A wierd idea about unit sizes

[Nightbringer]

Hi all,
first of all, I love EB, I still play it all the time.

Anyway, I was thinking about ancient warfare and how its represented on the battlefield in this game. The thing that always strikes me as the most innacurate (thanks to the great work on units by the EB team) is the ease of ordering many small units about in a way no ancient general could.

The way I understand it most ancient battles did not have many detachments of an army moving about independantly, but rather the main body of the troops would move about as a single body for the most part.

I know that the engine is set up in this way but I have an idea of how to more accuratly represent how cumbersome large bodies of troops would be, especially pike phalanxes and other such units. What if the unit size was drastically increased. for example, having a pike phalanx of 1000 men rather than 240.

While this would make very large battles difficult on any computers armies would usually have less units in them due to higher upkeep costs and the like.

I know this isn't something that is likely to be done, and probably wouldent even work very well, sieges would fall apart for example, but I was just curious what people thought of it.

[Horatius Flaccus]

Unit sizes are hardcoded at 250 per unit, so it wouldn't work. It would probably also screw up the AI even more.

[antisocialmunky]

Its too bad really as The Great War mod for NTW has 1000 sized units.

[Ichon]

I thought about this issue too and was thinking more that average morale for most troops should be lower and then the command radius of the general is much more important. Sending troops off on independent maneuvers should entail some risks unless they are elites. However if the AI general dies too quickly it magnifies the issue of an entire army routing which already exists. Of course with EB having many generals as infantry and relatively harder to kill with less deadly cavalry it might work.

[Cute Wolf]

and in another place, some people tone down the men on Phalangitai (in EB I) just to 200 because it give them advantage in auto-spam resolve

[Nightbringer]

Unit sizes are hardcoded at 250 per unit, so it wouldn't work. It would probably also screw up the AI even more.

Ah damn, thats right, forgot about that being one of the few things hardcoded in m2tw that's not in etw

[Olaf The Great]

This is one part where gameplay should be segregated from reality. It wouldn't be really fun to order a massive amorphous blob against your enemy.

[jazstl]

It is possible to set a unit number from for example 40 to 80, without changing graphic seetings?...Via reforms or some buildings?...

Thank you for the answear...

[moonburn]

well in the case of phalanxs it makes sence to "group" all phalanxs together or into 2 single groups so that they could be just 1 mass of men in he batlefield as for the skirmishers and cavalry units and such they should remain independt their manouverability is what makes them precious on the batlefield

for instance you got 2 units of leucos epos after a big defeat one as 11 soldiers left and the other one as 23 units it would make sence to group them together in the batlefield so they could act as 1 unit while mainting their disctinction in the strategy map for a much needed and future retraining

generals did this all the time mixing elite/veteran troops with new troops to increase their morale (i think) in batle and after the batle split them again so that the veterans don´t feel disrespected for having to mix with people who haven´t won their spurs yet

so if 2 units are of the same type in the batle deployment there should be one button to merge them without it meaning the loss of the unit on the batlemap (didn´t alexander mixed cavalry with spearmen in gaugamela ??)

the groupping in tw engines is nice and all but it as it´s limitations o armchair generals like us who like to test new things

[seienchin]

Well since the EB team is making whole new Animations for EBII they could make most units react even slower than in MWII this creating a realistic command delay. :)

[Ptolemaios]

I once thought about this issue too. I found especsialy the Phalanx much too flexible. One solution could be to set their number up to 250 men and all the rest to 30-40. The Phalanx of course had to be very expensive. So you had in each battle ca. 3 or four Phalanx units that could move independently which wouldn´t be unacurate. At Gaugamela Alexander also "splited" his Phalanxline.

Its just an idea, and I know that this can´t be realised in EBII because of several reasons. But it could be just a fun experience for people who change the mod by themselves.

[jazstl]

I thought aboute, changing unit size via reforms or buildings...(I know it would be hard to make it work...) Like after you will have enough estates your elite unit should have their unit size incrased(not drasticaly but still).

Just a idea...

[bobbin]

I thought aboute, changing unit size via reforms or buildings...(I know it would be hard to make it work...) Like after you will have enough estates your elite unit should have their unit size incrased(not drasticaly but still).

Just a idea...

It would be impossible actually, the closest you could get would be to have multiple versions of the same unit at different sizes which is a massiv waste of unit slots.

[Olaf The Great]

Also, large units have a hard time pathfinding in cities, you'd just make sieges even less fun.