Unit Sizes and speculation

[Rodion Romanovich]

Each model and texture takes GPU memory, if you get GPU memory overflow you start getting extreme performance degradation. I don't mind clone armies or units with 2 different textures/models for the men if that's what makes me able to play the game without a new, very expensive PC.

Besides I mostly play zoomed out anyway...

[pevergreen]

Ah there you go. My tech knowledge is shown

I like being zoomed in. Massive kill streaks and such.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Ok!

About the topic: I'd like CA to use the same strategy map numbers of men for all unit sizes, but only different numbers on the battlemap for performance reasons! Population decrease by recruitment for example shouldn't depend on unit size, which is purely a graphics setting! So for instance let us recruit 50,000 men for a field army, and let 50,000 men be removed from the city populations when we do this, even if on the battlemap we'll only have say 6,000-10,000! Then, population decrease by recruitment will actually have a huge impact! Also, please make a complex recruitment system including temporarily hired levies (and later also traditional conscripts) which are only available on defense or for shorter periods of time, to make offensive blitzkrieg more difficult and the last stands so much greater!

[Darkarbiter]

Each model and texture takes GPU memory, if you get GPU memory overflow you start getting extreme performance degradation. I don't mind clone armies or units with 2 different textures/models for the men if that's what makes me able to play the game without a new, very expensive PC.

Besides I mostly play zoomed out anyway...

Yes I am aware of that. I thought I read somewhere that directx10 has some improvements on "Identical objects" (the example they gave is grass) so assumeably ETW would be using quite a lot less graphical memory then the previous two games. Regardless stuff will be faster and bigger and better by then anyway (I'm sure you could turn it off easily anyway).

[Fisherking]

Wow, that almost touches on the problem of attrition from disease and desertion too.

We play these games and wonder why it didn't happen that way. Well it was because armies tended to melt away from those problems. You send 20,000 men some place and can only use 4000 to 6000 by the time they are put into the field. Long sea voyages and strange new climates took a huge toll on manpower.

Something I read once about the French forces sent during the American Revolution I also found interesting was they were said to have been 70% Scots and Irish who had joined up to fight the English...just a side note.

My guess is that unit size should be around 100 for normal infantry and 30 to 50 for Marine units and ships landing parties. Yes ships should be able to land large portions of their crews for infantry work, and be stronger at melee and weaker at musketry than typical infantry.

[ratbarf]

Man, if I could competently control 30 000 men with Rome Graphics I would be happy. That said you would need killer UI and the ability to let the AI handle some of the more minor details. (Like detecting when a cavalry charge is happening and forming into a square from a line. If we had to micromanage as much as we do in M2 and Rome than keep the total armies small. It would ruin the gameplay by making you constantly change the formations of your troops every other second to stop them from being wiped out.) One more thing, if they did put in plague and desertion to as large an extent as it really happened it would totaly screw up gameplay. You spend a million dollars on an army of crack infantry, cavalry, and artillery and then three quarters either run away, get sick and can't be used when you need them, or they die outright and its a total waste of money....