Agreed.  Leadership could be partly based off charisma, and both increase any unit cap (for the general) as well as increase the relative morale statistics of all nearby units (for any hero on the battlefield, larger radius if the general).

I do like the idea of logistics affecting the size of armies.

I also like the idea of being able to go beyond the nominal limits of logistics (Napoleon discovered this the hard way).

So for instance, you could have have "Expert Logistics" provide a nominal army unit size of say 8. Every level above that costs N gold per turn where N is how many beyond 8 you have.  So if you have enough gold, you can have a bigger army but it'll cost you dearly.

Yeah, any system that scales well economically should work well. The bigger the army you want, the greater the economic power (and thus size of empire) you need.

Agreed on both counts.

Also Good, agreed.

more than anything else has convinced me that stacks of doom probably won't be a problem in a game with tactical combat.  I still have some fear that stack of doom rushes could become a winning strategy, but I'm willing to wait an see.

One more thing though.  Frogboy's post about logistics got me thinking about how fleets are handled in GalCiv2, and I wanted clarification on if the word "army" has some special meaning.  The same way a fleet essentially means X ships working as one unit.

Later,
LAR

But then smaller kingdoms still wouldn't be able to keep up with bigger ones. Because smaller kingdom will usually mean smaller economy, and therefore less gold and less research. I'm not saying the larger kingdoms shouldn't have an advantage, but this 'double win' could easily unbalance the game.

Also, it promotes de-stacking when there are no enemies around, and only re-stacking when you plan to attack or fear you will be attacked. This adds a lot of busy work IMO.

How do you think it as a double win? If the army size was a linear progression, then the large kingdom's economies of scale would outgrow the upkeep demand of their increasingly growing army - that would be the double win. They'd get both a bigger army, and a much stronger economy. But doing upkeep like this (I'd possibly even have N be a percentage, rather than a flat amount, but haven't done any testing with math) means that yes, the larger kingdom does have the economy to have a larger army, but it has to sacrifice much of it to do so. If done correctly, that means even though the small kingdom is outmatched militarily, it can still sort of compete economically.

I just assumed it was global, not per-stack. I'm not really harping on the number being 8 since I'm pretty sure it's just a random example number to demonstrate, and not the exact proposed change. Kind of makes sense since it's research based, your kingdom gains the infrastructure to field and effectively command an x number of army units, and everything above that needs greater investments to remain effective (turning into the "extra" upkeep beyond the basic soldier pay)

Very good points, which is why I suggested that armies that surpass their logistical limit suffer combat penalties.  That way, there won't be any army juggling to game the system.

This really is the same reason why I'm against spells that are more potent against larger stacks.  In theory, it would seem to work.  But in the end, it will just end up being a massive quagmire of backward player activity.  A competent player would be forced to constantly break up their army, remake their army, and check and analyze an opponent's casting capacity every single turn to see if their opponent is capable of casting stack busting spells. 

As I and others have suggested before, the best way to discourage players from putting all of their units itno stacks of doom is to provide disincentives to do so.  Make rivals analyze how many units are in an opponent's territory after their opponent has marched off to war and have that rival attack if that number is small (thus, forcing the opponent to leave units behind to defend.)  Empower other strategic objectives which force good players to split up their forces.  This is the true way to control super stacks. 

If kingdom A is twice as big and has twice the economy of kingdom B, it will (roughly) be able to support twice as big an army as kingdom B. If they go to war, kingdom B will have to field an army about the same size as that of kingdom A. An army that is twice as big as it's economy can support. This will hurt. But if B is also behind in logistics tech (which is quite likely, and if he's not he'll be behind in some other crucial tech), he will have to pay extra for those troops that he already can't really afford.

Perhaps I should have called it 'double lose', as the small kingdom is forced to raise an army bigger than it can support, and is being punished for it at the same time. I'm not saying the first part is bad, but the second part doesn't seem right to me.

But this goes on the assumption that the upkeep cost of an army is a linear progression, which doesn't sound like what Frogboy intends with his idea. If it is strictly linear such that a kingdom 2x the size can afford an army 2x the size, I agree with you - but that's not the impression I got from the admittedly brief pitch of the idea. The way I picture it has stronger scaling economic penalties beyond the "soft" army cap.

For example, both A and B would be able to get 8 units normally, but if A wants more it has to start paying x% of its total current income per unit - which is a much greater number than a normal upkeep of 1 unit.

NO UNIT CAPS, MAKE IT A OPTION IN A MENU FOR THE NOOBS WITH SMALL BRAINS, BUT NO UNIT CAPS PLEASE!!!!!

I agree, no unit caps, but also no caps lock either please.

Having all your troops in one spot should be exploitable. Moving around large armies should be harder than moving around single units. That way you should be able to harass their cities and use mobility to your advantage.

Of course, good players would exploit this by disbanding armies before they moved and reforming them before attack, which is why I think there should be a movement penalty based on troops around them rather than only the ones in the same army. Of course it's not perfect either, but I think it might be a good place to start.

Generally it's a bad thing if you can have all your army on one tile, that's why they are changing it to one unit per tile in Civ5. But of course in Elemental there should be more than one unit per tile, because of the tactical battles (while in Civ5 the entire game will be something like one big tactical battle).

I think the limit should be based on the logistics ability (increased with technology), so in the late game you should be able to have much larger armies than in the beginning.

Well, a unit cap won't necessarily limit the size of the armies you are able to field, but their flexibility.  A limit on the number of units means you can have 8 units of 6 men each, or 8 units of 100 men each.  Investing in the ability to employ your military less rigidly could be very worthwhile with flanking, area of effect weapons and the like.  Now overall numbers, would be a different story, and that would have to be an escalating monetary cap based on the total number of men your nation has under arms.

Annatar: I read it more like at logistics level 1, you can have 4 units at the normal upkeep, any units above that will cost you a lot more upkeep. And at level 2, you can have 6 units at normal upkeep, 8 at level 3, etc. So a big kingdom that can spend more on research can field a larger army at 'normal' cost than a smaller kingdom with a lower tech level.

I'd rather have the 'normal' upkeep be the limiting factor, but I agree we don't have enough information.

I'm absolutely for a stack size limit, because in any game that doesn't impose some sort of limit the game swings towards putting all eggs in one basket approach, which leads to rather boring game mechanics: build up phase, train phase, stacks of doom clash - one player wins the other player dies. Basically HOMM style of gaming. So very static, not very dynamic kind of play.

So there should be some kind of limit. Preferably a modable limit. I would appreciate some kind of special game mechanic attached to it. But please, please not something like a bunch of techs like Logistics+1, Logistics+2, etc. this is such a bland and boring game design. I already hated such unimaginative tech design in GalCiv2. On top of that: I think there should be never ever a tech that grants you a bonus outright, like +1 logistics, +1 move to all etc. (also very often used in GalCiv2...). Good designed techs introducing new game mechanics. They maximal grant boni via proxies like units, buildings, wonders, what ever. I think it is better to have a tech tree that is lean and slim but with quality techs, than just add some 100+ techs that just add not much to game dynamics. So guys, a bit less of GalCiv2 or Space Empires 5 kind of tech tree, more something of Master of Orion 2 (great tech tree concept).

Now to the game mechanics of how I would tackle the logistics issue. Let's keep it to just one tech. As soon you (re-)discover the technology of "logistics" you are able to commit production of your cities on logistics per turn. The higher the commitment to more free slots you receive. With each slot you received you can expand one army with one additional unit. Those extra slots are not permanent - you have to keep the level of production funneld towards logisctics. If you reduce your commitment so you lose your free slots. Should you raise your production commitment then you raise these slots. Please note that it's really up to the player whether he spends the production of his cities on that or not and that it becomes increasingly harder to get more slots the more you allready received. This adds a wonderful dynamic to the game. You don't just receive some flat bonus by a tech - No! - you constantly have to deceide what has priority: more stuff (buildings, units) or bigger unit stacks? Those hard choices make games intressting.      

Hmm, so would Champions (and Sovereign) not count as units for these purposes? Just curious ...

I can't wait to mod a race of Apemen to murder them all out of spite because of you.  Joking, but larger armies shouldn't be harder to move around, they may be slower because a army is only as fast as its slowest unit.  The game should flow easy and certainly not punish a player because they are smart enough to create a beast size army.  Don't forget about dragons and spells that will most likely wipe out hundreds of men as your guys level up.

It's basically how it works in Europa Universalis 1 and 2 though there are several factors involved (production of grain, things like that...) and you can work to change them (getting new grain provinces, improving commerce and infrastructure,...)

You are told how many thousands of soldiers you can field at nominal cost and above this cap the more you train it begins to cost you more and more. It's fine if you've got enough money (and don't have much else to spend it) or if you just want to launch a massive attack expecting heavy casualties in short time.

This was a good system for determining army caps, one of the problems though was that the AI didn't follow it. So during wars you'd see one province minors building up armies of 100,000+ when they couldn't reach whomever it was that they were fighting, and even in peacetime they fielded much larger armies than you could in a single province minor.

Again, just wondering ... if we had the 4-6-8-10 unit structure (and I like the Idea of paying extra gold for extra units) ... if I have a current max of 6 would I have to choose between Sovereign and 5 best Champions and my 6,000 man army?

additionally, is an extra 1000 man unit (legion) going to cost the same extra gold as, say, an extra Champion or Sovereign?

I'd personally hope that a Sovereign never counts towards the unit limit (arbitrary I know, but c'mon) ... and While I'd personally not wish to choose between 1,000 soldiers and a prized champion, if such a policy is in place I'd like for a Champion to take less unit space and cost less extra-gold to employ in a bulky army.

I mean ... I suppose the only alternative would be to make champions have the "potential" to get really, really strong.

Personally I think that here, champions should be counted seperately from units (even though units might be small).  Since your champions are going to be your leaders once your army sizes get larger, I think having two separate caps, one increased through research in adventuring techs (for your champions) and one researched through warfare techs (for your units) would be the way to go.

Gee, all you people wanting 100k+ soldier armies must have super duper high-end gaming rigs...

I agree

in addition with this separation, I think most/all Champions should have a higher morale/ stay at high morale longer ... (like my 100 point morale system, where 3 numbers provide a barrier between High, Normal, and Low Morale, and Panic) - where units can have high morale and still have "less" morale than Champions, not visible by strength until the unit's morale drops to normal sooner than the Champion's morale.

So anyways, with this 100 point system you could have "default moral" for a unit to equal the morale they enter a battle with w/o any modifications. This default morale could be used as a limiter for who can go into certain dungeons.

Kind of like "you must be this tall to ride the dungeon." And units below this level can still be pushed into the dungeon (if they can fit) at a 50% penalty to morale (cause they are scared/ unprepared/ etc). Meaning that a unit not "qualified" for a dungeon will never have high morale ... more likely low morale. A hard cap is fine, but would probably prove too limiting. The point is that it would (should) be far more cost effective for a Champion-only user to fight his way through the dungeons (if there is such a thing).

I was planning on a soviet/Zap Brannigan style of dungeon exploration, where things are best measured in how many waves of my own men I've sacrificed thus far.