ARMIES TOO SMALL????

[The Former]

Why does everyone keep wailing about this?

Previous TW games: 1 General and Bodyguard + 19 Units.
TW3K: 3 Generals (and Bodyguards in classic mode) + 18 Units.

The math... The math has questions about this popular complaint.

[THEDOSSBOSS]

It's the internet. Misconceptions, misrepresentations, and misinformation spread like wildfire

[THEDOSSBOSS]

In this case I'd say it's a misconception

[rincewind]

Rule Number 87 of the intrawebs.

"Don't let insignificant things like facts to get in the way of a good whine."

More seriously, maybe some people want to have bigger battles than in previous titles.
Not me. I don't like really big battles. Those are micromanagement hell and I suck on micomanagement.

[The Former]

I do get that the novel throws out numbers like "800,000 soldiers", which might make people yearn for bigger armies, but... Those numbers were almost certainly arbitrary, unfounded in history.

What really gets me, though, is this one guy I saw on here who said that 18 units meant "significantly smaller" armies than the 20 in past games.

[Roflberries]

The only legitimate gripe I can see (I honestly don't care, just playing devil's advocate) is the reduction in size of cav units.

[The Former]

@Roflberries

Yeah, fair enough. I'm alright with it because Han-era cavalry tended to be pretty elite and required more training than the average footsoldier, but I can at least see where such gripes would come from.

[Poqreslux]

Yeah, it's a big misconception on both sides of the aisle. A lot of it comes from the idea that China has had massively sized armies throughout its history. This is true, and was true in the three kingdoms period. While the novel overestimates army sizes for theatrics, we do know from written records that armies numbering at the very least 10s of thousands, if not 100,000 or more were common and happened frequently.

However, at the same time what a lot of people tend to forget was that a large portion of the battles during the Three Kingdoms period were fought over multiple days, and generally (but not always) saw only a few thousand troops engaged from both sides at once at any given time. It was pretty rare that entire armies of 45,000 men each all engaged each other at once. Usually that's the more famous "epic" battles where those things occured.

So in a weird way, this game is both accurate but inaccurate at the same time.

I do wish CA would increase unit sizes just a smidge though. But at the end of the day I'd rather have balance over quantity so I'd prefer they prioritize that. If that means smaller unit sizes, then so be it.

[Fritz]

My gripe (which got a wall of text from me) is this association that because china presumably had large armies the in-game unit size needs to scale appropriately.

That is not how it worked (in older tw) or works (currently). The devs don’t compare historical army sizes to determine what unit scale to make available. Nobody thought rome had 50k manpower armies therefore rtw will have 160 max unit size; the british had 50k redcoats to fight the us rebels so empire will also use 160, but then china had 300,000 manpower armies therefore tw3k ought to have unit size 6x as large as rtw, but we’ll be nice to the poor chaps and limit it to 300.

The fact that this time period engenders the impression of warlords deploying massive armies has little to do with what unit size is appropriate for this game. That decision comes down to keeping the game’s requirements at sensible levels. Not all of us have monstrous PCs capable of running massive armies. This is one of those things that mods can cater to if one’s immersion desperately requires it and they know their pc can support it.

[Legolose]

Oh for the love of god where do these ppl come from?!?! Jesus, its like the op and the few ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that get locked out on CA's forums come here to spam the same old crys... Give it a rest already...... What a bunch of whiny little ♥♥♥♥♥....

[THEDOSSBOSS]

Originally posted by Legolose:

Oh for the love of god where do these ppl come from?!?! Jesus, its like the op and the few ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that get locked out on CA's forums come here to spam the same old crys... Give it a rest already...... What a bunch of whiny little ♥♥♥♥♥....

I don't think you realise what side the OP stands on in this topic, otherwise you would probably either agree or change around some nouns in your statement. He is making fun of the intelligence of whiners, and is prov8ng a point for CA, not against them

[The Cure]

Wait, you can only have 18 units in an army in 3K? Why was that decision made?

[Darklordnj]

Originally posted by The Cure:

Wait, you can only have 18 units in an army in 3K? Why was that decision made?

Might wanna read again (if you are being serious), it’s 21 units (3 general units +18 retainer units)

[Too Much Salt]

if its small, you can always bring reinforcement. With Reinforcements, you can potentially deploy 5 generals + 30 units = 35 units.

I am hoping the AI will know when to deploy multiple armies especially if they are attempting to capture a well defended settlement.

Never had problems in S2 where AI used more than 2 armies to attack my citidel.

[Chortles]

Originally posted by Too Much Salt:

if its small, you can always bring reinforcement. With Reinforcements, you can potentially deploy 5 generals + 30 units = 35 units.

I won't predict the release build's AI but in the influencers' build (specifically HeirofCarthage's video) I've seen as many as six generals on the AI's side, though I only counted ~18 retinue units.
https://youtu.be/n9EzBuFN5VU?t=810

[THEDOSSBOSS]

I reckon it's just going to be double like other TW games, but in this case the limit is double the characters including their retinue, so 6 characters, 36 retinue, 42 units