The Problem of Monolithic Armies

Well, in Medieval 2: Total War, the amount of each unit you could build in a turn depended on the size of your barracks/archery range.

In elemental however, I think equipment production is the key element, and resources will not be infinite, so to wield better armies, and only the best units, you may find yourself severely lacking in numbers, and/or treasury.

Multi-lateral resource acquisition will encourage multiple unit recruitment I think ... like soldiers with leathers + soldiers with plate + equipping  a few on what horses you were able to gather and train. Just whatever you can to fulfill resource availability. As it seems mineral resources will probably be more of a limit than population (I think)

One of the things that causes this is stack limits. AoW2 had a limit of 8 units in a stack. Faced with that, do you use a combination of sowrdsmen, archers, and other tier 1 units totalling 8? Or do you use 8 Chaos Lords? You always use the Chaos Lords, or the Dread Reapers, or the Red Dragons. Putting weaker units in a stack just makes you more likely to lose.

Now, 8 Knights vs 8 Peasants is a no brainer. 8 Knights vs 100 Peasants? Peasants are a lot cheaper to equip, I don't know how that fight is going to go.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping is the outcome.  I was left with the impression, though, that having certain resources simply accelerated training time and that you didn't actually build plate armor, breed horses, then throw a soldier into/ on top of them when necessary.

Yeah, Total War always had these issues as well.  What also plays into this equation is the to-hit ceiling of each unit (can a peasant even hit a knight?)  If it's fairly high, there is more room for a broader range of units in an army late game.  If not, you might see an overemphasis on the heavy hitters.

It was a stated goal earlier int he process that a peasant rabble be viable. So I'd say based on that, yes its supposed to be able to hit a knight. If not, there is a balance issue there. It may not hit for a lot, but you don't need to when you outnumber people 15:1.

I suspect you're still going to want some heavy htters anyway, I wouldn't send my sovereign out into the field in a peasant rabble. I'd surround him with the Bloodmoon Guard. But those guys will be too costly to mass produce, so I'll need cheaper soldiers for other things.

I think (at least I hope) it will be a viable strategy in Elemental to make weaker units for specific tasks. This is how I think it should work in theory:

Yes you can make heavily armored mounted knights. However mounted units in leather armor would be faster then mounted units in plate mail because the horse won't be carrying as much weight. If this holds true then it would make sense to have a couple units of mounted units in leather armor with long lances as they could be used for hit and run tactics. A mounted unit in full plate mail would have a much higher defense but it's speed should be slower. It would be more like a mobile tank. The same theory holds true for mounted archers which the Mongols have proved in history to be a very viable and successfully unit on the battlefield. Archers are nice, archers on horseback are better because of their new-found mobility. Archers on foot wearing full plate mail would be like cannons. Heavily defended cannons that can take a beating and keep on shooting. Archers in leather armor would be able to shoot and move and shoot and move because of higher mobility.

Hopefully Elemental will be something like that.

Wait till the first time I volcano one of your Monolithic armies in a multiplayer game 

That spell was ridiculous overpowered fun at PAX.

Also, that monolithic army needs to be able to get past Brad's "Ultimate Turtling Strategy in Elemental". So I think a massive army without decent magic protection is going to "Go up in Smoke".

I think the problem is not so much researching powerful units or stacks limits, but allowing to produce an infinite number of powerful units once they become available. In medieval times heavy plated mounted troops didn't compose 100% of all the armies because they were finite (they were Knights after all).

This sentence doesn't make sense with the rest of your post. If you cannot have monolithic armies, if armies are limited in size, then everyone will end up with maxed out armies composed of their most powerful units. This is why armies in games like MoM, AoW, etc always end up being composed of your strongest units. If you only have 8 spots, you will fill all 8 spots with your most powerful units because you will never encounter, say, 100 swordsmen. Or 50 archers and 50 swordsmen, etc.

With monolithic armies, though, you might spend all your resources and spend an immense amount of time training 200 Dread Knights. Meanwhile, your opponent has fielded 50 Paladins and 1000 footmen. These two forces might be ~equally matched. Without monolithic armies, if armies were limited to, say, 500 units... Then your Dread Knights will only have to go up against 50 Paladins and 450 footmen at once, followed by 500 footmen if your opponent is feeling foolish (and another 50 after that). Your 200 Dread Knights would handily defeat 50 Paladins and 450 footmen, albeit not without some decent losses. But your remaining Dread Knights, let's say 125, would slaughter wave after wave of 500 footmen ad nauseam.

Without monolithic armies, what you're hoping won't happen will inevitably happen. Monolithic armies is the natural solution to this problem, because it removes the major reason why it happens in the first place.

These situations in HoMM didn't resolve usually like you say, the 200 Dead Knights would obliterate first the Footmen and then finish the poor Paladins. In that game low level units had the problem that they would lose damage power too fast compared to better units.

We should consider the battlefield

Anyways, with 1000 foot-soldiers, you would flood a good portion of the battle-field with your troops, and your 50 paladins can move about the battlefield at will, striking the 200 dread-knights where their morale and/or fatigue were the lowest, hoping to cause some strategic route or something.

Equally, the Dread Knights could cause a route in the 1000 foot-soldiers, and fight-to-kill the 50 paladins. However lets assume these paladins are mounted ... they can engage, retreat, and re-engage, and if these dread-knights don't have pikes, and are instead swordsmen or axemen, each engagement can be at full-tilted charge, which could wear down the dread knights ... and the paladins would have the advantage of being able to rest on horseback while the foot-men Dread Knights try to chase them. Assuming that first contact with Dread Knights doesn't cause full-on route with the paladins, but we are also assuming these paladins have fairly even footing with the Dreads, at least from a morale perspective.

Meanwhile, a few of the regular footmen units could have stopped routing (while others continued to run off the board) ... and those could be sent, ever so slowly I suppose, towards the dread knights, and the DKs have the option of either continuing to chase the Paladins or waiting until they decide to meet their doom by making a final direct attack. The mobility has the advantage.

Although if we assume the dread-knights are also mounted ... then its no even fight at all, unless those footmen have spears or something. Then it would most likely turn into a flanking war, and if the dreadknights manage to flank and kill all of the spear-men before they run out of steam (become weaker than the paladins) then its a matter of resting up, cornering and killing the Paladin. Meanwhile its the paladin's job to attack the Dreads as much as possible while they are busy butchering footmen from the flank or rear.

In the Middle Ages (and pretty much the rest of history I think) class was a major factor in what equipment people brought to battle and what role they played. Heavy cavalry was limited to people with the means to afford a suit of armor and a warhorse and a leader could (usually) trust that small group of people to maintain the status quo. If a King/Queen blew their national treasury to make armor for 10,000 peasants, there's a solid chance that the peasants - fed up with being at the bottom of the feudal system - storm their own castle instead of the enemy.

Same sort of deal with a killer stack of dread-knights. After they roll over 4 enemy kingdoms, they might get an idea in their heads that they're entitled to some of the spoils. A good proportion of elite and average troops will keep each other in check. Of course I have no idea how this would possibly work as a gameplay concept.

You're right, although I don't think it's just about empowering peasants - practically speaking, I don't think decking 10,000 peasants out in full plate and warhorses was ever possible for any Middle Ages kingdom, regardless of the size of treasury - there simply weren't that many warhorses or metal to go around. Most battles had full plate knights in the dozens/hundreds at most, 10,000 of them is a force that has never been seen in history. 

Anyway I think it has more to do with scarcity of resources, and if Elemental duplicates that scarcity - if there simply aren't enough warhorses or iron ore to turn our entire armies into full plate knights (not to mention the magical resources, enchanted swords to create paladins and such) then we should have plenty of peasants with pointy sticks taking part; i.e. as long as population > metal/horses/etc, medieval-style combined arms will result.

Of course if 0 warhorses/iron ore means we can still train knights, but it'll just take 3x as long, we may run into problems - because spending 3x as long training a knight may still wind up a better option than training a bunch of pointy-stick-wielding peasants. It's all about fine tuning the balance, we'll see how it works out.

Is it me or many people understood that "monolitic armies" = "armies with a maximum number of troop"? (When reading the title, I though that "monolitic armies" = "stacks of doom".) If I understand the original post correctly, you are asking for reasons to mix strong and weak troups in the same armies.

Historically, I guess that the reason such armies (knights and peasants) existed was that it was the best armies their societies could provid : as much manpower (peasants), and as much cash (knights) as can be spared, but all the cash goes to an elite group. This is likely a decision no player would ever make in a game normally (the part where only one part of the army got all the money).

But what if you could raise really quickly a peasant army, while the knights would cost you considerable upkeep, then this would be the optimal solution. You train and pay upkeep for a permanent army for small skirmishes and providing for your shock troups, but you rely on quickly turn your money making peasants into poorly trained spearmen for any large scale conflict. This would actually be relatively easy to implement by making the training time vary wildly between weak and strong units, such that you will only train high-end units during peace time, and making the upkeep high enough such that relying on a purely permanent army is suicidal (like it was during the Middle Ages).

Or the 200 dread-knights would move butchering footmen, putting always some between them and the paladins until the footmen run away (over the paladins) and after that butcher them too. Or they could make a line to the paladins, kill them and then tell the footmen: you are next.

If HoMM is not a template for comparison (a game that has that mechanic), much less a total invented situation (where anyone can say what he likes).

Good post. And not only class, but it boils down to how armies were formed: the king wouldn't pay to equip anyone, he would make a call for his nobles to go to war, his nobles will call their own vassals and so on. Then each noble would come along a small band of knights (or better equiped troops, his retinue) and as many peasants as he seemed fit given the part of the year, his loyalty,...

In games all of that got abstracted into the concept of "hiring" units, but that's not how things happened in the past (except for mercenaries).

It was already stated that the two armies were to be considered roughly equivalent ... it depends on game design. Now if we were to use a comparison like HOMM, there would be a one-tile stack of 200 dread knights, a one tile stack of 1000 footmen, and a 1 tile stack of 50 paladins. Time spent moving about the battle-field would have no usage here, neither would endurance, morale, flanking, or formations.

There is more flexibility for various outcomes when each indivudual soldier is its own object (even though units can have multiple persons) which is how the game is going to be played. If you wanted to envision an out-come on a real battle-field that some-how equaled the out-come of the HoMM system, it would be streched at best. Battles simply won't play out in the same fashion, at least in-so-far as 2000 peasants killing 3 archangels, or 2 dragons, or somthing ... or 500 Paladins equally killing those 2000 peasants in a mere 1 or two turns.

Original post edited in order to cover several more examples of action.

Im just saying that a checkerboard with 1-tile stacks of units, and an organic battlefield with a individual objects joined together, have a vast different feel to them.

The actual out-come is not the "point of comparison" but its how the battle is fought ... for whomever's victory.

Right, I posted the topic to discuss how to create a game where you must build units other than your very, very best. 

When I was working on the Broken Crescent Mod for Medieval Total War, this was remedied in part by two elements.  First, it was impossible to have nothing but your best units because you didn't have enough finances to afford the upkeep for all of them and simultaneously defend all of your territory.  The second element was that strong units played priceless strategic roles in a large army, but weren't as cost effective if you put nothing but strong units in your army.

I remember making a thread awhile back that suggested making this a game feature.  You would essentially have a small, permament standing army of professional soldiers and when you went to war, you would issue a call to arms amongst your nobles with the option of varying degrees of pressure, at which point they would gather their own sub-nobles and peasants to war for your cause.  After the war was over, they would blend back into the population.  In every city you would have a little counter to represent how many men can be called to arms, and their relative calibur.  When you did call them to arms, you would have a mish mash of soldiers depending on what has been historically available in your empire--- everything from mounted and armored nobles to sword and leather armed artisans to spear carrying peasants.

So, instead of training every one of your units, you would only explicitly train your professional soldiers--- the rest of your men-at-arms are in the population of your cities, and you could enhance their combat effectiveness and readiness by improving the wealth in your society, providing drill squares and military academies which they can attend, and making weapons and armor more readily available in your society (citizen soldiers would purchase their own weapons and armor.)  Have a society where wealth is concentrated in the upper classes?  You end up with a massive army of spear armed peasants and a good number of heavily armed nobles.  Have a civilization where wealth and access is distributed amongst the people more equitably?  You end up with a lot of leather and splint armored soldiers with shields and swords.  You could also adopt civics that would allow your citizen soldiers to pillage and scavenge loot from defeated soldiers, which would give them a greater incentive to go to war properly prepared (with perhaps some disadvantages).

Also, the longer your population is off at war, the more of an economic and happiness penalty stacks in your cities, because the economy has been distrubted by the disappearance of workers (these penalties would encourage an "organic" end to wars).  The more dire the call to arms, the more additional "less qualified" soldiers are called to the front and the greater the penalties.  A dire call to arms would naturally be made in a defensive war, which would also give defenders an innate advantage.

I've always disliked the idea in medieval strategy games of training vast swathes of soldiers who then stand ready for an indefinate period of time.  It's a strategy game relic from the days of Civ 1 that most game designers still aren't willing to move past.  It's become very stale, and innovation is long overdue on this point.

I think economics is probably going to be the best controlling factor in this.

good idea for priceless units to play important roles in large armies, but to not be cost-effective to field all-elites.

No. It's bad combat system.

Consider Call to Power/Call to Power 2. There was a stack limit of 12 BUT 4 kinds of units: bombardment, ranged, melee and flanking.

Bombarding units could strike from afar on the strategic map but would be slaughtered alone in melee.

Ranged units could fight in first and second row, only striking at those in front of them. Melee units fought only the unit in front of them. Flankers could fight units in the first row of the enemy, even when not in front.

If melee units were strongest, then flankers, then ranged then ranged, it still made sense to build armies like 4 melee, 2 flankers and 6 ranged units, because the flankers and ranged would attack the enemy melee units and kill them faster than lone melee units (getting 3 attacks agaisnt 1 unit).

And don't forget that usually, peasants would return to their home (and harvets !!) after wars. So we would need a way to get back the remains peasants in town after a battle. If we can't, then raising 1000 peasants will be costly because of the manpower lost in city.

And why not an option where units could help in city manpower ?

You guys have definitely misunderstood my post. My point was that 200 dread knights would be an equal match for 50 paladins and 1000 footmen.

But if each side can only have a maximum of 500 individual units present in a single battle, then the 200 dread knights become much better than the 50 paladins and 1000 footmen. The 50 Paladins and 1000 footmen can no longer fight the dread knights in one single battle. They would have to split up into 2+ groups, and fight two consecutive battles in both of which they are completely outmatched, and thus both battles would be lost and the dread knights would come out of it all with a pretty high survival rate. The person whose strategy revolves around numbers is doomed to failure in a combat system that limits the number of troops on the battlefield at once.

This is still somewhat relevant even though it isn't what the OP was talking about. I kind of missed the part where "monolithic" means large, powerful and indivisible. I don't think that's a problem either, though, because the opportunity to get ahold of such powerful individual creatures sound like they will be pretty rare. It would be a more of a problem if troop count was going to be capped, but it doesn't look like it will be (or the cap will be so high it shouldn't really matter).

yea, I agree with PigeonPigeon.