Quote Originally Posted by Bwian
Cost and upkeep are what balances unbalanced units in a campaign. If you have to spend 10 times the cost to maintain a unit of Bone Giants, but you could defeat the Giants with 10 units of spearmen, then there is the balance. That's a very simplified and unrealistic example, but it gives an idea of how this is achieved. You could expend a lot of gold in building and maintaining a super unit, but if you have to defend 5 cities, you need to spread your forces. If you reach the point where you could station a unit og super trosps in every territory you own, and still have enough money to keep the masses happy, then you are probably well on the way to winning anyway!

It's not necessary to balance every unit to every other ..you need to have a scale that makes the best units cost a lot. That way, the player has to decide to spend a load on one army, knowing that he has nothing left to defend with. If you plan a destructive pillaging raid through the enemy, then go for it. If you plan on taking and holding the ground, you need to have the troops to garrison your new territories until they can start contributing.
ha ha, you make it sound so easy :) I have a sneaking suspicion it won't be. It's not only a question of making it balanced, but also gearing a build path. We want the chaos player to mostly use Marauders, and we want the Orc player to use mostly Orc Warriors. To keep the spirit of WH. But we can't allow them to be too powerful, so the player will only fill his army with it. Similarily, we want Skaven Clan rats to suck monkey balls, but we still have to make them worthwhile to buy.

Anyhooo that's tomorrows headache, and it'll be a lot of fun tweaking to get right.