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.

Having a unit be able to change equipment after construction (whether in the city, in the field, before battle, during battle, whatever) would be really useful and have tremendous tactical advantages... but the complexity of implementation would be significant and I think more suited towards something like the Total War series that is more about intense tactical combat.

For starters you'd need:

1) the game to be able to tell: can this unit change to use that equipment?

-- do they have the equipment on hand (requires storing ResourceStock-ish records with every single unit stack in the game)

-- do they have the training to use that equipment (requires something like a "Can-Use" record for each usable equipment type on each individual unit in the game, and also complicates unit design to choose what alternate loadouts you want the unit to be able to use

2) there would need to be AI for units to pick a decent loadout for when the AI is entering battle and when a human player really doesn't want to have to tell each of his units which color socks to wear to that human player's 10th battle this turn   This AI would need to take into account a fair bit of information to even make a decent choice, let alone a choice that would prevent the non-AI player from getting a significant advantage due to ability to make a smarter decision

That said it'd be cool... but ya gotta explain this stuff to a computer at some point, and I don't think it would be pretty

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.

Hum.. or maybe an "army creator". You put some items, some soldiers. Then you create some templates from them (with swords, haleberds, calavry or not) and when the fight begins you can chose a template. So you have to plan ahead and it wouldn't be a real nightmare for the comp.

EDIT: to be more precise : i open an 'army creator window". I drag/drop 20 trained soldiers. With swords. I add horses and pikes.

then I create two templates (cavalry andfootmen) with those elements. And why not being able to create those templates in a cuty "I want a cavalary battalion" Then it would calculates what you would need to have the templates you created. Oh .. wait .. isn't it already in the work ? So I think that wouldn't be so complex.

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 created/summoned by magic should be sustained by that magic. So you could summon some lions and they wouldn't need to eat. But you could also feed those lions and heal them to spend less mana on upkeep...

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.

Its possible to crosstrain troops into different weapons. The problem is the skills and experience for using one weapon will atrophy if not constantly excercised. It would make a lot more sense if we could train all of our recruited soldiers a bit in many different weapons, then pick the ones that excel and form them into specialized units.

Plus it would allow us to differenciate between different weapons in terms of how hard they are to learn. A crossbow is very easy to use, a longbow is not.

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.

Thats a great idea. Military forts that are "alive". In times of danger the civilian population would swell. If you wanted to found a city then you could do so with a significant head start.

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)

It isn't just the weapons that has to be crosstrained though.  You also have to train the doctrine, the small unit leaders, form the organization necessary to take advantage of the weapons, ect.  Switching between one method of fighting and another isn't easy, and unless you are an army that simply charges in the general direction of the enemy and hopes to hack your way through your method of fighting is going to depend on the weapons you are armed with.

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.

Why not. After all it's like the "defense" bonus in civ4 when you defend. each turn you earn 5% (to a max of 25%). It makes sense.

But what I would really like to see is the range of action of those kind of unit.

I hope there will be a "zone of control" : if a enemy unit enters your zone of control they must stop. And a entreneched unit has a greater range of control (like two squares instead of just one). Not every unit should have a ZOC (zone of control). Some special training (like "behind ennmy lines" should allow you to bypass said ZOC but in return you don't have too such ZOC)

Reminds me I really hope morale, ZOC and fatigue will be in the game.

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.

Yep each unit should only have two or three slots to learn things. And why not a global spells that enhance their brain so they can learn four things?

So you can give them 3 time sthe sword ability. Or 1 sword, 1 pike and 1 buckler.

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.

Yep for sure

Anyway, have we a chance that those ideas will be implemented? Yes i'm talking to you devs

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.

So you think there's good ideas here. Which ones?

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.

I'm not arguing against multiple weapons!  I'm arguing against units being able to loot weapons from the battlefield that aren't of the same type as they are already using, on the basis that it isn't just the weapon that needs to be trained on, but how to use that weapon in mass formation.

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.

I imagine everyone's in agreement that if you have units that use swords and you just defeated sword-using units, you should be able to "upgrade" to theirs, assuming they are better than what you have.

This is a whole different can of worms, but I assume there won't be material deterioration over time (kind of like the effectiveness of items).  That would add in another level of complexity and non-fun, although it would make looting and re-using that loot have more meaning.

So, the logistics of how you would obtain/keep the spoils is still being determined, but most everyone here seems to think getting to keep a portion of the defeated units' items would be a good thing.

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?