Unit size

[BrandywelBhoy]

What Unit size would u guys normall use, and wat effects did u notice on gameplay? I used to use Huge but after RTR had to scale back to Normal, and still having some Frame Rate issues... oh and what sort of graphics card u got too?

[Marcellus]

I use the large unit size. Firstly, it makes the units seem realistic in size (post-Marius, as they are 80-man centuries in large. Pre-Marius the realistic unit size for Hastati is huge, as this creates units roughly the size of the Roman maniple). Secondly, it makes the gameplay more challenging (due to the increased size of the army causing movement difficulties), without making it too hard.

As for my graphics card, mine is the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT (256mb). It can handle RTW without any problems.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I use huge because it makes the roman units Manipules, although the Triarii are the wrong size. Don't get me started on sizes.

[pezhetairoi]

huge. It's the closest you can get to the original grand scale of ancient battles, although I would have preferred hug-est instead. Unit sizes of 360 where they were once 160 sound about right to me.

But of course, graphics card wise I only have an nVidia geforce 4400 MX which causes some very low framerates when I'm in massive battles involving cities, like the time I stormed Scipii Syracuse (with nearly 13 units inside) with my Macedonian phalanx fullstack.

[Productivity]

Huge - 6600GT 128mb

[xemitg]

I use Huge units but scale back the graphics to make everything run smoothly. I have a 128MB ATI video card

[AntiochusIII]

Huge

Reason: Grandeur effects of the battles, depleting population challenges, slowed growth rate, etc.

Graphic card: Geforce FX 5200, though weirdly unstable. Rome:TW is the only game so far that has no problem at all with the card, for me.

[LestaT]

Huge with unit detail fullest.

Others tune down to minimal.

RAM 512 , FX 5200

[Coldfish]

Large Unit - most realistic...with all details Highest except grass, wich is low or none...i hate grass looking

ATi RADEON 9600

[Cheater]

I perfer large unit sizes, but occasionally have huge when I want to make free-for-all custom battles. More fun that way.

As for my video card... well, surprisinly, I forgot! But all I know is, it kicks ass. My brother said so because he was the one who gave it to me!

[Taurus]

I use Huge units in my campaigns and custom battles, and I use Large and Normal unit sizes in mp.

[KSEG]

Huge.
Also changed Roman infantry unit size to 60 from 40.
This way 1 full stack army will have about 4000 men, which is close the the historical number of 1 legion.

[Coldfish]

a legion could of got up until 6000 soldiers....but usually was 5.600....that was the reality

[Gaius Magnus]

Large. Even with a fast computer and graphics card, I start to get lag with Huge and all the settings I want.

[Volstag]

GeForce 6800GT, all graphical settings cranked to max, resolution set to 1024x768 (I think). Been playing w/ large unit sizes, but very tempted to step up to huge. I notice the occassional slowdown in engagements featuring large armies next to large cities.

[Siris]

I use Huge units with maximum settings on my good PC, it has 1GB of RAM, & an ATI Radeon X700 Pro 256MB PCI Express video card.

On the slower PC, I use large units with every detail set to minimal & I still get bad frame rates no matter what, it has 512MB of RAM & a 64MB Intel Integrated video card.

If you have an AGP or PCI Express motherboard, the 6800 or the 7800 GTX video cards are you best bet; particularly the 7800.

[Ciaran]

The one where I get 80 soldiers per unit, I don´t know what´s it called right now. That works all right for about 90% of the battles, the only time I had performance problems was when three complete Bruti armies attacked one of mine and they all marched onto the battlefield.

But wasn´t the Roman cohort about 600 men strong, divided into 100-man centuries (that´s where the word century comes from, after all, the number one hundred)?

[[DnC]]

Large sizes. Huge sizes tend to slow my computer down more then I'd like with the big battles and cranking my mediocre options even more down is not what I want. So I just keep playing on large unit sizes until I get a new PC.

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB.

[Zatoichi]

I edited the preferences.txt and changed the unit size to 100 (so larger than large but less huge than huge). This gives a good balance in my opinion. Oh, I have a Radeon 9800 Pro which does OK up to about 5000 troops. On a slight tangent, I believe the amount RAM your PC has is actually more of a contribution to the speed of this game than just the graphics card. When I went from 512 to 1024mb RAM, it certainly improved my frame rate.

[Coldfish]

i dont understand ur guys stroggle for making huge armies....huger then huge unit scale...i suppose u want to be closer to reality...true,BUT....huge armies were used only in important roman battles....not all battles..even so are some disadvantages in my opinion

Disadvantages:

1. Huger then Huge armies are harder to control on the battlefield
2. Action accuracy reduces on the battlefield
3. Possibility of lagging even on newest hardware equipment
4. Increases the cassualities taken by enemy artilery attacks
5. Harder to hide

Advantages:

1. Slow population growth
2. Historic accuracy ,in some casses

that`s 5 - 2 by me

I say Large Scale is fairly decent....its just a game not the reality...i rather have larger units with all detalis highest....then to have huge units with medium or low detalis...so can run with no lag in any circumstances

[Deus ret.]

You don't have to use high unit detail on huge. Thing is, to keep at least kind of an overview you are forced to watch the battle from far above, eliminating most advanced textures.

I also use large size, it seems to be a good balance between troop management and battle grandeur.

Further 'huge' disadvantages are

1) the restricted battlefield size which severly hurts maneuverability when two huge full-stack armies clash, forcing you -more or less- to slam your units into the enemy rather than pulling off fancy maneuvers.

2) the limitation of the camera on the general which is quite annoying since you have to double-click on units deployed towards the far ends of your line to properly maneuver them, often losing precious seconds in the zoom.
Of course, this doesn't apply if you switch off the general's cam and play god, the alwatchy. Not very realistic IMHO.

[[DnC]]

I edited the preferences.txt and changed the unit size to 100 (so larger than large but less huge than huge). This gives a good balance in my opinion. Oh, I have a Radeon 9800 Pro which does OK up to about 5000 troops. On a slight tangent, I believe the amount RAM your PC has is actually more of a contribution to the speed of this game than just the graphics card. When I went from 512 to 1024mb RAM, it certainly improved my frame rate.

I also have 1GB RAM. PC2700 if I'm correct. What kind of memory do you use?
I'm seriously thinking about using the same unit size as you right now, thanks for the info. Perhaps I'll up it even to 120.

[Zatoichi]

I also have 1GB RAM. PC2700 if I'm correct. What kind of memory do you use?
I'm seriously thinking about using the same unit size as you right now, thanks for the info. Perhaps I'll up it even to 120.

Yeah, it's the same memory as I use - I think it's from Crucial (or at least the second 512mb is...)

As for the size editing, I can't claim credit for it, I picked it up a few months ago from one of the wiser heads around here! Their name escapes me, or I'd give them proper credit.

One thing though, as far as I know, editing it to 120 is the same as playing on huge. Also, this will only work on a new camapign (or at least, when I changed it on existing campaigns, it made no difference to the unit sizes being produced the nect turn).

As per all these things, don't forget to make a back up of the preference.txt file first, even though it is a teeny-tiny change! Have fun!

[[DnC]]

Yeah, it's the same memory as I use - I think it's from Crucial (or at least the second 512mb is...)

As for the size editing, I can't claim credit for it, I picked it up a few months ago from one of the wiser heads around here! Their name escapes me, or I'd give them proper credit.

Well I knew you could change the unit size in the preference.txt file, however I thought it could only be changed to 20, 40, 80 and 160, but that isn't the case obviously Seeing that it works using unit sizes of 100 on your PC using the same GFX card (perhaps different producer though) and same amount of memory, made me curious to try it aswell and see if it worked on my PC.

One thing though, as far as I know, editing it to 120 is the same as playing on huge. Also, this will only work on a new camapign (or at least, when I changed it on existing campaigns, it made no difference to the unit sizes being produced the nect turn).

Huge unit sizes is 160, so it's still 25% less amount of men.
I tried it out and it works well in a full stack versus full stack engagement. So I'll use this setting with the next campaign I start and see if it's plays well in a campaign too. I'm going to use 120 by the way.

As per all these things, don't forget to make a back up of the preference.txt file first, even though it is a teeny-tiny change! Have fun!

I'm a backup fanatic Even if I just change something really simple I'm prone to back up.

[bubbanator]

I use normal unit scale with graphics all the way up, except for grass. I thought the grass looked stupid so I just shut it off...

I have tried using large and huge, but they just seem to be a pain. Having all those men crammed into the tiny little streets. Also, the casualty rate stays the same (I believe, correct me if I am wrong) so the battles last a lot longer without too much happening. Sure it looks cool with 300 pillas flying through the air, but it is just too much of a pain.

About the realism. This is a touchy subject. I like my games to be realistic and have the correct factions and be fairly accurate and run along the correct historical timeline. But I just don't see the need to create the exact proportions of troops in the Roman manipules. Sure it would be cool once or twice but I have never really liked it as a stratagy.

Yes, huge unit sizes in closer to reality in some battles, but, like said above, most battles didn't have tens of thousands of men running about. So on the major battles you get more realism. But this leads into another problem. With all of those troops, your line stretches most of the way across the map, leaving little or sometimes no room for mobility. I was using huge on a custom battle one time and I could see why so many people complained that the map was too small. In normal scale, the map is a great size IMO. Big enough that you can manuver your troops, flank the enemy, and get your cavalry around back, but small enough so that you don't have to chase around routers for hours. Normal unit scale is just so much easier to manage and, in my opinion, better in many ways than huge.

Not to say that huge dosen't have it's advantages, but after trying all of the unit sizes, I think that normal is the best.

[Coldfish]

I drink for that bubbanator

[Zatoichi]

'Huge unit sizes is 160, so it's still 25% less amount of men.
I tried it out and it works well in a full stack versus full stack engagement. So I'll use this setting with the next campaign I start and see if it's plays well in a campaign too. I'm going to use 120 by the way.

Gah! You are right sir! I got all confused... Have fun with your 120s!

[Viking]

Large. Not too small, not too big.

I tried huge once in a campaign. It worked well on the campaign map, but in battle it was such a pain to navigate that quited the campaign.

I use a Radeon 9500 pro /9700, 128 Mb and have all optoions set to max detail, except vegetation where I don`t notice any difference whether if it is least detail or max detail in the heat of battle.

[pezhetairoi]

Huge to me seems more realistic because most battles really weren't battles of manoeuvre, they were just slogging matches. The only manoeuvre came on the flanks. And besides, it's not -that- much larger units, maybe from 240 to 360. Not significant enough to cause your army to stretch too far, I should think. It just means your army becomes more realistically deep in formation.

If they're harder to control, all the better--a greater challenge. Think how hard it was for the old fellas to control tens of thousands slogging it out.

Lag, I admit, is a problem. But, worth it for the closer accuracy.

Harder to ambush? Agreed. But then again, how many ambushes do you see in history? Most of these came from the Romans, with their flexible cohorts/maniples, and as far I remember only two from Hannibal, at Trebia and Lake Trasimene. Of course, correct me if I'm wrong, but the lack of historical ambushes does seem to suggest that ambushes were the exception rather than the norm, and the game should make it so.

[Coldfish]

You missed Spartacus.....he ambushed a lot