What is the maximum number of units Pyrogenesis can handle in a large-scale battle?

[El Maker]

Hi everyone!

I was wondering about something, but I couldn't find an answer on the forum, so I thought I'd ask here !

Games like the original Rome: Total War can display thousands of soldiers on the battlefield. How does 0 A.D. compare in terms of its technical capabilities ? More specifically, how many units (or buildings) can the Pyrogenesis engine theoretically handle? I'm not talking about hardware limitations or FPS, but rather the engine's own technical limits.

Thanks !

[Stan`]

There is no limit per se. Just depends on your hardware. At some point you'll probably run out of VRAM.

[vladislavbelov]

Currently there is only one artificial limitation - silhouettes system. It stores occluders as 16-bits indices to save memory. So we can have at most 65k units with silhouettes enabled. Without it's limited only by hardware as @Stan` said. But the silhouettes system is very easy to improve to not have that limitation.

[Supermoon]

On 16/10/2026 at 6:22 PM, El Maker said:

Hi everyone!

I was wondering about something, but I couldn't find an answer on the forum, so I thought I'd ask here !

Games like the original Rome: Total War can display thousands of soldiers on the battlefield. How does 0 A.D. compare in terms of its technical capabilities ? More specifically, how many units (or buildings) can the Pyrogenesis engine theoretically handle? I'm not talking about hardware limitations or FPS, but rather the engine's own technical limits.

Thanks !

That’s an interesting question! I think the main difference is how the engine handles unit behavior and game logic, not just how many models it can display. The actual limit probably depends on things like pathfinding, AI calculations, and how the game updates each unit. It would be interesting to see some stress tests showing how many units Pyrogenesis can handle before the engine itself becomes a bottleneck.