huge unit sizes...

[hisn00bness]

Well I wanted to start a new campaign as the english; and considering I have a rather decent rig; I'm tempted to flick on huge unit sizes. I've played large up till now.

Now before I get hooked to this campaign; some questions immediately surface in my head; such as :

-does using huge sizes bring added value to the battlescenes besides the eye candy?

-does'nt it overpower cavalry charges even more (80 mailed knights getting a charge multiplier somehow seems a bit much) ?


What are your experiences/ opinions about Huge unit sizes?

[sapi]

I play with it and don't experience any major problems.

I've never done a direct comparison between scales, so I'm not sure about the cavalry issue.

One thing it does do, though, is make siege battles much easier for the defender, as it lets you cover an entire wall easily and multiplies the effect of the 'fight to the death' property in town squares.

[FactionHeir]

Only ever played on small with M2TW, but in RTW, larger unit sizes meant that cavalry was actually less effective as they'd kill less on the initial charge due to the spear units having more men and a deeper formation. Also artillery becomes less useful as you still only have 2 artillery pieces per unit (although you have more targets to aim at), especially for the more accurate artillery units.

I would also imagine it would be significantly more difficult to get your units to break from melee and reform. Its quite doable on small and normal, but with huge you will likely get a lot of stragglers.

[Patricius]

Having huge unit sizes in RTW meant having a lot of cities with very depleted populations. I liked having manpower as a strategic aspects, but the ai factions did sometimes overdo it, raising large rather weak forces, and leaving even large cities with only the minimum populations (c. 400?). I found also that units seemed to take longer to rout. Perhaps the only real distortion is that a force of high status general bodyguards as a stack could be disproportionately powerful.

[hisn00bness]

Well believe it or not; after playing around a bit and using some mailed knights and the hobilar light cav england gets in the opening stages.... my experience is that the enemy seems easier to route with a charge.

It might be that I just finished a campaign with the turks; where you don't get to rout the enemy army so often since the only things you'll REALLY be fighting are super beefed mongol and timurid cohorts; but if it's not, then I have a hypothesis :


Numbers go up; the ranks get deeper so proportionally to the entire unit the charge makes less casualties upon impact; but you still kikll numericallly more men with the charge than you would have done with large unit sizes.

The moral of a unit; which according to my two cents (and thus worthless) hypothesis) isn't upped porportionally to the unit size; registers a rather huge instant decease in the unit; and the unit subesuqently breaks where on mlarge it would've fought on.


Am I just being silly ? Does anyone know what formula the engine uses for morale calculations (i'm a zero at modding) ?

[Shahed]

In M2:TW huge unit sizes, cavalry kills less on impact. So I would say huge unit sizes disadvantage cavalry, while they advantage infantry.

[Bob the Insane]

Well with the population not being eaten into my the unit production I guess is should not make much difference on a strategic scale.

On the battlefield I prefer Normal because of archers... On RTW I took huge because it seemed appropriate for the ancient armies but in this game as in MTW I find archers become very unweldly on anything larger than Normal...

I also found int RTW (but put up with it) that siege assaults really dragged out because it took so much longer to get the huge units up inside the towers and up the ladders...

I also like the effect that individual knights taken on greater importance at smaller scales...

I will have to try a campaign with huge and see how it feels...

[anders]

ok boys and girls, here comes the really silly noob question; how/where do i change unit size for a campaign?

[rebelscum]

You do it in the game options. It is a game setting and not campaign setting.

[Bob the Insane]

You do it in the game options. It is a game setting and not campaign setting.

But it only comes into effect for new campaigns right? It does it work effect existing campaigns??

[Richard The Tiger Heart]

But it only comes into effect for new campaigns right? It does it work effect existing campaigns??

Only for new campaigns...

[Husar]

I've always played on huge, my brain can't deal with the knowledge that there could be even more men in my army.
On ther other hand, I'm used to it, formations take some time to react etc., but the benefit of not having to imagine that my metropolis is defended by four units of 30 men or so makes up for it IMO.

[whtdoesitmatta]

I play on normal for computer reasons, but wouldn't going huge make buying a unit a lot more questionable as it saps away a bigger percentage of your population?

[Shahed]

It does'nt impact population in M2:TW as it did in R:TW.
Smaller unit sizes also allow for greater use of terrain in the battle maps, whihc is why I play on normal unit size.

[Bob the Insane]

I have been playing a campaign on huge and I have to say I quite like it... If I accept that I have my archers in 3 rows rather than two then are still manourvrable and I think it makes the melee's last longer over all... The fights between individual soldiers take the same time but there are more of them, usualy deployed deeper rather than much wider than I would have on normal size, so it takes longer to decide the outcome. This gives more time for your flanking actions. I have not noticed cavalry being uber, to the contray it is easier for them to get bogged down in the infantry fighting now and it takes longer for them to reform for charges...

Additionally your walls in a seige look decently manned...

Must remember to go and switch that unlimited men on the battlefield thing on though... I am forever getting reinforcements delayed now..

[Foz]

It does'nt impact population in M2:TW as it did in R:TW.
Smaller unit sizes also allow for greater use of terrain in the battle maps, whihc is why I play on normal unit size.

I had noticed that as well about the terrain: the features simply lend themselves better to smaller unit sizes. I find myself preferring smaller sizes primarily for ease of management. I like to be able to keep some sort of tabs on my units, and I find it a bit more difficult even with a wide shot when sizes are set in the higher range because the units simply take up more space and thus sprawl out further. Larger unit sizes are especially rough when you start getting combat inside settlements, as the streets are constricting already even for normal unit sizes. It's a travesty trying to position a huge cavalry unit of 80 anywhere you actually might want them inside a settlement. The doubled size of huge just means even more men overflow everywhere, and it seems wholly unnecessary TBH. Smaller sizes similarly seem preferable from a unit movement standpoint: it's far easier to precisely maneuver smaller units around the battlefield, and it may especially be easier to maneuver and charge with cavalry if using a smaller unit size. Smaller unit sizes also mean men will more quickly finish climbing ladders, but most especially will pass through gates more quickly. This is especially noticeable during sallies, where a large sallying army can take horrifying amounts of time to exit the settlement if the unit size settings are high.

[darth_napo]

never played TW games with anything unit size but huge.

[Eng]

The main problem with it is when sieging because the settlement and it wall will remain in the same size that can Change dramatically what would have happened in a small or normal scale.
also it will be harder to take wall since the siege towers remain in there same size and no extra ladders (the defender could take out about 10 in a time without taking any casualties)

[Husar]

Must remember to go and switch that unlimited men on the battlefield thing on though... I am forever getting reinforcements delayed now..

I'm getting that too and I actually keep it, on one hand it's like fighting Mongols in the night(only one stack at once) and on the other hand, even more important, if I have too many men on the field, the game can go down to 2-3 fps, just one more big army can make all the difference there. And my CPU(C2D E6600) still isn't at 100% even if it lags, maybe CA can optimise that sometime?

[sapi]

It's likely graphics lag.