Units should have an inventory character doll just like most RPGs. The difference is though that putting a spear into the weapon slot means 200 men will be armed with spears.

Its not that complicated, its just like making new units. I want spears for 200 soldier, do I have any in stock? nope, so I have to cart them in from the next town over. The time it will take for the soldiers to recieve new spears and put the old swords into storage can be measured in turns. If the army is on the move then it will take longer for the new spears to arrive and so on.

Hmm, so an army stack wouldn't so much be a collection of units as a supply of men (with varying degrees of training) combined with a supply of equipment?  There would be a "default" config if necessary in order to display the stack as something other than a mass of men, but the army could morph into anything within the capacity of their equipment and training before battle?

Does sound interesting, but I'm still not convinced the AI could manage it as good as even an average human player.

Also, what about fantastic units or other units that aren't just a collection of men with equipment?

Thanks,

Keith

Units should not be able to switch weapons after creation (at least not easily).  Why?  Because training is going to be an important part of unit creation.  Units would only be trained on the skills and doctrine necessary for the weapons they are equipped with.  A swordsman would not have the necessary training to form a pike phalanx, while a pikeman would not be a good longbowman.  Changing a units weapon should not be possible unless it is taken back to a city, demobilized, and then its population re-recruited into a different unit.  If a unit were to change weapons on the field it would become a useless rabble... and therefore the only units this would be useful for would be units that were already rabble.

Many great ideas here.

 Of course some looting would occur. .. affecting moral?

Depending on the general and the soldiers "moral-codex" looting the dead could be seen as a good or bad thing. 

Some men would feel that they had deserved looting the fallen. To get trinkets and such to compliment the soldiering pay, or to exchange a weapon that has been rendered useless during fighting.

As said earlier, it would also be interesting if you could get additional choices after battle, that would take extra turns but boost the leader or the army.

""Burring the dead, looting, creating horrific metal-flesh- abominations at the cost of essence."" etc

A known enemy character might fall in the battle, and of course he/she should be able to be looted.. though, it would be fun if there was a  X percent chance that such characters would be lost in the pile of dead, taking their special items to the grave.. or maybe they might be looted by bandits and such, ending up on sale in nearby city's.

A large army stationed long enough at a place would attract merchants etc, creating in time small settlements. Staying at one place long enough might also give defensive bonuses due to knowledge of the surroundings, maybe higher percent chance on ambushes and traps.

They're just fantastic creatures with equipment An army is made of two things after all : soldiers (magical or not) and equipment (I put ballista or catapult in that category).

And for the AI : you just need to create some "base" template. And in the course o fthe game other player could "learn" the templates from others It's not so hard for AI.

And after all you could do that in dom3 for captains. And it certainly can be extended to every soldier (or stack of 10/100/1000 soldiers)

I think we could abstract the fact that an army is always training to prevent such thing.

And the cross training would need a great time : 3 turns to learn swords, 3 turns to learn pikes. But if you want them both you need 3+3 + 33% (or 20% or 50%) = 8 turns.

Knights learned to use every weapons : swords, axe, pike, flail, mace and hors riding. Samurai learned to use tanto, wakizashi, katana, bow. History is full of "crosstrained" soldiers

I think when you create a unit you chose what they learn.

Knowledge once gained is not lost, but it can become rusty. Its possible to live so long that you forget something entirely, but such a long life isn't likely in a medieval setting, certainly not for a soldier.

So if I train all my troops in physical fitness and a variety of weapons. They will be able to pick up any of those weapons and form a cohesive fighting unit. Now of course they would never get to be as good as a unit who specializes in one type of weapon over all else but that is the price of flexibility.

Armour actually should be seperate on the list of training. Armour is something that a soldier deals with every day so his skill with managing it would actually grow from the start and keep growing.

Whenever there is a shift in equipment there should be a short breaking in period to adjust to the new stuff. So if your troops new how to use swords and they looted some bigger better heavier swords then they would need a couple days to adjust.

Well, I think we will have to wait for the beta to get a definitive answer.

Problem is, StarDock will allready have decided for a system for the battles in the game and most likely won't change it until the beta. They'll probably wait until we've played their system until they start to make changes to it, since with the lack of information we've now, we can't really specify exactly what we want to be changed or how it would fit into the game as a whole.

So while brainstorming is a good thing to do now, I don't expect too much of it to implemented until the beta. But since the beta will be very long, I'm still hopefull that some of the excellent ideas in this threads now will be included then.

As far as multiple weapons go, don't forget that it's possible to train a given force to use multiple weapons as part of one singular doctrine.  For example, the Roman's had a light javelin called a Pilum that they would throw at the enemy just before they closed to melee range (from what I recall, the tip was made of a soft lead, and it would penetrate an enemy shield and then bend, rendering the shield useless, and prevent the enemy from returning the favor because the bend made it unthrowable).  After having disabled the enemy's shields, they'd then lock their own shields together and use their short swords (gladii) to thrust at the enemy.

Thus, multiple weapons, one doctrine.  Another variant would be a hedgehog -- give all your soldiers spears as their primary weapons, tower shields, and short swords.  THe spears are the primary weapons, but if the spear is disabled -- or the enemy gets in too close for it -- drop the spear and use the short sword untill you drive them back.

So because a unit learned to use a sword it can't pick up a bow on a dead body and put it (the bow... not the dead body) in the supply wagon? It doesn't make sense.

Another question- if you're fighting a battle, should you be able to capture enemy units and then force them to join your army?  Or maybe send them back to one of your cities?