I agree that both forms of killer stacks should be discouraged most of the time.

The AoW2 style 'killer stack' can be solved by not imposing stringent absolute limits to army sizes. This can be done in lots of ways (making army size dependent on logistics/leadership, etc).

The Civ IV 'killer stack' can be solved by making it strategically advantageous to divide said stack into smaller ones. This can be done by making meaningful defensive locations (in most games you can just go right around them). Like Psychoak and some others said, morale could be used as a mechanism to make killer stacks less effective (or more risky) within tactical combat. There could also be major movement penalties to large armies for moving across even slightly rough terrain (the penalty could increase with size); meaning smaller armies could effectively run circles around massive killer stacks. Especially if there's any sort of supply train mechanism in place (and a way to disrupt them), this would mean small forces could incapacitate huge ones without even getting into tactical combat - and thus removing the killer stack's one advantage (better chances in tactical combat).

Basically, I want this issue to be solved by adding in more/different strategic considerations, not be adding in or changing arbitrary limitations.

This is the main point. The whole reason we have killer stacks in the first place is because of the stack limits. In early game elite units are rare and can still be overwhelmed by large armies of normal units. Even if the elite units can't be defeated in one battle you can still wear them down using succesive waves of weak infantry. However after a certain point the elites can muster enough power that they can defeat an entire normal stack without taking a scratch. This is when it becomes a killer stack.

Instead of using the arbitrary unit stack limit we can just use other ways to control stack size. There should be distinct pros and cons versus using a large mook army versus a small spartan army. For example one pro of elite units require less and respond better to leadership because of superior discipline. A con would be that elite units require more supplies and thier equipment is more expensive to maintain.

Discipline and Logistics decide how big a unit you can send into the field. Leadership controls how many units you can form into an army. The denser your units are on the overland map the more supply they require because fewer of them can live off the land by foraging.

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On a side note, global spell splash damage should be calculated on a tactical level. If you could hit my entire army just by hitting my "stack" with a fireball then you close the door to special tactics. If I could spread my army out into a big cloud then blast effects like a fireball spell would affect them much less. The tradeoff is that logistics become a lot more complicated and that same army will be vulnerable to ambush because the seperate parts will no longer be able to protect each other as well.

This is different from simply making multiple armies, each with a single unit. If you go that route then you will need a leader for each force. Having independant armies would be handy in other situations but with pitched battles and sieges you are better off with one.

No it's only one of the main points. If you only remove stack limits, all you do is trade AoW2/HoMM/MoM-style killer stacks for Civ IV style killer stacks. I hope they do something to make multiple armies the norm during war in Elemental. It makes conflicts much more interesting and exciting, in my opinion. The rest of your post makes it pretty clear that you agree with me, I think; but I just wanted to point out that there are two equally important 'main points' to this discussion.

Whats a CiV style killer stack? I never got into the combat portion of that game much but I didn't play it for long.

Good question....

In CivIV you could stack as many units as you liked. However, combat was always one unit against another unit. One unit could only attack once and it had no control over which unit in the target square it attacked. Units could defend multiple times.

So if you had heaps more units in a stack than your opponent (say 20 vs 3), you would eventually wear him down because after three battles you still had 17 fresh units whereas he was defending with units that had probably already taken damage in the three battles before.

However...

I don't really see why that is a problem.

For one, as combat is always unit against unit, it doesn't really matter if your units are stacked or spread out. You could split your one stack into four and attack the same square from four different sides. It doesn't make a difference as far as your chances are concerned.

And if I can build an army that outnumbers my opponent 4:1 or more, then I should win a battle without much trouble (unless his equipment is far superior or his position is extremely difficult to take).

So saying that you shouldn't be able to stack units as in CivIV sounds to me like saying you shouldn't be able to amass an army that is far superior to that of your opponent.

Well, what I meant is that in Civ IV you can literally stack your entire army into one spot. That isn't a problem in Civ IV because, quite frankly, it's a silly idea; combat is always 1v1, the advantage you gain by splitting up your forces to cover more terrain far outweighs the advantage of having one stack of units that your opponent has no chance of stopping.

But in a game like Elemental, where there is going to be actual tactical combat, being able to pool your entire military might into one army, creating a massive 'killer stack' capable of destroying everything in its path could become a problem. If two players have identical forces, but one splits it up into 3 armies while the other combines everything into one massive one, then without other factors coming into play the combined army will have the advantage. In pretty much every game involving tactical combat I've ever played, larger armies are more efficient because you will lose many fewer casualties. So in this case the player with split armies might engage his opponent's killer stack with one of his 3 forces - the result will tend to be the smaller army being obliterated with the larger army recieving minmimal casualties. Repeat this 2 more times and the player who split his forces will have nothing left, while the player who combined his forces will have lost almost nothing.

That's what I want them to avoid. I want them to make it so that pooling all or most of your military into one unstoppable army is more often than not a strategically inferior choice. This can be done by introducing vulnerabilities for larger armies that aren't significant for smaller ones, by limiting large armies' movements in major ways, making it possible to harass armies without engaging in full-on tactical combat (or also by disrupting supply lines), by making splash damage spells a major threat, by making actual strategic points on the map that make splitting your army worthwhile, etc.

Of course, a Civ killer stack was highly vulnerable to artillery. That was how you beat them: cannons and the like would fight one unit but damage 5 more at the same time. So you sacrifce some cannon, but his entire stack is now wounded and your smaller stack can pound on it.

Elemental can do similar things with magic. If you lump your entire army in one spot, its an awfully tempting target for a meteor.

But that can't be the only counter. What about a player who sacrificed much of his channeler's magical power for more settlements or more powerful units? Or a player that focuses on healing/defensive magic? If the only real counter to a gian killer stack of doom is to have powerful map-level offensive spells... well, I foresee problems. It would be nice if that were just one solution to it, but I still would rather see more subtle strategic factors play into it.

Then why not get rid of map tiles then? Killer stacks only look stupid because they stuff a ridiculous number of units into one small map tile. If you allowed the army to spill over the edges you could still navigate that army by tile, but then when battle is joined the army takes up a realistic amount of space on a tactical scale.

If you have a fortress set into a mountain valley you can go ahead and recreate helms deep. But if "helms deep" is just a hole in the mountain wall 10 feet wide then it doesn't matter how many troops are on the field, only a small number of them can fight each other at a time.

There are easier ways to solve that problem.  First is morale.  If all of the units in an army fight to the death regardless of quality then your large armies will always have an advantage over smaller armies.  However if morale is a factor then your small, well trained armies will have the opportunity to defeat a much larger army by punching through and creating disorder and panic among the enemy ranks.  Second is terrain.  If a defending army can pick where it is going to fight (or at least have decent odds of getting to pick where it is going to fight) then it can pick restrictive terrain that helps to neutralize the numbers of a larger force.  And finally is attrition.  Prior to the advent of industrial warfare, for the most part armies marched on their stomachs.  Disease and starvation almost always caused greater loss than battle, and any army not in its permanent garrison was consumed by a continual search for food and drinking water.  So attrition makes keeping a large force in the field far more difficult than the keeping of a small force.  At that point the player must confront the age old military axiom of the large army starves while the smaller army gets beaten.  That forces players to make a real choice with costs and benefits to both decisions.

If I understand correctly you have to make a choice anyway whether you want to have a powerful channeler or give up some of your power to found new cities or create powerful heroes.

More cities means more units per turn and more units and powerful heroes means a more powerful army. So there is some sort of balance already between a powerful army and a wimpy channeler vs a smaller army and more powerful channeler.

If there are too many additional restrictions placed on building up a powerful army, there will not be much point in building units and channelers will just stay home and fling meteorites at each other .

the easiest way to prevent killer stacks, is to implement a supply system. If an army is going to move, then they will need a supply of food, goods, and weapons/tools.

Lets say you include supply wagons.

You can have it so your army can hold supply for 2-5 turns, before needing more supply in the form of wagons.

And new wagons would then be continually sendt from your cities to feed your army.

Well in that case a single killer army would not be possible, and you would have to spit up your army, because you would need to protect those supply wagons, or see your units die out from starvation. The raider could just do hit and run attacks.

Supply could be used as an upkeep mecanism. Each tile will ofcourse offer some food, where there is habitable land for units to feed on. If used as an upkeep mecanism supply should be needed when they are in cities too, but the wagons may not be needed.

This idea will limit the size of an army!

Also do not limit the singletile army size to 8 units. If you want to limit the army size that a single tile can hold, use a population limit instead! That way cheap massable units might accually be useful in the lategame.

That's not quite the problem we're trying to address here, though. Take two equal players - equivalent channelers and militaries. The problem we're trying to address is that massing your entire military into one army is, in nearly every game, the best way to go. If one player masses everything they have into one killer army, then the other player has to as well or they'll have no chance.

If one player has a military 2x the size of another, and all else is roughly equal (channeler, magic, heroes, etc), then the player with the larger military should still have a huge advantage over the smaller player. However, the best strategy shouldn't (at least not always) be to send in one massive killer stack - but to split up his larger army into smaller ones.

Attrition (with the supply system or foraging methods as stated above) is probably the best way to eliminate the killer stack.  If a massive army is extremely difficult to supply (and thus suffers losses from disease and starvation) there will be incentives to only produce sensibly sized armies.  Another way (if you don't want attrition) is to dramatically increase the maintenance costs for a large force, or introduce some kind of command limit for formations and armies (after all, beyond a point armies basically become an uncontrollable mob).  There are lots of ways to contain the "killer stack" army that is found in so many games, it is just that games that aren't striving for realism don't tend to implement them.

with real time fighting tbs a supply system is nessessary in my opinon. Because then a player will be forced to use at least a few armies in the attack of another player.

Also if a player has to use at least a few armies, then a single player is not dead just because he lost a single of his armies. He would have to lose a few armies for it to look hopeless.

Just one thing, do not make supply wagons too slow, or it will be almost impossible to invade another player. This needs playtesting

Of course they are juicey targets to raid if they are implemented. And if they are implemented different forms of supply stealer units could be implemented.

Also it could be implemented that if you manage to kill your opponents army, the supply he was carrying is now added to your wagons. possibly gaining some valuable loot. 

My solutions to Killer stacks was always create my own killer stack (maybe about half as deadly as their killer stack) and go attack their capital while they are trying to eat my cities. 

ok, maybe it doesn't solve the problem, but usually they are undefended since they just put 80% of their army into 1 stack.

It isn't as potent in MoM as it is later games (like HoMM or Civ) but I don't think we'll have the problem exactly like MoM in this game due to stack limitation changes.  We'll just have to see it when the combat beta hits.

Well, IF there is an upkeep system on units, the killer stack can be defeated by fast raiders in the enemies caravan routes (which will also increase your resource income).  Once the enemy loses the ability to pay/supply his troops = killer stack starts to implode.

Or, maybe they'll use the same 'upkeep system' as Sins = killer stack guys make FAR less income than the more military restrained players.

Grrr, there is so much reading for me to catch up on.  Does anyone know for sure what kind of unit upkeep system will they be using?  Will it be about population tax versus 'per unit' upkeep cost?  Or will it be a tech level = more troops but income penalty system?  Or will it be something else entirely?

I don't think that any kind of upkeep system will discourage killer stacks. The main problem with killer stacks is that it is almost always a bad idea to split your army into two strong stacks (instead of a single very strong one). Limiting stacks size could work, but this solution add its part of unpleasantness. Reducing big armies speed sounds better, as it still allows for epic battles between huge stacks, and force the player to focus on smaller raiding groups for most of his fighting.

Another solution would be to reduce the effectiveness of big armies in battle. Not by a small reduction in strength, but by forcing the battleground to be larger, and spreading the large army over a large area (preferably larger than the ranged units range). That way, big numbers wouldn't get a square advantage, but only a mostly linear one (strength of army ~= size, instead of strength of army ~= size^2).

I tend to favour the kind of attrition/ supply approach, some have mentioned: yeah, one huge stack is entirely possible, but it will take either measures to keep it at full strength or else it will deteriorate in fighting capacity. maybe RoN's supply carts could be expanded on somehow. for example with a general base level of army you can support ( apt to increase via research, abilities or other ways) and beyond that you'd need supply units that cover a set amount each. that means that if you do insist on a SoD, you will have to invest in supply carts, which have no fighting capacity, but do require enough resources to build so that it makes a difference. it also leaves you vulnerable to focused attacks on supply units (think about your army inside enemy territory losing its resupply capacity and slowly losing health every turn.)

I also liked the idea of bringing in land effects. fertile grass lands would naturally support more troops than deserts or tundras. it just might be a bit difficult to integrate it without making it overly complicated.

The killer stack was my biggest pet peeve in MoM as well.

Large killer units was not the problem.  It was the killer stack.  Other than Torin there was no unit that was too overpowering (The Chaos and Sky Drakes were a bit over powered but could be handled).

When you had Torin, a Sky Drake, a caster hero, and a few Paladins or Slingers in a single stack nothing but another killer stack could touch it.  With such a small unit cap per stack and so few units with synergies in the late game you either had a killer stack or you were dead.  I would like no unit limit and more units with synergies so that you have more options (Large synergy army vs a amall army of killer units).

Sammual