Sethai

Join Date 12/2005

+23

Suggestion: Make all infantry units squads

One of the first pieces of advice given to me was to make squads my first military tech and i know a lot of others play the game this way. And to my mind, there should be no such thing a necesarry choice in this kind of game. If we can't make it non-necesarry, we can at least make it automatic.

Advantages of making all recruitable units groups of 3 by default:

1 It will increase the "epic" feel and look of the game

2 it will reduce randomness as we will always be dealing with larger numbers of hp

3 it will stop the ai recruiting small, pathetic units. this will make settlements always better defended, since the default unit strength will be higher

4 for the same reason. it will make battles faster as you will generally have fewer units moving and attacking all at one, so you don't end up watching the ai move 10 soldiers all individually in the midgame (i have personally never seen the ai field a squad, but i have never played any really long games). this will also leave more space on the battle map for maneuvering.

5 it will reduce the importance of the warfare tree in comparison with others by removing one "essential" tech to be researched

6 it will make sovs/heroes seem more heroic as they will be a completely different type of unit. yes, they will need to be rebalanced to be competetive vs. groups, but to be honest, this needs to be done anyway.

this is not to say that the larger unit techs whould not be researchable, just that you should start off with groups of three of everything except pioneers.

i will admit, i just came up with this and it may be completely underthought.

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Not a bad idea actually, and I'm playing with it myself now. It seems silly to me that we needs tons of research to get 10 guys to stand together as a squad. Research / experience should allow for better logistics, but it doesn't take a scientist to figure out that 100 guys in a group are better in a battle than 100 guys by themselves.

Anyways, the idea I have been playing with is to keep the different group sizes, but make them make more sense. So big, nasty monsters would be Individuals. Elite / rare special units of knights, battle mages, etc. would be small units. Regular 'line' troops would be big units. The key would be to balance all of this and then find a way to implement it in the game. I'm going to explore this through modding, but it will likely be awhile before I have the know-how to implement anything like this.

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I don't like such arbitrary limitations, either.
There is no logical reason why I shouldn't be able to build 4 or 8 man squads early in the game.
Getting formations to fight effectively is a different matter. Improving this aspect through research is far more comprehensible than a firm limit.

I'm all for reinforcing the importance of unit experience, though.
Maybe a lvl 1 unit could handle a basic square formation but it would have to make lvl 2 before it can use the phalanx formation.

The basic case has been brought up here and there before but everyone has a different idea on the perfect solution.

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It's not a bad idea, while perhaps unrefined. What about the time when a nation has just enough resources to buy a single peasant?

or when one wants only a single scout? or a single flag-bearer?

or when one wants only a single death-knight?

obviously there would need to be changes to the combat system for a single death-knight to be useful ... or for a flag-bearer to even be possible (improves morale).

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Ordinary units were usually 6 men strong in MoM. Only monsters and heroes had just a single figure. Many summoned units had two in them and cavalry usually had 4.

The situation is slightly different here since the builder can decide on the unit size, but I think a default size of 3 for mundane units might be a good one.

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I came up with this idea a while ago. I hope a dev reads it.

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I think that the tech to have large squad sizes should be unlocked from the start, but the researched techs should make it cheaper upkeep wise to have larger squads as it makes the logistics easier.

That way you can have a single scout unit, or make a full peasant army for defense. The AI could also be adapted to tend towards building squads for defense/offense and single units for scouting and specialized roles.

Having regular squads default as 6 units, cavalry as 4 units, 'elite' squads (magical equipment, backpacks) as 3 units, and special units (pioneers, scouts) as 1 would be good while the player can adjust as needed.

Plus, a complete revamp of the experience system would be nice. A reason to have a single unit would be because experience is divided between all members of a squad.

So you can have 12 peasants adventuring with your sovereign, or the sovereign and one quickly leveling up peasant. The training techs basically for extra initial cost and training time allowing you to add a few starting levels to your soldiers.

Once again, a single elite footman might start as level 5 as would the squad of 12, but he'd level up faster than that squad.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

My idea spun off this:

Have the logistics techs instead of increasing the size of squads, have them increase the stack limit?

Heroes, summons, channelers, and other notable NPCs not count in the stack limits- to make them more useful?

Adventurers with the leadership special ability (new ability) can count as -1 or -2 units for stack size (effectively increasing the stack limit)

Cities get a +city level to stack limit. Certain buildings could add to this.

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I think more to the point is that there are several critical techs in the warfare tech path that you must have before you can build a real army. This is made worse by the fact that the first decent weapon you unlock is the bow, which can pick off the starter-level units without any risk of reprisal. You actually need to make several tech jumps before respectable armor becomes available. The other tech paths are not like this; all the truly "must have" stuff can be gotten in one or two researches.

Removing singletons entirely would probably require some special considerations for scouts and pioneers. Other than that, I don't see a problem with this. In terms of military power, singletons are effectively worthless. I do think someone needs to go at the military tech path with some hedge clippers and consolidate it. There are just too many techs in there right now, and some really basic stuff (like armor) is buried much deeper than it should be.

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Hmm, what about allowing singles AND parties from the beginning? (instead of a tech that unlocked parties) ... and then larger squads (10 soldiers, 20 soldiers, 40 soldiers, 80 soldiers) could be based on new Tech

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The techs to allow larger groups of units represent increasing disipline and better command structure allowing larger groups to work together effectively.

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