i have loved this idea in principle but i abhor the micromanagement nightmare that comes with this. its one of the reasons i stopped playing endless legend. same with endless space 2 (though that had the separate issue of having the most complicated battle system in the world where i had zero clue what the pluses and minuses were.
i also understand that autoupdate is not great bc u have to make the strategic choice of what minerals a unit uses and what type of attack ir should emphasize. if they retain this system they need to have an autoupdate system where you can make broad overall choices in what u want to enphasize (offense, defense, some special ability, whatever) and what minerals you prefer using. if i have a ton of mineral X, i want everything to auto update withX and not force me to individually update each kind of unit. or if i want shift to mineral Y i can just do that in one click. and then u have the option of changing the template but i never want to into that screen. id be ok with forcing the player to pick specific upgrades ONE TIME and then all upgrades will be patterned after this
ANY Unit Workshop of Individual Update system in a Historical Game would have to have a lot of 'Automated' units included, because one of the bonuses of playing a historically-based game is playing with (famous) Historical Units. What's the point of playing Greece without Hoplites? Or Rome without Legions? In many ways, these 'emblematic units' define the Civilizations for many people.
And what's the point of having a Hoplite who doesn't carry a
Hoplon: large round bronze-faced wooden shield or a build a 'Legion' unit that doesn't include Swordsmen?
So IF anybody took the time to include such a system in a historical game, they would also have to include a bunch (possibly all the Unique or Emblematic Units) as Presets with only minor modifications to them allowed (like the Roman Legion changing from mail armor to
lorica segmenta thin plate armor and then back to link mail in the late Empire - they'd still all be Armored Infantry with big shields, swords and heavy javelins).
That, combined with some 'standard presets' by Era or Tech, would 'speed up' and (hopefully) vastly reduce the drudgery of 'designing and equipping' each unit individually.
Standard presets could be, for instance:
Peltast in Classical Era: an infantryman with no body armor, but various types of individual (not
Hoplon) shields, javelins and, for more Gold, a sword or spear. The Romans used them by the thousands as Auxiliaries, and almost all Greek Mercenaries were of this type - they were everywhere in the Classical World.
Fusilier in the late Renaissance/Early Industrial Era: the man carrying a flintlock smoothbore musket with bayonet, dressed in a coat and trousers and some kind of felt hat - that describes just about every infantryman in Europe from 1700 CE to 1840 CE with only the 'fashion' in coats, trousers and hats changing. Give us the ability to change the coat and trouser colors and the color of the 'turn backs' - the lapels, lining and cuffs on the coat - and without having to deal with weapons and armor, we can quickly represent basic infantry for an entire Era's worth of units. The black-powder
Rifleman of the early-mid 19th century is the same again, with a slight change in weaponry.
Something like these can be set up for almost every Era, sometimes several in a given Era (like, in the Ancient Era, Bronze-equipped Spearmen and Bowmen, Medieval Spearmen/Levy and Knights (who were all so similar they had to deck themselves in heraldric tabards, cloaks and banners so they could tell who was on who's side!), Late-Medieval/Renaissance Pikemen and Crossbowmen (weapon, helmet, leather armor unless you want to Pay Extra)
You should be able to use all 'standard' units and your Unique Unit(s) without being too terribly penalized in a historical game, and not have to open the doors to the Workshop for your units much at all unless you wanted to.
So yeah, there might be a few more war or expansion oriented traits with the ones we haven't seen yet (for example naval-war or exploration or ...), but what would be a good ratio between peaceful and warlike traits?
