Myrgard

Another thing I have noticed and this mostly pertains to Light maps. Is some people like to have squads others like to have more specialized unit groups.

Examples

Squads: Each Player gets a few Bowmen, few melee, a duff or 2 and some puss. With maybe one player having a more specialized group of units.

Specialized groups. Each player gets a group of only 1 or 2 unit types. Player A all Bowmen 1 or 2 puss. Player B All melee few puss and maybe a duff.

Myself I prefer and think it is better to give most Players on a team a mixed squad of units. There are a few reason for why I see it this way. Each Player has a well rounded group of units that in theory can defend itself against almost anything. The have a Duff to fight large melee packs. They have Bowmen to fight other Bowmen or use against Duffs they have Puss to use as defense or offense. They have a few melee to protect the Duff and Bowmen. In the right situation 4 Bowmen 3 Warrs 1 Duff and 2 Ghols with puss could beat 15 Warrs and 2 Ghols with puss. Also with Bowmen fights it is most of the time better to have 2 Players with 3-4 Bowmen each vs 1 Player with 6-8 Bowmen. The split group of Bowmen can be controlled and utilized much better.

What happens a lot when Players dont have mixed squads is the different units dont work as well together as they would if each person had a mix. So many times I have been given just Bowmen and maybe 1 Ghol with puss and then another Player is given a pack of Warrs. The Player with the Warrs will charge the enemy and pretty much abandon the Bowmen or other Artillery. Leaving me to die to an enemy Warr or Ghol pack even a fairly small one. If I have 8 Bows and I am attacked with 8 Warrs there really isnt much I can do but try to do as much damage as possible before my units are killed. Vs if I had 4 Bows 1 Duff 2 Warrs I have a good chance of winning that. Im going to defend my artillery units better than my teammate probably will. Even if you are the Player with the Melee pack you will have issues vs a mixed enemy group with Bows, Duffs and melee. Even if you way outnumber them you are going to have to charge and will most likely take heavy loses since you have no defense against the Duff except hope for duds and just sacrificing some units to kill the duff. A mixed squad is a small self contained army that will have a fighting chance vs almost anything.

The only advantage I see for having specialized forces (on light maps specifically) is a Player only has to concentrate on that one type of unit. Which is good sometimes for a Ghol or Ghol/Melee pack. Also on a Rushy type map where an all melee strat is best obviously.

Thoughts?

Its not really a question of squads vs no squads, rather more on what the map and unitset demands.

By your definition Clash is a 100% specialization map since its pretty rare someone will be using more than 1 type of unit primarily (either trow/lock/mort). However I would still consider a lock and say 4 mauls a squad on this map.

Ok so lets looks at the default light map desert. Again I don't consciously decide as a captain whether I want to split into squads or not, I just decide on my rough plan and split according to whats going where. Lets say I go with a rush south and have basic ranged groups N and mid. In this case the rush works best if multiple people have pus + warriors rather than gibing all the warriors to one guy and the pus to another. This is simply optimal given the # of players in the game, in theory with say a 32 player myth limit you might split the warriors to 2 people and 2 people with the pus so you'd have better micro on both but this isn't the case. Middle and north simply will perform better with a mix of units (I'm talking about decent players here, you can't plan that well for weak players) because they are self sufficient and can handl or attempt to handle any threat they see.

Maybe if the myth player limit was higher you'd see a move towards specialization since there'd be far more players with the current # of units.

well shit , just found out you cant hit the NORMAL replay button when you do a quick reply....lost my post
well anyways, mixed is better. More TOOLS for more situations on the field of battle with mixed units. They all can
support each other's strengths and weaknesses.