Partys vs Groups vs Etc

Give traits that allow for better use of small groups, that would be my take, like a trait that gives you +1 defence and attack for each unit in your stack you have less than the attacker / defender (prolly some balancing needed)

Small versions of "overpower" (Overpower multiplies the damage by the amount of units in the target stack) like +1 damage per unit in the target stack.

another good idea would be monsters notice small stacks less, so a party is less likely to be noticed on the overland map than a... whatever have 9 units

More fantastic creatures, and even moreso, let some of the fantastic creatures use party upgrades (sounds more interesting now actually :P)

Nice Idea Firefly

Meaby an experience bonus to small stacks?

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Just stewing over this a little, but maybe have an 'elite' %chance exist where smaller stacks have a better chance than larger groups due to the focus of training, whether it be off or on the battlefield.

 This would give the decision to the player to either have smaller groups with a greater % elite chance, or larger groups with a smaller % elite chance.

This can always be controlled by the leveling of your unit....higher level units increase the chance at becoming elite. This way, you don't necessarily have units that have gobs of hp just because they've put in the time....they need to be a little lucky too.

I don't like this, a random chance on more power on building units make the early game very randomly either easy or hard.
Besides for the actual of just spamming units until you have elite units, because they are the only "viable" units

Sincerely
~ Kongde

Well if you made perks that cost 100 or 200 labor/figure it would probably encourage you to make smaller units to some degree. The problem is that because you have a limited number of units per battle (i.e. you cant have 30+ units in battle), you will always want to have as many figures/unit as possible. It all comes down to density.

Since units get lots of HP on level up, offensive power is the most important. Iron Golems have high defense but low attack, making them pretty weak overall.

Basically, I don't think there is any way to fix the problem without letting you bring multiple armies into battle. Having traits that are limited to parties of 3 figures would help I suppose (like elite: +1 hp /lvl, +1 defense/lvl, and +1 attack/lvl), but you would have to have artificial restrictions to make sure its only available to a party.

I've never really seen the benefits of having the variable numbers of parties in the game. All it does is make the game more difficult to balance.

I think its fantastic if balanced properly, just needs a balance nut somewhere in the dev department,

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Couldn't agree more.

Now that you mention it, I think having players design the size of the groups seems superfluous.

How about all sizes are unlocked at the beginning, but the size depends on the labor cost?

So if the unit costs less than 50 labor, its 9 figures/unit, if it costs 50-100, its 7, if its 100-200 its 5, if its 200+ its 3. I don't know exactly what the average labor cost/unit is but something like this would make it more interesting perhaps? This would be closer to how MoM did things.

I suppose you could have the techs that improve the size just change the labor requirements, so instead of 50 labor being the threshold for 9, after researching the technology you get 75 for 9, allowing better equipment for your large groups. A side effect of this system is that in addition to managing encumbrance now you have to manage this as well, I wonder if it would be tedious.

If you have the option of all sizes, and are not pressed for time, there is no reason to not always use the largest unit size possible. 9 person company is and always will be fully 3x as good at dealing damage than a 3 person unit, and will have 3x as many hps, so it will take 3x as much damage to kill them than a lowest size unit.

I personally prefer the balance and flavor that comes with predefined units, but that's not what FE "is". It is more an RPG game, and choices like unit size are good. They should, however, be choices instead of just "biggest unit always", or "research up to groups of five and call it good".

I really like the OP's suggestion that there be abilities which are limited to smaller groups which help balance them against larger units.

Alternately, if you split the encounter XP up by individual, and make the larger units take more XP to level, that could balance really quite nicely.

It would make a level 3 unit of 3 roughly the same as a level 1 unit of 9 in terms of soaking ability, and since they would lose their "models" at a lower rate than the 9 person unit, would retain combat viability across a larger portion of their health over time (more total hps per model offsetting more total damage output of the larger unit).

I like this idea, actually.  It emphasizes the difference between a disposable tidal wave of cannon fodder vs. a highly elite, well-equipped fighting force.  The biggest problem to this I can think of is that it's extremely unintuitive (why are my armies getting smaller as my understanding of combat is getting better?), but it certainly is a way to give poorly-equipped factions a more fighting chance.

I've never really seen the benefits of having the variable numbers of parties in the game. All it does is make the game more difficult to balance.

This is very true. It always makes me wait to really start building an army until I can build groups. As parties and whatnot cannot be upgraded to groups, everything before groups seems worthless.

I'd love to hear from a developer on this topic.