mixed unit idea

[pike master]

i know it probably isnt able to be done but i just thought how interesting it would be if one could create units with several types of weapons mixed together.

for example:
musketeers with pikemen
pikemen and halberdiers
pikemen,halberdiers and greatswords

what say ye?

[cavenaghi9]

i know it probably isnt able to be done but i just thought how interesting it would be if one could create units with several types of weapons mixed together.

for example:
musketeers with pikemen
pikemen and halberdiers
pikemen,halberdiers and greatswords

what say ye?

The Spanish Tercios (the real ones, anyways) had Pikemen and Arcabusiers and Musqueteers... It's not that wild of an idea...

[cavenaghi9]

Why cant I edit my own posts? That's just stupid.

Anyways... As I was going to say... Imagine my surprise when I tried to combine gunpowder units and they started shooting down my on tercio pikemen or refusing to shoot, heh...

[zstajerski]

You will be able to edit your post once you have member status...
it takes some posts :)

[SMZ]

i think it's a great idea and I imagine if we don't see it in the next total war (which i'm sure the second dev team is already working on) we'll probably see something like that in the total war after that

they make a new engine with every other game... so yup - and the way things are going now with soldiers gaining experience individually and having their uniform individually, i don't think it'll be too much longer before we start recruiting soldiers as individuals instead of as units

ie: for instance, if we call Hobilars low, Mailed Knights average, Feudal Knights high and English Knights elite and Province X can produce 80 low or 40 average or 20 high or 10 elite per turn... then maybe on turn 1 I'd recruit 8 English Knights and 16 Hobilars, and on turn 2 I'd recruit 10 Feudal Knights and 20 Mailed Knights... so then I've got 54 soldiers altogether, and I click a button and say to lump those men together into a Unit, the game suggests I call them "Knights" since they fall into that class, but I can choose to name the Unit whatever I wish... I can add more men in later, or take some out and recombine them

I can see a lot of interesting strategic and tactical choices created by such a mechanism - like, one player might create a unit of all archers for as many arrows as possible, while another might mix in some spearmen to turn the tables on any charging light cavalry - while still another might mix crossbows and archers together to combine both speed with firepower, etc, etc, etc

you might create a unit of only 6 men, taking the most experienced and battle-hardened soldiers you can find from your other units, then designate those men as a suicide general killer unit.... in the confusion of battle, the other player likely wouldn't notice a small band such as that slipping around their flank

to kinda balance this somewhat the game could restrict formations to certain percentages.... ie: if you want to use the phalanx formation your unit must be at least 95% pikemen - formations could be in two categories, Standard Formations which require a unit comprised of mostly one type of soldier, and Faction-Specific Formations which would allow combined arms of a sort representative of that faction.... you could still combine however you wanted, just your men would be arrayed in a disorderly mob if you didn't

[Lorenzo_H]

I have often thought that having Tercio formations with "sleeves of shot" wouldn't be such a bad idea. It was a hugely successful formation in history. I guess you can improvise by positioning Tercios behind Musketeers - that works.

[bobajob]

Mixed units is a good idea but SMZs version just sounds way too complicated.

[SMZ]

well... i guess armies are a kinda complicated thing... i mean, that's how they actually did it, and do it - very few forces have their soldiers equipped identically, and if they do, that means those soldiers are probably for show and not for fighting

just think how you do your armies now... do you train all one single type of unit? of course not, your armies are varied - each army isn't the same either, you prolly have a particular combination you like for sieging, another for aggressive field battles, another for hunting down rebels, another for garrisoning, etc, etc...

many strategy games, which don't feature the sheer scale of the TW series, do things on a individual basis... ie: something like ages of empire - very popular game, and if you played it, I doubt you found it confusing.... you recruited soldiers individually - now you know how you select a group of soldiers and tie them to a hotkey? it'd be the same thing.... you grab the soldiers you want, and lump them together into a unit... easy nuff

[pike master]

have you noticed the western peasants. they have two or three different kinds of pitchforks.

i think this would not be so much of an issue if pikemen would be allowed to spread formation like you could in rome. in rome i could take them out of spearwall hit spread formation then reactivate spearwall. then i could enmesh my missile units within them and retain a high volume of fire.

if this could be done in mtw2 it would make musketeers and other flatter shooting projectile troops more effective while being enmeshed with pikemen. also if all infantry units marched at same speed it would be easier to mix units together.

[diotavelli]

well... i guess armies are a kinda complicated thing... i mean, that's how they actually did it, and do it - very few forces have their soldiers equipped identically, and if they do, that means those soldiers are probably for show and not for fighting

just think how you do your armies now... do you train all one single type of unit? of course not, your armies are varied - each army isn't the same either, you prolly have a particular combination you like for sieging, another for aggressive field battles, another for hunting down rebels, another for garrisoning, etc, etc..

I think you may be confusing modern armies with medieval armies. The idea of mixed units is relatively recent. Mixing troop types gives a unit a lot more flexibility but flexibility has only become truly useful in recent years, with the advent of modern communications (there are some exceptions, I know).

If the only way you can control your troops is to give them orders in advance and then hope they respond to the odd trumpet signal, you have to keep things simple. You have individual units that are good at doing a few things and you try to make sure they only do the things they're good at to people who aren't good at defending themselves against those things.

Hence, troops might have a variety of weapons but they'd probably all have the same variety (again, there are exceptions but this was the rule). Units might be capable of a wide variety of tasks but they were all capable of the same variety (again, there are etc.,).

One of the things you're forgetting is that there was a social/ethnic basis for the composition of many units.

European knights came from the gentry or nobility and wouldn't consider fighting alongside the scum in the ranks. Longbowmen and men-at-arms were professional soldiers and set themselves apart from peasants fresh from the fields. Town militias were jealous of their right to fight as townsmen and insisted on being separate from everyone else. Welshmen wouldn't fight in English units and Bretons wouldn't fight in French units.

Mixed units might be interesting for gamers but they weren't very typical. I think there might be a case for the sort of pre-determined, historically-accurate, mixed unit mad cat mech suggests but the idea of being able to pick-and-mix doesn't work for me.

[Temujin]

The Spanish Tercios (the real ones, anyways) had Pikemen and Arcabusiers and Musqueteers... It's not that wild of an idea...

Also the, sadly absent, Byzantine Skutatoi combined spearmen and archers in a sandwich formation.

The later Danish armies used combined halberd and crossbow units.

Naffatun were often integrated directly into units of spearmen in Egyptian armies. Likewise for javelinmen and archers in the Moorish spearlines.

I'm sure there are many other examples, this is just what immediately came to mind.

many strategy games, which don't feature the sheer scale of the TW series, do things on a individual basis... ie: something like ages of empire - very popular game, and if you played it, I doubt you found it confusing....

Not confusing, but extremely aggravating. If I'm supposed to play the general, I want to command lower ranking officers, not individual soldiers. Finding out which shed or bush private jones is goofing off behind, or messing around trying to get your troops into formation is not a general's work and has sod-all to do with strategy. That's what sergeants and captains are for, and their absence from AoE (and it's numerous clones) is precisely what made me ditch those games.

Group selection and hotkeys are no substitute for a proper military command structure, not even in games. Micro-managing individual soldiers is anti-fun to me.

[SMZ]

ehh... maybe, but: case in point - roman legions = everyone equipped the same and very orderly... medieval group of knights = most with a spear (of all sorts of varying lengths, depending on how strong the man is), secondary weapon is a sword (of all sorts of variations, whatever the persons favorite is), some like axes as backup, some like mace, some like warhammer, some want all of the above, some have daggers - some don't have spears at all, but use sword first and foremost, etc, etc, etc...... they would not all be identically equipped and lets not even get into armor - they'd be each individually wearing whatever he could afford - not to mention that each "knight" would have a small, or large retinue along of men-at-arms who would not be as well equipped as him and would vary in their own arms and armours even more greatly.......

so hence, why I say - mixing and matching would fit just fine....

Group selection and hotkeys are no substitute for a proper military command structure, not even in games. Micro-managing individual soldiers is anti-fun to me.

well, I'm no AoE fan either, it was an example tho... what I'm thinking of is the same setup we have now, just you get to pick what the units are made up of... once you've got the unit, you command it the same way you do now - you can't recombine units in the middle of battle, that's campaign map strategic decisions

[pike master]

the big question i want to ask is if it is possible for ca to do something like this in the current game through a later patch? and if not i wander if they could make it easier for units to march at same speed or missile troops enmesh better with pike units?

[CBR]

Its gonna require a total rework of the engine to have mixed units, so no its not gonna happen in the expansion or a patch.


CBR

[Nelson]

Building integrated tercios with pike and shot would be great but the arquebusiers would need to behave very differently than the pike. That makes the unit AI much more complex. When you would order a such a tercio unit to attack, what should it do? Advance to firing range, halt, and volley away while the pikes assume a defensive stance? Or march into melee and force the shot to file to the rear?

Having different actions happening within the same unit at the same time sounds problematic.