achieve this in-game.

I tend to believe there's no such thing as a universal ratio which can be easily applied to the game. Several impressive battles in Gaul (at least impressive to Gallic standards) would only create a few dozens, perhaps a few hundred deadly casualties... while truly epic battles in the east would imply tens of thousands of soldiers, and probably thousands of dead ones after it. There's no ratio to make the Gallic amount of casualties after an epic Gallic infight number only a few hundred men irl, while the same in the east would number thousands of men.

kind regards,

Andy

**vartan** · 03-03-2010, 01:45

Haha, Andy, forget the game for a minute, will ya? I just had forgotten what the standard was, and I'm starting to think it was Large times 10. It's for custom and MP purposes, not the silly campaign =)