Recommended Unit Scale

**SlartyBartfast** · May 24, 2019, 10:10 PM

Is Third Age 3.2 balanced around a particular unit size?

**Hirundo** · May 25, 2019, 02:42 PM

Unit size is only important in regards to your computer performance, because if you change it, the proportion of the units won't change.

There are four unit sizes, but I have only tried too, so I will use these. In the game file, the unit size is a number between 2 and 100. If you set the unit size on normal, the unit size will correspond with this. A unit of 100 will have exactly 100 soldiers (if you don't count the officers, of which you can have a maximum of 3; and the generals). If you set the size on huge, the game will multiply this number with 2.5, so that a unit of 100 will have 250 soldiers.

If you have a unit of 30 and a unit of 80 fighting, in huge they will have 75 and 200 men, respectively, so their relative strength does not change.

I suggest you play the game on huge, because that way your battles will be more epic, and your game's performance won't get worse if it's not a potato. After all, M2TW was released back in 2006, so nowadays computers shouldn't have a problem running it smoothly.

**SlartyBartfast** · May 27, 2019, 02:30 PM

Indeed, I like to play on huge unit size for epicness. However, huge unit sizes often result in pathfinding issues. I wonder if that is a problem in this mod, especially with customized castles and whatnot. Also, it depends on the unit size the mod is designed around. For example, if the mod was designed around normal unit scale, it will be unbalanced to play on huge unit scale; that is, battles will play out much differently.

What I'm asking essentially is which unit scale was the mod designed for?

**Frotzy** · May 27, 2019, 02:59 PM

This is quite a good question. I've haven't gotten the answer to it, however I have always played on huge unit size, and never had a problem. Although Med 2 was my first Total War game, so perhaps thats why the pathfinding didn't annoy me. The vast majority of players, in my expierence, play on huge as well. It is quite rare to see anyone play on the lower settings. I'd just go for huge and not overthink it. Perhaps someone else has any better/official info.

**SlartyBartfast** · May 27, 2019, 05:43 PM

I believe M2TW was the last base game in the series to be balanced around normal or default unit size, whereas all games since, from Empire to 3K, are balanced around large unit size. Modders, of course, can choose to do things differently. I'm just curious more than anything. It would be a little funny if we were playing Third Age on huge all these years and the modders originally balanced it around normal.

**Dutch-Balrog** · May 31, 2019, 05:30 PM

I don't think it matters much in TATW, it depends on your performance.

**alreadyded** · June 04, 2019, 09:17 PM

It was designed to be played on huge from what I have seen, lowering the sizes will affect battle balance and autoresolve for AIvsAI battles. I would imagine smaller more powerful units would be either over-powered or under-powered. I have only played on huge myself. Test a few battles of 1 unit of spearmen vs 1 unit of trolls or ents or nazgul or something like that on different settings would be the way to find out the actual difference in battles. For autoresolve I don't know, there is only like 3 lines of code for that so no clue how it is affected, it is possible it stays balanced but I seriously doubt it.

I have no issues with pathfinding, I don't think that is common to TATW or any other mods that use G5's BAI.

**inge** · June 20, 2019, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by alreadyded

It was designed to be played on huge from what I have seen, lowering the sizes will affect battle balance and autoresolve for AIvsAI battles. I would imagine smaller more powerful units would be either over-powered or under-powered. I have only played on huge myself.

I agree with this. At smaller unit scales, the elves and dwarves in particular will be less powerful since when elite units get stun locked by hoards of lower tier units, they perform much worse in battle. This occurs not so much at an overall ratio of elites to lower tier units but more when the elite tier unit falls below a certain number of troops. At least that has been my experience. So I definitely recommend huge.

**orclover** · July 01, 2019, 02:39 PM

Originally Posted by SlartyBartfast

Is Third Age 3.2 balanced around a particular unit size?

It has always been tested and balanced for huge battle sizes. I prefer the smallest battle size because I don't like clone armies but smaller units will rout faster because they can be cut in half easier...units like archers are quite a bit weaker with smaller size because they have less targets. And horde nations take a hit because they have 100-150 extra units in huge size and only 55-60 extra units in small size.