huge size settings

[I of the Storm]

Hi all,

I used to play with standard size, but especially in XL mod you end up with megatons of stacks-of-doom on all sides towards the middle of the high era, which is a bit of a fun killer for me. So I tried huge and after I got used to the completely different gameplay due to the doubled recruitment times, I started a vanilla HRE campaign on huge. I must admit that I'm very suprised. First of all, the gameplay is very different. You have to plan much more ahead concerning recruitment. Then there aren't that many troops around so losses hurt much more and retraining is very important. You gotta learn to fight your battles, especially border protection, with fewer troops. The pace of the game seems to be way slower than with smaller unit sizes. It wasn't until the 1170s and the demise of the Italians, Poles and Danes and the crippling of the rest of my neighbours, that my empire was somehow secured and I could afford my first crusade.

Any of you have experiences with huge size in XL mod? Will there be similar changes of pattern (I'm asking because after all XL's economy is a bit different) in pace, troop amount, maybe AI aggressivity?

Opinions and other impressions are welcome.

Edit: A minor annoyance is the fact that the starting units of each campaign seem to be defined for standard size. Is there a way to have them adaptable to the size settings? If not, what file do I have to look into in order to make them full strength under huge size settings?

[predaturd]

you need to go to C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos to change the starting unit sizes

[Belisario]

I normally played with standard size, and I also end up with these huge stacks and the subsequent battles of 8,000 vs 4,000. When a campaign arrives at this boring moment I usually put an end to the game. My latest German campaign is a good example: I dominated Europe from southern France to eastern Poland, and the Spanish were the other superpower dominating Iberia and southern Mediterranean lands, both with huge stacks; after several turns of war with the Spanish, their king died without heir, and my new enemy were the ex-Spanish huge armies -now rebels-; in this moment I put an end to the campaign.

I made a forum research about how obtain balanced armies and I read an interesting comment about huge unit size. Now I am playing a XL Hungarian campaign on huge, the year is 1154 and I could sign your comments.

[PershsNhpios]

Is it really that much greater?

At the moment, I am trialing Napoleonic: Total War - but unless the quality picks up I'll be playing XL again soon.
When I played the very first time, I played on huge for realism.
However I saw both the added cost and the doubled recruitment time, and thought I was simply doing myself and the AI a great disadvantage.

So I usually play on Large, and I notice most people in the AAR thread play on as little as Small..

[r johnson]

which nap tw are you playin? I ask because when ya download it you get 4-5 different sceniros and the aggression of the AI is different in each. Do you crash when you try to download the Eastern Alliance?

[Peasant Phill]

I haven't played on huge but there has been a thread about it some time ago. It seems that apart from strategical changes (longer training time and more costly) there are also some tactical changes.
The unit sizes change between different numbers. For example: a unit of 60 on default will be 80 on normal and 40 on small. These fixed numbers aren't completly related to each other. So on small units there will be more cavelry in one unit in comparison to a unit of spears than there would be on normal.

So what does this mean for the huge size setting? It means that big numbered units will become stronger by comparison to smaller numbered units. In other words, infantry and especially spearunits, byz inf and the likes will become more important and stronger than they would be in a game on normal.