Mass Combat Rules Constraints

[nockermensch]

I was talking to Frank and I floated the idea that army battles are really just terrain in a heroic fantasy RPG. They are literally some shit that happens while the heroes do samurai battles with the enemy heroes.

I'd probably just give armies a single number each and do some math to figure out how many guys on each side die. Some armies would have terrain environmental effects for heroes wading through them.

While battles as terrain is certainly true for some (maybe most) situations, it's still true that in an open ended game the players will want to change the terrain sometimes. In particular, sooner or later some PCs should be directing the battles.

[Chamomile]

Just saying "battles are terrain" doesn't answer the question "what happens when you convince the fire giants to fight on your side?" Having a mass combat system treat hordes of clashing level 0 mooks as terrain isn't a bad idea, but it doesn't really answer the questions you want a mass combat system to be able to answer.

[OgreBattle]

Should small party dungeon crawl combat be more abstracted to suit such a system?

For example playing 5th edition it really bogged down tabletop time when I animated 10 daggers to fly around stabbing things

[Chamomile]

For example playing 5th edition it really bogged down tabletop time when I animated 10 daggers to fly around stabbing things

I find that kind of surprising. Animated daggers are just a basic pile of stats: HP, AC, attack bonus, damage. They don't have special abilities or anything. You just assign them to targets, roll a bunch of attacks, then roll damage for any hits. You can make ten attack rolls in less than a minute. As a GM I regularly have umpteen mooks running around, even in 3.X where it's more common for those mooks to actually have abilities (especially if it's a mid-level thing and those mooks are CR5), and it doesn't take me that long to roll attacks for a whole bunch of identical critters.

[hyzmarca]

The basic unit of your mass combat minigame should be groups of dudes, not individuals. That's the point, mass combat should always be able units, not individuals.

PCs and major NPCs Characters do not fight alone, they lead units. In doing so, they provide modifiers to the units under their command based on their class and level, or their personal-scale abilities.

Every PC class has mass-combat scale modifiers that they apply to their mass combat scale units. No one is useless.


Modifiers are never just numbers. They might include numbers, but they will also always include substantive abilities.

Bacause the base unit is a group of dudes, combat is abstracted. No one cares how well a single dude swings his sword or fires his bow. And they might even have crew-served weapons instead of individual ones.

Unless otherwise noted, units are assumed to be combined arms, and can engage any other type of unit. Unit types and modifiers might give one or the other an advantage in a rock paper scissors lizard spock matrix, but no ability shuts down a unit's ability to contribute completely.

When one dude fights alone in mass combat, he is treated as a unit of one. Unit of one is a pretty huge negative modifier that can be countered by sufficiently high levels, but not negated, as stats in mass combat are dependent on unit size more than on levels.

There is no playing masses of people in the single combat minigame. If you're going up against mass units, then you're forced to use mass combat, because the other guys effectively control the battle with their numbers. One guy against a thousand, even if that one guy is superhuman, is at an extreme disadvantage.

That's what you need to have mass combat matter.

The Wizard + 1000 tiny dudes needs to be more powerful than the wizard alone. And the Wizard should be able to protect his tiny dudes from Coudkill and shit so that the lone wizard can't take them away. So we say that happens automatically. Furthermore, we have to say that happens for all character classes leading tiny dudes, and what changes is degree of effectiveness.

[Dimmy]

The question is "what impact does it have that players have secured the allegiance of the fire giants," and the answer of "a fire giant unit shows up in a game of Warhammer Fantasy" has been considered and rejected.

The impact is: the PCs get a fire giant bodyguard. Or: they receive 20 rubies every year as fire giant tribute. Or: the fire giants do something off-camera which would be either impossible or inconvenient for the PCs.

And that's precisely because the alternative always boils down to: a fire giant unit shows up in a game of Warhammer Fantasy. Look at hyzmarca's suggestion's of "able units"; look at mlangsdorf's "abstract mass combat mini-game". (Which turns out to be GURPS.) In order to do what you want to do, you have to temporarily stop playing your role-playing game, and start playing a war-game. Every single time. I'm sorry if Trollman and Tannhäuser want to pout and say that's unfair -- because apparently, they're hung up on the idea that RPGs should be able to numerically model every possible activity, interaction, or phenomenon, from the molecular to the cosmic scale -- but them's the breaks. If you want to drive a screw into wood, water balloons are the wrong tool to use -- pick up a screwdriver. Likewise, if you want to play a game about war, RPGs are the wrong tool to use -- play a war-game. "Fair" and "unfair" doesn't enter into it.

[Dimmy]

...you need an in-game reason why your party isn't just forking over enough money for a pile of henchmen when they go on their quest.

Zinegata already told you the in-game reason: because that game will invariably take place in a setting where, for complex socio-economic reasons*, armies and adventuring parties fill two different niches. So any quest that could be resolved with piles of money and henchmen, would already have been resolved by somebody with piles of money and henchmen, long before the PCs showed up.

That so many people have decided to ignore this advice, and side with infected slut princess, seems inexplicable.

* Which it's the author's responsibility to explain, while they're writing the game's setting/exposition guide. Preferably without boring the readers to tears.

[Username17]

The basic flow of a battle is something like this:

• Oh noes! Orcs are on the march!
• Assess the Orcish army strength. Assess the opposing army strength. Realize that the Orcs have an advantage.
• Players decide how they are going to want to interact with this fact (attempt to gain more army strength for the good guys, attempt to weaken the orc army, or whatever).
• Do a regular personal level encounter.
• Invoke standing battle affecting abilities and or resources on each players' character sheets.
• Determine the effects that the players have had on the battle.
• Determine the results of the battle.

Now of that, I have bolded one of the steps, because it's literally the only part of D&D that actually has rules and procedures. Now in a just universe, most of the rest of the steps should be handled quite quickly. But without there being a set of rules that take us through each of those steps the action scene is pretty much completely unmoored from the progress of the story.

-Username17

[Thaluikhain]

Wonder if it would be worth thinking about the other way round, take a wargame and scale it down rather than an RPG and take it out. GW had Mordheim and Gorkamorka and Necromunda.

Very limited in how well they could work as RPGs, though.

[Username17]

Wonder if it would be worth thinking about the other way round, take a wargame and scale it down rather than an RPG and take it out. GW had Mordheim and Gorkamorka and Necromunda.

Very limited in how well they could work as RPGs, though.

D&D of course got its start as a patch for a wargame that let you play the individual heroes. So did WFRP for that matter. The problem with trying to recover an RPG's wargame DNA is that the wargames had pretty narrow acceptable inputs in terms of army size. You couldn't play a game of Chainmail or Warhammer with a thousand guys on a side - it would take you weeks to play through a single engagement and over ten thousand dollars in minis.

A role playing game is inherently open ended. I don't know whether the armies that clash in your stories are going to be measured in the dozens, the hundreds, or the thousands. And honestly, neither do you. Whatever wargame subsystem an RPG has must be agnostic as to the number of troops required or allowed.

You can't just aggregate units and say that like 1 unit is 10 dudes or 1 unit is 100 dudes or whatever, because any such conversion will always fail to hit the playability sweet spot most of the time.

-Username17

[virgil]

In order to do what you want to do, you have to temporarily stop playing your role-playing game, and start playing a war-game. Every single time.

So. What. The rules can have it be fast enough for the anti-wargamer to take a piss (weird Venn diagram intersection, that guy), and that's not against anyone's sensibilities.

hung up on the idea that RPGs should be able to numerically model every possible activity, interaction, or phenomenon, from the molecular to the cosmic scale

Somebody likes their intentionally obtuse hyperbole.

[Tannhäuser]

Modeling mass combat in an RPG doesn't turn it into a wargame any more than modeling political maneuvering turns it into Coup. Both things are huge patches in most RPGs, in that they routinely come up in actual games actual people actually play, and don't have satisfactory resolution systems. Most RPGs have abstracted systems for downtime activities like overland travel, working a profession, or item crafting as it is. None of those have you stop playing an RPG, they just stop assuming to model PC input directly. If anything, the small-scale combat and square-by-square exploration are oftentimes not abstracted enough.

Again, why come into a thread about solving a problem that comes up frequently in real games and act all smug like it doesn't matter? This Stockholm Syndrome thing some people have where they feel the need to defend the state of RPGs is really weird.

[Judging__Eagle]

The basic flow of a battle is something like this:

• Oh noes! Orcs are on the march!
• Assess the Orcish army strength. Assess the opposing army strength. Realize that the Orcs have an advantage.
• Players decide how they are going to want to interact with this fact (attempt to gain more army strength for the good guys, attempt to weaken the orc army, or whatever).
• Do a regular personal level encounter.
• Invoke standing battle affecting abilities and or resources on each players' character sheets.
• Determine the effects that the players have had on the battle.
• Determine the results of the battle.

Now of that, I have bolded one of the steps, because it's literally the only part of D&D that actually has rules and procedures. Now in a just universe, most of the rest of the steps should be handled quite quickly. But without there being a set of rules that take us through each of those steps the action scene is pretty much completely unmoored from the progress of the story.

-Username17

The overally narrative and the simplified 'battle' mechanic from "Gnomes 100 - Dragons 0" approaches a lot of the unbolded text.

[*] Assess the Orcish army strength. Assess the opposing army strength. Realize that the Orcs have an advantage.

"G100-D0" compresses this down to aspects of an army simply granting Offensive # and/or Defensive #.

When the gamebook starts the Dragon Army has Offensive # of:
-Draconians (Aurak 17+ Baaz 13+ Bozak 15+ Kapak 14+ Sivak 16) = 75
-Dragons (Blue 30+ Black 18+ Green 20+ Red 40+ Shadow 15 + White 17) = 140
-Humanoids (Humans 12+ Ogres 15) = 27
=242 Offensive #

While having a Defensive # of:
-Draconians (14+11+12+11+13) = 61
-Dragons (18+15+16+20+13+14) = 82
-Humanoids (11+14) = 25
=168 Defensive #

Comparing a Dragonarmy Offensive # of 242 and a Defensive # of 168; with the Gnome's Offensive # of +10 and Defensive # of +10 (i.e. the Gnomish War Machine adds +10 after all other considerations); the Gnomes are sort of screwed. Which is what prompted the adventure in the first place.

Additional note: the Gnomish War Machine has 100 health points; while the Dragon Army has 200.

[*] Players decide how they are going to want to interact with this fact (attempt to gain more army strength for the good guys, attempt to weaken the orc army, or whatever).

In "G100-D0", the player has to find items that:
-Grant Offensive # (max of 78; 15 items)
-Grant Defensive # (max of 51; 10 items)
-Grant Offensive # & Defensive # (max of 10 & 10; one item)
-Eliminate one type of enemy (some are specific, like "Eliminates Ogres" or "Eliminates Kapak Draconians"; others are general such as "Eliminates Choice of Dragon"; 26 seperate entries)
-Screw the player over (i.e. there are several Imp Illusions that double the Offense/Defense #'s for Red, White & Shadow dragons; 4 entries)
-Make the player auto-lose the end-game battle (at least one item; also am Imp illusion)

Bonus: Hope that the Gnomes didn't break the items that contribute the most O/D #'s; nor "boosted" items that contribute the least to final O/D #'s.

Which is a combination of: "Bolstering friendly army strength"; "weakening enemy army strength". As well as "screw up and benefit the enemy by mistake".

[*] Do a regular personal level encounter.

Most of "G100-D0" is this, attempting to improve the odds for the final resolution of the franken-machine the Gnomes create out of your finds.

What it doesn't have are detailed rules for:
[*] Invoke standing battle affecting abilities and or resources on each players' character sheets.
[*] Determine the effects that the players have had on the battle.

However, these could be resolved by making PCs/Heroes simply grant a bonus to their armies to Offensive # & Defensive #

Relevant excerpts from "Gnomes 100-Dragons 0"

The Final Battle Weapons Table shows all the items
that could be found while you adventured through
Mount Nevermind to prepare for the final battle, and
their value in the battle. As you get ready to face the
dragons and their evil hordes, inspect each of the things
you have brought to the battle using the Gnomish
Inspection Table below. This tells you what has happened
to each device between the time you found it and
the battle.

To use the table, generate a number from 1 to 12 and
the result tells you how to mark the list of devices.
Though the list has all the items possible in the mound,
you should only use the ones you found for the battle.
Inspecting your gnomish war machine, you discover
many things have changed from the way you left them.
Roll on the GNOMISH INSPECTION CHART to determine
what the gnomes did to each item. Special Note:
Any item that merely eliminates an enemy type can’t be
doubled in strength, it just continues to do what it does.

GNOMISH INSPECTION CHART
Roll of 1-2 Turn to Bad News Section
Roll of 3-10 Turn to Okay News Section
Roll of 11-12 Turn to Amazing News Section
Bad News: The gnomes look very sad when they tell you
that they accidentally broke this device while trying to
improve it. You cannot use it in the battle.
Okay News: The gnomes look sad to say that no matter
what they did, they just couldn’t improve on this device
so they just added it to the machine. You use this device
normally in the battle.
Amazing News: The gnomes look happy and say they
were able to double the effectiveness of this device. You
use this machine at double the points listed for it.
Special Note: For the Okay and Amazing News sections,
if the thing discussed is a living creature or magic item, it
is changed because of the things the gnomes added to it
and not because the gnomes changed it.
Now turn to 85 to learn scoring during the final battle

FINAL BATTLE SCORING

Your gnomish army has a total of 100 life points for
this battle. Your Gnomish War Machine hits on rolls of 8
or less. The dragonarmy has a total of 200 life points, but
because its generals can’t figure out your battle plan, or
even what you are using against them, they hit on rolls of
7 or less.
Using the Final Battle Weapons Table, total the offensive
numbers (only for those items you obtained and
which survived the Gnomish Inspection Chart), and add
10 points to the total. This is your offensive score. Also
total the defensive numbers (only for the items you
obtained), and add 10 points. This gives you your defensive
score.
Using the Dragon Arrival Table, cross out all the creature
types (and their offensive and defensive numbers)
that your gnomish devices, equipment, and allies eliminate.
Add up the remaining offensive numbers for an
offensive score, and the remaining defensive numbers
for a defensive score to be used in combat.
Generate a number from 1 to 12 every time you or
your enemies attack. If the dragonarmy hits your army,
subtract your defensive score from the dragonarmy’s
offensive score. This is the amount of damage done.
Subtract it from your army’s life points. If your defensive
score is greater than the dragonarmy’s offensive score,
you automatically win the war. Turn to 118I.
If you hit the dragonarmy, subtract its defensive score
from your offensive score. This is the amount of damage
you do. Subtract it from the dragonarmy’s life points. If
the dragonarmy’s defensive score is more than your
offensive score, you automatically lose the war. Turn to 86J.

The Battle Begins
Your war machine moves out onto the field and the
dragons can’t believe their eyes. You take advantage of
this by successfully striking once with your war machine
before the dragons can even prepare. From then on, you
take a turn and the dragons take a turn in the battle until
one or the other side wins. Good Luck!

What it doesn't have is any sort of concept of 'positional' aspects to conflicts; the simplest abstraction I've seen for such is from Dragon Dice.

In DD, the war is divided among each sides "Home" territories (defended by the owner's Home army, and attacked by their opponents Horde army); and "Frontier" territories (contested by each sides Campaign army).

The goal of DD is to "control" two territories (i.e. maneuver an army successfully several times to change it's "Distance of engagement" to the point where they control the territory).

One final location that a player can place their units is in the "Reserves"; from which they can retreat units to (from enemy/own Home, or Frontier, territories); or advance units from (towards enemy/own Home, or Frontier territories).

Dragon Dice's turn order:

1 - Beginning Phase
◦ Spell and effect expiration (Beginning of turn expiration)
◦ Racial Abilities
◦ 8th Face Special Abilities
2 - Dragon Attack Phase
◦ Dragon Attack - If an army is present at the terrain, the dragon(s) attack the
current player's army, even if they summoned the dragon.
3 - Army Phase
◦ First March
1. Maneuver
2. Action
◦ Second March (different army)
1. Maneuver
2. Action
4 - End Phase
◦ Reinforce - Move any or all of your units from your Reserves to any or all of
the Terrains.
◦ Retreat - Move any or all of your units from any or all Terrains to Reserves.
◦ Spell and effect expiration (End of turn expiration)

[hyzmarca]

Wonder if it would be worth thinking about the other way round, take a wargame and scale it down rather than an RPG and take it out. GW had Mordheim and Gorkamorka and Necromunda.

Very limited in how well they could work as RPGs, though.

D&D of course got its start as a patch for a wargame that let you play the individual heroes. So did WFRP for that matter. The problem with trying to recover an RPG's wargame DNA is that the wargames had pretty narrow acceptable inputs in terms of army size. You couldn't play a game of Chainmail or Warhammer with a thousand guys on a side - it would take you weeks to play through a single engagement and over ten thousand dollars in minis.

A role playing game is inherently open ended. I don't know whether the armies that clash in your stories are going to be measured in the dozens, the hundreds, or the thousands. And honestly, neither do you. Whatever wargame subsystem an RPG has must be agnostic as to the number of troops required or allowed.

You can't just aggregate units and say that like 1 unit is 10 dudes or 1 unit is 100 dudes or whatever, because any such conversion will always fail to hit the playability sweet spot most of the time.

-Username17

The simplest way is to have troop numbers impact unit stats, rather than setting units to have a specific number of troops. This does have the disadvantage that troop numbers becomes the primary determinant of who wins, but I think that can be mitigated somewhat.

For example, we can have unit size determine the physical size of the unit, how many spaces it takes up, which ultimately limits the terrain that large units can manuver through, forcing them to break up in many situations. This is perfectly logical and realistic. And it lets PCs go all 300 Spartans on much larger units, by forcing them onto terrain where they can't bring their full numbers to bear at once. At the same time, in an open field, the million-strong army is going to curbstomp the 300 strong unit.

[Chamomile]

words

Your argument here is that because you, personally, are too stupid to come up with a solution, it must be impossible and we should all give up. Really, when stated outright rather than merely implied, it pretty much defeats itself.

[mlangsdorf]

And that's precisely because the alternative always boils down to: a fire giant unit shows up in a game of Warhammer Fantasy. Look at mlangsdorf's "abstract mass combat mini-game". (Which turns out to be GURPS.) In order to do what you want to do, you have to temporarily stop playing your role-playing game, and start playing a war-game.

WTF? I'm playing GURPS when the PCs go negotiate with the lizardmen for troops, I'm playing GURPS when the PCs have a public debate to try to convince a bunch of people to join their army, I'm playing GURPS when the PCs go raid the Imperials to rescue the minotaur slaves, I'm playing GURPS when the PCs search an ancient tomb for a lost artifact, I'm playing GURPS when the PCs lead their army into battle. Sometimes I'm referencing rules from the Basic set, sometimes from Social Engineering, sometimes from Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons, and sometimes from Mass Combat, but it's all 3d6 roll under, compare margins of success GURPS.

If your argument is that you can't use the small scale, melee combat rules from GURPS (or D&D or whatever) to run a massive battle, I thought that was obvious from people calling it a "mass combat mini-game." But you can use similar mechanics in the mass combat mini-game that you do everywhere else in the game. You can have a system that doesn't require breaking out 100s of miniatures and blocks of d6s and spending hours playing out Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Hordes of Terrible Things or Clan War! or whatever.

[Judging__Eagle]

words

Your argument here is that because you, personally, are too stupid to come up with a solution, it must be impossible and we should all give up. Really, when stated outright rather than merely implied, it pretty much defeats itself.

It's a bit worse than that. Dimmy is deliberately forgetting that one of Frank's earlier posts boiled down the wargame sub-game into "Take the Strength of one army, Compare with Strength of other army; use RNG to compare which side succeeded". While insisting Frank wants all the mechanics of any RPG to model "Everything" (which is even more funny since Frank has said time and again that there's no such thing as a truly universal game system).

[edit/update]

I came across this today, regarding the psycholog of conflict and how to implement it into wargames.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/1 ... authentic/

This, as well as recently re-reading S.E. Ellacott's "Spearman to Minuteman"; is making me consider that neither "fighting ability" nor "defensive ability" matter as much in large battles so much as "Disciple" does. That battles in the Dominions strategy franchise hinge a lot more upon "morale", than raw combat numbers; supports this. As well as the fact that both real-life sources such as Sonshi's "Art of War", and tabletop wargames such as WH40k/40kEpic & WHFB/Warmaster, put a fair deal of stock in the morale/training/discipline/leadership of the forces.

Finally, back in 2e D&D, monsters had a "Morale" entry to determine how long they'd stay in combat.

Which could mean that calculating "Army Strength" in a warfare sub-game could be as much about the soldiering ability of the forces involved, their ability to act in concert with their formation; and not so much about their raw ability as fighters.

[nockermensch]

I came across this today, regarding the psycholog of conflict and how to implement it into wargames.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/1 ... authentic/

This, as well as recently re-reading S.E. Ellacott's "Spearman to Minuteman"; is making me consider that neither "fighting ability" nor "defensive ability" matter as much in large battles so much as "Disciple" does. That battles in the Dominions strategy franchise hinge a lot more upon "morale", than raw combat numbers; supports this. As well as the fact that both real-life sources such as Sonshi's "Art of War", and tabletop wargames such as WH40k/40kEpic & WHFB/Warmaster, put a fair deal of stock in the morale/training/discipline/leadership of the forces.

Finally, back in 2e D&D, monsters had a "Morale" entry to determine how long they'd stay in combat.

Which could mean that calculating "Army Strength" in a warfare sub-game could be as much about the soldiering ability of the forces involved, their ability to act in concert with their formation; and not so much about their raw ability as fighters.

This is true because we live in a Hobbesian universe where masses of tiny men are basically the same, so battles tend to hinge on differences of numbers, equipment and morale. I mean, a group could invest a lot in "training" and end with something like Spartans, but even they could and did lose to larger numbers of farmers with spears that went thru some weeks of hellenistic boot camp.

And whats more, in places/times like Ancient China or the World Wars you could kind of assume that everybody was fighting with equivalent-strength equipment (or at least, that the big kingdoms would wise up and quickly catch up any inovations) so morale and numbers were the differentials that the famous war strategists worried more about.

But D&D exists in a Homeric universe where people "become heroic" to a point where a single person can be more than a match to an entire army. So I don't really think that making "morale" or "discipline" the uber stat for mass combats really captures the genre.

[Username17]

D&D lives in basically the age of exploration. The model is basically the fall of the Aymara Kingdoms or Incan Empire to the Spanish. There's been a recent calamity of climate change and plagues or whatever and now there are remnants of a once-great empire staggering along that still have giant piles of gold and silver and groups of highly effective warriors with better equipment show up to explore and conquer the place and loot the temples.

Now the part that's a little weird is that D&D is very directly on the side of the Conquistadors in this equation. The Quechua speaking peoples are depicted as Gnolls and Goblins, and the Spaniards are unabashedly labeled Good on a supposedly objective axis. That's a bit of a hard pill to swallow for modern people, but it is what it is. With enough introspection and the fact that it's a frickin fantasy world, you can get people to go with the premise.

And while it is true that the Spaniards marched into Peru with 130 men at arms and walked out with untold riches and also control of Peru, it is also true that that would not have been possible if they hadn't recruited the armed retinues of many villages and cities to fight by their sides. Raising an army of their own in order to combat the armies of Inca was a major part of that, and should be a major part of the game.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

I think it's important (both for monsters and for armies). In too many modules (I'm looking at you, Paizo) the monsters 'fight to the death' for contrived reasons. Including morale in the equation certainly makes sense. But keep in mind that 'better trained troops' (ie, those with better morale) will also have better equipment and skill. If you're confident you're going to win, you'll have high morale and if you're certain of defeat, you'll have low morale.

I'm probably going to have to tackle this again since I can only find early notes and not the finished product. I do recall that certain variables had an impact (ie, outnumbering your opponent 2:1 or 3:1 gave you additional advantages).

[Zaranthan]

I think you can have the best of both worlds by taking a balance pass to the Dominions model. Supercombatants High level heroes get massive morale scores compared to units of tiny men, and grant big morale bonuses to the units they're attached to. Heroes tend to not get cut down by a thousand tiny men, and can often make a good stand against them, but can be forced to retreat when the odds are truly insurmountable (which satisfies the "PCs lose without dying" thing lots of people want in their TTRPG).

[JonSetanta]

Look to Dynasty Warriors for inspiration.

[Chamomile]

The most critical stat for a mass combat mini-game should probably be morale, just on basis of the fact that morale is something that can be plausibly swayed by six particularly badass dudes. If the enemy shows up with a dozen trolls, that's scary. If the PCs kill all those trolls, that's inspiring. Likewise, the enemy formation may well have a thousand orcs, but if the PCs break past that formation's front ranks and begin slaughtering left and right, the eighteenth orc is probably going to see what happened to the first seventeen guys to try their luck back when the formation was tight and shields were closed and decide that you know what, they don't actually really want to die today.

Taking the paradigm of morale as biggest determining factor (which is conveniently fairly realistic), a few dozen enemy casualties can result in a rout of an entire formation, and that one formation routing can turn into a rout of basically whatever size you need to be significant. Maybe the one company that fled is the only one on the battlefield, maybe they had a thousand more on either side, but just like the whole company falls apart once their front line breaks, the enemy front line falls apart once a cohort/legion/brigade/mega-unit is missing from it and BLUFOR is getting in on the flanks.

My main concern is that you need to have a number of units on either side, even if that number is one (i.e. each side just has "the army," or maybe each side has the center and two flanks like in CK2, or whatever), and you need to find a way to fit in some amount of unit differentiation into that. There should be a difference between recruiting lots of orc infantry versus recruiting lots of goblin archers.

[Hicks]

On first blush, that I'm totally for Morale being the most critical charistic. But how does that interact with armies composed of mindless skeletons controlled or more likely unleashed by necromancers?

[Chamomile]

It makes them fucking terrifying, which I think of as a plus.