I think now I understand your point. Yet, I believe the problem arises from 4X games using city's production instead of hard cash to produce units. This naturally creates an imbalance even if more powerful units take more time to train. Also, as the game is not a perpetual warfare a player can easily hoard the latest and greatest units. This problem is fixable without the use of force, however.

First, make units cost money besides time. The price will be on the bland unit plus piece of equipment, which are:

1. Base armor or robe;
2. Gauntlets or gloves;
3. Helmets, hoods or masks;
4. Boots or shoes;
5. Rings and necklaces;
6. Belt;
7. Weapon;
8. Shield.

Therefore, the more you put in your soldiers the more expensive they will be. Also, a few combinations might decrease the effectiveness of some types of units. Take archers: heavy armor is not their friend. Also, lances might increase the range and allow spear formations but forbid the use of shield unless in specific formations e.g. phalanx.

Add an upkeep tax for every unit, slightly higher the best equipped they are. The player will not have an infinite amount of money, so keeping large "elite" regiments will not be attainable. The previous suggestion of increasing damage or effectiveness of magic equipment is also doable.

Finally, make elite regiments perish with time. Your units gather experience and strength during wars, but they are not immortal and will one day get too old to fight. Without wars elite regiments would degrade in ranks after, say, 30 years of inaction as new recruits are not in the same level of the old ones. Some of the experience will remain, being passed through generations. One way to avoid a sharp decline is creating martial academies or practicing regular drills.

usually I would place a level-cap on defensively trained units. Fall Further has a simple tact, and it relies on teching to a fairly simple mid-game tech and building a relatively inexpensive building. this would be for each "unit type" melee/archer/recon

for mounted units it was a deeper mid-game tech, with a more expensive building, although the level cap was also significantly higher.

meanwhile mages and priests had their own auto-experience gain system, whie arcane leaders gained mage experience faster and spiritual leaders gained priest experience faster. It was a very unique thing for the relatively weak priest to be able to upgrade to the powerful Paladin ... allowed for peaceful means to gain high-level paladins, that kept their tier 2 divine spell as well!

I for one don't want elites to have as much power as demiansky might be thinking of. In real life it only takes a man and a sword to kill another man. And beyond that if one side has two men and two swords, the victory is all but certain.

Also you can count on me using magic to wipe out or charm your elites until you either rage quit or sign a disfavorable treaty.

BUZZ. KILL.

but anyways, it takes more than two men to kill one determined man. Simply having any combat experience at all (or equivalent martial training) is worth 100 people attempting battle through Trial and Error.

Someone that makes it through enough battles would most likely be worth at least 10 fresh recuits. Its not so much about being stronger, or having better stats, or even being hardened (although that helps too). Its about having an inbred intuition about what actions to take, and an instinctual reflex based on countless battles. In war, a single hesitation can cost your life, and the more experienced you are the more confident and fast your actions. And not blind confidence either. You know what you have to do to kill the other guy, and avoid being injured (or at least injured as greatly, sometimes its unfortunately necessary to allow an opening, and if your opponent is faster than you, you can lose, and even if he is not you can still get seriously hurt)

Also, some weapons take longer to learn than others on their usage, or rather, mastery. The English monarchs centered the peasantry lifestyle primarily around Archery, and Shooting events. As a result, they had some of the best longbows. Archery was a life-long ambition. It was not something you could simply pick up and be good at. The English trained for practically their whole lives in some way or another. All other archers (other than crossbows) required years of dedicated training and Much Practice afterwards to stay sharp. The guns ... sure they had sharpshooters, but in order to be Militarily effective with a gun recuired much less practice. Still it required discipline, yes, but not as much weapon-based proficiency. Alot goes into building a good soldier. Battle experience has ALOT to do with that. Training too. (which is why both add to "Strength" iirc).

Also, this is an RPG. This is not a two-class battlegame where there are weakling mobs and Superpowerful wizards. There is everything in between as well. Rangers, Fighters, Knights, Assasins ... all units and heroes are not equal, although Heroes can and SHOULD be excessively strong. My real-world examples are why units as a whole, who have survived combats together, should gain Unit-combat proficiency (which means, in game terms, that they all gain experience and level up together) ... and hopefully we will get UnitCommanders like in Dawn of War/ Warhammer ... those just rock. But asides from that realism factor of veteran units, HEROES should be rather exceptionally strong. Usually one of the first benefits of a hero is to be less vulnerable to spells, rather by nature or due to equipped items and defensive spells placed upon him/her by a friendly caster. With more mechanized weaponry, it can be easy to think of people as simple numbers ... but even then the Discipline factor and other psychological elements can play a HUGE part of warfare and combat proficiency. This is one of the many reasons that Experienced and Seasoned veterans are alot stronger than greenHorns. And Heroes are a metaphorical Exemplar of that Idea.

This assumes magic is not applied. If magic is being used, its more than possible for one guy to wipe the floor not just with the 2 guys, but with their 15 buddies too.

Elites should be worth a lot. And having elites level up into higher units is good, but it could snowball quickly. If you win a lot, you end up with a super army to win lots more. If you lose, you can't ever get your units leveled so you can't get past basic spearmen. Perhaps some set of powerful units that can only be made via elite upgrades, and another set of powerful units that are training only.

Lol, Sean, I'm pretty sure Real Life doesn't apply in Elemental: War of "Magic."  Yes, if a game purports to be realistic then I am offended when a soldier is struck 30 times and still fights on.  But I am not offended if, in a magical setting, a soldier had such power.  If Elite Soldiers bite the dust after one sword blow, then so will heroes and so will sovereigns which means we lose a significant area of the game.  No one will try to pursue and level up heroes if they have a ludicrously high likelihood to die each fight from stray arrows.

Likewise, no one will ever commit their sovereign to combat if they suffer from the same frailties.

My is only that a taoist philosophy would negate all the elite training in the world of elemental. Guerilla tactics could potentially make your elites useless because a mage with weak minions can endow them with powerful spells for only a turn and then have them run and hide. Speed boosts, attack upgrades, demon summoning and then by your turn it all vanishes or is out of range of your pitifully slow elite spearmen. So when i lose units they are cheap but you lose your xp advantage and waste time chasing geese.

The idea though, would be that you would also buff your elite units with magic. Elite + magic buffs = pwn. That should be how it works.

But I would hope that opportunity cost would allow my magic to become fearfully superior.

OOOOH no no no no no.

Small numbers of elite units vs Large numbers of inferior units.

THATS opportunity cost.

Assuming the same proportion of Few Elites and Many weak fodderlings, both channelers should have the Same Opportunity for Equal Magical Mastery.

Now, if you want your Magic to be significantly Superior to that of your opponents, then the TRUE result should be something like Many Elites + Medium Magic Versus Many fodderlings + Superior Magic.

Or even Hoard of Elites + Medium Magic Vs. Many Fodderlings + Ultimate Magics.

and then of course, either channeler could have 5-10 "supergod" heroes that can withstand many stabwounds, and even a "Super Death" bolt sent by a Channeler. Chances are the person focusing on Adventure will have 10-20 such God-Champions, however the Super Military and Super Magic should both have easily around 5 Heroes.

The adventurer's response would be Small Number of Elites + Many SuperHeroes, + Powerful (but not ultimate) magic. Plus many mystical items and powerful weapons for heroes.

In either case, elites are still a valid response. Also, Heroes(adventuring) vs Massive Armies is a valid non-magical response. Someone that goes 100% magic, or anyone trying to place superior magic over everything else, will have the choice between wielding their own elites (in small numbers) or wielding a large enough force of cannon fodder. After all, with Magical superiority, its not about having the military advantage, but about using the military as a Buffer between the Enemy's swords and your own Magic Users (Or Channeler). A superior magic user will not have a military advantage when it comes to units. Period.

"Period." is redundant. What about speed(not in battle probably) vs attack and armor? I like Jhengis Khan's Method.

What opportunity costs? we both cast the same buffs, for the same cost, same research, everything. The only difference is that my units have won numerous battles before so they are elite, while your units have not, so they are green. There is no opportunity cost to winning battles.

Every game since MoM should have done that IMO. Troops garrisonning a city don't just sit on the walls signing when it's peaceful outside. Their generals take them into the courtyard and make them train. Every army that is not moving should get experience at a certain rate, when there are no enemies, say, within 3 tiles.

That actually has some interesting potential for added realism-certain garrisons could passively gain experience faster or slower depending on a number of factors.

But to get back on topic, while I agree in principle that the deployment and use of a core of elite units should be emphasised (look at the Special Forces), limiting equipment doesn't seem like a feasible way to do it. If you really feel like it, you could just equip your hordes of peasants with weapons of incredible power. What should be figured out is a way to fundamentally limit the equipment you have available. That is to say, when you produce a unit with a Sword of Uber, it should be an event. These superior weapons should represent a Significant investment of resources, and handing them out left and right to units that'll only get a chance to swing them once before they die should be a glaringly bad idea.

I am reminded of when the expertly trained swiss pikemen came up against russia's conscript riflemen in the early 18th century. The swiss were technologically ill-equipped and lost horribly. I think its logical to ask that first level weapons advance to a point, say to steel and regular trainning. After that there could be as you mentioned, Uberswords to buy for the elites, but there should be some middle ground to this (mass produceable but also effective at any level). I'm sure the devs have already discussed this and our conversations are futile in this sense.

I just don't want to end up having to disband my super elite units because they are no longer effective. I doubt many units will make it to super elite and those that do, i want to be able to keep around for a while.

That and if there is a mechanism to give units xp while they sit and train, there should be certain limits. EX, you might be able to train them from green to regular, but in order to make the jump to veteran they have to actually fight. It doesn't make any sense to leave a bunch of green troops in their barracks for 10 years, come back and find a bunch of vets.

Yea, I think City-based experience should only train up to a point. Say level 3 or 4. Actual combat should definitely be superior to training in a barracks.

Garrison troops should have a level cap of say 3 or 4, with level 20 being "Hella Good" (fall from heaven's famed Level 6) ... and then levels 30-40 should be near godly, and level 40 should probably be the level cap. (or maybe 50 at pure godhood)

I think that there should be no level cap, but that the xp reqs to level should keep increasing till the point you need to kill literally millions of troops to level. It always bugs me when a game says "Nope, you can't get any better from here, no matter what you do".

Fair enough, but how about a "level cap" for barracks training??

I think level 3 for most settlements barracks, a City can get you to level 4 and 90% experience towards level 5, and a "Super Barracks" can train you to level 5 with 90% experience towards level 6.

Does this sound fitting? Again, maybe no *total* level cap, but level 20, in my mind, should be the *sweet spot* where things start to come easily for the soldier, and the soldier/champ is now a bonafide badass. Levels 30 and up should Reach Herculese/DemiGod proportions of awesomeness, and someone level 40 should be able to, say, survive 5 instant-death spells or something. Survive a CannonShot to the FACE, or walk through Dragon's Breath if it was nothing.

Maybe elites could become heroes?

This plz.

I like this proportion.  I don't want barracks to be able to spam elite units.  I want elite units to really shine and not be easily replaced, as I suggested in the original post.  Losing them means not being able to replace them any time soon. 

A way of ensuring that elite or veteran troops are the only ones that walk around with the really good weapons without any hard caps would be to have a level increase affect weapons in different amount. Example:

An untrained soldier (level 1 or similar) with an iron sword would have an attack of 1. At level 5 the soldier would have an attack of 5.

An untrained soldier (level 1 or similar) with a Flaming Sword of Death (TM) would have an attack of 3. At level 5 the soldier would have an attack of 20 (or similar).

This way, the weapon's bonus would scale with the level, at different rates for different weapons. This way, it would also be possible to have both crossbows and longbows (as an example) with both being useful. A longbow would only have an attack value of 1 for an untrained soldier, with a quickly increasing bonus (attack 10 or something for lvl 4-5). A conscript with a crossbow could have an attack of 3, but at level 5, the attack would only have increased to 5-6. The numbers used are only to show the principle, not an indicator of how I believe the relative strength of the weapons should be (eg. I have no idea what the strength of a magical sword should be relative to a crossbow, and it isn't what this is about).

This would mean that untrained troops would benefit more from having weapons that are easy to learn, while other weapons would best be left for more trained troops. Wether the training is included when you recruit the unit (giving it a significantly increased cost and building time), or gained from battle experience is more or less irrelevant for this model to work, I believe.

That makes a lot of sense. A raw recruit is as likely to burn himself as the enemy if you give him a sword of flame. Give it to an elite and the other teams burn wards are gonna be totally packed. I very much like the idea of more experienced units being able to get the most out of magic weapons.

It doesn't make since, but it would balance things. Soldiers carrying flame weapons would be able to do more than minute damage because they are on fire and are therefore stronger. Maybe fireswords should do +7 damage and elites get a percent increase in attack. It would be unbalanced to let weapons mean nothing in comparison to high levels of soldiers, heroes maybe.