Unit Size

[Oman]

The dynamics of unit size interest me at the moment as I now realise that its not simply scaleable and relative. A couple of things that i can think of straight away are.

1. Onagers lose power as the unit size goes up, i.e one shot from them, fire or otherwise, will not do as much damage as a % of unit size. This potentially could make a massive difference to units like eles. One flaming shot at a small unit and they will rout, on normal- quite often rout, on large - sometimes, and on huge, rarely.

2. A unit that is within range of a missle unit, or any unit that has a form of missles will not (in theory) be hit by as many missles, relatively speaking, due to shear size and spread. i.e you attack a unit of urbans with a unit of horse and you will get hit by 2 or 3 units of urbans as they are close enough (within range) to throw them. On large, or maybe more aptly, huge, the units will not be close enough due to shear physical spread/size. So in theory you will get hit by less of those nasty pillums, as a percentage anyway.

3. Once again due to size, the spread of an entire army will mean that horse and/or other flanking units will have a harder time getting around the side or back of your army. Not sure, but im guessing that this would make these units less effective the larger the unit size?

Anyway, im sure there are many more subtle differences that unit size will make and im interested to hear what you all think.

Oman

[micromegas]

I find that in general missile fire is less effective with larger unit size. This is because you have to kill a larger number of units to have an effect.

I like to play on large but not huge. I find with huge the units are too difficult to control and it's hard to get a good view of the entire battlefield. Furthermore, there are performance issues depending on your computer. Perhaps huge unit size would be the most historically accurate but it's too cumbersome to play with.

Large unit size seems to be the prevalent size in online games.

[LeonidasOfSparta]

I play on huge because I love to control many soldiers at once.


Leonidas

[Towelie]

Another advantage of huge is that it recruits more people from citys, so its easier to get rid of too much population. And there is an advantage on onagers and such.. I forgot how much it cost in Rome, but in M2 you pay 250 florins upkeep for cannon, and it can be used by 3 people, so on huge you can lose 90% of your cannon soldiers, pay less than 50 upkeep for it and still use it regulary..

[Domitius]

A big difference is, like Towelie said, that it takes more population to recruit soldiers. But it ain't entirely good. It's very hard to get your towns to a good level if you loose 160 men when recruiting one unit! I also agree that missiles is less effective and that it's harder to control them. I hate playing on huge scale, cause there are much troubles, like for example the control problems. I like to play with Macedon, and they have to manouver their cavalry very much. It would be impossible to get between two units of spearmen on huge. I think that large is the best scale, because that's the level the game is adapted to.

[Severous]

Hi Oman

Limiting comments to battlefield impact as I know thats your interest:
1) Longer to move around. Longer to get 'ready' to face a charge, to change facings, to cross bridge, use ladders, gates.
2) Nightmare in city for huge chariots or cavalry..especially open formation types.
3) Big armies on huge take up a lot of the battlefield. Less room for strategic movement
4) Easier to tire a huge AI opponent. Force it to reorder its battle line and its units are running around for ages.
5) Less easy to hide huge units in small patches of wood/grass
6) Easier to miss a small target with onagers. But then maybe you hit an adjacent small unit..doing high % damage.
7) Huge phalanx troops can block city streets with more depth to their formation. Phalanx generally stronger on huge as frontage increases relative to its flanks.
8) Box formations. More room to house artillery and archers inside the box of a huge scale army
9) It looks better on huge.

Cheers Sev

[Prince_of_Macedon]

I noticed that one of my Noob Circles doesn't work in smaller unit scales. As much as I try shrink my archer formation (into loose formation), my spearmen can't stretch out far enough to protect them (as they could in larger unit scales). I certainly could cram the archers into my box, but that would mean packing them in like sardines (in other words: more susceptible to missile attacks).

I prefer Large, but if my opponent can't handle the graphics, then I'll settle for Small.