Yeah, you're right that they'll probably fix the "WHAT THE $&#*!" moments in the beta, landisaurus. But in retrospect, I should have been more specific on the "feeling of unfairness". In Civilizations series, for example, you might have a unit of riflemen attacking a unit of Longbowmen. Now logic would dictate that the Riflemen would hose the bowmen, but for some perverse reason the archers win! Or worse, you send a tank to crush crossbowmen and the tank is scrap. This sort of thing has happen to me before in Civ 3 and 4, and caused a lot of WTF moments. In both Rome: Total War and Medieval 2: Total War I had a fairly good idea as to what went wrong. But in Civ 3 and 4, all i could do is send a massive wave, one unit at a time, to capture a city and expect to lose half of my men even when i had the dramatically superior forces and technology.

I too hope that there will be a balancer system for unit customization. Naturally, if you create a super heavy infantry model equipped with the best and most armor, a tower shield, a sword and bow it would, and should, come with a hefty price tag and take several turns to fully train where as a simple model of spearmen given rudementary armor and maybe a small shield would be pretty cheap and take very little time to recruit. But in the end, that super heavy infantry would be worth the time and gold to make them.

Stimpacks anyone?

The conversion rate seems like a very good, and simple, idea. it does put everything in perspective. A basic stat configuration to help give a comparison would go far, if not a long way, in helping us see what we're getting ourselves into. Both a Heavy Infantry and a Cavalry models, if i'm reading you right, might have the same attack and defence stats but without those horses the cavalry unit would be comparibly weaker and be just as slow as the Heavy Infantry unit. Thus making the only difference between the two units is that the Cavalry unit is much faster and more manueverable. Of course, depending on the quality of the horses or whether there is an option for factions, previous or player created, to have specific animal husbandry bonus(es), like boosted attack, defence, speed or price reduction, a cavalry unit may be more cost (both gold and training time (turns)) effective than said infantrymen.

Another aspect to take into consideration is weapons. Lets look at the variables between a spear, an axe and a broadsword and ignore the other weapon varients (like halberds, pikes, bows, two-hander weapons and pitchforks) for the time being.

Cost and Quantity of Materials Needed: the amount of metal required to make one basic broadsword would be the equivalent, oh lets just say, 5 basic spearheads and axes would fall somewhere in the middle. From this alone, spearmen would naturally be cheaper to produce and maintain than swordsmen.

Training: Spears, being straight forward, don't require much training in their use; remember stick'em with the pointy end. Axemen on other hand need more training time so they don't accidently turn themselves into eunichs. And swordsmen, well, require even more extensive training because of the weapon's versatility.

Attack and Defense: I consider spears to be more of a defensive weapon (in that they keep an enemy at a distance but limit attack options as they are best used as thrusting weapons). So as a balancing factor we could make spears have a weaker attack but an okay defensive ratio. Axes are all about aggression and hitting the enemy hard but give little in the way of defense. And swords being naturally more versatile would have a more balanced ratio.

Or put in numerical terms of AP (Attack Points) DP (Defense Points) TN (Turns Needed) UM (Units of said Metal) and $ (cost) to train a single Spearman, Axeman and Swordsman. (Just the requirements for the weapons alone)

Spearman: 1AP 3DP 3TN 1UM 5$ Axeman: 3AP 1DP 5TN 2.5UM 7$ Swordsman: 3AP 3DP 7TN 5UM 10$

Of course, this is just a rough sketch that could help make players decide on how they want their armies configured just from weapon selections alone. And you probably noticed, I didn't add weapon characteristics on purpose like Spears bonus against Cavalry (which I consider just a tactical advantage not a Scissor's beat Paper absolute, cause under the right circumstances a force of cavalry could wipe out a force of spearmen).

Oh and I did checkout Frogboy's latest info tease...after you mentioned it.   I guess it would have been funnier if i had posted this a day prior. but at least he answered two of this post's questions.

Hm... If I think about it, it would be a good idea to have basic categories for creating equipment/units.

During weapon creation, you have to choose the type of weapon you want to build (longe range: bow, close quarter: sword, extended reach:pike, siege: catapult) . The categories themself already come with a predefined set of values/ abilities:

long range has an attack value of 1. It's special ability is that it can attack everything within 5 tiles of the archer during the combat. It comes with a defence of 0 and has a -2 attack value in the forest or during rain (if weather effects will be included).

Based on this category, one can start to build better equippment: from leather reinforcment (allows for higher tension of the bow and thus longer reach (+1 on reach: the archer can attack everything within 6 tiles now)) up to the iron reinforced semi automatic loading crossbow... You get the idea.

I have no clue how the final system is going to work. But I would love if one could somehow merge units to form a new one: There is the archer and just in front of him a swordsman with a huge shield protecting both of them from long range weapons. If there is a close quarter combat, the swordsman automatically defends the archer, thus both function as a single unit. This would basically result in an archer with high defence capabilities. However, it needs two men, and the proper equipment, making it a very expensive unit.

Man, the possibilities!

Yeah, just wait for my bear cavalery with their swiss army pike of doom... Eating a lot of buttered bread and having a fable for gardening...

@ Fenhiro:

Yeah, you might be right, it might complicate things a bit.

However, there have been other historical examples in which there actually have been teams of archers and shieldmen. Just googled it and found this:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/articles/defensive_archery.html

Of course, a secondary type of weapon/defense system would be a good thing. I personally would love to additionally combine things, too (just like in the archer/swordmen example. The basic costs would be the same for the combination of those units compared to the single units. By combining, however, the archers would get the swordman's shield defence, too, thus having a higher survivability than the single archer unit. This would come at a cost though as the swordman can no longer move around freely.)

My fear is the following: we end up with sth similair like the spore generator: purely asthetics. Thus we need complexity for the generator. I hope we don't just get a sword +1, teched up to +2 and then to +3. I would like to be able to decide if the unit uses a longsword and a shield or a twohanded weapon which does not allow to have a shield. i would also like to define some abilites for the equipment. like a pike having a bonus against riders and things like that.

Well, it might be indeed too complicated...

Yeah I forgot about the practicality of archers being behind large pavise shields and mantlets, of course, if my memory serves me right these kind of defenses were used primarily in siege battles (to protect your archers from the besieged enemies own archers).

On a historical level, it wasn't uncommon for small groups of archers to integrate with more melee oriented infantrymen and cavalry, especially in skirmishes. But for pitched battles, segregating troop types was more practical. And from what frogboy  said about the general idea of battles, early game battles will be minor skirmishes with only a handful of troops (so having a good mix of troop types is only sound) at your command where each unit is an individual rather than a representive of a unit and thus more precious, in a sense. Then as the game progresses the individual units become larger in number until we get Lord of The Rings battle for Minas Tirith preportions.

Another unit customization item, that i personally think would be sweet, which allows us pick special abilities buttons that are either gear oriented or not.

      Examples: Say you give a unit a massive shield you could give your unit the option to form up into a testudo or a shied wall formations or give them a technique like shield bash. Or if they have spear like weapons you could select the abilities to form up into either a phalanxe or a hedgehog formation. Other, non-gear oriented, abilities could include: Stealth (ideal for ambushes and concealing troop strength), a CHARGE! attack ability that boosts speed and attack (good for infantry, even better for cavalry), but gives a negative side affect like weaker defense, if balancing is needed or the ability to setup boobytraps like sharpen stakes (a bonus defensive against enemy troops, most likely cavalry)

Now how can these be balanced? 1.) research the needed Techs. 2.) require specific facilities like a ninja school or thieves guild to train specifieds units in stealth. 3.) make progressive upgrades from relatively weak to increasinly better versions. 4.) require a certain amount of money and time needed to produce units with said abilities (but not maintain; you don't need gold to maintain a skill or ability). 5.) limit the number of abilities a unit can have (soldiers would get very few but heroes would have more cause they're, well, heroes). 6.) a cooldown period might work depending on the ability. 7) have a natural counter like say an enemy troop form up into a phalanxe and you have catapults (which would do more damage to said troops for they're more compact).   and 8.) negative side effects like said previously for CHARGE!.

But the beauty is that these are just plain, unmagicked, abilities and would not deprive your Channeller of precious mana.

I for one would love to build a nice force of battlefield assassins to harrass, ambush and confound my opponents.

How did that 3 get in there?  

I've been wandering where that thread was... been trying to find it for days.

 Actually part of the problem was I forgot what the thread was called, so it was partially my fault.