Its actually not that complex. All you really need to keep track of is the health status of both the rider and mount and if they are seperated or not. The individual performance of each unit and its placement would not be important in Elemental given how the battles are somewhat abstracted. Now if we were talking about a Total War game then things would be different. Each soldier is modeled as part of a whole unit and acts independantly, evenif they are all under the control of a collective intelligence.

If you want to go the super simple route then you can. For example, we know that each army will probably have a "supply train" of sorts for units in the field. Not only do you have to make soldiers and bears available to found units of bear cavalry but they must be on hand to replace aging units or casualties in the field. This indicates that bears and soldiers are a limited resource. We can either bring replacements from home or patch up wounded units and return them to service. If you just take for granted that the rider and mount always get killed together then you have a lot of waste.

So again, what happens? This time its really simple. If Luckmann is killed but Smokie lives then we are -1 soldier but we retain the trained war bear who can be given another rider. If Smokie is killed and Luckmann escapes then were short a war bear but Luckmann is unhurt. No matter what combination you use, the status of each half is tracked independantly. If you somehow lost 40/40 riders you would end up with a unit of 40 trained war bears without riders to worry about. They would then become a unit of animal infantry instead of a dead unit of cavalry.

Then if that is the case, who instructs the animal Infantry, the Lead bear? And if the bears could suddenly act independantly on the battlefield without their riders, why even bother wasting the resources required in adding a "Rider" to the bears.

Animal infantry is just what it IS. Who said there was a leader?

We actually have no idea if and/or how battles will be abstracted in this game. The only things we've been told about combat so far is the vague "continuous time turns" and total war scale battles. 

Edit: In response to GW Swicord's comment below this posted I have removed the word promised. 

First, I hope there is no "supply train." Unless the game can handle it well automatically, that's an aspect of war that I would never want to have to manage in a game.

Secondly, soldiers and bears would still be limited resources if they die together as a single Bear Cavalry unit. And I don't even know that I'd call their joint death a form of waste. It would only be waste if there were an in-game alternative. If that is simply the way it is, then it isn't waste - it'd only be waste in comparison to real life, which should really sit on the sidelines when considering fun gameplay.

But then SD has to code in mixed-unit squads (unless they forego any sort of squad system, though I don't know how tha would work). And how does a riderless mount affect combat? A riderless horse wouldn't just attack the enemy on its own. And I don't think we'll be able to have non-sentient creatures (read: mounts) as independent military units. Which kind of makes sense, how would they know what to attack, or where to go? And if we can't have them as riderless units, then when their riders die, what happens to the mount? Allowing them to die separately leads to many more things that the game and the player have to keep track of and manage, and imho wouldn't add much fun.

I'm very much in favor of mounts and riders dying simultaneously for the sake of gameplay. I have been convinced though that they should have separate attacks. It would be cool for elephant archers to be able to charge into the enemy and have the archers independently target something else.

As someone caught in the embarassment of Impulse whining related to GC2 2.0, I feel obliged to point out that nothing we read on these forums from a Stardock staffer is any sort of "promise."

If we start using that word regularly, especially in trying to hassle devs about past forum posts (which isn't what pigeonpigeon is doing here), we'll almost certainly harm the Stardock culture of encouraging open dev-player communication.

But then would you be okay with managing "upkeep"? Because upkeep is exactly the same thing. My point was, if you want to replace dead members of a unit they have to come from somewhere. In games like MoM new members of the unit effectively appear out of thin air. Adding a bit of realism here would actually reduce the management burden. Let me give you another example.

You have a unit of 40 bear cavalry. That is 40 war bears and 40 armoured knights. This unit is sent into combat and loses 37 of its members, 10 of which are too wounded to fight. This unit is now useless as a fighting force because you can only send 3 of its members to fight in the field, 13 once the wounded members heal.

Now if you tracked the rider and mount independantly you could instead end up with a different situation. Lets say that out of 40 riders 6 are dead, 20 recieve only minor wounds, and the rest escape unharmed. Out of 40 bears 12 are dead, 8 have been lamed by spike traps and 10 of them have minor wounds.

This time we are left with 34 riders and 20 bears capable of fighting. This is a vast improvement over the 14 we would have ended up with under the old system. The unit can still mobilize at half strength with 20 units, nothing to laugh at. At the same time you have a force of 14 dismounted knights who are still capable of fighting, you could attach these men to another unit of infantry.

--

When it comes time to reinforce this unit to full strength you would not have to train 26 bears and 26 riders. Instead you would only need 6 riders and 20 bears. The 8 wounded bears will eventually recover and they remain with the unit but do not participate in combat. If the unit has been reinforced to full strength by the time they are fit for duty then they are not wasted. The healthy bears would be able to replace bears killed or wounded in combat.

In fact that is one thing would help a LOT. Extra units assigned to every fighting unit you produce. They would allow you to replace casualties and reinforce units already in combat with fresh soldiers...

It depends what you mean by upkeep. Yeah if you lose some units and want to replace them, train more and send them to the army. By supply train I thought you meant you had to maintain a wagon train following your army everywhere with supplies and services. That is what I wouldn't want to see in the game. Feeding troops and maintaining equipment should just be a gold/food upkeep cost.

Your comparison of the two situations with bear cavalry being one single unit vs. a combination of two is like comparing apples to oranges. You came up with two different scenarios for two different methods of handling mounted units and then came to the conclusion that one is vastly superior to the other.

For example if the mounted units are counted as one single unit, it could be easier to completely kill off a unit, but if they are separate then it would comparatively very easy to kill either the rider or mount, resulting in an inferior unit - and if more riders die than mounts then the extra mounts would be worthless anyway (until you train new riders anyway). And allowing them to be separate results in having to keep track of so many more things. Neither way is inherently superior to the other. It's a matter of preference. I prefer keeping this aspect of the game simple. You want to make it detailed and realistic. I think your way would be too much of a pain in the butt for the little it would add to the gameplay, and you think my way is too simplistic that it wouldn't be as fun.

Yeah well, I'm not done argueing with myself yet.

Having a supply train might be a pain for you but it could also be a pain for your enemy if you decide to raid his. The problem is doing it in a way that is realistic enough to be interesting but simple or automated enough to be fun.

As far as mounts go I think we missed the obvious answer. Make mounts more like cars. Anyone can ride a car, but if you don't know what you are doing then you can't start it, can't steer and will probably crash horrible. Mounts are the same way, animals smell fear and you have to build a bond before you can do anything with them.

This way we have choices and the type of mount you give your troops would become much more important. For example:

• Transport mounts are used to give your soldiers extra mobility. Before combat your troops dismount and tie up the horses and go to battle on foot. They can be used in combat in a pinch but are not trained for it. This would be very useful for scouts, quick reaction forces or units with a lot of armour/gear like engineers.
• Combat mounts are meant for fighting and have been trained not to panic in such a situation. All of them are armoured to some degree depending on what role they play. In combat they attack the enemy in support of thier rider, either by running them down or using natural weaponry (claws, teeth etc)
• Companion mounts are a bit different. Anyone with the right training can hop on and direct a combat mount. A companion mount is essentially your friend. You have been together for a long time and built up a useful store of joint experience. Depending on the animal companion mounts can be used for transport, combat or both. The key difference with these mounts is that if the rider or mount gets killed then the bond is broken and has to be rebuilt with another mount or rider.

This way we can include everything we have talked about. When combat mounts are lost in combat the rider can be given a new mount. This essentially makes the unit twice as tough, quite an advantage and a fitting one for cavalry units.

The thing is, in elite cavalry units the rider and mount are inseperable, so if you remove one from the equation then you are effectively removing both as a fighting force from the battlefield. If you track wounds and such seperatly then it is possible that mounts and riders could return to active duty with the unit at a later date.

That's even worse. That would mean having a supply train would just be a pain for everyone. That is the mark of a horrible feature That said, if it could be something that is automated well enough that it always does what I want when I want, then great. Otherwise, I'd rather not have to deal with that level of micromanagement.

That still doesn't convince me The reason I'm opposed to separatable riders and mounts is I think it will give me way too many minor things to keep track of. You can make elite cavalry be very strong and dangerous and hard to get rid of by other ways (like just making them hard to kill, for one). And none of the features you've come up with that would be possible with separatable mounts seem like they'd add enough to the game to make that extra amount of work worthwhile.

Supply trains are important because it means that most armies would be linked to the empire that sent them. This would prevent an army from simply running to the center of your empire and attacking an inner city. If they make a hole in your defenses you can simply close the hole and the invading army will eventually starve if nothing else. If I was making a system like that I woundn't anything to do with wagon units with Starcraft level micromanagement. But something akin to the control points system in Dawn of War or Company of Heroes would work better. Only in this case they player is the one who makes the stragtegic points.

Basically, when you have an army in the field you have to set up a line of supply, this may or may not involve wagons. In fact at the very beginning you might not even HAVE wagons or horses for that matter. This means you might have a wheelbarrow train and rely exlusively on manpower or maybe another animal like bears. In the beginning this means that your armies are limited in range until you research better logistics.

To extend the line of supply you have to lay down strategic points. These are checkpoints between you and your army where supplies will be routed through. Each point has a radius around it that reflects its area coverage. An empty point is just a waypoint used for navigation. A point with a garrison which can be temporary and or fortified ala the roman forts has a protective radius around it. The enemies can't enter this radius without being attacked and it allows you to quickly move your supply train into hostile territory.

So in a typical situation you would have cities and forts along the border of your territory. When you go to way with your neighbor you would have to establish a strategic point in his territory, sieging and capturing one of his forts would be a convenient example. Until you do this you can't attack any futher into his territory unless you use troops or cavalry which can operate on the supplies they carry alone.

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There IS worthy depth in such a system. The biggest benefit is that it would stop players from smashing thier enemies capital city with a uber stack ala MoM. The only defence to such tactics was to garrison your own city and the surounding tiles with 9 other uber stacks. Secondly what you compose you army of will become very important. Scout and commando type troops can operate independantly for a long time which makes them perfect for scouting and attacking literally behind enemy lines. An army composed entirely of undead or magical creatures requires no food, so it could also do the same. The biggest benefit is that you can use the layout of your empire to create true lines of defense. The enemy can't simply rush through, they have to make a gap and keep it open, otherwise the line will close around them and they will be cut off.

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Not enough to be worthwhile eh? Well it all comes down to the useful complexity issue. Its pretty obvious how much is too much. But then how much is too little? The current system as it stands does work is just far too simplified, its abstracted to the point where things no longer make sense.

I think its worth it just because we can make cavalry units tough because either or both the rider and mount are completetly badass. 150+150=300. If you wanted to make a badass unit with combined deaths then you end up with 1+1=9.

To really get into it we will have to way a but until we know more about the combat system. Or I could make one up.

There is no 'obvious how much is too much,' except for individual players. IMO, devs and critics are better off if we all focus on an assumption that underlying complexity is good but that how and when players must directly engage with that complexity is a matter of taste.

The strongest (broadest-market) aproach will both maximize underlying complexity and provide a range of map settings and interface options so that Elemental can appeal to players ranging from ones who mainly want to build and skirmish neat fantasic military units to players who want to occupy a virtual garage for months with a big table covered with miniatures while they play through a story like LotR.

"Animal infantry is just what it IS. Who said there was a leader?"

I thought the discussion was about Seperate Mounted Combat attacks, covering both Mounted and Unmounted, and what happens to the Mounts if their Riders are lost. The Riders are most certainly their Leaders.

Please note the OP's Topic of discussion before getting all shifty eyed... thanks.

Unless of course, you are avocating that we be allowed to simply build Bad Ass Bears Brigades, in large formations.

Yeah that's the exact type of micromanagement I don't want to have to deal with. Imagine playing on a huge map, fielding a dozen different armies. It would drive me absolutely insane to have to constantly make sure that all my armies are going to have enough food, equipment and whatever else they might need shipped to or following them every day. I'd rather they just implement logistics ala GC's life-support (although I wouldn't be very happy with that either).

Personally I would find this maddening. I like the "zone of control" idea, where maintaining an occupied fortification gives you a zone of control that hampers enemy movement, though. And if you're so into realism, then what's to prevent your army from pillaging the surrounding enemy territory for food and supplies?

Yes, your suggestion would prevent a lot of annoying tactics like just making a bee-line for the enemy capital. But I think there are much less complex ways of doing so that don't require anywhere near the same level of micromanagement. It could be as simple as giving major movement penalties to invading armies (at least when they are close to enemy military installations). This could be justified as due to unfamiliar terrain, local hostilities, guerilla tactics, etc. This way if you manage to plunge deep into enemy territory with no opposition, you deserve to reach their capital. Likewise army composition can still make a difference even without player-managed supply trains.

My point is that there are many ways of achieving these goals without all of the tedious management your suggestions would require from the player. At least in my opinion

Except riderless mounts wouldn't = 150. They would = 0. Because they can't fight without a rider. So all you need to do is remove the rider from the equation and you've incapacitated the whole unit. That may be more realistic but I wouldn't want it to be in the game, mainly for all of the reasons I've already stated. And a badass unit with combined deaths needn't be 1+1=9. It could be 1+1=1.5, or = 2, or =3, or =10,000. The strength of combined units can be whatever they need to be to be balanced. That is pretty much the only important thing. You can't numerically compare the two ways of handling mounted units. It's merely a matter of how much you value realism vs. how much you want to minimize tedious management, and what type of gameplay you prefer.

Of course. But before we ask for anything we have to be sure of what we want. Its pretty obvious that pidgeon doesn't like the idea, which is good. If he doesn't then its quite likely that I won't either, im just not sure yet.

The original topic was based around a yes or no question. I voted for yes, but that answer by itself is not useful for anything or anyone. If I had left off at that this conversation certainly wouldn't have gotten even this far. To get anything useful out of a conversation or idea you have to follow up on all possible leads.

The rider is not neccesarily the leader. If you are riding an elephant and the elephant gets angry or spooked you are no longer in control. It would be akin to gost riding a semi trailer. It depends entirely upon what method of control you are using. If the rider is the one who directs his mount then the loss of a rider means a loss of direction. If the animal is trained to respond to commands that never come, it will either get confused or do nothing.

War bears from master of magic are summoned by wizards in pairs. The leader in that case would be you, these creatures are magically linked to you and presumable obey your commands. If you did something similar in Elemental only this time you place riders upon them, it wouldn't matter if the rider dies, the mount will still obey your commands.

When I said "animal infantry" I was just categorizing those war bears based on what they are. If these were wild bears then they would have no leader to speak of. If they were trained war mounts its possible they could respond to outside commands such as horn calls. If they were magically summoned then they would obey the commands of the summoner.

Leaderless bears are still very dangerous. In an offensive capacity the lack of control would cripple most tactics. But imagine if you loaded them into hidden cage traps, put them to sleep magically and waited for an invader to attack your city. Every street corner they turn would essentially result in constant OMGWTF BEAR AMBUSH!

Gives a new meaning to the name "bear trap". 

That would be like having pie with cake IN IT.

Hmm. Well in most games your starships have some sort of "fuel" rating. You can extend the range of ships by using tankers to refuel them halfway. I suppose the supply system in Elemental would work a bit like that.

It doesn't have to be user complex. I'll just make up an example here. Lets say you dispatch a supply convoy from your home to your army every day. This caravan contains 100 supply points. Your army would have different supply meters that represent different things, food would be a major one, equipment another and other stuff such as mounts or siege weapon ammo. Lets say your army had 50/100 food points, when the caravan arrives it only takes 10 supply points to refill the food stocks. The other 90 are spend restocking other things, depending on how expensive the item is the more supply it is worth. 1 point = 5 food or 4 bundles of arrows, 2 points = 1 sword, 5 points = 1 mount etc.

If your caravans arrive daily then your army will never lack for anything. If there are supply issues and caravans only get sent out once a week the army will still have enough to eat but thier stocks of other items will begin to degrade. This kind of detail would allow lots of stuff. Say you were attacking a city and the city had plenty of food but was low on arrows, if you intercept the next 3 caravans they would have no arrows left by the time you make your main attack.

From what we know of the unit building system, this kind of supply system would not be far off.

Yeah exactly. Forts can be used in an offensive capacity as well as a defensive one. Your raiders could do out and cause havoc then retire to a safe stronghold. Having a fort or at least a stationary camp allows you to bunk more soldiers and frees up sentries to go scouting.

With the caravans at least its really not that hard. When you are creating your empire your territory will be divided into zones, even if those zones are not separated by lines on a map. For the "dead zones" between cities its a simple matter to plop down a few waypoints and forts. Placing these in good locations is a necessary skill, you don't want your caravans trudging through swamps. Once these points are down the computer would connect the dots automatically and route caravans through the quickest and safest route. You wouldn't have to directly control them unless you wanted to do something special or there is a threat affecting them.

If your army is in enemy territory then you would need to put in some more effort. But at this point it would be another layer of tactics. Do you escort your caravans with enough troops to make them bulletproof or do you bring them in by stealth?

Okay maybe I could have phrased that better, I was in a hurry. Mounts are powerful because they can support riders. 1+1=2 But if mounts die when the rider dies then that equation becomes 2-1=0 which doesn't make sense at all.

You can remove the entire unit from the battle if it loses one of its parts, but the loose half doesn't have to evaporate. Even if you only keep track of the surviving half in a logistics capacity, that would be a huge improvement because surviving resources can be used again.

I do think this is an important issue as that is pretty much how I always ended up winning in MoM, and though I knew it was cheap, I just couldn't resist the easy win! It would really be handy if there was indeed some game mechanic that addressed this in Elemental to save me from myself! I'm not sure if supply trains is the way to go or not but I think it's an interesting way to start the conversation, especially given that it does reflect reality and potentially throws up some interesting strategic choices to boot. I can totally understand the wearyness to embrace further micromanagement though so it really would need to be as sleek a system as is possible.

One question I would have, which I guess you kind alluded to in the quote above, is at what point does a stack necessitate a supply train in this type of system? I mean if a stack is a lone hero.. clearly they get by on their own living out in the wild or whatever pretty much indefinitely (or I'd hope so as I loved sending them off on random monster bothering quests in MoM , and clearly an army of 10,000 men would need a significant supply train... but a group that comprises 3 heroes, 2 units of pikemen and some cavalry? Would we be dealing with a straight number threshold that needs to be met before resupplying is necessary? If so we might end up with a lot of stacks just below that level (which could lead to consistency problems.. I mean you might have 5 stacks all in a tight group just below the threshold, these move across enemy terriorty with no penalty..then they coalesce to strike the capital.. how would we stop such a thing occuring?).

Another option would be you could have some special ability/trait that all units need to have to avoid the necessity of constant supply, like "commando" or "self sufficient" or something, which obviously your heroes and scout units would have.. maybe you'd just need a hard limit of how many of these units you could have in one stack though.. otherwise you could end up seeing armies of 10,000 scouts Zerg rush! The downside of such a system might be that it seems unrealistic for a single unit of spearmen of say just 20 men (who I would argue would be unlikely to be given the self sufficient trait, as they're a reasonable building block for a large army) to always need a supply train... I'm just thinking out loud here so to speak which is why this may be totally incoherent .. I guess in this case you could have an upper threshold for how many of the units without the trait that you can stack without supply.. which would be pretty low, but enough that 2-3 units could wander around untethered etc.. although again any threshold probably falls prey to the exploitation I suggested above. Hmmmmm. I guess you'd really have to keep that threshold really low, so it just wouldn't be feasible to have enough micro stacks moving about in enemy territory to form a decent army. Yeah that makes sense.. I mean if we are talking here about truly epic battles requiring 10,000 men.. then if the cap was at 100 men in a non supplied stack without the self sufficient trait.. then ummm yeah that seems kinda reasonable doesn t it? If you had 100 micro stacks to slap together suddenly into a 10,000 man army you'd basically be creating a massive supply train by another means anyhow

I guess another way to go would be to have the necessity for supply scale with the number of units in the party (which obivously makes sense if we're going for realism). I'm not entirely sure how this would work out though as you'd need to find some way of scaling the flexibility of what your army can do depending on the number of men within it. So yeah, any ideas? How do we make this a sliding scale so that setting up a supply chain for 200 men is a less inhibiting than setting one up for 10,000?

Hope some of that made sense.. I'm really really tired! 

Haha!

That seems pretty complex to me... Not 'hard-to-understand' complex, but 'involved' complex. First I'd have to produce all those supply points. I'd have to know exactly how much I need at any given time. And what if I don't have enough supply points to satisfy all my armies? I'd have to choose how much to send where. Then there's the matter of which types of supplies do I want to replenish most? Those are all things that I would never trust the computer to do for me, as it would be too situational. Managing all of those things would in no way be fun for me, and hardly strategic. I would rather just have there be a straight-up food/currency upkeep cost for military because that can easily be fully automated.

Yeah, placing forts/waypoints wouldn't be so terrible as it's probably something you would do as you expand. So even if you're expanding quickly then you probably wouldn't have to spend that much time placing them. On the other hand, making sure your caravans can actually get to your army could be a PITA. For example, you would have to make the decision whether or not to send troops along with your caravans, and if so, how many and what to send. Again, that's not something I'd trust to the AI. That, combined with the management of 'supply points' might make invading enemy territory prohibitively micromanagement intensive. It would definitely add some realism to the game and strategy (stopping a much larger army could be a matter of blocking their supply lines). But it could also be a real frustration, both in terms of gameplay and tedious management tasks.

It wouldn't be "the mount dies when the rider dies." It would be "the Bear Cavalry unit dies when the Bear Cavalry unit dies." It would be 1-1=0. And the Bear Cavalry unit would be more difficult to kill than either of the component units. 

To repeat, I'm not saying if a mounted unit loses one of its parts, the loose half should evaporate. That would imply that killing the mounted unit would be just be a matter of killing the weakest component of the unit. What I'm suggesting is that a mounted unit is singular, having no components to it. However, being mounted would give it bonuses (harder to kill, faster, extra attack, etc). 

I would say it depends entirely on the lands ability to support you. This would add tons of layers of complexity, even if you choose not to rely on it at all. So many possibilities exist that we should probably make another thread at this point. Anyhow ,ost armies would still require supply trains but they would not be nearly as frequent if they didn't have to bring food.

Makes sense, let me make something up again.

Say you had a scout or commando unit. That unit would be composed of 6 or so people. Normally this unit would consume one "unit" of food. Both of them have the "hunter" unit trait which allows them to hunt for food. It also gives them a bonus to ambush tactics. Now if they hunt every couple of turns they will have enough food to supply themselves. If they were attached to an army they could scout around and hunt on the same turn bringing back some food to the army each day. If you have a lot of scouts you could slow down the consumption of your stored food.

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Apart from replacement soldiers and or mounts your army will usually not need anything other than food unless it gets into a fight. Swords and armour break and while arrows can be gathered up and used again the majority can't be reused. These all have to be replaced and the only way to do it is by caravan. Unless your army has had its clock cleaned you will always have surplus supply points. Distribution would only become important if there has been a prolonged shortage such as in that siege example I gave you. Otherwise all you have to worry about is that the army gets its weekly caravan.

Also, just because your soldiers have not recieved fresh swords and armour for a while doesn't mean that they go without. A dull chipped sword can still stab and cut things in a pinch. A new sharp sword would perform better, but until then the old one can still function. Now if the sword breaks entirely you have a problem but thats what backup weapons are for.

All supply caravans would be guarded. The world in this case is still a dangerous place so its likely that anyone traveling with the caravan and driving the carts would be a soldiers. If you are going to deploy deep into enemy territory you might have to go so far as to create whole support armies to lock down safe supply routes to and from your forces in the field. This is doubly important because such a road doubles as an avenue of retreat if things hit the fan.

Its really not that far off. Militaries in history and fiction often have entire regiments specializing in support tasks such as hospitals or artillery. In order to build a fort you would need to train all of your soldiers to build them Roman style or have deticated engineer units.

Abstraction is fine but that is the kind I would much rather avoid. Attack and damage (health) scores NEED to be seperate for mount and rider. Killing the mounted unit is entirely about killing the weakest component. Don't shoot the knight, shoot the horse. Its a bigger target and has less armour. The mount gives cavalry all of its strengths but also its greatest weakness. If you remove that weakness you lose the balance cavalry have against infantry.

OK, I see plenty of folks ready to describe or complain about different types of complexity, but I still want to see some really smart talk about how to *layer* complexity and progressively reveal it based on player tastes and behavior. I'm barely smart enough to have my question, and I'm pretty sure some folks working this forum should be able to answer even if I might not be able to follow the reply very well.

To try getting back to the OP via this sub-theme, if the core game mechanics track a rider and a mount as separate units, how and when could or should that be revealed to a player? Should it be pegged to difficulty level, explicit player setup options, stats saved from the last game session, some combo of those and/or something else?

I know it's not far off. But I wouldn't find it fun to manage a complete military support infrastructure in real life, let alone in a game. If Elemental were going to be a full-fledged war simulation, it would be one thing. But the truth is that militaries and armies and combat will only be a small subsection of what we manage every turn. Personally, I want the only military aspects that require a significant amount of time/actions from me to be creating/training units and combat itself. There should be other aspects to deal with as well, but they should require minimal and/or rare attention. This is just a personal preference, and obviously one you don't agree with .

Realism is fine but that is the kind I would much rather avoid. Health scores NEED to be singular for mount and rider . Now, I agree that attacks should be separate (which can just be done by giving the single unit two different attacks). The balance between cavalry and infantry can be created in other ways than full-on realism. Likewise, the balance struck between cavalary and infantry in the game need not be exactly realistic, so long as it allows for good strategy and isn't completely out of whack.

The most realistic tactical combat I've ever played is in Medieval II:Total War, and even there cavalry were treated as singular units. I played that game for months on end and the thought that the cavalary should be split into rider and mount never even occurred to me - because it would be completely unnecessary. It would definitely have an effect, but would the effect have made the game more fun for me? No.

The key phrase of this paragraph is the first one.  MTW2 has a seriously unrealistic resource system that has absolutely no relation to anything resembling reality.

If you are going to have a realistic resource system where men and their armaments actually come from somewhere, a system that conserves them depending on the situation is entirely appropriate.  Keeping the horses in a Total War game would be pointless because you don't actually use horses to start with.  They, along with the rest of the attire, come straight out of your ass crack because you have the required structures.

Separate rider and mount is as simple as deciding they're separate.  You have your mounted knight on a trained warhorse, the horse dies.  You've now got an unmounted knight that needs a new trained warhorse before he's a mounted knight on a trained warhorse.  If the knight dies, you've got a horse with no rider.  All you need is a system for determining which half ends up dead, the rest is elementary.  It can be player targetted, weapon dependent, a simple unmodified percent chance, any would work.

 Unless of course the enemy had a Magic Sleep spell as well.

As to the point of "seperate" or "single" mounted combat units, it would seem that "seperate" may be as likely as not. As noted above, if the pieces to create a unit are made up of seperate components, A horse, a Knight (of which itself is made up of 3-5 pieces) then the seperation already exists.

What is left to decide however is how they "act" independently after the initial merger is made and then broken.

Does the warhorse without its Rider just run about willy nilly kick the shit out of what it thinks are enemy units? Perhaps. How combat effective is a grounded Knight compared to when he/she is Mounted?

I think giving certain mounts their own attacks is a fine idea. However I do not like the idea of mounts continuing to fight when their rider is killed (or vice versa, I suppose). At that point you are really treating them as two completely separate units that exist in the same location - two separate HP pools, attacks, abilities. Blegh. KISS, treat them as one unit as far as death/negative and positive effects, etc.

Of course, now another thing comes up.  

The way that frogboy showed it, it made it sound like it was all 1 unit with mount being in the same catigory as swords and armor.  Extra attacks, and maybe some added defense and speed is all it would give in such case I imagine.

Do we give that bonus to the unit as a whole or does the mount act on its own?   If it acts on its own, we have to decide how to focus attacks upon it. 

Is damage automatically divided between mount and rider?  then your super-bear is probebly going to go through a lot of riders before it finally goes down, where the flying shark probebly only takes a few hits, where the armored super-man one top probebly take take a bit more punishment (maybe even after falling off the dead shark). 

Like, certainly bears are harder to kill then horses.  Hippos and elephants are harder to kill than bears, I'd imagine (though it might be close )

So horses, bears, tigers, elehpants, dragon turtles, flying sharks, giant bugs, frogs, elemental beasts, wyverns, hippos, birds, unicorns, and whatever else you imagine all would be different toughness as well.

The discussion of wounded bears and all that + the fact that we now KNOW that riders and their mounts will have seprate queues for building (not to mention swords and all that), should mounts have their own HP and when killed should the rider become a dragoon?  (dragoon is I believe the roman term for spearmen on foot.  Not to be confused with dragoons as seen in in Final Fantasy 2 that ride wyverns, aka the opposite of foot soldier.  The guys on foot with the 'jump' ability are fine though I guess)

Eh, I still think the best would to treat mounted units as a single unit in terms of hitpoints and actions - no splitting damage, no focusing attacks on rider or mount, the unit has one pool of health and when it runs out both rider and mount are no more. Being mounted should provide certain benefits (depending on what kind of traits units can have), as well as having two different attacks. So when a bear rider attacks, the rider would attack with its weapon and the bear would attack with its claws/teeth/sheer mass, and they would be resolved separately.

Also, no the word 'dragoon' historically meant any mounted infantryman armed with a firearm. The word only goes back a few hundred years, it was derived from the French word "dragon" as used to describe a kind of firearm.

*gasp* I was wrong!  bad me.  I'm sorry  (+1 to Pigeonx2 for catching my mistake)

- wikipedia does say that dragons are trained for horseback but still generally fight on foot.

"A dragoon is a soldier intended primarily to fight on foot but trained also in horse riding and cavalry combat, especially during the late 17th and early 18th centuries when dragoon regiments were established in most European armies."

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