Why not make all units Groups?

I agree. Although very early-game would have to be tweaked, as getting defenders out earlier would be hard.

With this change, they could make monsters and summoned units more dangerous. Instead of a GREATER FIRE ELEMENTAL OF DOOM OF DESTRUCTION being weaker than a peasant, they could actually make it worth something.

This may be one place where the game could use some paring down. I mean, it's supposed to give you that sort of "RPG Party" feel, to start with. But that lasts only so long, and all you're trying to do is advance beyond that.

So yeah, this might be a good idea. Brad at one point wanted to have dungeons and adventures into them with your characters leading....I can see that's where you'd need single units. So depending on if they ever want to do that, maybe it should stay. But it would definitely speed things up a little bit.

Indeed. The whole single unit/group distinction in-game seems artificial and arbitrary.

MUnits best units, this is a good idea. Slower speed of unit creation means rushing is slower and riskier.

I agree with this, I think the whole battle system could use some improvements to a degree.

I would do something entirely different

I'd get rid of groups of units entirely.

Instead- I'd make stack limits based on a few factors

Towns- no stack limit.  You want to turtle up 100 units in your capital, go ahead.  Your economy will suffer.

Stack limits would be based on a few factors (logistics code has to be in the game somewhere, I'm sure, if not SD knows how to do logistics

a) Base value, which is determined by techs.  The grouping techs now would add to the base stack limits

b) Heroes would not count in stack limits at all, and adventurers and commanders would raise stacking limits based on their char value.  Hero bonuses would be additive, so 2 heroes would equal a much larger stack.  Other hero types such as the farmers/scholars/sages/adminstrators/royalty, would not raise the stacking value, but still would nto count.  Sovereigns and their family would always count as adventurers.

c) Some traits added, such as commander, and a unique building would also provide a bonus.

d) Some units, such as dragons would take multiple slots.  Those heroes/adventurers/commanders with the beastmaster trait (another addition I'd add, traits to give units modifiers) would negate/reduce this penalty.

e) From the adventure tree, an Adventurer's Guild building would be added, which would give a chance of popping out adventurers.  Command posts would have a possibility of popping out commanders.

What if parties weren't that much stronger than individuals of the same number?

For example, what if a party of 4 peasants was only slightly stronger than 4 individual peasants.  I think this could be achieved if they modeled the attack and defense of the party as 4 individuals instead of whatever summation they are doing. 

Advantages of parties:

Harder to completely kill of unit.  (All members must die.)

Slight advantage regarding sharing the damage. (Opponent randomly hits one of them, so harder to concentrate fire)

Can field more troops.  (only relevant to stacks of max size)

Advantages of individuals:

More flexibility on battle field.  (Can move to flank, etc)

Lower threshold to produce.  (Don't have to save up to buy all at once)

Also, it would be nice to be able to train individuals into a party.  Wouldn't it be nice if those experienced early troops could actually contribute past a few tech upgrades? It always saddens me to send my first peasant on a suicidal exploration mission.

Finally, it would be cool if you could put a champion in a party.  I wouldn't mind be able to put some heavily defended units in a group with my sovereign or my spouse.

I agree completely with the TC, and agreed when a similar thing was suggested during the pre-release beta. I'm getting tired of the 'epic' battles consisting of one or two guys with sticks or having one spearman defend a city of 100 or so (luckily there's no crime!)

I've always been an advocate of this. I think that "champions" should be buffing units (ie, 20 STR Champion gives +5% dmg, etc). The "adventures" could be epic sized instead, go destroy the black dragon in the farm fields because it's killing my cows, etc.

If they want solo adventures, you can bring your legions of soldiers and your handful of champions, but there can be a little note on the adventure screen stating that "Your army would not fit in the dungeon, you can only bring your adventuring party" or something like that.

Groups should only stack health, not attack or dodge or def or anything else. If they were just higher HP versions of a single unit, they'd still be advantageous without making the late game so goofy.

And before anyone goes "bu bu bu but experience training already does that," groups of experienced units would mean each individual unit's experience bonused health would be included in the final count. With big ol' hp pools and compressed attack and defense values, combat would get less silly towards the end game. 

Another use for dungeons- bring in regular units, they live they become lvl 1 adventurers.

Actually, making any sort of dungeoneering done by your heroes only makes sense.

Still, the entire combat system is balanced around the single unit right now. Everything is a multiple of that single unit's stats. So....removing single units would require yet another rebalance to every game unit, and items.

This is a diamond idea. Mix this with a party limitation for dungeons:

"The dungeon you are about to enter is close to collapsing. You decide to form a group of no more than five adventurers. Pick your heroes."

Now you can choose up to five units to take in the dungeon. After completing the quest, you may convert one of the regular units into a champion (balance check: maybe the unit needs to complete more than one quest).

This is true. Though the combat system requires a lot of balancing regardless, and I would vote for doing the rebalancing sooner rather than later.

I'm assuming there won't be a ton of dungeons, and there would be a decent risk involved.  Also you only get a level 1 adventurer, who would have to be protected. 

Honestly, I don't think dungeon exploring should exist, except in the sense of how it was handled in AoW.  I can see it being a distraction more then an enhancement.  This is a feature that should end up on the cutting block until the game is in a good state, and maybe not even then.

1.2 HAS to be about combat rebalancing as its primary gameplay focus.   Combat and Magic were the two big problems, and Magic was solved decently (there needs to be more, but that can wait)

I considered dungeon exploring as a single tactical battle when entering the dungeon. That wouldn't be too hard to pull off. In my opinion it shouldn't be anything more in-depth than that, otherwise it would be too big a stretch from the main game.

Oh, and about grouping units - I agree. In my opinion normal trained units should be groups by default. I'd actually raise the amounts to 5/10/15/20, just for the sake of scale, but balance the stats. Champions and mundane units should be distinct from each other on the battlefield.

Yeah that's fine, or even a series of battles.  A TBS game does not need mini-games included like it's a lame Final Fantasy (isn't that redundant?  ^_^)  clone.

On the grouping, I agree, but only if the single units do not have a logistics cost, or a steeper limit on stacks that don't have heroes in them (is it possible to code a negative logistics cost- Note: I am assuming that logistics is like GalCiv2 in how it works in terms of stack limits.)

Also if you incresed the amounts 5/10/15/20 or perhaps even higher it would then use up more population. I think building armys needs to put more pressure on our population cap.

I assumed they'd make it so better units have a population cost multiplier. That didn't happen. A 1:1 ratio is realistic and it allows for serious huge armies. Pop cost multipliers end up becoming, like, WC3, where you never get to build armies to the size you really want.

On the other hand, in the game's current state, there's absolutely no reason to need more than 2 or 3 maxed armies, and you'll rarely need even a fraction of that to stomp the AI.

it would be nice to simple be able to merge units into group

Or have a way to upgrade units to the highest "group" you have unlocked. So if I had a single unit, but could group units into 3, I could retrain said unit to be a group of 3.

Not this.  Include dungeon crawls all the way.  Quests should be able to be run by onlu sovs / champion units,

NOT this.  Completely disagree (except for the part where the combat system needs help.)   The game will only stand to benefit from better questing.

Quests should be run by ONLY sovs / champion units.  "Army" units should be for war.

I agree with all your post except this bit. That is what "immunity to arrows" and "spell immunity" magic is for.

Heroes should stay heroic.

right now heroes are not heroic a normal unit with semi gear can kill a lvl 5 hero

The more I think about it the more I like the additional variety unit limits would give quests. An Inn / Witch Hut / Wizard Tower fight could be restricted to even just one Hero unit (others not permitted to enter). Perhaps the biggest ones, fighting a dragon terrorizing a village / defending a keep could involve the army as well. Whatever would fit the quest best.

Frankly, right now, unit size is mostly arbitrary - bigger units get more HP and more consistent damage (due to more attacks). I'd rather see more interesting dynamics that aren't just modifiers and that don't have so much overlap. As it is, while you can make the illusion of, say, an elite group of horsemen, you don't really since they're literally just peasants with HP modifiers.

For instance, instead of unit size and normal/veteran/etc, both of which are mostly just HP modifiers (and duplicate what unit experience give), make each choice grant something distinctive. Perhaps each represents a distinct social class you're drawing from. Or different types of training (so normal, skirmishers, etc). Or that trades off HP for attack power. Each choice would create a different 'base' unit which you then equip. Something interesting beyond "how much HP do I want to give this unit". And if you want to make bigger groups (or scale into the late game for epic battles), make it a technology (logistics and supply).

Or, better yet, draw from GalCiv2's ship builder. You build an troop (ship) by assigning how many people (how many parts), the organization, and the equipment. So rather than dress up your peasants, you have a greater design influence over your units. You want more people in a type of troop, add more.