Something Attila needs; Unit recruitment pools.

[The Glizzy Goblin]

Watch this, Most won't sit through this so just skip to 1;30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6eaBtzqqFA

Attila needs this, even without the population variable. Why? Because in R2 once I start to get powerful most of my armies consist of Praetorian guard... I doubt rome ever fielded 8 legions of them.

Not only is it more realistic, you see some of the lesser units that factions have in there rosters. For example, in R2 once I get principes thats all I build. I have zero reason to ever build hastati again, but I do carry a few triari. If there was a recruitment pool, then the player might find it easier to recruit some hastati, less principe and some elite triari to defend against cavalry instead of just having an army consist of 1 unit.

[abrensons]

agree, some mods fix the problem though, but it should be in the original game..

[Berserk Slayer]

I am not sure this would be as playable as might initially seem.

The game is rife with limitations, often not good ones, and this one can pretty much be modded in if wanted.

For my part if there were a major change to armies, I would far rather they add the ability to break armies up into patrols/detachments etc. like in Rome: Total War (and perhaps even build watchtowers). I guess that's another conversation, though

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Faction rosters were always an issue for R2. Recruitment pools would have been unnecessary had the rosters actually offered serious variety.

Rome (the faction) has something like 20 melee units, and you only really are likely to use maybe 5 of them. And Rome only has 4 spear units or so, and you lose Triarii when you upgrade, so get used to having Auxilliary Infantry or nothing else in that category.

Then you have the barbarian tribes. Until the Suebia update, the Iceni were the only side with a somewhat tolerable amount of variety. Even with the Suebia update, the barbarian tribes often have just 3 melee cavalry units: basically, just low, medium, and high quality, so there's really no variety there and just tiered upgrades.

Then you have the successor kingdoms. These guys actually have a nice amount of variety. But you know what? All you need from them is a couple ballistas, a bunch of pikes, and a few good cavalry units. The ballistas force them to come at you, the pikes murder everything, and the cavalry units attack their skirmishers and ranged units (and enemy artillery if they have them).

My favorite sides in R2, because of all this, were always Carthage and Parthia. Carthage because they can get cheaper mercenaries and this sort of opens up their roster tremendously compared to other sides, and Parthia because they have to find ways to make their powerful cavalry work in cooperation with their sort of weaker infantry.

Recruitment pools were not the issue. Faction rosters were/are. The reason huge numbers of folks have played using mods from day 1 is because many rosters were/are still pretty thread-bare. I mean, for crying out loud, Pontus is still pathetic and we already are at the point that the next game in the series has been announced. That's unacceptable. There isn't even DLC for Pontus to flesh them out yet.

It's rosters themselves.

[Varmint]

Unfortunately it would take more than just numbers on a table in a Mod to make this pallatable.

And artificial, gamey caps on unit types - without any rationale - even in unit descriptions is too immersion-breaking. Especially for the OP's concerns, the limits shouldn't necessarily be at a global, factional level - but rather per army.

I'd recommend, and granted not likely to be done from a modded table - a "Combined Arms" bonus - that encourages unit diversity within each army stack. And for a stick - a "HamFisted Army" debuff - for stacks that have only 1 or 2 infantry types - more debuff for no Cav or no Skirmishers or other support - possibly dependig upon Faction/Culture.

But this sort of consideration makes for more code for the Devs and more headache for short-attentionspan players - understandably.

Would also like to see increase upkeep for Cavalry heavy armies - say beyond 5 units per stack?
Morale debuffs for more than 6 skirmisher units per stack.
Cost escalation for more than 2 Ballista/Onagers per stack. etc.

Anyway, a lot of this sort of consideration can be crafted with carrot and stick buffs/debuffs and costs - even campaign movement - without artificial gamey absolute caps. There's so much potential. It just takes folks who care.

And really not sure there would be enough to even care about this sort of consideration
- much less agree on a tack to implement such.

[Cahlien]

The buff concept is not ideal, either, as the composition benefits/detriments are inherent and natural (for instance, infantry and artillery support each other much more substantially than artillery and cavalry, while an army comprised entirely of mounted archers was, at the tactical level, operational level, and strategic level, far more maneuverable than - and less susceptible to assaults from - armies utilizing a mixed force or combined arms policy).

I think it would be a terrible shame to limit the army either with a cap or with a buff/debuff system; rather, I think the representation of elite units should not be a function of the unit itself, but of the traditions of the army they belong to.

I would love, however, to see the option to separate units for patrols (as I utilize missile cavalry patrols extensively during invasions to act as a vanguard on the march and then divide them amongst several armies before laying siege) and would love to be able to do so without having to deprive myself of the use of an entire army just to march the force ahead of its infantry and artillery companions.

I also hope to see us able to designate our own faction capitol, and to change it whenever we choose. So long as we don't lose naval battles, I'd be fine with things like that, though it'd be nice to have more accessible coastline to land on.

[The Glizzy Goblin]

Guys, I don't mean restricting the amount of a certain unit an army could field.

The core concept of this is that buildings train units passively each turn, depending on the units quality it could take 1 turn or 6 for something like Feudal Knights. Everytime a single unit is trained, it is sent into a limited pool. Instead of paying to train units, you just hire them (I belive you could only hire 3 per turn) when needed.

This could work very well in Rome 2 since armies require a general, and one of the problems the game has is that elite units take the same amount of time to recruit as cheap ass levy unit's. Making units take multiple turns to recruit is bad, because each year is a turn so if you're recruiting 6 principe for 2 turns each you will have to spend 4 years of your general's life, while instead if this recruitment pool was in place you could simply hire the principe without them feeling completely cheap (since the pool would be depleted)

[Desmond]

Początkowo opublikowane przez LittleLegionaire:

Not only is it more realistic, you see some of the lesser units that factions have in there rosters. For example, in R2 once I get principes thats all I build. I have zero reason to ever build hastati again, but I do carry a few triari. If there was a recruitment pool, then the player might find it easier to recruit some hastati, less principe and some elite triari to defend against cavalry instead of just having an army consist of 1 unit.

Realism in a game where everybody is following the will of a hivemind and is as good as the hivemind.

I rather not be forced to use units I dont want to use. But then again I am the guy who waits at least a 100 turns with a small nation just big enough so I can get the best uppgrades and units before I start to conqure the world.