Re: Unit abstraction?
A few comments :
- When we think of epic battles, we think of tens of thousands of units, if not more... because a battle with more people always seems more important. Yet there are many times and places in History when the scales where much lower, and the battles were no less contested : the Middle Ages in Europe, some periods of Japan history, The Greek cities...
- Saying an army fielded 60,000 men doesn't mean they all made it on the battlefield. Many would be guarding the rear, or the flanks, or an important bridge 10 kilometers upstream, or even the baggage. For that matter, the "battlefield" is an approximation, fighting often occured only a a few, scattered spots.
- Even in fantasy, not all authors need tens of thousands of men everytime.
All that being said, I find a battlefield with 400 people on it, counting both side, is OK. This is a struggle in a smaller land, with less people, but it does not make it less epic. In fact, I am sure that I killed more people in my Mictlan AAR so far than died in the entire Illiad, and I am not yet in turn 10.
And the current scale has one very, very big advantage : you can survey the whole battlefield at a glance, and both see the individual soldiers and the whole army. You are not sending big square of moving pixels against each others, and you are not getting lost in the details and missing the big picture.
That being said, if you want to say each man represents 10, or 100, or 1000000, be my guest.
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