Battle Formation Anyone?

that would benefit bigger armies and I for one want to get rid of that. It's much more exciting to have many bands of small units. In RTS terms, your suggestion would end up in one big battle but mine would have many small skirmishes.

  My impression is we will be able to develop our own tactics and unit control.  Some people are likely to form large but mainly standard type units and abilities and others will end up specializing in more unique and expensive units that will have far fewer numbers.  I don't know the mechanic for achieving the formations.  Maybe there are some template formations available?  Hopefully we will be able to tinker with the formations.  I would like to take a template formation then alter it to fit my unit ideal size and type.  Maybe take a line out or stagger the lines slightly differently.  Add some units.  Remove some units.  Or maybe just allow us to make our own formation templates.

  I think size in battle is always important until different strategies or tactics become used.  If you have two groups both employing hack and slash tactics then the bigger group is almost always gonna win.  If you send the bigger army of hack and slashers against a smaller force that decides to use ranged weapons and mobility then the outcome isn't as easy to figure out.  This game should be interesting just for the little bit of unknown factor in every battle or conquest.

Depending on how tactical combat works, you should be able to move units into a formation that you want. Might be nice if there's a way to set it up so that the army automatically deploys in that formation when combat starts, though.

It's a trade off.  Large armies move on their stomache.  A small raiding party can subsist off the environment in plentiful areas.  A ten thousand man army needs an army of caravans supporting it.  The same type of drawback goes for large formations.  A phalanx is an impenetrable wall of shields and spears from the front, but changing facing is a significant undertaking and marching while holding that formation takes great care.  Something like a hedgehog formation, while being ridiculous to assault from any direction, is also purely defensive as you can't really walk backwards or sideways in formation while armed and armored.

If supply and mobility are done realistically, big and badass isn't always the best way to go.  You can cut the supply lines of that huge army with small raiding parties.  You can flank and route the huge formation using significantly smaller forces so it can't meet them all head on.

I want to have the choice. The battle system shoud let you decide what you need : a small raider force ? Or a huge army to crush enemies ? Or an army to take cities and hold them ? Or berserk units to try to harm a powerfull player (some kind of suicidal stack)

I hope to get wide tactical options pre-battle, in-battle and after-battle. They are more interesting than hard or soft counters. A good battle mechanism need gameplay options, not just different kind of attributes.So, small, big, hit and run, etc armies would be viable.