RTW Effect of Unit Size on Campaing Difficulty?

[SpiderMinky]

Ok just trying to make the single player experience a challenging as possible for my self. Has anyone any ideas on what the different unit sizes would do to the difficulty of the single palyer campaing?
I know that the larger unit sizes will take more people from your cities, however while this will limit the amout of units that you, can raise how does this effect the ai and the armies that it will raise?
IE what will the composition be and will they use them effectively at larger sizes?

[GreatEmperor]

The only thing I can think of is that they move slower and esspecially when turning. This can be good for you if it's the enemy which is turning, but if you want your unit to turn fast it could be very annoying having a big unit.

[Papewaio]

It is good for raising units of peasants to move from one city to increase the population of a second one... very quick way of getting Spartans in my Greek campaign...

[SpiderMinky]

Papewaio, I had not thought of that aspect....
I was wondering more if it would hinder for example the Gauls as they may spend all of their population on the beginning units and then lag when the have the buildings nessecary to build better units.... I seem to remember reading something like that. I guess I was wondering is there something that would help them as well....
Would the AI use this ability to move pesants around that way?

[Craterus]

Would the AI use this ability to move pesants around that way?

Probably not, it's quite sneaky to shift your population around depending on where you want the people. Of course, the human player can "exploit" it as much as he/she wants.

[Yukon Cornelius]

I *think* that the rate at which squalor increases with population is affect by the unit size setting, in which case the setting has no effect on public order. This being the case, however, population growth slows earlier making it more difficult to get larger cities (kiss you Imperial Palace goodbye). Furthermore, with a small unit size you can build new units sooner, given a minimum population (i.e. 400), since the unit size (30 men for a "60 man" unit) is now a smaller percentage of 400 and it won't take as many turns to get 30 people as it will to get 60.

I don't know how unit size will affect game balance between factions. Whether some factions (ex. Gauls) fail to tech up properly on Huge is a mystery to me.

It should be noted, though, that at lower unit sizes all factions probably will use lower tech units, since population growth will tend to stop well below 24000, possibly below 12000, in most cities. At higher unit sizes both "population per pip of squalor" and "men per unit" are increased proportionally (to my knowledge), so everything should function at higher levels numerically. Therefore, since the cut-off points for city growth (2000, 6000, 12000, 24000) do not change with unit size, everyone should tech up more on Huge than they do on Small. Also note that everyone should field more units on Huge than on Small since unit upkeep costs do NOT scale with unit size and that income DOES scale with unit size in the sense that the population will be of greater magnitude *therefore* the tax income will be higher *plus* since everyone will be teched up more they'll have access to better economic buildings.

So I think that as unit size increases you'll see higher tech units and more of them. As I said before, I don't know if all factions will scale "equally" or if some (i.e. the barbarians) will be left behind.