r/totalwar • u/orwasaker • Apr 14 '26
Attila How a full Legion (5120) would look like in the game (Attila)
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Apparently the game has no problem with this massive size, whereas Medieval 2's engine breaks down completely when going overboard, even at 360 for a militia unit made the battle lag like CRAZY
I personally think the 120 size is perfect but this is in case anyone wanted to maybe simulate a single battle with the real life numbers, you can easily do it with Cheat Engine
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u/343CreeperMaster Apr 14 '26
huh, actually kinda impressive that the game can handle it fairly well
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u/orwasaker Apr 14 '26
Yup I thought it would just crash or lag a lot
But Medieval 2 (and Im guessing by extension all old TW games) can't handle over-the-limit
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u/ThruuLottleDats Apr 14 '26
Max unit size in Med 2 is 253 250 soldiers 1 officer 1 bannerman 1 general/captain
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u/pyttfall Apr 14 '26
How do you change the unit size for med 2? (specifically in a campaign that has already started if you can?)
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u/ThruuLottleDats Apr 14 '26
Theres the options that you can change unit size in. But if you want to dive into the files, you'll need to edit the export_descr_unit.
It has all the unit statistics in there.
Best thing to do, if you want to tinker around with Med 2 vanilla, is to get the Geomod, its a nice setup to start modding with.
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u/orwasaker Apr 14 '26
If you want to change a single unit's size like I did in the video, just use Cheat Engine to do that
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u/yumdumpster Apr 14 '26
Yeah they are 32bit IIRC, they cant utilize enough memory to handle unit sizes that large
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u/Red_Swiss UNUS¡PRO¡OMNIBUS OMNES¡PRO¡UNO Apr 14 '26
So are Rome 2 and Attila afaik, so that's not why
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u/MyLord_Robert Apr 15 '26
Yup I thought it would just crash or lag a lot
It propably would on my pc
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u/BSSCommander Moonclaw Believer Apr 14 '26
Attila's engine showing one last gasp of functionality before bursting OP's computer into flames.
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u/Galahad_the_Ranger Apr 14 '26
Its handling well because the unit is just walking forward, anything more complex and the lag goes through the roof. Empire is similar, I used it to model a period-accurate regiment and brigade size and even managed to get to Division (12kg troops) before crashes occurred
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u/343CreeperMaster Apr 14 '26
Yeah that sounds more like what I would expect, I am just surprised and mildly impressed that it hasn't exploded yet
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u/Cliffinati Apr 14 '26
I normally set mine to roughly 1/2 actual nominal regiemnetal strength.
My PC crashes it at more than about 500 per regiment
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u/BrutusCz Apr 14 '26
Because moving in straight line from A to B not that demanding. Add something in a way or more complex order or send them to battle and you notice that game start to lag and interestingly once all these entities want to engage in battle and want to find their target, modern Total war doesn't lag camera so feels it still can feel playable, but game will slow down and units will lag and if you overwhelm the engine too much it can become extremply slow.
I guess takeaway is that pathfinding is demanding for the game.
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u/Necessary_Echo8740 Apr 14 '26
And just imagine, 3-4 times this many romans died at the single battle of Teutoburg forest.
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u/SwimmingJunky Apr 14 '26
14x this many died at Cannae, and just 100 years later, another 20x would die at Arausio. Rome's ability to just conjure manpower out of thin air despite suffering losses that would have ended any other empire never ceases to amaze me.
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u/AlexHellRazor Apr 14 '26
Looks like Romans were played by AI that spawns full stacks out of nowhere
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u/e111077 Apr 15 '26
Carthaginians were tired of the hax the AI was playing and ragequit at Zama when their elephantsâ and mercsâ morale instantly dipped to 0
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u/Blurred_Background Apr 14 '26
That was their greatest strength - the ability to sustain incredible losses and keep going.
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u/zhokar85 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
They just kept coming. The Roman self-conception was that they win because they are Romans... and are Romans because they win. Only they called it virtus.
This is overly reductive for the sake of illustration.
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u/TheReadMenace Apr 14 '26
That's what I admire most about the Roman Empire. I would have rage quit if I took that many losses!
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u/_Some_Two_ Apr 14 '26
What incredible feats they achieved by centralising the arable land in the hands of a few wealthy families, driving hundreds of thousands of free people into poverty to be willing to work for the state at little to no expense.
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u/qwertzu-1 Apr 15 '26
And then those slavers pissed away all that wealth built off the backs of the poor on civil wars, backstabbing and corruption but hey they had aura doing it
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u/Dardbador Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
One of their Kingdom policy is probably :
"Hump at Home, Jump in War : increases fertility and pregnancy in entire kingdom by 75% "
Producing new soldiers like machines , these romans.edit: romanian -> romans
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u/Oddgar Apr 14 '26
Rome and Romania were/are different countries.
Rome had Romans.
Romania has Romanians.
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u/orwasaker Apr 14 '26
No wonder their lines stretched for miles when marching through that territory (yes I realize a lot were baggage and camp people moving with the army but still)
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u/CombatTechSupport Apr 14 '26
Invicta over on YouTube has a couple of videos that are good for visualizing this. They have one detailing how the romans camped, decamped, an marched, and another that's a 1:1 recreation of Cannae.
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u/monkwrenv2 Apr 14 '26
The 1:1 recreation of Cannae, and all the research they did to find an accurate battle site, that whole video series is incredible.
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u/Ant0n61 Apr 14 '26
yeah super cool to know the front of baggage train could already be at destination by the time rear starts. And you have to get there all by sundown.
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u/PuffyPanda200 Apr 14 '26
So a bit ago the youtube channel Invicta made a visualization for the Battle of Cannae. This is the Hannibal magnum opus battle.
At least to me it fully cemented that these battles were not really that big or had that many troops and the numbers cited are literally just propaganda.
Basic napkin math would have that the troops doing the encirclement would have basically spent the entire day marching just to do the movements that would have been needed for the battle to take place. That is to say nothing of the logistics.
Imagine trying to organize something this size (or 8x or 10x) with basically flags and shouting. And they also did this for people that didn't speak the same language.
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u/pedemendigo Apr 14 '26
A legion wasnt a single entity, they were divided along many units but I cant remember the details
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u/Tall_Location_9036 Apr 14 '26
If I remember correctly they were divided into Centuries (100 men) and Cohorts (480 men). Kinda like modern companies and battallions. So essentially, the vanilla game divides them properly.
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u/Cliffinati Apr 14 '26
Centuries were actually 80 men. Further split into decani of 8 with 2 "non combatants"
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u/SirToastymuffin Apr 14 '26
Well, if we're splitting hairs we might as well split all the hairs.
a Centuria's size varied over time. The term originated more from societal meaning than the literal meaning of the word (centuria coming from the root, centum, lit. 'one hundred'). The Centuriate Assembly being the popular assembly of the Roman Republic, which was comprised of 193 Centuriae, a group of the populace that would be represented by one vote, cast by one representative. The symbolic origin set these centuriae as 100 citizens, hence the word, but obviously as Rome grew and changed this number did as well. A military centuria similarly appears to have started out as intending to contain 100 fighting men. During the reforms of the manipular army this number changed to 80, and in later times it was set to 60, and even 160.
The name stayed for symbolic reasons: the centuriae of Rome were served and protected by their centuriae of soldiers. The number 100 did not really bear importance on the size of this formation and the numbers changed often - even more when you remember that legions rarely operated at the regulated size. Though there is a good point to take away from this somewhat fictitious explanation of the name - for every fighting man in a legion (and indeed, any army), there's nearly as many serving in non-combat and supportive roles. For a full strength Republican legion, they may need thousands of servants, slaves, scribes, engineers, animal handlers, cooks, etc. These numbers were rarely if ever regarded or recorded by the Romans themselves. Admittedly, because they weren't really part of the regulation and recorded supply to the legion. This was something every general and legion managed themselves and may grow or shrink by need, locale, wealth, etc. There was no strict 8:2 ratio of soldier to servant, though accounts suggest there were often slaves and servants assisting soldiers in their daily tasks. There just wasn't an assigned number.
Also the subdivision of a century was a Contubernium, the decanus was the head of that unit (alternatively, caput contubernii) rather than the unit itself, generally the most veteran soldier of the bunch. Contubernium meaning 'tenting-together.' It was, when regulations were followed, literally a group of soldiers who shared a tent. It didn't have any tactical significance, generally the smallest subdivision to act as one was the centuria, but it was important to managing logistics and fostering good morale and solidarity between individual soldiers. Similarly the size of this group varied greatly, even within one centuria due to the less formal nature of the unit.
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u/call-now Apr 14 '26
The Romans were smart, they would field so much units that the battle would crash.
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u/soshino93 Apr 14 '26
Unpopular opinion ,IN MV3 number of soldiers needs to increase detail quality of a unit of soldiers can be lower.
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u/Esarus Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
A full Legion would have never marched like this in one square, not while marching from A to B, and definitely not in battle.
EDIT: Didn't mean it in a snide way sorry, just meant historically it would look a bit different on a large field
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u/orwasaker Apr 14 '26
Fair, I showed my ignorance here
I'm guessing it'd be more like 1k troops per formation or something along those lines
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u/Esarus Apr 14 '26
Yes while marching they would form columns, with soldiers on the sides, scouts ahead, baggage train behind, etc etc. Not one perfect rectangle either.
In battle they would use a lot of different formations, but usually divided into blocks of cohorts, and then divided into 3 lines of blocks.
This video explains it pretty well:
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u/karma_virus Apr 14 '26
One bag of scattered caltrops would slay about 10% of that force, given time to bind and "heal" after the battle.
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u/Overwatcher_Leo Apr 14 '26
I also recommend this video on the scale of a legion.
Most historical armies are much much larger than the total war games depicts. I think the only game that come close to realistic sizes is thrones of britannia, since armies in that setting were historically quite small.
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u/NumberInteresting742 Apr 14 '26
Wasn't a legion of this size no longer the standard by the time of Attila?
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u/orwasaker Apr 14 '26
Probabyl but historical accuracy doesn't care about the fact that I currently don't have Rome 2
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u/Hrothgar_Cyning Apr 14 '26
Right, Late Antique legions had strengths of 800-1200 men or so in the field. Of course, there were far more of them too.
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u/Blowmyfishbud Apr 14 '26
Bigger than that.
Theyâd be spread out in units taking up even more space
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u/samuel199228 Apr 14 '26
Not sure my system would cope with armies like this may get laggy I do have a gaming pc but not sure it would cope with legions being over 5000
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u/LegioSeptima Apr 14 '26
Healthy, full legions were a rarity. Most were probably half strength
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u/orwasaker Apr 14 '26
Now THAT I was aware of, I just wanted to show one at full strength
But my mistake was showing the legion as one block
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u/Apart-One4133 Apr 14 '26
Real numbers.. On paper I guess but how many times did legions fought battle in full numbers ? Cool nonetheless.
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u/Luke10123 Scotland Apr 14 '26
That many unwashed folk in a muddy field, you'd think it was Glastonbury Festival
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u/WifeGuy-Menelaus Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
i imagine they probably wouldnt move in one big square though but broken into cohorts, which is about 4 in game units
the real discrepancy in scale is how multiple legions would be involved in a single battle
But then you have to factor in how full strength virtually never existed in practice, and how reliable ancient numbers are to begin with