Developer's Blog

[Spino]

I believe he is talking about the "blobs" seen in MP. Massing many units into one big blob.

But if they also could fix the thing you are describing, that would be nice too.

Ah, that's right! I completely forgot about the penalties applied to units that were stacked on top of one another in STW & MTW. I wish they would also bring back the formation AI that would force units not engaged in combat to march clear of another unit that is infringing on its space (typically after x number of seconds had passed). It was a bit of a micromanaging pain when units would sometimes march clear of another without orders but at least it kept you honest in SP and MP battles.

why was it a bad thin'? flankin' and gettin' behind the enemy while chargin' it frontally gave leginaries more advantage and more so against spearmen!
the same goes for any unit. the killrate goes up and morale down when flanked by somebody...

You'll get no argument from me! However Roman legionary cohorts (or phalanx units for that matter) didn't 'blob apart' upon coming into contact with the enemy; they fought in tight, disciplined formations that better resembled a human powered killing machine than a pack of opportunistic swordsmen doing their own thing. Typically the boys up front thrust and cut away until the centurions blew a whistle or barked out a command whereupon the rear ranks would open up, allowing the front ranks to run to the rear for a breather while the second rank stepped up and took their place in the front lines. However since the cycling of ranks isn't available in the TW games I can live with the ameobic blobbing effect. One could always leave the 'Guard' option enabled for legionary units to keep them from breaking formation.

i dont like what the guy says about unit sizes... i really really dont like that

I'm not too worried about that. What bothers me is the effect of Large and Huge sized units have on a province's population. I simply cannot enjoy campaign games using the Huge sized units option in RTW because the AI is simply too handicapped by this feature. I guess I was hoping that CA would make it so that regardless of which unit sizes you select, the drain on a population would be a fixed rate, based perhaps on the default ('normal') unit size.