Huge Units = Big Difference

[Didz]

That is a very powerful (and VERY EXPENSIVE) set up you've got. How much did it cost?

The basic PC cost £400 from Employeesales.co.uk, they sell re-conditioned and surplus PC's and I get all mine from there now.

The graphic's card was about £120 and came with a nice set of 3D games but its not the best on the market anymore, my son has just upgraded his PC to the latest (5600 Ultra) that cost £350.

The 1Mb memory upgrade cost £110 from the little computer shop just up the road (I avoid PC world if I can).

So, altogether and ignoring software like MsOffice it cost about £870 not the £3,000 you were suggesting. The trick as always is to know where to go.

BTW: Ebay is always worth a look, I think my son sold his redundant Nvidia 5600 FX card on there when he upgraded complete with the orginal box and games package.

[Didz]

Picking up on Fridges point about the strategic impact of Huge units I can confirm that these are really beginning to bite in my game now.

During my vanilla campaign as the Romans I got into a routine habit of putting conquered cities to the sword. It made sense, after all they had resisted Roman rule and the reduction of population gave me time to settle any cultural issues without having riots in the streets every few minutes.

I am being forced to rethink this policy in my new campaign as with huge units de-population has become a real issue. One unit of peasants for example can strip a city of 240 men and at least one of my cities now has no men left capable of military service and a population of only 562 old men, women and children.

Hence you will notice that most of my armies are formed from arab and persian mercenaries. This seems to be limiting the AI too and so far I have failed to notice anyone fielding the huge army stacks, or the masses of small armies I witnessed in the first campaign. That doesn't mean that the AI doesn't do daft things like sending a general unit out alone but its not so noticeable.

Strategy seems to have changed also as most of my armies are now City based garrissons that fulfill a duel role as keepers of order and defence force. And most battles are brief sallies from the city to drive off an encrouching enemy rather than long campaign marches. The sinple reason in my case is that I don't have the troops for such things.

This means spies, assassins and diplomats have a bigger role in this campaign too. Committing an army is a serious business and so I need to know its really necessary. Assassinating an enemy general can remove his bodyguard without the need to dispatch an army and so its well worth the risk of an assassin to try it and keep the army in hand for use elsewhere.

I have yet to see a full army stack in my game though the garrison of Sidon is almost there, in the meantime the availability of mercenaries in the border provinces is a serious influence upon my offensive capability, especailly as i have to pay them off regularly to save money between forays.

[Fridge]

Didz, you should try playing the Seleucids! I think I'm having a parallel conversation with you on another thread about the merits of the Seleuc unit selection, but on huge units their painfully slow population growth makes it a real challenge. At least with the Nile delta you've got a nice fertile valley to generate more pike-fodder!

I, as do you apparently, rely heavily on mercenaries, but that's very expensive, and just about negates the Seleuc's main strength, their economy. Also, not being able to retrain mercenary units makes them problematic; they never get enough experience and after the numbers have been thinned out in a couple of battles, they're effectiveness drops alarmingly.

What campaign level are you playing on? I'm playing with R:TR for the first time, and on VH campaign difficulty for the first time and I'm finding it very, very hard...

[Didz]

What campaign level are you playing on? I'm playing with R:TR for the first time, and on VH campaign difficulty for the first time and I'm finding it very, very hard...

I'm sticking to the medium setting. Personally, I don't like the way most strategy games apply difficulty levels as its so artificial. If the AI got better as the difficulty increased then I'd go for it but in most cases they just force feed the AI more resources or starve the human player and that really smacks of cheating in my book.

After all we would soon complain if on VH the enemy troops were twice as tall as ours and their archers could fire twice as far and yet we seem quite willing to have their cities produce twice as much gold and the builders work twice as fast.

[Fridge]

I agree - up to a point. My last campaign I played on H campaign, VH battles, and then I discovered that VH battles just mean a +7 attack score to every unit - so peasants would suddenly be attacking like legionaries.

To be honest, it didn't really affect battles on the strategic level, but completely screwed up thinking on a tactical level, as you couldn't predict unit-on-unit battles any more. So this time, as it's my first go with R:TR, I'm playing the battles on normal, but to make it more of a challenge I'm playing the campaign on VH - just so the armies I face will (hopefully) be better quality. And so far, it's certainly a challenge. But at least the AI's cheating is done out of sight inside their cities, rather than on the battlefield!

[Spino]

Yes, the AI has a serious problem with Huge units sizes because it simply builds and builds until its settlement populations are severely depleted.

The whole issue with unit sizes could be avoided if CA scaled the game's city/population system to match the unit size selected. Basically if you play with Huge sized units then starting populations for all settlements should be four times larger as well. To offset any problems with massive populations and growth the population threshholds needed to enlarge a given settlement would increase fourfold as well (i.e. with Huge sized units a Huge city can only be achieved by reaching 100,000 inhabitants instead of 24,000).

[Didz]

Yes, the AI has a serious problem with Huge units sizes because it simply builds and builds until its settlement populations are severely depleted.

Not sure if thats the case but its certainly what I've been doing

The whole issue with unit sizes could be avoided if CA scaled the game's city/population system to match the unit size selected. Basically if you play with Huge sized units then starting populations for all settlements should be four times larger as well.

I disagree. I think mobilisation of military units ought to drain the cities of their manpower. Its a really nice game mechanic whihc in my opinion ought to be applied retrospectively.

If anything city populations ought to be reduced so that manpower becomes a problem even when fielding small units.

It would certainly put the brakes on some of the rushers out there.

[Ziu]

Great story!! A great example of a Pyrrhic victory.
Keep em coming.


Interesting information about the strategic differences too. Sounds like it would be more realistic. Especially the part about the seriousness of commiting armies.

[Kyoujin]

Athlon XP 2600+
512mb pc2300
Radeon 9600pro

Huge Units
All Graphical Options at Max

With that setup I was able to play without lag in battles of up to 2000-2500 men...depending on whether I was fighting a siege or battling in the field. At 3000-3500 men there would be constant, but minor, lag. Anything more than that was hard on the eyes.

I enjoy the way the game looks and plays with the huge unit setup. I just wish it was possible to decide the unit size on a per-battle basis. Those barbarian scum, the Daciens, love to hit me with the Army of Lag. Three thousand barbarians is lag enough unto itself; Having to field a 2000+ man Roman army in addition to the barbarian dirtbags makes my GPU plead for mercy.