Drop Unit Design in favor of Army Deployment

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No.

Just.. no.

Did I state the suggestion plainly enough?  This isn't so radical.  It basically moves assigning equipment from the first step to the last.  Which solves one of the problems mentioned by the devs.

Ever handled a rifle?  Does training on it prepare you to TC a tank?  Having done both I assure you it doesn't.  Soldiers need training on the weapons and tactics they are going to use, not just generic "training" on being a soldier.

Yeah, it's not that different.  It has merit but I'm worried it could up the micromanagement up quite a bit.  Instead of having only one recruit order you are dividing into several pieces.  First recruit, then train, then finally equip.  Not too bad but if we are recuiting from 10 cities across our empire it could get unwieldy perhaps.  Still it adds some realism which is a good thing.  For me it's a bit too early to know if I like the current system or not as it is very bare bones and we don't have the resources or training in yet.

He could just change the order to fix this.  Recruit, equip then train.

Ok so then you designate what kind of weapons your troops will be trained with before training starts, and if you do not have that specific weapon in the storehouse when they roll out then they will use something that they are less proficent at.  Or you equip them before they are trained.

I am a fan of this idea.  It is far more representitive of how armies are actually requistioned.  Also I very much like the idea army as being a cohesive unit (not a unit in game terms but instead a unit interms of it acting as one) rather that disparate and segemented peices.  Armies would become a collection of peices acting (or attempting to act) as a cooridianted whole.  What is important is that things like generals would become very imporant if you treated an army as a whole, as they are who coordinates it.  I dont know how it would be done in game terms, like some abstracted bonuses provided by generals, or if generals could have special tactics and things that would be become custom to the army, and the composition of a specific army.  Some generals and of course armies would be better at small scale conflicts while others have the ability to seige.

I really just think it would be wonderful to have certain the 14th imperial legion and tales of its exploits instead of just a loose collection of units. Or the terrible and infamous seige tactics of the 7th army with their world renown ironclad heavy infantry led by General Whatever.

 The unit design seems to be a fundamental concept of what makes Elemental the game it is. So much so that the initial framework is already in this stage of beta.

I doubt there will be deviation, only tweaks.

So wait you want to remove creating units and replace it with creating armies?

So instead of having an army of say 12 units (7 footmen and 5 knigths) you'd rather just have 1 unit called "101 army".

How would you deal with tactical battles like that? Afterall an army is the sum of its parts not just a group of peasents given weapons. So in the first model I'd have 7 block units for holding units and 5 flanking units. Where as you'd have one large random mob?

Armies work by using combined arms right?, Rather than just by counting the number bums in plate mail?

Sorry Klaxton I'm feeling slighlty thick today . And can't see the praticalities of how this system would work.

I'd rather design units, build troops, and then have the option to take a bunch of troops I made and combine them into a single "army" structure. How does this idea work if I want to build one scout?

Sorry, I just think it works better as is, provided we gain a way to assemble armies.

If we design units and assign the variety of units to an army, I hope we can still name the army and assign leaders appropriate to the task.  This would be similar to the 'Cross of Iron' system:  Leaders with traits who gain experience, armies built of units with individual characteristics which also gain experience.  You can still name the army, name the units, and give both units and armies medals if earned (perhaps by addind a * of # after their name).  You can also add/subtract units to the army organization based on tasks to be done or areas to be garrisoned.

So I think that the currently proposed unit system should work well.

I sincerely appreciate all the feedback.  I did not mean to give the impression that I wanted unit/army design to be more complex.  In my mind, training was automatic.  It began as soon as the units were requisitioned and continued until they were mobilized.  The main focus of the suggestion was to alleviate the missing equipment problem and have a game mechanic for upgrading units.  But again I appreciate the discussion even the parts that disagree with the original post.  Thank you.

Recruiting units, training them and then equipping? Sure, that's awesome (I already proposed something like this). Point is, I can't understand your proposal, or I vote no, from what I grasped. It's hard to describe what's wrong - I just got this feeling that playing such game wouldn't make me happy.

As it is now you CAN make an army. As you have already seen, you can make stacks of units (is it 10x?). I think it's enough. Just go to the unit editor, select the race (if it ever happen), training, weapon, armor, misc. and probably some optional mount. Then you just select how many of those you want to train. Fin. Making the game so army-centric makes the game somewhat too simple.

 NO  -based from what I have gathered.

I do however like flexible units/soldiers. What I mean by that, is essentially the unit will not be "eternally set in stone" once its created. Im assuming that soldiers won't die of old age (for gameplay reasons) ... so I see older soldier units being able to be "recycled" ... that is, take the units and their experience level, re-train and re-equip them, and reduce their level according to how much new training they need. Say, if their "first" bootcamp was 3 months, and this bootcamp is three months, divide experience/level by half, however if this new training is 6 months, their level is reduced to a third. (9 months of total training divided by the 3 months of original training their battles were based upon)

Or if you wan't to be really simplified, simply half their experience everytime they are re-trained. (however if training is divided into several key elements, an elite unit recycling into an uberelite unit should only require a small percentage, say 10% new relative training time ... therefore their level/experience will only be reduced by 10%.

equipment would have no effect on new level, since its assumed the soldiers will be equiped before training begins (otherwise there would be an inherent over-lap ... which would just be weird ... and also you need to be trained for your equipment). Also time it takes for the equipment to be made will have no effect on level ... only actual new "training" will reduce their relative level proportionally.

Ya Im with NO on this. I agree with what lwarmonger stated right on.

As individual units will likely die alot I would really like to have some system of creating battle groups wether they be armies or batallions or whatever. Each of these groups would develop unique characteristics based on their history. Newly formed groups would have no bonuses but battle hardened groups with a long history of battles would have unique bonuses fitted to their history and traditions. New units would take time to fit into a group and wouldn't fully take on the group traits until after a couple battles and if all the vetrans of a group were lost some of it's history might be gone forever. I think this would make the game very enjoyable.

Units will usually consist of more than one person. Currently its 10, I hope it grows to as many as 50-100 in a single unit (depending on type of unit).

The unit will gain experience as a unit, and you can take it to a city and spend time to *train* new recruits to join units that are low on numbers. Then you have your levelled unit with full numbers again. Hurray for you because your unit survived and was able to pass its own experience onto new recruits. Thats how I envisioned it, anyways.

But I would rather have 10-20 units of 50-100 soldiers rather than 2-5 "army groups" of (alot)400-600 soldiers

Having more units simply means more tactical flexibility ... rather than several large and sloppy *armies*