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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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