We agree (I mean
Knasp, you and I), this was integrated in the redesign of the unit's evolution, and the ability to have variable number of personnel for any unit was added in
this update.
In the current version, units have 2 main properties : organization level and equipment classes.
The organization level represent the ability to control more troops as a single entity with new technologies/concepts.
ATM the lowest level for infantry units is the "Party" with ~400 personnel and a small "In Camp" buffer of 20 personnel. Names and values are just for testing purpose, they will change, here is a small recap of the current organization levels, "Ancient" may be split in 3 eras with lower starting values.
Since you are now marching right through my area of interest (Master's Thesis on the organization of Alexander the Great's army at Gaugamela, 15 books on the organization of the German and Soviet Armies in WWII, several articles on the tactics and organization of the armies of the War of the Spanish Succession and late 17th century Europe) I just gotta throw in a few cents' worth here:
First, all the earliest military units we have any records of (Sumer, New Kingdom Egypt, Akkad, for examples) used a Decimal organization, with the smallest unit being 10 men. Larger units were 50 to 100, or 5 - 10 units of 10 each. After that it gets varied, because one Sumerian city state could only field an entire army of 648 men: smaller than a modern Battalion!
Second, based on those Stone Age Tribes that have been studied in the 20th century (in South America and Southeast Asia primarily), the basic weapons for both hunting and warfare were throwing weapons or weak bows. The reason is simple: the same weapons were used for Hunting as for Warfare, and it is almost impossible to walk up to a deer or a rabbit and club him over the head, and trying to do the same thing to a Cape Buffalo or American Bison will just make him mad, followed by your immediate demise and dismemberment. Distance is Safe: everybody threw spears/javelins or shot arrows (and became amazingly adept at dodging them). Weapons are almost always 'crafted' by specialists within the tribe, because even a simple throwing spear for maximum range, accuracy and effect, must be as 'streamlined' as possible and balanced for a good throw - breaking the nearest branch off a tree just won't do.
Finally, there are some specific figures for 'standard unit sizes' that you should probably consider. I'll see if I can reference it to the data from your table:
Level 0 (Ancient - "Party")| 400 men plus 20 'support'
.....There is a remarkable coherence for a 'basic ancient unit' in size. Here are some examples:
200 - 250 men - a 'Sa', the basic tactical unit of the New Kingdom Egyptian army
300 men - the Bodyguard of Knights of a Spartan King (ref: Thermopolyae)
300 men - the 'Sacred Band' of Thebes (Greek, not Egyptian)
200 - 300 men - the 'soldurii' the sworn bodyguards of a Celtic/Gallic chief
200 - 300 men - the 'companions' - also sworn guards/fighters of a German chief
300 men - the 'Agema' or Spearhead squadron of Alexander's Companion Cavalry - which he almost always personally led.
I suggest, that your basic unit be a
Band of 300 men, with 30 'support' which (based on the evidence from Greek, Egyptian, and the Stone Age tribal practice) would be largely very young men or even women acting as bearers of supplies and out to learn 'first-hand' what a warrior's job was all about.
Level 1 (Classical - "Horde")|I 700 men plus 40 'support'
... 'Horde' comes from the Turkic 'Ordo' which was a unit of 10,000. While Horde has come to be a General word, it's original meaning is very specific as to size - also, the earliest record of it isn't until the late Classical - early Medieval period. Instead, the Roman Cohort was 480 - 600 men, and the largest 'tactical' unit in Akkad was 600 men (based on the amount of bread rations they provided), and the largest unit of Gallic 'Soldurii' mentioned is 600 men. You see the trend here...
Early Classical, then, would be the
Cohort of 600 men, with 10% Support, or 60.
Level 2 (Classical - "Cohorte"III 1000 men plus 100 'support'
...Even armies that got 'sophisticated' later on seem to have started out with a Decimal organization. The Classical Greeks used a File of 8 to 12 men, so a 'Taxeis' was a unit of 100 files, or 800 - 1200 men. Alexander's phalanx, or 'Pezhetairoi' (Foot Companions) had a file of 16, so were about 1600 strong. ALL the Steppe 'horse archer' armies (that we have good information on: Huns, Mongols, Turks, Bulgars) had units of 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000. The problem is, all the 1000 man units have very specific titles unique to the individual armies - not appropriate as a Generic unit size indicator. One possibility is to use the Roman term for an auxiliary unit of 1000, which is also related to the Persian word for '1000'. So
Late Classical - the
Miliaria of 1000 men plus 100 Support
Level 3 (Medieval - "Company")III 1500 men plus 500 'support'
.... It is hard to find specific tactical or military units in the Medieval period, since most 'units' were simply Everybody You Could Raise from a given village or area. The smallest 'unit' was the Lance, consisting of a Knight and 4 - 8 'support' including an archer or two, squires, and supply-haulers. After that you have 'retinues' of all sizes. In combat, however, all the Medieval Armies were divided into 'Battles'. Size would vary, as would the number. Minimum seems to have been 3 Battles: Right, Left, and Center, but there could be up to 5 or more: Right, Left, Center, Reserve, Vanguard or Advance. Therefore:
Medieval: the
Battle of 1500 men plus 500 'Support'
Level 4 (Renaissance - "Brigade")X 3000 men plus 1000 'support'
.... If, as the game does, by 'Renaissance' you mean the late 15th century to the end of the 17th century, then this is close. It was during this period that the Spanish organized 'Tercios' (consisting of 3 'Cornuelas', or Colonelcies of, you guessed it, about 1000 men each), Maurice of Nassau organized pike and shot 'battalions' of 600 - 1000 men into Brigades of 3 -4 battalions each, and the Swedes formed 'Brigades' of 1000 - 4000 men with artillery, pikes, muskets all in one. By the 1690s all (western European) armies were organized into Brigades on the battlefield, BUT they were not permanent organizations - they were formed out of the regiments of cavalry and infantry on hand, commanded by the senior regimental commander, and usually all one arm: no mixed infantry/cavalry/artillery units.
Renaissance -
Brigade of 3000 men. The amount of Support depends on what you mean by that: the average 7-800 man battalion might have another 200 - 300 officer's servants, supply cart drivers, preachers, prostitutes, and even soldier's families tagging along. That could translate into up to 1000 'support' for your brigade, but it varied wildly, and most good commanders tried to keep the 'tail' to a minimum, periodically driving much of the 'support' away from the army.
Level 5 (Industrial - "Division") XX 5000 men plus 2000 'support'
..... The modern Division was invented in the French Army in the last half of the 18th century, so right at the beginning of the Industrial Era. The concept was to have a force that had not only 2 - 3 infantry or cavalry Brigades, but also Combat Support for them: 2 or more artillery batteries, some 'sappers' or 'pioneers' (combat engineers), some Light Infantry as scouts or skirmishers ahead of the Mass. The basic manpower of an infantry Division was 2 brigades of 2 regiments each, total 6000 to 10,000 infantry plus 12 - 20 artillery pieces manned by 400 - 600 men. IF you assume the basic strength is only those men actually firing muskets or rifles, then the numbers come down to 5 - 8000 men plus 1000 - 1500 direct support.
Industrial -
Division of 7000 men plus 2000 'support'
Level 6 (Modern - "Division") XX 6000 men plus 4000 'support'
.....For Modern we pretty much have to take the Division of 1914 - 1935, assuming the 'Atomic' Era starts with the first serious atom research in the late 1930s and so puts WWII in the 'Atomic' Era. The actual historical figures are wildly variable. Most of the major powers' divisions in 1914 were 10,000 or more infantry plus another 10,000 cavalry, artillery, engineers, communications, HQ, supply, and medical troops. By 1918, those same countries (Germany, Austria, Russia, Britain, France) had Divisions of about 6000 infantry plus another 6000 artillery, engineers, HQ, communications, supply and medical troops. By the early 1930s most of the 'peacetime' divisions had expanded a little, but, for instance, German and US Army divisions were each about 7000 infantry (9 x 800 man battalions) plus 8000 men in artillery, engineer, reconnaissance, HQ, supply, transport, communications, and medical (including veterinarian for the horse-drawn German units!) 'support' units.
So, based on that:
Modern - Division of 8000 men plus 7000 'support'
Level 7 (Atomic - "Division") XX 5000 men plus 5000 'support'
... World War Two. The Infantry Division ranged from 10 - 14,000 men (Soviet Army) to 15-16,000 men (US, British Army) to 17,800 men in the German Army at the beginning of the war, devolving into a 12,000 man unit by the end (theoretically). BUT increasingly, each division also had a non-divisional 'slice' of men and equipment: German divisions of 12 - 15,000 men average had another 8 - 11,000 men outside the divisional organization to provide supplies, artillery, engineer, medical, HQ, and antitank/antiaircraft support, while US divisions of 15,000 or so men had a whopping 30,000 + men outside the division to support it - admittedly, a lot of those were to support the division a continent or the Pacific Ocean away from the US homeland, but even 'on the battlefield', the average US division in Northern Europe in 1944-45 had another dozen battalions of non-divisional antitank, artillery, antiaircraft, combat and construction engineers, tanks, and communications assets in support.
I think the bulk of the Logistics Support (in the US case, that would be at least 20,000 of the 30,000 extra men in the 'division slice') should not be included in the unit regularly, but something the Civ is going to have to spend a lot of resources to get. It's easy to forget that in WWII, only 2 nations managed to maintain dozens of divisions 1000s of miles away from their homeland/home base over sea connections, and as a result both of those nations (US and UK) had armies that, on paper, were a fraction of the number of divisions of their opponents.
With that in mind, the divisions themselves should probably be about:
Atomic -
Division of 8000 men plus 10,000 'support'
Level 8 (Information - "Brigade") X 4000 men plus 4000 'support'
... The brigade-level unit has definitely become the 'standard' operational combat command in the Current Era, but the WWII brigade (average 3 - 5000 men) has about doubled in size. On the other hand, the number of men actually in contact with the enemy on purpose has gone down - a modern brigade has about the same 3 - 4 infantry battalions the British/Soviet/German brigades had in WWII, but have more Support within the brigade, and, again, a huge amount of Support outside the brigade - not even counting the massive personnel and equipment resources required to Airlift a brigade to anywhere in the world, a capacity that only 2 - 3 countries even theoretically have at this moment. That said, and assuming most of the Logistical Support is going to be a separate Resource Eater outside the 'unit', the unit should probably be:
Information -
Brigade of 4000 men plus 6000 'support' - only now the Support includes not only the artillery, antitank, antiaircraft, engineer, communications, etc. of the Atomic Era, but also Helicopters, Drones, Satellite Communications/postioning, and Cruise Missiles
, so I've compiled a juicy table of data, copied from Wikipedia. I went through the "List of Battles before 301" (AD) and I've gathered the basic info from all battles listed until 1 BC, from the Battle of Megiddo (1457 BC) to Battle of Alexandria (30 BC).
