Remember that the build time for a unit is also dependant on the city / village you're building the unit in. For all we know Brad is trying to build this unit in a small outpost... By the time we can build legions, I'd guess / hope that the build time for one unit in a sizeable city would be a lot less then 11-14 turns.

Scorpiana has it exactly right.  If you want to build an army of armored Fabios you better have plenty of metal mines, roads connecting cities to get supplies in, armories, smiths, etc.

Presumably there will be additional benefits to the larger formations, beyond just lower maintenance costs.  By bundling large numbers of troops together like that, you lose a lot of versatility not only in warfare but also in production.  By devoting 20 turns to producing a large formation, you tie up the production in that city for a long time during which it can't respond to other needs that might come up.  If you're producing 4 units at 5 turns each, you get a window every 5 turns where you can respond to emergencies without having to discard production progress.

Are the larger formations more dense, so that you can bring more force to bear on a smaller front in tactical battles?

Can you split and merge formations of the same unit type?

Wow, just wow. I cannot wait to start playing around with this stuff!

Makes me wonder more about the tactical combat. Even 250 vs 1000 is tough let alone 4 vs 1000. And compared with the old MoM "1 unit per square" have we got rid of squares?

Back on topic...

The system sounds very organic. Very Sword of Aragon but with construction times. Interesting

Hm.....yeah I made a post about tactical combat <> number of units on the battlefield as well, but no reply from the devs. Imo this is an important question, so some proper infos would be nice to have.

I suspect 4 units vs 1000 would be much like a dragon vs 1000. I'm assuming you have the option to keep rank (in which, considering melee troops, those 4 people will continuously be fighting 4 legionaires at a time, (until they die). Now, im assuming whoever is controlling the Legion has the option to 'break formation" which is an inefficient way to sent a thousand AI-controlled individual units across the battlefield attacking anything they see. Thus the 4 defenders would be surrounded, and potentially be dealt 10 attacks for every 4 they are able to do, being immediately surrounded by 10 or so, and with possible flank advantages for those mobs units that arrive behind the group of 4.

The unit design thing is the coolest part about Elemental so far. I loved it in MOO and all the space games that came after. I expect that in a fantasy game it will be even more fun.

  Wow just read that... Good stuff Frogboy!

The current build allows creation of units with various gear setups that can be saved. They when time comes to add to your army you can select Fabio's (in whatever flavor) you prefer for the battle at hand.

I will assume a Max # of builds will be allowed with the Delete feature being enabled so the lowly guy with a stick would be deletable to be replaced with a new Fabio, with a Pike and Leather etc up the Tech Tree.

As to army size on the field. There was some inkling of Massive armies being assembled and used in concert with each other, thus this idea

should absolutely be doable. Just pick a Zoom level...

A very interesting post that brings up a question I've had for a long time but has yet to be answered. Is the only limit on what can be invested into troops a nation's infrastructure or will there be other considerations? So for example assuming I had the necessary infrastructure could I produce a single but immensely powerful soldier? A "super-soldier" if you will that any nation regardless of size could only handle producing 1 or 2.

I absolutely love that you can tell what's in an army and what sort of equipment they have at a glance.  That was one of my biggest concerns about unit design, that I'd spend all my time individually investigating my opponents' troops to figure out what I was up against.

I also like the egalitarian option, but agree that an "amazon" option where women run the army by default would be interesting.  The amazon option would need a trade-off in increased productivity to compensate for the lower birthrate, perhaps.

Will units combined into an army fight independently of one another in the tactical map?

Hmmm, thinking about this I wonder if there will be a similarity to the Dom 3 combat, that being no defined unit sizes but rather a single unit can have between 1 and 1 million (maybe not 1 million but you get the idea). I always wanted Dom 3 to have directly user controlled combat, so I like this idea.

   I would like you to change the nomenclature on the units.  Currently in the military if you have 10 soldiers you are a squad.  If you have 4 or more squads in a group then you have a platoon.  If you have 3-8 platoons you have a company.  If you have 5 companies then you have 1 battalion.  1 Brigade typically has 5 battalions in it.  A division is made up of roughly 10,000 troops or 2-3 Brigades.  Those numbers have some fluxtuation and flexibility but are fairly accurate.  This is current US Army unit doctrine.

  Maybe change the numbers?  Maybe change the names?

Well, currently the Company to Battalion ratio, and Battalion to Brigade ratio, are quite accurate (5:1).

Also, in more classical and medieval times (although especially classical) a *legion* would be the largest individual fighting unit.

In an RPG setting, a "party" is the smallest fighting unit, and the one most classic dungeon crawls are participating in.

If your party is your smallest unit, and a legion is the largest, then we can take some Terminology of more contemporary sources to fill the gap in between. As party and legion have the most bearing in this type of game *those* terms are the ones that have a classical 1000 man legion and 4 man party, as per Square Enix (who may have 3 person party) and the Julii Romans (who might have 6000 in a legion). Of course, the true designation of a Legion was its Eagle(Flag-pole). If a legion's flag was captured in combat, and the Legion could not succesfully regain their flag from the enemy and returned home in shame, then the Legion had to disband, and the soldiers would be re-assigned to other legions, distant outposts, guard duty, ect.

Perhaps instead of 10=company, 10 could equal Squad, and 50 soldiers could equal a platoon, and 250 soldiers could equal a company.

However, I don't mind the current names as they maintain proper Hierarchy and Ratio. So what if a few steps are skipped.

My Ideal race would have a party (3), squad (12), centurion (100), brigade (500), and Legion (1000) ... if for no other reason than to have the 100 man centurion which legions were made of. In fact, I would probably stop with Squads of 10 and Centurions of 100, and Army Groups exceeding 1000 or so persons I would assign a royal Flag-bearer, official commanding General, and dub thee Legion (X).

My tenth legion would consist of Horse-Archers, Rock-Lizards, Mutated Powerful things, and Eldritch Flying things. Probably some elite Praetorian Melee troops as well, equipped with a variety of gear.

The Legion as a whole would have its own inventory bank ... usually for advisors and special items. For instance, I would assign a Military Engineer and Seige Expert to a legion if I wanted it extra quick about building Battering Rams, Catapults, Ramps, and other Seige equipment. The romans were great at digging up the very earth from beneath their adversary's feet and using it against them, literally as well as metaphorically. Sappers are a literal sense, in that they dig dunnels beneath enemy walls. Metaphorically speaking, the Romans would use such strategy as to Build a Wall surrounding the enemy wall, in order to ensure the city will eventually starve out. (game effect would be a quicker and more powerful blockade effect for troops used, making the enemy starve out more quickly). THey could also construct large ramps to try and overcome any "impervious obstacle" that the enemy relied on for defense. One such idea was to build a giant ramp for the soldiers to simply walk up the ramp directly onto the Enemy's Wall Fortifications. Bypassing the whole need for breaking the walls in, and somewhat more effective than a Seige Tower. Of course, likely Earth magic would be the most easy way to accomplish things like this. Make a hill just as tall as the Wall, on your side. THen your troops can charge up the hill right into the opponent's city.

That being said, the current implementation of Legion, as a cohesive unit of 1000 identical soldiers, is certainly an interesting proposition. While during *most* of the game this might not seem necessary, and whie certain games (like King Arthur and Total War) like to focus on smaller units between 60-120 soldiers apiece, to make smaller more contained armies .... this Legion of 1000 armored Fabio's could be the Late-game's unanswered question of Tedium with mass-units and Stacks of Doom. Want to build 100 Brigades of Armored Fabios, but don't want all that battlefield micromanagement??? AKA want all 100 brigades in one army. INstead of building them as Brigades, build them as Legions!!!! then you only have 25 legions to worry about.

A legion should not be something you *have* to use as soon as it comes out. I can see people playing with Battalions and Brigades well into the Era of Legion technology. Legions would be primarily used for Cheap Cannon-fodder at first, however it seems that eventually, with truly massive armies, most type of unit would be used in Legions ... even non-countered Mass-Destruction spells won't be able to utterly destroy your 25 Legion army during the course of one battle. Maybe a Volcanoe can kill 5 legions, and thats a significant investment. Then each spammable High End spell like THunderCloud or Meteor can damage the rest of the legions to an extent. After those initial SUPER WEAPONS that hit, killing about 3-5 legions a piece, the rest will be able to damage maybe half a legion per turn. Say it takes 20 turns for combat to ensue, as thats when the heads of the armies meet. Thats 15 legions destroyed, but you are still fighitng with 5 legions. Plus, the less he has, the more Wide area your spells will have to be ... or rather his troops aren't so clustered now so Wide-Area spells are now less effective. Also, youll have to use precision spells now or else you could hurt your own troops. Of course, if you have an army of 10 legions, and only 5 are locked in combat with their remaining 5, but their 5 are better, you might be tempted to use the UBER (kill everything in this area spell) similar to the Volcanoe (a possible reason to save using a volcanoe till AFTER the melee has commenced) ... that kills all those units, their 5 super legions and your 5 mobs legions.

This is just an example that reminds me of Code Geass. Where massive weapons of Pure destruction still do not remove the element of Strategy.

So yea ... I like the unit-size variation.

My compliments to the Frog and the Stardockians. Well done. This sounds very interesting indeed. I'm in love with Elemental already! I'm a lucky fanboy indeed!