RTW was meant to be played on Huge Unit Size

[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.