Ten reasons we think Ashes is pretty special

PA has every single one of these characteristics and global maps.  I hate to break up the circlejerk, but Ashes has a long way to go before it becomes anywhere close to the best RTS of the year.  

You want to see an AI that can adapt to a changing situation without pulling resources that don't exist? Manage multiple maps with an apm limit?  Play against PA's hardest AI.  When your AI can beat that, you can claim best AI

That's not to discount the amazing work you guys have done.  Ashes is shaping up to be great.  I just don't see it happening yet.

No it doesn't.  Are you seriously trolling?

PA is a fine, 32bit, DirectX 9 era game (OpenGL 3.2 in its case).

Let's walk through this:

1. PA is on spherical worlds. Its active player base is 350 people online at once. 

2. PA does have decnet modding (Legion expansion for instance).

3. Campaign: Does PA have a story driven campaign now?

4. PA's engine is a third generation DirectX 9c/OpenGL 3.2 era engine.  The game looks as good as it's ever going to get.

5. PA, as a third generation engine can't scale with more cores / more GPUs.

6. PA AI?

7. PA strategy isn't APM based, that is good. Hooray.

8. Fun is obviously subjective. PA: Titans has a 76 user score.

That is a weird thing to say when you are the first poster. It takes more than 1 person to...erm, yeah...

Anyways!

That is actually the key sentence to judge this on. Many things mentioned are not yet in our hands and some won't be till the 2nd half of the year.

I do agree with Mered that a lot has yet to be proven as there are still lots of basics to get right - too much crashing in MP, UI and response/control issues etc - , let alone the grand plans, but I don't begrudge a developer being enthusiastic about his product and I am glad he/you have ambitions for the game. Interesting what you say about the campaign as the campaign/galactic war in PA sucked, (That is not a comment on all of PA, just the galactic war) so I was hoping it would at least be better than that.

I suspect a lot of players of this game will drift in and out of the game over the years, coming back in when new DLC/expansions hit for a while and then back out again. True of all games though so shouldn't be a surprise.

The tech stuff which gets rid of the past bottlenecks is genuinely great but the game is not going to sell purely on that. Also I don't think it will be fully appreciated until a bit further down the line when we have huge maps with land and sea happening on a grander scale with no sim slowdown (despite what some say the biggest maps we currently have are not yet huge)

First you gotta fix game stopping bugs in MP asap.

I look forward to Beta 2 and I hope the game sells well.

After release the main things I am looking forward to are 1) support for more players, 2) good mod support, 3) naval 4) a 3rd faction 5) And in general just more units to choose from. The promised improved tech tree could be cool if it does allow players to go up different branches per game and there is no single best route that you use every time.

It may not be wise to get too specific when talking about other RTSs. PA has its own launcher so a lot of the original players will probably play through that instead of Steam so they wouldn't show up on any Steam info-graphics. And mentioning user score, hope that doesn't come back to bite ya!

Spherical worlds definitely have their fans but I know it turns off some. My brothers didn't like it and I play with them a lot so I did less PA then I might otherwise have done. The AI is decent though and I had some fun MP games for sure. They certainly did some things no one has done before. I can't argue with the technical and graphical limitations of the game though and for me personally I felt it really needed 2 factions (one is being modded in by a group of modders so may get that eventually). As mentioned above, I did recently try the single player campaign-y thing but didn't like it, I really couldn't find it's appeal over a standard skirmish.

Will be interesting to see how your number 4 works out: Ascension Wars Online. Loot?

We can revisit this thread in a year and see where we are.

I do hope that to happen. Time will show us.

I think this is the second most important part that a game need to have to last, and I am not talking about basic modding, I am talking about creating new single player story modes, ala Company of Heroes or C&C. Having Some kind of a MOBA Sub-genre in AOTS, were you can go and defend a base, there so many ideas out there that the Community will love to do if the modding support is good.

With all respect to some players in here, I love to play some nice crafted story mode campaign, with good story and keep expanding that story with new DLC and expansions. That's the first thing that I will play and its a must for every good game out there. If you want to immerse yourself in a game and you want to get new payers, then get a good and fun working campaign.

That's great to know and, I will see What Stardock will do with this Engine in the next 6 month and beyond.

That's one of the reasons on why I got this game.

hmmmm what do you mean? can you please explain? I will Love to see an Awesome AI without getting faster build rate, or 3x more resource.

And the best way for us to learn from an Awesome AI that does not Cheat it by looking into the Replay and learn from that. so try to add it to the game.

Really Interesting, I hope it will be fun.

That's what i like From Stardock, keep doing it because this is the way to keep your customers happy, but Supporting and updating your games for 5+ years.

I do Still Think that AOTS still make us use a lot of APM, i need to be more optimized.

Let me explain why, right now there is so many Things going on in a map, you start, you need to expand, build, defend, move your army, create Meta Units, You can not Automate anything in AOTS right now, so by not doing that it will mean that yes you really do need to use a high APM at this moment, and Smaller maps have a Higher APM, Bigger Maps Slower at least the first 10 minutes of the game.

Hey Brad, make sure the game will be fun to most players, we are here to support Stardock and AOTS, So try to support us a much as possible to make the best RTS game out there.

I'd forgotten the details about the AI in PA. The young guy behind it, who modded new AI for supcom has a real talent for it. Big into his neural networks, so it really is like a learning computer, very cool.

By the way the image at the top is very cool. One day I hope we get the chance to play with the units looking that good, with that much detail, in game. If all the units had that much detail I might have to find a mod to make everything look a little bigger to enjoy it

Do you know what pejorative means, Tat? 

Regarding 64-bit.  I stand happily corrected on that part.  Early on, I had talked to Uber on this and they were, at the time, planning to do 32-bit for market reasons.

As for multi-core, No. Tat, just because you want to believe something really really badly doesn't make it true.

This is PA's core use:

This is Ashes:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a game not utilizing multiple cores. Most do not.  It's not a criticism of their game (and certainly not a perjorative description).

The way computers get faster now is by adding more cores.  They've largely peaked (and have for years) what they can do with a single core.  

With who? People like you who are perfectly happy with SupCom:FA and see it as perfection already?

Such as?  Which statements of fact are incorrect?  While I was incorrect about PA being 64-bit, I made no claim that Ashes was the first 64-bit game.

You have access to the source code of PA?  Also, Ashes AI doesn't "Cheat".  At the highest difficulty levels it gets more sources.  If you object to that, don't play at those levels.

 

Just like Ashes.

How? Ashes AI plays by the same rules as the player.

Uh huh.  

I have a great deal of respect for Sorian and what he does. I'd love to steal him and have him on our games (as far as I know, he works at a VR company now).   I worked with him on Demigod.  He's a really really good guy.

That said..

One claim I can make for a fact: I'm the most experienced AI developer in the game industry. No one has been doing it longer than I have.  So I'll let you in on a little secret about computer AI: Nothing. Trumps. Horsepower.  All things being remotely equal, a system in which a modder or coder can set up what a unit does rather than "learning" it will perform much better.  And as previously mentioned, Ashes is a job based, multi-core engine. 

How much an AI can feed into its simulation per milisecond is king.  

RE: There can´t be no comparison between PA and Sins of a Solar Empire, PA puts  SSE  in the pocket in the gameplay not sells or current amount players.

Dont come with DX12 because that means nothing to us Gamers , we want have fun on gameplay with lot options and game DX12 isnt bring nothing then +7k units fight at this moment.

For most HardCore RTS gamers thats nothing , we care the little options on every unit and build that make your decisions to the game.

All very pretty and fun to read on paper,  the problem is that in terrain all looks different  and empty from what we read !!

I still did not get it...

First there is no enough money to have a great game.

Then we read that ashes will be the best 2016 RTS game.

If we question because of the lack of certain options .... there is not enough money ....

Then we read that ashes will have solutions for the game that we cant count.

Frankly I think that for a game to have a long duration the first impact is what will tell the future, and I do not think that ashes will have a fundamental impact on launch.

At this point the Ashes just attracts casual gamers few are the gamers that choose Ashes as a game to play long time , ashes is a easy gameplay with few options to counter any diferent attacks ,and casual players change games, night for the day.

RE: I know what you think from what i say , but belive has a Gamer since 12 on MS-Dos or spectrum 48k that have to wait 3 hours unitl i could play tetris black and white like most here and with 41 i have pass with so many fail games that becomes hard for me belive.

But find  in future that im rong will make me very very happy, so dont take my words too serius.

Green is Sins. Blue is PA.

With regards to DirectX 12 and such, I wrote tihs for the Founders. It's not a marketing document.

Much of it boils down to this: Ashes has a lot more room to evolve than other games in the genre. That gives it a significant advantage.

Tat and his friends can advocate for PA or SupCom all they want but at the end of the day, they really can't evolve any further. They're at the end of their engine life cycle.

It's an issue we are painfully familiar with: Sins of a Solar Empire is at the end of its engine life cycle.  We can't do anything more with it (other than perhaps more content) without a new engine.

It reminds me a bit of Diablo2.  Diablo 2 was written on a 2nd generation game engine (just like Diablo 1 I believe).  And even with Blizzard's resources, there was only so much they could do to extend it.  When they finally made Diablo 3 (3rd gen engine), 12 years had passed.   It is non-trivial to write a next-generation custom game engine (whether going from 2nd to 3rd or now 3rd to 4th).

SupCom, PA, Sins of a Solar Empire, Grey Goo, etc. are all third generation engines.  It doesn't matter whether consumers understand the technical realities of that.  What they will understand is that those games aren't going to be getting a lot of new updates or expansions beyond content.

For example, no matter how much you love PA's AI, there is only so much you can do if it's doing its work on a single core.  They can't wait until people get the latest/great machine and have it work better any more than people can do that with Sins of a Solar Empire.

Anyway, I apologize if my love of my game offends some of you.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Speaking of Tat:

Got some PMs from the people who think Tat helped ruin PA (I still have no idea what they mean by that but I suspect others do) that Tat basically spends his time spreadinf FUD on Ashes on the PA forums.

Example:

Our bots apparently.

You know, Tat. We have a beta for a reason.

Despite you claiming that Ashes is worse than PA was pre-alpha, the point of the bots is to help make sure the underlying ranking system gets a work out.

I really don't like being in a position of having to be critical of my friends at Uber.  I've known them for many years and I LIKE PA.  

With respect, we are not only quite familiar with PA but several of my friends worked on this game. I remember distinctly some of the complaints they had about the architecture and thus somewhat familiar with their rendering pipeline. You seem to think we work in a vacuum without intimate knowledge of other projects/engineering efforts. The Graphics community is a small one, and if you can name a PC game especially, I am probably on first name basis with the lead on that project.

In fact, we are quite aware of the engineering challenges that PA faced. I am not going to talk about someone else rendering architecture, because that is unprofessional of me and as an industry rule we do not publically critique each other. However, I will state that the architecture differences between Ashes and PA are probably vastly _understated_.  I would go so far as to say Ashes and Nitrous can handle 10x the throughput of the PA engine depending on the system/config. And that's a conservative estimate. I'm not saying that PA is a bad architecture, in fact the gap between Nitrous and other engines is actually far greater then that.

Look im not really like your words go easy we are´t childs...

I dont and will never need no one tell me what to do, or what to play , i do watever i want ,i play watever i want ,i buy watever i want,i RESPECT who respect me im free.

Its not 1 time i see you and only you, use words you dont like get out .

Nice democracy you use to show or sell your game,you know very well that there are several ways to show players that their problems with the game its their problems not owers, but you use the easy way.

I have hit ashes door long time ,but this time i will hit the door for you , but you too hit the door if you dont respect different opinions here.

Good luck with the game.

Let's recap:

In our private Founders forum I post to the Founders 10 reasons I think Ashes is going to be THE RTS.  Am I cheerleader for our game? Yes. 

Response #1: User refers to the post as a "circle jerk" and claims PA already has all these things.

Response #6: Tat shows up and claims PA has a neural net and is a multi-core engine.

And then you post that PA is better than Sins.

If you want to come into our inner sanctum and criticize us, then go ahead.  But you're not entitled to your own facts.   Sins was made for $800,000 and is the third most popular RTS currently being played (Starcraft, Age of Empires 2 HD).  

Other than during sales, Sins is has more players than PA + Grey Goo + SUpCom:FA combined.

At the end of the day, this is what we'll be judged on.   You can bet that a year from now, someone is going to post a chart like this on RTS games.  If Ashes isn't #1 then clearly my cheerleading was for naught.

[Preamble: I've been away for a while, sorry if I've missed some (many) discussions; but I have to say I am quite surprised by the tone in this (Founders') thread -- what happened?!]

Anyway, about the original post. Please read the following as the words of a concerned, but hopeful, supporter. I don't mean to criticize, and I certainly don't claim to know anything about producing or releasing games...

Let me try and formulate my response like this: "THE RTS of 2016 and beyond" really contains two periods, which are "2016" and "beyond" -- and most of your arguments and your excitement about Ashes seem to be about the "beyond". And you (I mean everyone involved) have my greatest respect for creating such ground-breaking technology, really.

Before the "beyond" however, there comes 2016 -- your game has to rock ON RELEASE. Please don't make the same mistake Uber did with PA (from my limited point of view), namely being too optimistic about the expected critical reception of the game and releasing way too early with important parts missing or half-baked. Therefore, please, if at all possible, polish the game as long as you can afford, before releasing. A game can improve after release -- and PA, for one, did improve A LOT, but the damage was already done.

I absolutely agree that Ashes has the potential to be THE RTS; and as someone who bought the Founder's Lifetime Edition (twice), I certainly hope it will be!

But it can't all be about the engine, and other games have extended modding support, great campaigns and game modes too. The one key component, and the reason I am excited about the game, is the focus on the meta-unit ("Army"). It is the insight, that large scale battlefields need better ways of being controlled*, not just better ways of being visualized (but that too!). While SC/FA and even PA mostly have the same "way of controlling units" like old TA did, you on the other hand are trying to improve with the concept of meta-units -- and I believe meta-units will be, or could be, the actual gameplay feature that truly sets Ashes apart.

* I take that from the FAQ: "While the game will allow you to control individual units if you'd like to, you won't want to."

However, (and correct me if I'm wrong, or you have planned great improvements in this area anyway, before release!), the Army system feels very prototypical (trying to use a "careful" word here). The concept has such great potential, but it has not been realized, yet. And currently, still, what the FAQ suggests, isn't actually the case; namely that Ashes still doesn't allow individual units to be controlled ("forced unit packs"), and (this is subjective) the urge to use Armies is severely hindered -- not by bugs (that too), but by the fact that the way Armies are visualized and (supposed to be) controlled feels clunky, and sometimes frustrating. (I have written a lengthy post that tried to point out some basic issues and suggested some solutions to the issues, but have not received much feedback (title "Army-related Issues and Solutions"); if someone is willing to listen, I am certainly willing to provide constructive feedback and further ideas on the matter!)

My one wish therefore is: Please make the game much more Army-centric -- this might truly set Ashes apart, in 2016.

.

so as one of sins loyal players...we await its second coming lol..single thread just sucks

Re Army centric.  That's our goal.

That said, there's a reason why Brutes come out in groups of 6. It's part of the design such that 1 brute is cannon fodder but 6 can overwhelm.

While I understand that some people would prefer to manually handle each brute (have a brute come out every 3 seconds from the factory and take it from there), we'd lose a lot more people from being overwhelmed than we woudl gain from those who prefer such fine control.

wow seriously? what happened here?

You guys went overboard, everyone here should take it easy.

This post was about

Well I think and hope it will be Special, that's why i am here every day reading the Forums. And not only me tatsujb, rapha320, quadrium, TAG_Utter, Ticktoc, and many other Founders. all of you guys should stop comparing games with AOTS, I mean come on! the game just came out as Beta1! if you want to compare and bitch do it after release and if you don't like it then Stop playing it and go get a new game that you like.

You guys decided to buy the game to support the Dev's, Since the first Alpha Build this game have changed a lot and i am really happy about it and hope it will keep changing for better.

So the best way is to ask questions to the Dev's about something that you want answers like, if you guys bitch a lot about the AI being in the ranked matchmaking then ask why the added it to the matchmaking and I think they did answered that a while ago so it means the Dev's have its reason for doing that, so stop bitching till the final release.

For Real let the Guys do their Job the way they want it, why you guys want to talk wrongly about the game? why you want to give bad reviews about AOTS? why you want to write Trash about a game that is not even out yet. everyone is free to do it but be comprehensive and wait till Final Release to do it.

If you are here is Because you care about the game as I do, all of us here want a game to play and have fun with it. so ask correctly and give constructive opinions and ideas.

If the Dev's want to read it and listen to you then they will do it, and if not then they don't. so just Because you Spent $50 or $100 that does not mean you have the right to make them listen to you or make them do whatever you want.

By the way Brad i don't think you will gain anything by Banning tatsujb from the forums, it looks like that he cares a lot for AOTS, he just talk so much and bitch a lot, still don't know what he is trying to gain by doing that, Haters will always hate lol, but you have the Right to ban anyone you think is doing a really PR to the game or whatever other reasons you have.

Stardock Thinks that AOTS will be the very Special and one of the best RTS game in 2016 and Beyond, and i do hope for it to be, they did not say it is yet.

So good luck with that, work hard on it and you may get what you want

i like ashes..and i understand it is in beta..for now sometimes the fun does run out..but i understand its stage..lets see in march..BUT even if its not like the best..i honestly believe it has the potential to be the best..i bought the life time edition knowing there might be a chance of that..i have followed what you guys have done in galciv3 ..and how the game has evolved i am impressed..i personally don't own it..turn based is not for me..but just the progress you guys have made tells me it will be the same for ashes..and after it releases and all i'm convinced in 1-2yrs this game will be truly amazing because i can already imagine all the things they will add and improve..i have already convinced 4-5 of my sins buddies to buy ashes..and they seem to like it as well..and i will continue to support  and have a positive outlook as long as the devs keep doing what they have already been doing

Dude, you can't say that and then go in to your own rant :p

And the 2nd line,

Frogboy's somewhat dismissive breakdown of PA in his first response also invites conflict tbh, which I tried to point out in a fairly neutral way. 

People are overly sensitive on the internet as it all comes down to peoples interpretation of the written word, which differs from person to person. With no expressions, tone of voice, body language etc. to soften things. It does take a certain level of awareness and more time to write in such a way as to not piss people off. Especially hard with gaming as people are very passionate about it. It is one reason I am guilty of using things like or :p to show I am saying something in good humour or a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Anyway, as I said, I hope Ashes sells well and continues to develop over the coming years and I am positive about the project too.

p.s. to add to my wish list, I hope we get T4. What we have now works really well for 1v1 or 2v2. But on the bigger maps which involve more resources and longer games it would be nice to have another level to work up to too. Cheers!

Keep up the good work, I appreciate the long-term vision you guys have for the game and am more than happy with my purchase as is. 

@Tat:

There are two things we can do to get along better:

(1) Don't use your Founders access to spread FUD on other forums (like the PA forums where you actually said that Ashes beta 1 is in worse than than PA pre-alpha - the as a reminder, PA beta didn't include opponents).

(2) Don't assume that I'm not already intimately familiar with the code bases of many of these other games.  For example, I understand that you truly believe that Supreme Commander's projectiles were physics objects just like you truly believe that PA is multicore (which is different from being multithreaded -- multicore means your entire game is job based.  GalCiv II, for instance, was multi-threaded.  My AI would spin off threads to do lots of things thus using all those cores. But that doesn't make the game multi-core.  These terms mean something in engineering circles. 

I don't expect you'll ever like Ashes very much.  That is fine.  However, what I do expect, at least on my own forums, is a little bit of respect and benefit of the doubt.  I've read what you've written on other forums so I know full well that you actually don't think I understand/know what features SupCom or PA have in them or how they were engineered even after I've pointed out that I'm very familiar with the source code of SupCom and that we talk regularly to Uber.

@Tat

Yes. Again: The question isn't whether there are cases in a given game where it spawns lots of threads to accomplish a task in parallel.  Multi-threaded programming has been around a long time. It is good that they are doing that.  And technically, every thread will, by the OS, go out to a particular core based on the OS scheduler.  But a multi-core architecture is a job based system where everything, all the time, is split up amongst the cores all the time.   In Ashes, all your cores are always equally busy.

As far as your questions, I'll do my best.

1. The current AI doesn't "cheat".  You can play on normal and it plays the exact same game you do.  According to the stats, normal beats most players even now (and it's about to get a lot nastier).  But there will always be players who are just plain better than a computer. 

Now, when we talk about a multi-core AI versus what is in a typical RTS what we mean is that the AI works asyncronouosly to the simulation.  In PA, SupCom, Sins, Demigod, etc. the AI works syncronously to the sim.   That doesn't preclude it from having a good AI.  What it does mean is that the programmer skill needed to make the AI good is much much higher because they have vastly less CPU time to implement a strategy.

Case in point: In SupCom, units don't get firing solutions.  A unit gets and x,y location of another unit and fires a weapon. The weapon has a small (or large) AOE when it gets there and damages what's in the area.  This gives the illusion that the projectile is a physical object.   By not having an actual firing solution, units can end up firing into walls or sides of hills. 

In Ashes, if a unit can't hit another target due to an obstacle (like a hill) you'll see it back up and move (if it can) it's turret to get the right arc.  

How is Ashes able to do all that for thousands of units? Because it's multi-core.  

2. Depends on what you mean as "needing fleshed out".  Eventually, games have to be released. They're never really "done".  SupCom, PA, Homeworld, Sins, GreyGoo, Acts of Agression, etc. were all released when they were released and there are always people who think they should have waited until X, Y or Z went in.

At the end of the day, games are products.  Thus, the calculation is "Will it make more money if it waited until it had X."  Now, I don't know what feature X you think Ashes needs.  But let's say you wish it was shipping with say naval units or a third race:

Here's our schedule:

• March: Ashes
• April: Offworld Trading Company
• May: Late spring (dead time)
• June: Steam sale
• July: Middle of summer (dead time)
• August: Available but getting close to Civilization VI

So the calculation on any game is, what would we gain by delaying the game until say August? What key thing would it have? More polish? More time for MP testing?  These are incidental to whether a game succeeds or fails.

3. Because we don't want to.  We don't want to split the ladder.

4. Building MP

Now, since we're talking in a private forum let's make sure we are all crystal clear on the realities of MP gaming:

PA, SupCom:FA, FAF, Sins, Grey Goo, etc. etc. have tiny tiny MP communities.  Take all of them combined and it would still be commercially unviable.   To put things in perspective the magic number is about 5,000 simultaneously online players playing the game.

All those games combined get on average around 2,000 simultaneous players (excluding Sins).

The reason I bring this up is that nearly all the things you mention fall into the "Great to have in the future but would never consider holding up release for them."

• Balance.  Yes.  
• Replays (they're coming but not for 1.0)
• Reconnection. Not worth the effort.
• Give units to allies (future)
• Alliances (future)
• Global Chat (future)
• Map Pings (future)
• Per Team text color (future)
• 1 v 1 ladder (in)
• Glboal rank (in)
• Team ladder (only once 1 on 1 has sufficient population)
• Tournaments (see above)
• True galactic war (Ascendancy Wars Online)

For multiplayer to be viable we need enough people playing the game.  Robustness, ease of inviting friends in, observer mode, Resource sharing, etc.) these are some key features.

Another key feature will be bots.  The way they will ultimately work is that we'll measure how long it takes for someone to give up searchign for someone to play.  At that point, a bot will be given.  It might take 10 minutes before that happens but they'll be there.  Why? Rankings are about the meta game.  Playing humans is preferred but if I'm in Australia and there's no one else up to play, I shouldn't be excluded from being reasonably competitive.  

Then, when we do have tournaments, we can at least seed from the top 20 human players and give out prizes to them.  But those 20 people should all have an equal shot at being in the rankings.  Remember, the bots, like humans, go up and down based on their winning.  Someone finds an exploit, no problem, the bots fall down the rankings.  If the bots fall too far, then, well there wno't be any AI to play (the game won't match you against someone too far from your rank).

Quoting Frogboy, reply 19

Re Army centric.  That's our goal.

Good to hear, and I know it was the plan, that's why I'm here, trying to support the game by providing ideas (and arguing with you). Would you say that the game, as it currently stands, is army-centric? It is not even close to being army-centric, currently. As I understand the term, it would mean to have the entire game (mechanics, UI, visualization, production system, even mouse and keybindings etc. etc.) designed around the idea of controlling and handling armies, not individual units. Clearly, just adding a "Join Army" button (and making units in an army "help each other") is not enough. And the reason why I keep arguing about this is that I think it's very hard to make the game more army-centric after release, because it profoundly affects *everything* in the game, fundamentally how players are supposed to interact with it.

For example, why not make production army-centric, too? (And some of the things I've suggested in "Army-related Issues and Solutions" might help, but they're not enough either.)

Well, you seem to be convinced that that's the right thing to do. So I will only argue once more against it, I promise

Here it goes: Ashes is supposed to be an RTS, right? Do you really expect that critics, reviewers and players (most of which will have RTS experience) will say "Thank you for not letting us control our units by imposing these arbitrary* and confusing* limitations! That was such a pain in every other RTS!"? I mean, who are you making this game for? People who have never played an RTS and are too dumb to learn that certain units are only effective in higher numbers?! Isn't that one of the core things in RTS? And it's a really simple fact too, just tell them to produce 10 brutes at a time in the first tutorial!

* I maintain that this mechanism is arbitrary, because you can and will still end up controlling a single brute (or 2, or 3), it's just by accident; and confusing, because the health info gets more complicated and misleading, and because "unit numbers" become rather meaningless. Especially with respect to army reinforcements, straight, simple unit numbers might be really helpful, though.

And by the way, making production army-centric could solve the problem of having too many little units floating around by themselves! (Unless I've misunderstood what you think the problem actually is.)

HTH

Edit: Strikethrough, apparently that does not seem to be an issue to people