A million grasshoppers could suffocate you

But that sounds good to me. I'm all for dragons being immune to some peasant rabble, etc. The only thing I'd want is to make sure that good units would still be able to do minor damage to a dragon. A regular division of archers - not even a scratch. But large numbers of decently well-trained, well-equipped and fairly experienced archers should be able to do some damage. Uber units (like elite Bear Cavalry of Doom) shouldn't be the only ones capable of doing any damage to other even more uber units (like dragons).

Alternatively, you could make it so that it really does take truly elite units to start doing damage to a dragon. But once some damage has been done, it gets somewhat easier to hurt it further. A weak archer with a bad bow and flimsy arrows might not be able to scratch a dragon's tongue, but if the dragon's got an exposed wound he can always get lucky and land his arrow right inside it. So to hurt a dragon via conventional (non-magical) means, you'd need to send in your elite troops; but as they deal more and more damage, less powerful units can start doing minor amounts of damage. 

Have you ever been bitten by a grasshopper?  I'm a gardener, so I know that when they do bite they can hurt   Even a single lucky grasshopper can bite you in the eye.   If 1,000,000 spears are thrust at a dragon, are we to assume that not a single one ever hits the dragon in the eye, strikes a molting scale, jabs it in the throat as it rakes soldiers into its jaws, or jabs it where its tallons meet its scales (thus opening up a wound and, hence a larger vulnerability)?  But this is beside the point, and like I mentioned earlier, the issue becomes mired in people's personal resolve with how uuber they want dragons to be.  I would appreciate it if at least 1 person in this thread would address my point on the grounds of what would make meaningful game mechanics rather than what gratifies their intuition, anyway. 

Comparing the strongest unit in the game to the weakest is really beside the issue of my concern.  The important thing to consider is the full continuum of unit strengths from weakest to strongest and deciding what part of the spectrum can hurt what.  If less trained, less equipped soldiers are trounced too easily, players are forced, in order to be effective, to adopt a linear strategy of Build the Best Units and Only the Best Units as they become available.  We have seen this the strategy of the day in many, many strategy games (as is the case in MoM).

By allowing even the weakest unit to have a chance (the key word is chance here, and that chance can be very small) it keeps other strategic options revolving around quantity, rather than quality, much broader.  Programming this into the combat scheme wouldn't be hard. 

Here's a hypothetical scenario based on a hypothetical combat system.  Let's say, for instance, that a mighty Groglock (completely made up monster) has 20 defense rating, and a poorly trained archer has 5.  The archer must exceed 20 defense to do any damage.  When an archer rolls, they have a 1 in 5 chance of getting a 5.  If they succeed, they roll again, adding the second roll to the first.  If they score another 5, they roll an additional time (and so forth.)  Now, the actual chance of that archer hitting the Groglock would be 1 in 625, and that only makes a dent.  An archer one shotting a Groglock might only happen once every 1,000 games.  You would need, naturally, many many archers to bring him down it's likely that, during most typical games, it would make more sense for the player to have used the resources needed to make an army of archers to instead train elite knights to bring down the Groglock, but my point here is that the strategic options in the game are broader and more diverse if you allow players who play their cards right to use these kinds of strategies effectively. 

To eliminate a meaningful strategy from the game on the grounds that "spears don't kill aircraft carriers in real life" (10 spears jammed into an engine turbine?) can only make the game smaller.  If you have any criticism of the idea presented above, please address it on the grounds of meaningful game mechanics and not ancedote.

Can 10000 Fire Mage kill a Fire dragon?

For example, 10000 fully trained Fire mage should still be considered as “peasantry armies” to a Fire Dragon, because their fire spells is ineffective.  But the same 10000 Fire Mage is NOT an “peasantry armies” when they are casting their high level Fireball spells to an Ice Dragon, because they can inflict meaningful damage, & in a meaningful rate.

In the OP, I’ve tried to link Morale with meaningful damage.  And here I’ll try to demonstrate “meaningful rate”, which I think it is also important to the smooth flow of tactical combat and determine what units are the “peasantry army” to the Dragon or any other units.

Can 10000 peasants all equipped with “Sword of Dragon Slaying” kill a dragon?  Well, although their swords can easily pierce the dragon armor, there is only 20 peasants managed to get close enough to jab the dragon in 1 turn (assuming frontal assault, ignoring formation issue).  They managed to inflict a total of 20HP damage to a 5,000HP Dragon.  Theoretically, It takes 250 turns to kill the dragon.  They are NOT inflicting damage in any meaningful rate.  Once the peasants are aware of that, their morale drop drastically and all 10000 peasants flee or refuse to attack the dragon afterwards.   NO, their morale tank once they know even their attack cause damage, but their attack is NOT quick/effective enough.  (However, if the Dragon was already injured before the battle & only has 40HP, their morale will instead raise & keep fighting)

Assuming 10 turns of tactical combat is the desired length of tactical combat, a minimum of 500HP  damage (combined from all parties) per turn is meaningful rate of damage to the dragon, in the determination of troop morale.  Without morale mechanism, do we want the 10000 peasants keep doing 20HP per turn?  

Dragon is of the highest caliber unit.  A standard mechanism is needed to determine what is the minimal caliber required to hurt higher caliber units.  ATT & DEF is one way, but maybe Damage & Morale consideration is better.  And there should not be any hardcoding and extremely flexible, as units can be extremely diverse in EWOM.

In D&D Second edition (and all the others too) there are many types of creatures that can only be hit with magically enchanted weapons. As Frogboy already stated, without the ability to actually hurt something it won't matter how many people are fighting it, if they can't hit it they can't hit it. I like this. I like this a Lot.

This is really going to force the player to think about what kinds of troops they are sending into battle.

Yea, I like the idea of super-powerful dragons, and the general rule of minimums to be 10% of max.

when I was talking about maneuvering units, I was primarily talking about army vs army 

The (dragons being super powerful) plus elemental being  Magic: Total War ... is such awesome news to me.

I would like to ask if we will see different ages of dragons (even though dragons are rare) ... like would it be more likely to recruit a fledgling dragon than an adult dragon, or if there is even an extreme quest to complete in order to acquire and raise  your own dragon egg.

Thus begins the slide toward the Monolithic Army.  This mechanic limits player thinking.  If you are always encouraged to build the biggest and baddest units, why even bother with the small ones?

Becauase not everything is a dragon. Dragons are rare. You can't build them. You can't easily recruit them. You won't even see them in every game. They're an exceptional and badass case.

Elite units you can build will not outclass a peasant rabble the way a dragon does.

I mean, if a God showed up on the map, should your peasants be able to kill it?

Once again, using ancedotes to argue against legitimate game mechanics doesn't produce good game mechanics.  Whether peasants could concievably kill God or spears can destroy an aircraft carrier is irrelevant when you are making a balanced game. 

That's silly. So if a swordsman has a defense rating of 5, the archer would only have a 1/5 chance of even hitting it?

In a game where armies might stretch into the 10s of thousands of units, low probabilities cannot be ignored. If I have 5,000 archers, 1/625 chances of hitting the Groglock would mean 8 archers hitting the Groglock per volley. Statistically, about 1.5 archers per volley would roll a 25/20 per round. About 1 archer would roll a 30 in any 3 volleys, a 35 in 15 volleys, a 40 in 75 volleys, etc. Now, keep in mind that that is statistically speaking. We haven't been talking about how much relative damage each of these hits would be doing, but it takes a really, really small probability to result in a statistically vanishing chance for something to occur when dealing with numbers in the thousands. And I don't ever want to see some measly archer one-shot (or even do significant damage at all to) a Groglock - whether it's my archer and my enemy's Groglock or the other way around. RNG at its worst.

But Tridus's main point is valid. If there is the occasional creature if incredible power that can only be hurt by units of a certain caliber or higher, so long as said units are really occasional then I don't see it as a terrible balance problem. And as long as it doesn't take crazy super elite units to be able to touch them. I don't see a problem with the lowest of the low being unable to do anything at all vs. something like a dragon, as long as reasonably well trained/equipped units can, even if just a little.

I still like the idea I put forward before, though - the more damage a unit like a dragon has taken, the easier it becomes to damage (this process of weakening defenses should be ~slow and small, though). Therefore as your stronger troops do more and more harm, more of your weaker troops can start to join in, even if the contribution is still small.

Killing all of the Gods worshipers. Or one of the peasants have his (extremelly) lucky day (blessed be Avandra) and get Godsbane from Cyric and manage to stab the God a la Tasslehoff.

Btw, the Fire Mages could consume the whole oxygen around the dragon to suffocate him (he still needs to breathe, right?) as long as they managed somehow to limit his mobility (traps, terrain...) and keep the flames long enough (being 10k, that's the easy part compared to the previously mentioned one).

Hey now, no mixing Dragonlance with Forgotten Realms

First off, I explicitly stated that my battle system post was hypothetical to illustrate a contest between a lowbie unit and a high end unit.  I was positing a possible combat system, but made a crude version to illustrate combat outcome.  You are absolutly correct that 5000 archers might match up to a Groglock, and that's precisely what I want to see for game balance reasons.  I want to see 5000 archers be able to make a dent in a Groglock and, given enough archers, even kill it.  It's not unknown that lowly defenders have killed great beasts in fantasy--- as a matter of fact, it's a staple of fantasy (think of the Hobbit and the defenders of Esgaroth).  We can come up with ancedotes all day long about grasshoppers, aircraft carriers, and counters to those ancedotes.  Personally, I don't see why the awe of a terrible and massive creature is reduced just because 5,000 archers can pitifully witle away at it (while the beast vanquishes scores of them with its breath weapon and rakes them into the air with its claws).  But as I mentioned before, this is beside the point of game balance.  I want someone to respond to this specific question:

"How does allowing low end units the chance of damaging a high end unit damage the balance of the game?"

I still haven't recieved an answer to this question beyond a response that distills down to, "Because it's uncool."

Now, this question should be stipulated by the fact that high end units should still grant vast and priceless strategic rewards.  In otherwords, although this is a simplification, X resources worth of dragon added to a large army should be a vastly better than a purchase of archers with that same X resources.  However, if I'm playing a game and my strategy has yielded a lot of extra citizens and a lot of extra food to support them, I want there to be a legitimate strategy to use them in a productive way without that strategy being dwarfed by a low hit cap ceiling, even in the late game.

If you want to make a balanced game, you don't make it based on what does and doesn't offend your sensibilities about dragons and Groglocks.  Like I've said before, trivializing masses of lowbie soldiers by neutering them against high end enemies reduces strategic options and forces other options.  If someone has an army of oober units and an opponent has spent the same number of resources on any army of lowbies, you can expect that army of lowbies to essentially never stand and fight.  Allow the lowbies to do some damage (abliet, still not be as effective as their opposing army) and retreat becomes an option, rather than a mandate.  And all other arguments aside, which battle would you sit up in your chair more?  A battle with an impervious high end unit where you might as well click autoresolve?  Or a battle you might actually have to manage?

Demiansky, rgds to your bolded question in Reply37, Frogboy has already answered it in Reply#23. 

Frogboy's Reply#23

all he is saying is that defense will have a 10% minimum (maybe attack too?) ... so that if a unit is out-classed in stats on the scale of 10:1, then scratches will be impossible. I think, maybe a critical hit could do some effectiveness (two max rolls in a row, or something) as in 1 damage, but no more than that. And thats talking critical hits.

One thing to keep in mind though ... is that if its truly an ancient dragon, elephant/rhino hide will be the LEAST of your worries, think closer to 10x that, plus a general magical aura.

Now, those types of units are EXTREMELY RARE.

If I were to, say, make a dragon-heavy mod with lots of lesser drakes, wyverns, more tribes of lizardpeople, ect, ONLY the most rare ancients will have such an advantage, and others will be able to be easily defeated by large enough numbers ... but will of course have the power of the lizard on their side

I believe there should be a new dragon,  Greenhouse Effect dragon will breath out CO2 breathe, suffocating everyone around it!

Yeah, that's totally cool.  I guess I'm just putting emphasis on chance-to-hit-ceilings.  I have no problem with, say, the top 3 units in the game being invulnerable to the bottom 3 weakness.  The key though is that you don't have too many units that have impunity, otherwise you end up with strategic loopholes, abundant blindspots, and predictable, monolithic armies of powerful units.  After all, if there are too many units that can take no damage from low to low-mid range units, no one will ever develop strategies around building the weak units and there will BE no lackeys for your mightier units to wade through during an Epic battle (unless the AI is unintelligent or seeks to please the player by building them anyway).   

I have no problem with this and actually really like it (so long as those critters are rare).  However, I still think that those peasant armies should have a role against those critters even if it's just harrassing and annoying them or making them slog through them all.  A couple of hundred grasshoppers (even if they can't bite) that for some reason decided to swarm me could easily drive me away from an area or make an opening for a real opponent to get easy shots at me.  Let me put it this way: If I attack a dragon with 50 Elite Archers with Diamond Tipped, Angel Feathered, Acid Dripping arrows of  Dragon Slaying arrows I expect them to die a swift death after dealing a bit of damage.  They'll live longer if they spread out to make the dragon hunt them down individually, but they'll have a harder time hitting the dragon because it will be more mobile.  If I attack that dragon with those archers defended by 500 pikemen as dragon fodder I expect to be able to take it down just because it has to slog through my pikemen to get to them and is less mobile as it does so (we'll call it a giant land wyrm so we can ignore the flight & breath weapon).  I guess my point is that people should not feel bad about recruiting cannon (or dragon) fodder and using it as such.  It is a valid and effective defensive strategy, althought it isn't quite a useful offensively.

For one, Smaug wasn't defeated by a horde of lowly defenders, he was defeated by Bard, a singular archer who was literally told of a missing scale in Smaug's armor by a little birdy. Sure, in this situation a horde of enough archers could get lucky and land an arrow in said weak spot, but maybe dragons in Elemental don't have such imperfections. And I can guarantee you that Glaurung, or Ancalagon the Black, for example, would never have been destroyed by even never-ended hordes of crappy little archers.

And I have nothing against 5000 archers being able to make a dent in a Groglock, so long as said archers are powerful enough to actually scatch it in the first place. But under no circumstances should any one of those archers ever do more than a menial amount of damage do said Groglock.

Also, I think Brad's method of determining whether or not a creature can be hurt by another is pretty good. If your Groglock has a defense score of 20, then he will roll between a 2 and a 20 (but never a 1). Therefore, any creature with an attack rating of at least a 2 will have a chance to hit. A creature with 2 ATK then would have a ~1/40 chance of hitting (could vary depending on how rolls are weighted etc) and doing minor damage. A unit with 1 ATK would have no effect. The result is that even if you have a unit with crazy high defense - to take Brad's example again, say 50 DEF for a dragon... It wouldn't take another uber powerful unit to be able to hurt it. It would just take decent units. Your crappy conscripted archers with 4 ATK will have no effect, but your slightly better-trained archers equipped with bows with actual tension, with 6 ATK would. And this mechanic probably wouldn't even be evident at all between mundane troops - the weakest regular troops would still probably be able to swamp the strongest regular troops.

Sounds epic!

Ever seen a Spearman defeat a Tank in Civ? That is your answer. Completely obsolete, underpowered units should not  be able to defeat overwhelmingly superior units due to the RNG. A game that based on randomness is not fun, it's random. You start a fight and pray something unpredictably bizzare doesn't happen to screw you over.

A system like you propose carries the same RNG risk. Sheer randomness is bad for a serious strategy game, because fights should be determined by tactics and army compositions and not by the RNG.

Bard also had the Black Arrow which he used to hit that target, which the normal archers didn't have. The odds of a mundane archer with mundane arrows hitting the mark and burying it deep enough to deliver a fatal strike? Good luck.

yea, RNG shouldn't be an all-powerful god, enabling that one peasant to kill that one Sovereign or Dragon during that world-wide tournament game. Or something.

Why do people keep bringing up spearmen versus tanks?  I can envision a ton of actual scenarios in which a man with a spear can take out a tank. ..

Oi, once again, I don't think we're properly understanding what I mean by randomness (I'm sorry if I sound rude, but I'm a biologist and have to confront people's statements about biotechnology on a regular basis based upon gut feelings and prejudices rather than technical discourse, so my patience is already a bit exhausted.)  I'm not suggesting that there should be randomness in the game that swings so violently that nothing is predictable.  Not even close.  As a matter of fact, let's remove the word "random" entirely since it seems to be a loaded pejorative that sets a lot of people off.  Let's instead call it "range of probability."  If you are aware that your soldiers have an X chance of hitting a Groglock, and that 1 out of those thousand will end up hitting it per volley, there is really very little randomness at all, but instead an analysis of the range of probability with which you are acting.  I am in no stretch of the imagination suggesting that every other battle, your mighty creatures will be insta killed by the lucky shot of a peasant.  

I am proposing an exponentially diminishing, but potentially infinite ceiling for hit probability which does leave the possibility open that, at some point in the billions of games of elemental that will be played that a peasant will manage to drop a mighty end game monster in one shot.  But seriously guys. one end game monster being single handedly slain in the history of elemental isn't game breaking.  Not even close.  The true effect that you'll see a billion times more frequently is that units will always have utility, even if it rapidly diminishes in the face of stronger opponents.  This will reduce the supremacy of the classic mad-rush-for-endgame-units strategy that can make games of this type bland much quicker and it will produce a plethora of other viable strategies with which to pursue in the game.  It remedies way, way more problems than it causes (even though it would seem to offend plenty of wishes for oober doober monsters, despite having almost exclusively a psychology rather than literal effect on their performance or strategic value).

And I'm still waiting for an answer to my bolded question beyond authoratative, but unsubstantiated, declarations of "it just doesn't seem right to me".  

Really? I can't. Not unless the spearman is carrying explosives with him...