A thought re population cost for units.

[Rory_20_uk]

I have been playing the mod recently and I felt that the fact that one unit of cavalry can take 2 years is a bit harsh.

I think that most units should 0 or 1 turns... but this is nothing new.

What I was thinking is that is it possible that a unit of say 30 extremely heavy cavalry can cause a reduction of (for example) 250 population for e.g. grooms, servants, which would impose a heavy penalty on amassing the elite troops. Perhaps for the nobility of the Sassanids 1,000 people are required to sufficiently look after the 30 nobles, horses and armour.

Romans typically seem to loose few people for effective units, whereas barbarians require a far higher toll of people compared to the Romans. Gameplay wise this would make the loss of people more equal and be due to the increased support the Roman units require to the Barbarians.

[Ramon Gonzales y Garcia]

I have been playing the mod recently and I felt that the fact that one unit of cavalry can take 2 years is a bit harsh.
I think that most units should 0 or 1 turns...

2 years is probably "harsh", but overall I feel exactly the opposite, I find it preposterous that, say, a unit of Comitanenses can be trained in 6 mos time!! highly trained!?!? It becomes worse if u use the 4tpy script since that one turn becomes into 3 mos!
For light infantry and auxilia, I agree 1 turn (3 mos in the 4tpy), for peasants and the like 0 turns, for heavy auxilia (Aux paltinae, et al.) 2 turns (6 mos) and the heavy inf 3 turns (9 mos) Palatina (very highly trained units that they are), 4 turns (1 yr).
For Cav something similar, Auxiliary and v light cav 0 to 1 turn, Med and Archer cav 2 turns, heavy cav 4 turns (1 yr).that's more realistic IMO.
ADVANTAGES:
1) your "good" infantry becomes more precious - u won't be throwing away ur Comitanenses coz it takes time to train them. theres always the Auxiliae as stopgap units.
2) Mercenaries become a more viable alternative. I really don't know why ppl have something against mercs, they can become a very good alternative to high end units, expensive but no need for training (if u can find them).
POSSIBLE DISADVANTAGES:
1) the map will be populated by lower level units (which might also be more historically correct?)

A BETTER IMPLEMENTATION, I believe, would be the ability to train several units in tandem. As it stands now, u'd have to train one unit of Comatinenses after another, for example, but I think it would be better if u could train, say, 4 units together, but it takes 3 turns to finish all 4 units. I think that would take a different engine, though

The groom, servants idea is very good, though, and if implementable should extend to high level infantry.

[Rory_20_uk]

I agree that training several units at once is a much better system - and indeed bigger barracks mean more units can be trained at the same time.

The problem with precious elites is always the fact that the one man "unit" can be retrained in one turn. For my sins I do tend to combine units then retrain the scraps somewhere, thus balancing numbers at the front as well as numbers of reinforcements.