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

[ChaosLord]

I agree, I play on huge unit sizes and its great. With how the speed/killrate is now huge plays pretty well with units manuevering slower because of size and lasting longer. But yeah, I think it helps balance things out.

[hoof]

The thing that bothers me the most about unit sizes is the variability in population cost for the units.

Aside from the increase in men on the battlefield, the only thing that changes with unit size is their population cost. Thier money cost, the number of turns required to make them, everything else is equal. However, the population they require *is* proportional to the unit size. Thus, playing with the smallest unit size means that unit creation has little effect on population growth, while the largest size means that most of the game is spent with everyone having small towns/cities.

IMO, RTW should have maintained the principal of keeping all else being equal with unit sizes except the number of men in the field. Some people would say "shouldn't 240 men in a unit take 240 population from the city?". If that's an issue, then scale the city populations with the unit size. Double the unit size should mean that you have 2x the number of people in the cities/towns at the start of the game. Double the unit size should mean that the "town grows" limits should also double. Double the unit size should mean that squalor and other population effects occur at 2x their normal matter.

This would allow balancing of the city growths vs unit creation drain to be done once, and have this balance hold regardless of the unit sizes. I like playing with huge unit sizes, but that means no faction gets the advanced units. You have to artificially manage the cities to get them big enough (to avoid the issue), and when you do, you'll walk all over the AI because they can't compete with their small cities.

It's a blast sending four units of Phalanx Pikemen down a hallway, and knowing nearly a thousand pikes are advancing on the hapless defenders. The ironic part is that as people upgrade their computer and play with the larger unit sizes, they'll find they have to drastically change their strat-level playing habits.

An example of what I'm talking about is with a small city, say 2000 people. At a typical 2% growth rate, you get 40 more people per turn. At 160 men in a typical huge-sized unit, that's one unit per four turns, if you don't want to lose ground. And, of course, the AI will ignore growth issues and churn out units, rapidly depleting population until it hits the "don't create units 'cause not enough people" limit.

At the 40 men/unit level, that's 1 unit per turn with the same city.

My preference is to have unit size not affect the strat size of things. That way, when I have the super computer system, I can actually take advantage of all that horsepower w/o having the strat game adversely affected.

[Colovion]

I'll play my next campaign as a Barbarian faction with Huge - but up till now I've been really happy with the Large setting. It's big enough to not be puny and small enough not to take too much off the population. I think that the way to fix the scaling is for a future patch to maybe impliment a function for the AI to 'know' when to build units and when not to.... but that's one of those common sense things which the AI seems to be forever without...

[Shaitan]

I also would like to play with the huge units. The scaling of the population with unit size would the right way I think.

After finishing my roman campaign I want play as the germans. If I set to huge units, will the AI be able to grow it's cities enough to get marius reform?

[ChaosLord]

2% as a typical growth rate with a 2k city? Only if you're maxing out taxes and the original farmland is poor. I'd say 3-4% is more likely, and thats not counting any bonus from low taxes. And yes, huge units could eat up tiny cities population quickly. But once you get over 6k pop you don't even notice it. All this means is enslaving is more useful. Which actually helps the AI, since they seem to enlsave more then exterminate. This doesn't cripple the AI either, while conquering the middle east in my game i've found alot of 30k+ population cities.

[hoof]

Not true ChaosLord. It varies considerably from territory to territory. Carthage grows like a weed, but the Parthian territories are anemic growers until you add all the population growing buildings. I had the Parthian capital at 0 growth with low taxes, 4500 people, maxed out growth buildings, and had to ship in dozens of peasant units to cross the 6000 barrier just so I could build better pop-growth buildings.

My main point wasn't that the population loss was a bad thing, it's that it varies considerably with the unit size setting.

[hoof]

Shaitan, I think you'll have a miserable time playing the Germans with huge unit sizes. The reason is that the Germans start out with small towns (only one or two has more than 2000 in it at the start, if I recall correctly). If you play with huge unit sizes, you're going to be forced to defend a huge territory with very few units while you try desparately to grow the towns up to 6000 or more. Otherwise you'll drain the cities dry.

The germans are a lot of fun, however. They have a phalanx-like unit that makes mincemeat out of the other barbarian factions. They have a decent cavalry selection. They have one of the best archer units in the game (the Chosen archers, I think they're called). And their chosen warriors can go toe-to-toe with the Romans (who you won't have to fight until you've neutralized the Barbarian factions around you, which gives you time to build up your infrastructure).

The biggest challenge with the Germans is getting your cities up to 6000 before getting overwhelmed. Once there, you will roll over the Barbarian factions, then be able to crush your Roman enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their senators!

[Devastatin Dave]

Man i wish I could set my game to huge. If I did that with what PC I have know, it would look like a freaken power Point slide show!!!

[Bhruic]

It's odd, I switched to 'normal' unit size straight off, and played like that for most of my games. It wasn't until recently that I tried 'huge' unit sizes.

In general, I think I do like 'huge' better. The main reason is because I feel more like I'm fighting a battle and not a skirmish. Before, I'd worry over the loss of a few men, simply because a few men was a large proportion of a unit. But now, if I charge a 160 man unit in, and lose 40+ men, I don't feel that's such a bad thing.

The one area that I greatly preferred 'normal' unit sizes, however, was in sieges. It was much, MUCH easier to maneuver around with the smaller units. Even when I'm sallying from my cities, the huge unit size is a real pain. I often can't even get a full unit out the gate before the enemy has closed and engaged (and they started outside missile range, so obviously not that close).

Bh

[Dark_Magician]

Aside from the increase in men on the battlefield, the only thing that changes with unit size is their population cost.

HUGE difference if your siege equipment only increase in soldiers, not in artillery pieces. Does it or does it not? If you still have 2 onagers it is underpowerment

[hoom]

Not that o(w)nagers are exactly underpowered, but yes, you still only get 2 per unit.
I was hoping for 4 though...

First thing I did after install was crank all the settings inc. unit size :D
I was rather miffed to notice a few turns into the prologue that it wasn't applying 'huge' :(

I've certainly had to take some care in where I train units.
Frontier towns with large garrisons & a long walk to a large population centre can find themselves depopulated by retraining.
Phalanxes work :) (give or take the shimmy shuffle dance)
Archers dish out mondo punishment.
The battles are pretty big
Yet even still, those cities still manage to dwarf a big army.

Hmm, remove the AI being crippled by the training/upkeep cost & replace it with the AI being crippled by lack of population, nice one CA

[Ulstan]

I don't know if huge would work so well with the AI - esp the barbarians. Churning out 240 man warbands a turn from their little starting cities?

Large works very well though and I greatly prefer it to normal.