Sounds good, since having a feature like this would open up new strategical/tactical options on the battlefield.

well so far in the game you can create singles, party, company, platoon etc.  i would assume that you control them based on the type.  if you create 10 singles you would control them as a single, if you create a company then you control them as a company.  i do think you should be able to split them if you wanted to.

I would think that would be the way it was done, but, in most games once soldiers are placed together as a "unit" you can't grab just one guy. So if I have 100 Foot Soldiers, and I select 1 of them, it auto-selects all 100. Think more "Total War" style and less "Starcraft".

In Starcraft you can select 1 individual unit, or double click that same unit and select All of That Type of unit on screen. Starcraft how-ever is a RTS, not a TBS. Even though "Total War" is a TBS with RTS battles, when you have a group or "unit" of Knights in your army you can't select just one Knight in your group of Knights. When you click on him it selects All the Knights he's grouped with as they are in a "unit" which is in formation.

I'm Hoping that Elemental will have or allow Formations to play a part in the strategy of battles. If it does, or if it doesn't, I still think it would be useful to be able to "Split Groups" or "Split Units" during a battle.

Example: I have 50 Knights riding towards my enemy in a Wedge Formation. I decide during the charge to grab all the Knights in the back line of the Wedge and have them break off to the right. My enemy is concerned with fighting the charging wedge and concentrates it's defenses at that point. This leaves the small group of 10 or so Knights I pulled from the back of the Wedge to ride around and attack the defenders from the rear, which they should logically take more damage from a rear assault. (Hurts more being stabbed in the back since your shield is facing your front)

That explanation wasn't really aimed at you, John. I know you understood. I was just giving further example so I could further explain exactly what it is in detail to limit further confusion or simplification of the idea.

Either way, if I can I'll mod something like this into place for the Dragonlance Mod as I think it would be incredibly useful in the middle of a fight. Most games out there that would allow you to have 2 of the same type of grouped unit on screen at once would only let you change "units" and "unit counts" either before or after a battle, during the "strategy" or "planning" part of the game. They would Never, EVER, let you change that in the middle of a fight though. I don't think I've ever played a turn based battle game before that would let me do that and I've played hundreds of TBS Games since the early 80's.

I've played many games like that as well, Nick. Age of Empires 2 was a great game in it's day. Although, I don't think that limited type of system would fit into the turn-based X-Com style combat we're talking about for Elemental. I would hope very much it isn't as limiting as what you describe. While that was indeed a fun system for AoE2, Elemental makes Aoe2 look like "Pong" or "Checkers" when comparing depth and strategies and options like Magic and Monsters.

I have a question. I'm not particularly well-informed about memory usage. In Total War, there is a limit of 20 units on-screen at once because most people's computers couldn't handle more than that simultaneously, whether because of the memory issues of loading so many units at once, or because of the computing/graphical power needed to animate them all I dunno.

Does Elemental's combat now being turn-based () change things up at all? Will some of those hardware limitations be less restrictive now?

Also, memory limitations couldn't possibly be the reason for why we couldn't split up squads in TW during combat. Splitting up a squad of 40 soldiers into two squads of 20 soldiers, to be recombined at the end of combat, shouldn't take up more memory... I think it was just a matter of either keeping things simple, not enough time/resources to implement it, or a limitation of the engine.

Well yeah, but what I was wonder more specifically was whether the 20 unit limit in M2:TW is due to ram, or due to graphics and/or CPU? Or all three? I mean, I can see all of the above being relevant. The more units displayed the more ram required, but also the more intense the CPU and graphics requirements are. But in turn-based combat I'd imagine the CPU and graphics requirements would be lower as not everything is moving at once, nor in real time, nor do real time calculations have to be done to determine damage, etc.

Since we still don't know how the tactical combat / movement will work this might be invalid, but I can imagine some griefing/exploits that would be possible with this:

Since it is tilebased, you could split up you army into hundreds of single units that basically block all of the tiles between the enemy and your long range units or the border of the battlefield (if there is some kind of retreat-option).

With this, you seriously slow down a bigger army with a smaller amount of units. (If a unit has X actions per turn, and attacking a single unit is the same as attacking an army). If there is a turn limit you could use this to stall until reinforcements arrive, or, if they decide on a "winner takes all"-approach with a turn limit, win battles that you probably should have lost.

A single unit might not be as strong, but IF you only get a limited number of attacks per turn and IF you only get a limited number of turns per battle, this could be abused.

See: Advance Wars, were basically the only tactic that was used in multiplayer was walls of the infantry + artillery behind it.

I would "think" it would make sense to have the unit in questions Whole Turn to be used in doing a "Split Unit" command. Trained troops, under fire, can be trained to do formations. They did it revolutionary times constantly in the middle of a fight. Just look at Empire:TW. It should take at least one turn I think, just on principle.

This is where the differences between "Units", "Formations", and "Armies" come in. I can explain exactly how this works in the TW game (minus speaking in code even ). Here goes.

For Tactical Battles, when on a battle map, each "unit" had it's own movement speed. Obviously cavalry was much faster then foot units. If moved independently they move at different speeds. If you group selected them WITHOUT being in "Formation" then they would move at their independent movement rates. If they ARE in "Formation" then all the units would slow down to the movement rate of the slowest unit. I.E. cavalry would walk along side the foot-soldiers.

There was a group of pre-set Formations you could use or unlock with research, but the best players custom make their own formations suited to their preferred tactics.

I hope that clears it up for you John. I think you'd really enjoy any of the Total War games. My recommendation would be to get Medieval 2:Total War or Rome: Total War. Empire:TW is good too, but to me the peak in game-play was in Rome and Med2.

For now, since I've picked up Napoleon:TW and haven't even had time to play it yet, I think I'll wait for WW2:TW. If they keep going forward in time they'll get there soon enough.

In closing, to keep this about Elemental, I think this whole "Splitting Units Mid Battle" could be really handy and add a lot of "possible depth" to even turn based combat, with just the addition of one little option. Just by implementing it you open up the door to a lot of deep strategic planning during combat. It's true it's not a huge issue if it's not there. As we've seen almost no game allows this because they just don't think to add it I guess. With all the other options and set-ups and combinations of armies, something as simple as a mechanic like this can be easily over-looked.