Training soldiers individually or in units?

[Thijs_Razor]

Hi there,

I'm new here and having read about this game I wanted to know more.

As far as I've noticed this wonderful game (so far) will be much like the Age of Empires series.

As much as I love the series and the atmosphere, one thing really bothered me.

When you train a unit you only have one soldier and after training a few more you have a bunch of them. But this system always turned out to be a mess during fighting, because althoug you were able to group them, you were able to have a spearman, a swordsman, an archer and a cavalryman in the same group/formation. The trained soldiers are basically all individuals. And not just that, you were also able to commit a single pikeman individually to a melee.

Wouldn't it be an idea to train a unit of 10-20 soldiers? Especially for spearmen/pikemen/phalangites it would be quite stupid that you can train only one soldier of them at a time and commit them to a fight individually while it's strength lay in having several pikemen standing in a formation.

Same goes for Roman legionaries, barbarian warbands (more or less) etc.

Now I understand that you can't have hundreds of soldiers in a unit, or thousands on a battlefield.

It's just that controlling a bunch of individuals is very weird for certain cultures (Romans, Greeks&Co)while formation was the key to victory.

Example:

For the Romans you could train a 'cohort of legionaries' or a 'maniple of hastati' comprising 20 soldiers

for the Greeks you can train phalangites in a unit of 20 soldiers

I hope you get my point.

Btw, the game called 'Cossacks' came to mind. There you could train pikemen indidvidually and after you trained an officer and a drummer you were able to group them in units of 36, 72, 120 etc.

[Belisarivs]

0AD will be pretty much the same (meaning gameplay, not technology etc.) aas Age of Kings.

Pop limit will be quite low (compared to reality or Total War games). Therefore training in larger groups wouldn't be good because you would reach pop cap pretty quickly.

Keep in mind, this isn't Total War game where developers can play with LOD and thus saving memory.

You'll see all units from same "distance" and therefore in full detail.

Also, Citizen Soldiers would be harder to control if you want to let some of them do farming, another mining ....

But you can put units in fixed unique formations (yeah, much like Cossacks, but forget those numbers).

Legions can have Testudo, Petzhetairoi Phalanx (or WTF was its name), horses can form wedge and so on.

Edited April 24, 2008 by Belisarivs

[Thijs_Razor]

Ah alright I see.

Perhaps including officers á la 'Cossacks' is an idea so that when you have 20 soldiers you can recruit an officer giving them the ability to form formations and perhaps other bonusses?

20 soldiers in a single unit wouldn't be a great deal, counting the amount of soldiers in the in-game movie.

[Mythos_Ruler]

When training units, you'll be able to train them in "batches" from 5 - 20 or more (there will be a cost benefit to training bigger batches, but of course will take longer than training 1 at a time)). When fighting, you can use formations. When soldiers are put into formation you can use them just like in Rome:Total War. They essentially become one "unit" until you take them out of the formation or until too many individual soldiers die; in such a case the formation "breaks" and all the soldiers are individual units again.

Oh, and the Macedonian Pezhetairoi use the "syntagma" formation, while Hoplitai and Spartiates will utilize the "phalanx" formation.

[Thijs_Razor]

Ah I see. Thanks for the explanation!

Btw, the screenshots show quite alot of soldiers... are those ingame or are they just snapshots intended for showing the differences between the Macedonian 'syntagma' and the Greek 'phlananx'?

(I hope not... )

[Mythos_Ruler]

The graphic is only an illustration for a gigantic history article on our website.

History and Evolution of the Hellenic Phalanx

[Thijs_Razor]

Great!

Too bad that 150 is the population max. (yep, I discovered the FAQ )

I hope it turns out that the population max can be easily increased.

Would it be moddable or will this be hardcoded? Or even better, it would be nice if you could increase or decrease the population maximum in the options menu...

[Mythos_Ruler]

The pop cap is not set in stone and I am fairly confident we will allow the game host to determine the max pop cap of a particular game session.

[Justinian]

so lets say the host sets pop cap to 1000.

does that mean it will be split evenly through the (eg/ 4) players. making 250pp in a 4p match (p = player)

or does that mean 1000 soldiers for all.

[Mythos_Ruler]

That's a fairly academic question isn't it? I mean, we can represent it any way to the game host/players, but it all comes out the same in the end, whether it's shown as 250 per player or 1000 per game or any other way you choose to represent the pop cap.

I'd say 1000 per player is high. Your average battle, we are aiming for, would be 150 or so units per player duking it out on the battlefield (add in 50-100 units gathering resources and building structures and you get a pop cap of 250). We'll try to make it so battles are more decisive. We'll try to make it worth every player's benefit to set up his armies and use tactical maneuvers to destroy the enemy's army in an actual set-piece battle, rather than just a huge mosh pit in the middle of the map like in most other RTS games. To do that will take a lot of tweaking and play testing.

[Justinian]

a huge mosh pit in the middle of the map like in most other RTS games.

Sounds like Dawn of War

To do that will take a lot of tweaking and play testing.

I look forward to it !

Also I was wondering whether Roman troops were flatpack (faster movement but have to be armed before battle).

Edited April 25, 2008 by Scipii_Alemanus

[MrBlack103]

We'll try to make it worth every player's benefit to set up his armies and use tactical maneuvers to destroy the enemy's army in an actual set-piece battle, rather than just a huge mosh pit in the middle of the map like in most other RTS games.

Yeah, I hate it in most other RTS's how all the units end up being treated as utterly disposable. When this happens, everyone just uses the cheaper, quick to create units over the stronger (and cooler!) ones.

[Apomonomenos]

Maybe you could set an option tool that'll allow the training of 1-5 units per bunch, but the catch is the more units the slower the training (a constant stream of soldiers is like sending 1 soldier at a time against an army burning your town)