Max bodyguard size?

[Atilius]

I've been experimenting with the size of the Roman generals' bodyguard unit in RTW 1.2 and run into a couple of strange things:

(1) If I set the number of men in the unit to 30 (in DATA\export_desc_unit.txt) I get a bodyguard of 120 men with the unit scale on "huge". This drifts up to 124 for generals with influence after a few turns. If I increase the number to 40, I start the game with only 124 men in each bodyguard unit and it doesn't go any higher.

(2) More seriously, if the general's unit (with 120-124 men) enters combat, the game will occasionally crash (with no show_err). Because this happens only occasionally, its difficult to quickly and easily pin down what's causing the problem. I had also changed the stats of the bodyguard unit to be very similar to Equites. I hadn't modded the post-Marian general's unit, so once I passed into the post-Marian era the problem went away.

I've seen no mention of a hard-coded limit on bodyguard units being lower than the 240 man limit which applies to all units. I'd be very interested in anyone else's ideas or experiences in this matter.

[Simetrical]

Indeed, generals' bodyguards do seem to have an upper limit lower than normal units. I'd add it to my hard-coded limits thread, but I don't remember the exact limits.

[Atilius]

Simetrical,

I played around with the numbers some more - the maximum number of men in a Roman general's bodyguard is clearly 124 on "huge" and 62 on "large". Specifying a value larger than 31 in export_desc_unit.txt is treated as if it were 31. At the maximum value there is no difference in the size of the bodyguard whether the general is a faction leader or not.

I'd still like to know what the highest safe number is - I think I was seeing crashes when I had the number set to 30 on "huge". My current guess is that the number needs to be small enough so that the faction leader's bodyguard won't exceed 124 naturally. The faction leader's bodyguard reaches about double a regular general's so perhaps the EDU value shouldn't exceed 15?

I don't think this is much help - I assume you're interested in the safe number - but perhaps it's worth knowing anyway.

[Simetrical]

Interesting. How do you know the crashes were caused by the bodyguard size change and not something else? Anyway, those numbers are about what I remember, so I'll add them to my list and credit you.

On the topic of bodyguard sizes, see this. Faction leaders get +7 bodyguards, an additional +1 per three Influence, and +1 per point of personal security (all on Normal, of course). This means a fairly safe upper bound would be about 15 (allows for a leader with max Influence and +3 personal security above their normal leadery security).

[Atilius]

You're right of course. But since the crashes only occurred when the bodyguard unit engaged in combat (and not every time) I think the culprits could only have been the bodyguard size or the mods I made to the unit itself - basically I had tried to make them hopped-up Equites. Since I was clearly already near some threshold for bodyguard size, I think that's the most likely explanation.

I'm unwilling to experiment with this any further in a campaign, but perhaps I could see what's going on in custom battles. I had myself convinced until just today that there was no general unit available there (almost never use it - owned the game for almost a year).