RTW was meant to be played on Huge Unit Size

[Morindin]

I finished my normal long campaign on the weekend as the Julii. I was going to keep going until I conquered the entire world but my empire just got ridiculously hard to manage with 60+ provinces.

Anyway, I restarted as the Scipii with huge units and thus far (around 220BC) the game is FAR more enjoyable. A lot of the major issues people have with the game are muted:

1. Bigger battles!
2. Unit garrisons are much larger and its way easier to keep your populations happy - [edit]not sure about this yet![/edit]
3. By the same reason, its very easy to keep populations low thus stretching the game out longer and reducing the effects of squalor. By this stage in my last game, I think I had hit the Marius reforms already. Im no where near it now.
4. Fights last much much longer and generally improved in every aspect.
5. Cavalry isnt as powerful from the front - but its still extremely powerful from the rear. Elephants are probably more powerful however. I lost over 1500 Pincipes/Hastati killing one unit of 24 Elephants.
6. The maps are large so they can easily accomodate the extra units.
7. Playing as the Romans I frequently have been using the checkerboard formation - which I never got to do with 'large' units - and it works!
8. Many more units seem to get away when they rout.


Some things that still remain:
1. AI still has groups of small armies instead of merging them together.
2. Still early days in my game so far, but the AI still seems to have a ton of ships.

It seems that this game was really meant to be played on huge units. While that isnt so great for those with low-spec computers, I highly recommend it for those that can run the game on this setting.
The campaign is better in almost every way.

[therother]

2. Unit garrisons are much larger and its way easier to keep your populations happy.

Are you sure of this? I've made a few investigations of the effect of garrisons, and it seems that the game scales the garrison effect so that one unit of peasants will always have the same effect on all unit sizes. Of course, you will take more men out of your settlement per unit, so that will tend to help reduce squalor and the associated public order penalties.

[Morindin]

Are you sure of this? I've made a few investigations of the effect of garrisons, and it seems that the game scales the garrison effect so that one unit of peasants will always have the same effect on all unit sizes. Of course, you will take more men out of your settlement per unit, so that will tend to help reduce squalor and the associated public order penalties.

You may be right, but it just seems overall that its easier to manage happiness.
Ill have to see what happens when I start to get a large empire with huge cities.

[The_Emperor]

maybe because your drawing more population into the army squalor becomes less of an issue?

At the moment I am playing on large unit setting (much better than the Normal sized one).

I suppose I'll have to give Huge a go, probably as a barbarian faction.

[Armchair Athlete]

yeah I have been playing on huge unit sizes and it is much better than large. The Pikemen/Hoplites also seem more effective, you can stretch their lines longer and so less likely to be flanked. (Although they still dont beat a head on cavalry charge easily enough IMHO)

[Plucesiar]

I agree on the point about the pikemen being more effective. Even in large unit setting I find them to be not too useful because of the length they are only able to cover due to their size