I haven't read all the posts , but anyway, I really like the idea.

I have encountered another game where this concept is developped ( successfully , the game is very interesting to play , even with a very limited tree tech). It is called cavewars.

here is a screenshot of the unit construction screen

You could see that each unit can have a weapon, an armor ( each in 3 different materials) and a mount. ( specials represent units that are not human ( or other race) being.

My main fear about this idea is how design an interface that allow extension ( of weapon, material ... ) and is intuitive and esay to use. ( I'd personnally like to be able to make sword with steel guard and adamantium blade, with one enchantment on each part or having armors on mounts ( or even weapon: anybody wants a centaur cavalery? ) , but it might be a little too complex)

Hopefully some units will do more than just  X  damage in  Y time during a battle.   What about battle skills or traits of units... such as:

1) a swamp insect biting an enemy unit causing him to be diseased ?

2) or a vampire who drains life from an enemy unit ?

3) or a demon who takes bodily possession of an enemy unit?

That doesn't answer the question and my question is for STARDOCK :

   Will units will do more than just  X  damage in  Y time when exchanging attacks during a battle? 

I've been playing with these ideas for a while. I've considered making a post on it, but I'll post what I currently got here.

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For designing units, each designed unit would have a certain kind of build that it would consider default, but it could equip weapons and other items different than what it was designed to use. For instance, a common knight might prefer an "iron longsword" as its weapon of choice, but nothing would prevent it from equiping a "moon silver katana" instead. Likewise, it could equip something very different such as "bows & arrows" or a "musket".

The advantage of this system is, you could produce and reequip units using different equipment, superior equipment, inferior equipment, or even make them completely bare. For instance, if you manage to invade and capture a town using common knights, and you manage to loot moon silver katanas, you could refit a number of your knights with better weapons in preperation to fend off your opponents from trying to take back their town.

Such a system would make the only real difference between units (of the same species) would be their training, and possibly their magical augmentations.

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The second idea I have is, I want to be able create very powerful units, with or without magic. I want a to make "Soul Knights" (units who have ghostly limbs from dead comrades), "Necromancer, multi-limbed abominations" (necromancers who added undead limbs to their bodies), and Fire-blitz golems (golems who can shoot jets of fire that makes flame-throwers look like matches). I want to be able to make units powerful enough to be a threat to a channeler if they are not careful.

To that end, I would not only need magic spells that I can cast on per need baisis, but I would need persistant magical effects. Lets call these persistant magics rituals. These rituals could animate undead, animate golems, provide ghosts with ectoplasm bodies, and so forth.

HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS POST BEFORE!?  (especially when it has a big cave wars screenshot in it)   I love cavewars!   (not as much as master of magic, but still.  You'll find I quote the game quite often when refering to the

This game does have that cutlass/super cutlass/hyper cutlass feature that frogboy said he wanted to avoid however.  I guess you make the weapons out of different metals, so that makes sense, but it still happens.    The units in that game wer very bizzar with combat that was perhaps a bit too random for my liking, but in general the game was very good.

Again, I plee for multi-map system.

Maybe theres multiple tiers to each unit.  For example:

Tier One - Appearance

• Race - MAybe choose what race you want the unit to be.  IF nothing else, just a way to catagorize your unit.  It could be used quite well in relation to your other units if you wanted to have a "different" type of unit.  The race would give it a series of base characteristics (nothing unfair!) to make it more unique.
• Gender - Male/Female/None - Most creatures will have genders, their models changing accordingly.  If wanted, maybe one can give each gender different advantages.  None would fit for creatures that do not have a gender.
• Cosmetic - Maybe some slider options for Hair style, color.  Skin color.  Clothing type, color, style.  Nothing crazy, but just enough to tell the differnce between "naked" units and their portrait picture.

Tier Two - Equipment

• Weapon(s) - Items that modify Damage and/or To-Hit.  Could be exceptional items if you have enough (Magical).  Additional effects would be related to doing different KINDs of damage, and its element.  (IE A sword would be Steel/Slashing while a flaming mace could be Flame/Blunt).
• Head Armor - Items that modify your defense value, of course, but also could potentially reduce range (the full helm opposed to the skull cap).  More armor, less range/vision.  Additional effects could be related to vision (Darkvision, clairvoyance, etc).
• Torso Armor - Items that modify defensive values greatly (or poorly).  Different armors could provide different levels of protection to various elements and attack times.  Steel againt steel wouldnt incur a penalty, but Steel weapons against mithril armor would get an automatic 10% reduction, etc.  Additional effects would be to change the material of the armor, as well as enchantments and such to make it better against the damage types.
• Misc. Armor - Potential to have MORE protection in the form of boots, gauntlets, and pauldrons.
• Additional Items - Rings, amulets, belts and such which give units a wide array of abilities and are transferrable.  Dwarven sappers with a ring of flight, walls beware!

Tier Three - Training

• Experience - How much training a unit recieves before going to the field.  Gives them more health, maybe some damage.  Basicaly levelling them up without fighting.  Takes longer to produce, however.
• Abilities - Giving units new things to be able to do beyong their racial abilities through training.  Maybe allow a melee units will the ability to climb walls (maybe giving them a Misc. Item that explains their power) or to be able to swin in deep water, etc.  Increases cost and training time as well.

Tier Four - Associations

• Creatures - Already explained, like horses and such.  Each creature has different abilities.
• Other Units - Complementing some units with outers to make fighting teams.  AN example would be a melee unit with a large shield paired with a ranged unit.  The melee unit will have addiotnal "shield bearer" skill (from the abilities training) and will fortify whatever ground unit their associated with.  Alternatively, you can assign units to other units via a menu and give them different jobs.  Flank Protection, Shield Bearer, Supressive Fire.  With magical units, they can add spells instead of casting them directly.  A Mage assigned with a Heavy Footman Army only casting flight to give the unit flight instead of directly casting a temporary spell.

I dunno, just a few thoughts.  I may be way off topic, but thats what I would like to see.  Any thoughts?  Also, I didnt read a page of posts so I may be copying somone.  If I did seem to copy, then I'm just supporting what they said.  ^^

Hmmm... Isn't the point of a fantasy game that it has fantastic creatures in it?

The term run-of-the-mill probably says it all: If it is mainly just guys with a sword, guys with an axe on a horse or guys with a bigger sword and a shield, units will seem generic and not very interesting.

Having creatures that can bury under the battlefield or cast their own spells has a lot more appeal.

Also, I doubt your channeler is going to be able to imbue the average field soldier with his essence, as it wouldn't make much sense to essentially waste it on chaff. You never know, though.

Plus, I get the impression that magical creatures will be common enough so that you'll most likely have a bunch of them in your army; it's just that the core of your military will be run-of-the-mill troops, and they will be supported by a handful of powerful magical beings.

I'm actually looking forward to it. Pretty much all fantasy games make very heavy use of fantastical creatures. AoW, HoMM, etc - most armies end up consisting predominantly of exotic units, which actually makes those exotic units seem less special. If you look at most epic fantasy, armies are almost always predominantly consisted of 'grunts' with sometimes a few specials mixed in. Take Middle Earth - armies are mostly made up of the regular men, elves, dwarves, orcs and goblins; some of those units are made special either because of superior skill/ability (like Elrond, Elendil, Fingolfin, etc). Then in addition to those there is a smattering of more exotic beings - ents, wizards, dragons, trolls, wargs, oliphaunts, balrogs. 

The OP:s idea with customizable units is appealing to me. I always enjoyed designing my own, ever since i fell in love with Master of Orion (the original one, not the others).

-When looking at the crude schematic I started to wonder if all that matters will be values X,Y and Z. In many games (like Civ 4 and to a small extent MoM) certain troops have anti-unit abilities that comes just from their equipment (pikes vs cavalry etc), which makes diverse armies more important and battles more strategic. Then it would make sense to have some pikemen along just to protect archers whom otherwise are very vulnerable to fast moving light cavalry. A requirement for diversity also prevents a player from only researching swords for example, even though his swordsmen would be great they are just not flexible enough to win.

-If troops are obtained with resources and training time, can several different units be trained simultaneously in the same town or will they still need to be qued?

Perhaps it is a little late in the day for such a question, seeing as this journal was originally posted over two months ago, but I was wondering whether this equipment model meets the implication that you ought to be able to loot the bodies of your fallen foes for any intact items which you could later use to equip your own units. For instance, if I route a regiment of the powerful Flugurlan Guard, do I get to swipe a couple of their coveted war spears, enchanted with potent fire magics?

Also, as a side note, I would be interested to know how much of the work you do in planning parts of a computer game are still done with good ol' fashion pad and pencil. I mean, I see you have posting scans of diagrams you have drawn, Frogboy, but are those the exception or the rule?

I think there should be some external tool that allows you to design your units outside the game. Like pre-setuping your civilization/unit tech tree before you play to let you play with the options and finetune them. And perhaps then you could upload civ templates online and share them with others?

I like this concept and the sketch especially, just one question. Why is it on graph paper instead of a bar napkin? A good concept cannot be properly displayed on anything but bar napkins, bonus points if it has beer or grease stains.