That's why I wouldn't even call a non-fleet in GC2 a 'stack.' A stack moves as a single unit until it's disbanded. Ships outside of fleets in GC2 need to be moved individually.

On the other hand, I never even considered the idea of a champion as a necessary condition for using any 'logistics ability' in the first place. That seems...interesting.

Are general army sizes set? As in "This general can only have X units"

Or is it a bit more complex, where if you go past the generals commandling limit, you run the chance of units disbanding in it, lower quality, ect?

I'll be very sad if a hero is required for each army... The biggest downside is that it totally removes the decision of whether to rely heavily upon heroes or not; I was really excited for that. If you want to play at all militaristically, you'd be forced to invest heavily in heroes. On the other hand, if you told me that you could also recruit General or Captain units in lieu of champions for the purpose of leading an army, I would be happy. And I would be even happier if you told me that the size limit isn't a rigid cap but a threshold beyond which your army's efficiency degrades.

And I hope the base size limit is fairly large, or armies of rabble won't be viable and the stack of doom problem will rear its ugly head yet again.

I'm sure super dark Stormtroopers will be among the first custom user units.

"Stack of Death" can be worked around with different types of game mechanic.  Hard unit limits are one such method, though they can limit the "epic" feel of it, if they're too low.  Still, they can make sense: you don't want Joe Shmuck the local Alderman suddenly in charge of 50,000 professional soldiers.  The army just wouldn't function well (unless it had a decent, professional staff...).

If the games operational and strategic victory conditions--that is, those things which actually end the game, or those things which tend to lead to the game's conclusion--are such that single-point victories aren't very useful,t he "stack of death" isn't useful as well.  For example, enemy stack of death conquers a few cities, but you scatter your armies and order them to plunder and burn your own lands.  Result: large enemy army starves to death.

If tactics and formations matter, the "stack of death" may become a strategic liability: if it is lost in some catastrophe, the other side is lost, or nearly so (see: Battle of Lake Tremaine).

Just my 2 coppers, of course.

Mavor > Dragon

Well, it's already been stated that a generals "level" will affect how many troops (or maybe the total "power" all of his troops combined) he can command; that's good news to us.  With some type of  overland spells (like ice encasement, or freeze time) that damage or "hold" units in an entire area, that should help the stack-o-death problems too.  I remember in MoM, putting all your eggs in one basket could be dangerous when some of the more powerful overland spells came into play.

All I know is, we NEVER play Homm any more, cause it always ends in SoD vs SoD for 1 battle, then end game.

We use to play Age of Wonders (I and II) all the time too, but there are not really any counters in that game, so it's ALWAYS good to make the biggest/strongest unit (which is usually a flying dragon type unit, with area or cone breath, that kills mobs of other units, with NO unit to counter said giant-flying unit).  I hope they have counters in Elemental; please, some kind of counters, so it's not a "Tech-up to the ultimate unit, then make hordes of that one unit" type game. . .

Oh, and for those who played Age of Wonders II, do you agree with us: forcing you to chose only ONE spell catagorey that you can ever use (like "Nature" or "Fire") and no other, was a very bad idea.  In Mom, you could research almost any spell in any catagorey (If I'm remembering right); only the your main catagorey was cheapest/quickest, and the spell catagories "further" from the one you choose took much longer?

Has some of you played King's Bounty: the Legend ? There is a leadership ability in it. I am wondering if Brad has something like that in mind.

I wish the engine will be flexible enough that any creature is a resource (for easy a modding future); that includes bear, horse, giant eagle, etc.  I am trying to suggest a flexible way to make our super soldier here.  This is my attempt for Frogboy or devs to see the feature I want.   My attempt to “have ultimate control over what kind of army you want to have”

Every creature & equipment has a weight property in the Custom unit design screen (aka Beastiary).  Units can Equip , Transport and/or Carry up to certain weight.  An elephant carries more goblins than human archers.  For the sake of simplicity, the rider always dies first. 

Property: Transport X pounds (Horse, ship, giant beetle etc)
The unit enhances its rider’s movement only, no contribution to HP or other ability.  If all riders die, the transporting unit escapes/become available for capture.  The Transport ability is usually assigned to units that have little appetite to fight unguided or little intelligence.  

The Camel Archer unit is made from combining 2 units at the Beastiary:
Camel has the ability of Transport 150 pounds, and Dessert walking.
Human Archer has the ability of Archery etc. weights 120 pounds
Human Archer has the ability to equip 40 pounds.  Because the Camel can only transport 150, the camel archer cannot wear as much equipment e.g. armor.
(Optional build) Goblin Archer is only 70 pounds, so the camel can transport 2 goblin archers.

Property: Carries X pounds (e.g. Dragons, Giant Eagle, Bear etc.)
Same as Transport ability, except both the unit & its rider fight using their own abilities at the same turn.  The death of the mount/rider does not stop the remaining one from fighting.  When the rider dies, the mount does NOT die at the end of combat.

Property: Provide Rider ability Y
Any mount can have this ability.  The ability Y can be anything, but common example will be charge, magic immunity etc.

Function of Unit producing building (UPB) is to convert the town population to specific occupation(s); e.g. Barrack converts a Fighter, Mage tower converts Wizards etc.  Each racial occupation should have their unique quality defined.  For example, a Fallen Mage can only equip 20 pounds, cannot wear metallic armor, have certain spell casting ability, can or cannot mount.  Then an Elfin Mage will have somewhat different ability. 

Property: Equip X pounds
For a game that emphasis equipping, some unit should be able to equip heavier equipment, some cannot.

Everything else, like mounts, armor, weapon, headgear is a bonus (or optional) of stat or ability to the Creature Resource.  I’ll expect once the dust is settled on our Economy thread, manufactured resources will get reprocessed many times to high end gear like magic item.  This is why Frogboy say

I have two questions.

1. Are you separating experience and training in terms of recording them for a given unit and their advantages?
2. What's the morale system you intend to implement?

Regards,

Kul

That seems like it would work. I can also see a special type of mage that can join an army to raise their stats, sort of like the fleet bonus ships in GC2. Of course, that brings in the Great Aggro Problem, so maybe not.

EDIT: This refers to GW Swicord's reply on the bottom of the last page. Didn't see all of the other replies.

They help limit one kind of Stack of Doom, but hard unit limits are the cause of the worst kind of Stack of Doom. Caps prevent you from accumulating your entire military into one unstoppable force, but there are so many ways of countering that strategy that instituting hard caps to prevent it is silly. For one, bombardment, area of effect or other overland map effect spells can wreak havoc if you create such a force. Secondly, other players can just send smaller armies around your large army and ransack your kingdom, destroy your economy and force your grand army to come grinding to a halt. Thirdly, if Elemental will allow for multi-army battles (ala Total War, Age of Wonders) and flanking maneuvers and other such strategies, a player with 2 or 3 smaller armies could destroy a single, massive army (larger than the 2 or 3 smaller ones combined) without much trouble. 

The worse kind of Stack of Doom is the kind that unit caps cause. If I can only fit 1000 troops in my army, then why would I fill it with 1000 peasants instead of 1000 knights, so long as I'm capable of fielding those knights? It removes the ability to field a viable army of rabble, because the advantage of rabble is in numbers. This is what happens in Age of Wonders and MoM (and many other games).

The other way of doing things is to assign a leadership cost to each type of troop, so an army that could field 1000 knights could field 5000 rabble. Personally I'd rather not have that as it feels so artificial and unintuitive, and artificial and unintuitive limitations are the best way to break immersion and the feel of a setting (for me). I mean, if I have a general capable of leading 1000 knights, it should be harder for him to lead 1000 peasants! The knights are trained, they'll do what they're told and won't need every little detail explained to them. The peasants are hopeless and have no clue what they're doing, things have to be broken down into the basics for them to understand, they'll panic and forget and not execute the desired tactics.

Now, I'm of the opinion that realism should take a backseat to gameplay. But there's a big difference between being unrealistic and being counterintuitive. Implementing counterintuitive 'features' tends to add more frustration and annoyance with silly, artificial limitations than satisfaction with whatever goal was trying to be achieved.