Unit size question

[jhhowell]

Empirically, I can say that Epirus spent decades with a total civilian population of 800-1200 (two cities hovering between 400 and 600 people each) in my game. Meanwhile several large stacks (mostly slingers, as I noted in another thread some weeks back) just stood around nearby. EB replacing population does help explain why the city population shot up so dramatically later on, I assume when Epirus reached the point where their economy couldn't support any more troops. Going from 400 to 10000 should take quite a while by normal rules...

Do the rebels get this population replacement help? A lot of those provinces have also had enormous garrisons protecting ~500 pop. cities. Maybe Messina and various Alpine provinces are supposed to be tiny, I don't know...

Starforge - I thought I read something on these forums to the effect that population dumps like that are frowned on in EB. Not appropriate to the period, etc. If they wanted us to do that, they'd have given us peasants!

[Starforge]

Starforge - I thought I read something on these forums to the effect that population dumps like that are frowned on in EB. Not appropriate to the period, etc. If they wanted us to do that, they'd have given us peasants!

Point taken. Some mods actually encourage it with "settler" style units (Fourth Age TW for example). I play on normal now in all the games because I personally like the balance and most mods don't add in pop to replace recruits.

I liked the epic battles on Huge but have gotten used to running it on Normal.

[pezhetairoi]

I say huge, which I always play on. It's the closest to reality, and it is far harder for the AI to do all sorts of fancy formations with huge size on. No more AI central phalanxes breaking up and before you know it, outflanking you. At least they're so large that they're unwieldy enough that the battle slows down like in antiquity. Not to mention your lines become longer so an outflanking is not such a fatal thing like if it was on huge scale.

Also, I find the sight of 120 slinger bullets flying through the sky that much more gratifying than just 60. :)

Of course, the point about things being unwieldy apply to you too, but what the hey, you're the human player. You're -supposed- to be challenged.