How many people does a unit represent?

[Lone Wolf]

Inspired by a discussion in the Bug thread.

To me, that depends on the unit. A usual mundane unit like a Swordsman or a Champion is definitely a group of people to me. A military unit in the classic definition of the world.

I like to think that most heroes represent a hero and a small group of his followers, even though there's nothing to suggest so in-game.

An arcane unit represents a single person to me.

 

[Xin]

Normal units I think that from 20-100, heroes are them and some of their followers, but dragons are alone, so are archmages, hammah, alazkan and couple other heroes. Desciples 20 and mages 5. Ships 3-5. And goblins are in grester number than normal units.

 

[Chip56]

I also think that depends on the unit.
Dragons alone.
Archmages alone, maybe together with 1 or 2 aprenteces.
Mages: small groups up to 10.
Adepts groups up to 20.
Horseman, archers etc (lower tiers) : up to 500.
higher tiers up to 1000. Some like immortals less.
Heros depending on which unit: alone (archmages like hemah) or leading armies with up to 500 soldiers (Donal lugh, Gilden)

Everbody who knows the wheel of time universe very well will know that those soldiers just never get mentioned. The Dragon and his 100 male Aes Sedai sealed the unspeakable evil. Yeh just ignore the 10000 soldiers that traveled with them.

 

[WarKirby]

all heroes and world units are definitely alone. Even with the likes of Donal Lugh, the army that follows him is, well, the army that follows him, literally. As in the other units in the stack.

I'd say all arcane units are alone too, otherwise you ought to be able to cast more than one spell at once. Besides, it takes a long time to train someone in the arcane arts. Much longe than it takes for them to swing a sword around. It would be pretty silly to have groups of 20 adepts in one unit.

Disciple units and ships are also alone, I'd say. And Siege weapons are also a 1:1 representation. Sometimes there's more than one per unit, but I think two catapults just represents two catapults.

I'd say the same for recon units too. With hunters and rangers, it's explained that their strength comes from the animals that follow them. But in human terms, I'd say there's only one man per unit.

For troops like warriors, swordsmen, etc. I generally think of it as 10-20 times the number of visible units.

 

[Lone Wolf]

For troops like warriors, swordsmen, etc. I generally think of it as 10-20 times the number of visible units.

It would still make the armies too small. I'd say they are more like 50-100. Unless by "visible units" you mean "graphically visible people", e.g. a swordsman - 3 people visible.

 

[Lade]

I'd have to agree with Warkirby, except with the swordsmen/aceman/champion/warrior/etc. units. I've always thought a unit was more like 100 men strong rather than 60. Of course, I've always wondered why phalanxes have more people.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

My personal opinion:

1. Standard army units (axeman, archers, swordman...) - They are a company of about 50-100 units in the stack.

2. Archmages, mages and heroes - They are alone single units, but they are probably escorted by slaves/serfs/pages/aprentices. These do nothing for the combat value but care about things like catching lunch and tending to the horses/weapons ect.

3. Siege weapons - The said weapon + crew

 

[F-F]

I think most of the people here are a bit off.

The way I see it:

The "real" stack size depends upon the size of your empire. I am currently playing a game where I have over 100 million population; the capitol alone is millions. To say that this city, and the empire at large, produces fighting groups consisting of 50 men is a bit silly.

In short, the bigger your empire (population), the bigger one stack "really" is.

The following site might illuminate the issue (shows how large armies real world countries have):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_size_of_armed_forces

 

[Xin]

But if so than unit of warriors from small empire, which has less warriors in it, is still as strong as warrior group from biger empire, which has more warriors in it.

 

[Vitek]

Yeah, WarKirby's opinion quite match mine.

 

[Lade]

F-f, But a larger empire has MORE units! After all, if I have one city, my axemen does jsut as well as someone's with three.

Anyone thought about assasins yet?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Single units. It would make no sense to send more than 1 from a covert operations standpoint.

 

[TheJopa]

Heroes definitely shouldn't be a single one unit taking on an entire division - I see them as a small efficient party - a hero escorted by his retinue, his few loyal friends, ala D&D party with a brute, healer, alchemist, mage, priest... Also maybe small elite squad of bodyguards and elite soldiers.

 

[Chip56]

Assasins might work alone but others could be part of a small team. A team in which A creates a diversion while the B kills the leader and C poisons the food supply.

 

[Rasta69]

I agree with F-f but with a few differences, I think that it changes with promotions and with the race, and the effect the promotions has is different from unit to unit.( Say with a warrior the combat promotions really represents adding extra men seeing as a warrior really just represents an untrained man with a club, but if its say a unit of Immortals then it represents the Immortals simply getting even more kick ass)

 

[Lade]

I agree with F-f but with a few differences, I think that it changes with promotions and with the race, and the effect the promotions has is different from unit to unit.( Say with a warrior the combat promotions really represents adding extra men seeing as a warrior really just represents an untrained man with a club, but if its say a unit of Immortals then it represents the Immortals simply getting even more kick ass)

Its EXPERIENCE.

They are getting better at wacking people with a club. It would make no sense for them to just add more men.

Heroes definitely shouldn't be a single one unit taking on an entire division -

Well thats what makes them heroic in the first place...?

 

[Deon]

From experience standpoint: it doesn't make sense that after each battle they just "replenish their ranks" with level-ups. I believe when you level up and they instantly refill it means that they are still in low numbers, they just got MORE experience and became better to be as good as the whole unit. Thus units gaining experience passively and combating are different.

Those who got XP passively are just became a bit better each other.
Those who lost a lot of men and got the same amount of XP became MUCH better as single persons but the same amount as the whole squad.

So you end with highly-promoted warrior parties which may be of 500 people if they were training in a city or with 20-30 people of the same strength (as a 500 men squad) who gained it through hard combat and death around them... They became closer to heroes which kill armies.

From this point of view, army sizes as constant make no sense. Every unit has it's own history, battles and situations and own number of survivors.

At least this is the only way to describe instant "heal" with a promotion for me .

 

[F-F]

But if so than unit of warriors from small empire, which has less warriors in it, is still as strong as warrior group from biger empire, which has more warriors in it.

Well, you have a point there, but do remember that civ4 is only a game; everything is not done in a realistic way. In game play terms, the "real" amount of people in a unit does not mean anything; it's only something that we speculate here.

F-f, But a larger empire has MORE units! After all, if I have one city, my axemen does jsut as well as someone's with three.

Anyone thought about assasins yet?

It could be seen like that, yes, but we would still have the problem of a huge city producing tiny little fighting groups that are completely insignificant compared to the population within it.


I actually realized that the original question is (sort of) answered in game: you can view demographics of your empire and there it tells you how many soldiers you have. I believe that the amount there depends upon your population and the number of soldiers you have. Not sure what kind of figures would you get if you divide that number by the amount of units you have...

Heroes and assassins are pretty much fantasy elements and I doubt that there is much point in speculating on the "real" numbers behind them. But as far as I see assassins are small elite groups like commandoes or whatnot (still tied to population though) and heroes are basically one person + possibly a few helpers. And please, don't ask me how one guy can defeat thousands of enemies

 

[GePap]

I think of FfH warfare as being comparable to medieval and ancient warfare on Earth. If empires like the Egyptians could asemble armies in the tens of thousands, so could great powers in this game. As such, I do view each unit as consisting of say 50-200 individuals. Most heroes would be the individual plus a few followers.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Heroes being 1 person and standard units being companies of hundreds of men does make sense in the context of FfH. Some of the hero civilopedia entries, such as Donal, Alazkan, Kithra, and Gibbon, lend credence to the "one lone hero is powerful enough to take on a platoon of mooks in direct combat" theory.

As for the more powerful spellcasters being able to level entire armies, consider that it comes in the form of 1 spell per turn, 2 if you make a concentrated effort to bend the rules with spellstaffs, and that a turn, while not explicitly given a definite length, is implied to be a decent chunk of time, somewhere in the ballpark of a few months to a year. (Kael said he envisions a full, start to finish file of FfH covering the span of a few centuries.) It logically follows that those spells you have heroes and archmages cast in game are massive, grueling rituals that take many weeks of preparation, and that the very best casters can, through these arduous rituals, produce something appropriately spectacular that kills by the tens of thousands.

If you've played WC3: Think of what Illidan was trying to do at the start of TFT. He sat in a fortified ruin for weeks and attempted to magically trigger a massive crack in a glacier that would cause a huge environmental disaster which would wipe out legions of undead, among other things. That's what I imagine something like a speaker's tsunami spell to be like, only the army sent to stop it from happening doesn't always succeed.