Number of people fighting for you should be proportional to your tickets

[Sultan_Khalifa]

This just encourages massive army blobs instead of multiple parallel armies.

+1

 and

-1 for OP

[Megafunk]

Anything that encourages the WAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh is fine with me.

[Tristan]

tl,dr:
+1 to op, but add attrition to large armies.

Longer version:

I like the idea very much. Force concentration has always been a valid strategy.

However it needs to be paired with something equally realistic... attrition.

Basically gathering large armies in medieval times caused a havoc of diseases. Combine tickets and mercenaries and add an attrition modifier to tickets, that the greater army assemble the greater attrition. This should be able to be somewhat countered by providing food, but never eliminated entirely and especially large armies fear having many men assembled at the same time.

A way to counter abuse is to make the attrition base modifier dependent on all troops in a radius (transfer radius?). As the land is used by many armies, so the attrition is greater. This way hostiles with large armies has to consider what they are doing.

As said the base attrition modifier that is defined of troops in the transfer radius of the army should be mitigated by food and maybe some items that can be constructed in cities (healing tents what not).

[Panoply]

This just encourages massive army blobs instead of multiple parallel armies.

You're right, but that varies depending on the advantage conferred by differential army size. Besides, multiple armies will always have the advantage of being able to assault multiple locations simultaneously.

exponents are your friend

Yup, I was thinking something along the lines of:

y = -1/(n^(x-1)) + m

where:
y is the ratio of number of people that can fight for the larger army versus the smaller army.
x is the ratio of the number of tickets of the larger army versus the smaller army.
n is a constant that affects the advantage conferred by differential army size. (Increasing n means increasing advantage)
m is the maximum advantage

I would suggest an m at 2 or lower, and an n at 1.5 or lower.

For example, at m=2 and n=1.2:
Army A has 120 tickets and Army B has 100 tickets (20% advantage, x = 1.2), Army A could field 4% (y=1.04) more men at one time than Army B at one time. Roughly 61 v 59.

Army A has 1000 tickets and Army B has 500 tickets (100% advantage, x = 2), Army A could field 17% (y=1.17) more men at one time than Army B. Roughly 65 v 55.

Army A will never be able to field more than m times more men than Army B, in this case, the maximum advantage is twice as many men. The advantage conferred by differential ticket army size experiences diminishing returns.

The numbers can be tweaked as seen fit, but I think this is at least proof of concept.

EDIT: Urgh, just realized my formula only really works for m=2. Any tips on how to generalize this, such that at x=1, y=1 for all m?

DOUBLE EDIT: The real general formula is much messier, it is:

y = -1/(n^(x-p)) + m

where p = 1 - log_n(1/(m-1))

[Dehitay]

Or you could just try to bring the best strategy to the table. After all, the name of the game is strategus. I like the way wit can make up for numbers. Giving more of an advantage to a clan whose only skill is recruiting every idiot in the game is just going to make things more mindless. But then again, I'm biased as I'm a smart player.

[Prosed]

If you could make a 60-60 to a 65-55 with 3:1 ratio and more and 70-50 with a ratio higher then 5:1 it would work.
But nothing more.

+1 for this idea.

How about a poll?

[Gortha]

no.

[Uhtred]

large armies already have a large advantage. Keep it the way it is, and enable brains to win over brawn.

[Panoply]

Not really. There's no advantage to having an army of 1000 over two armies of 500, actually a disadvantage since the two armies of 500 can attack two different locations simultaneously. Ceteris paribus, there's no real difference between a 1000 ticket army taking on another 1000 ticket army or two 500 ticket armies in quick succession, except that the latter scenario would take up more time, which might be helpful for the larger army or might be helpful for the two smaller armies, depending on which side is the aggressor.

[Raxmus]

If you could make a 60-60 to a 65-55 with 3:1 ratio and more and 70-50 with a ratio higher then 5:1 it would work.
But nothing more.

I like this idea, and despite the fact that I'm in one of the zergiest clans ever, I don't see any reason to give a major fielded player advantage to the team with more tickets, it makes the battles boring.

[DANK]

A lengthy title no doubt, but basically I'm suggesting that the amount of tickets you have versus the amount of tickets of who you attack should be proportional to how many people can sign up and fight for you (or the other side).

For example, if I have 1000 troops (tickets) and another person has 500 troops, then I should be able to have twice as many people on my side of the battle as they can.   So basically it would work like single player battles do and have a ratio depending on how much larger an army is that translates into how many people can fight for you in battle. 

Maybe not have it directly proportional (where twice the tickets gets you twice as many people in game), but when it's 1000 vs 500 it shouldn't be 75 vs 75 in game.  Maybe something like 90 to 60 (100 to 50 would be proportional).

Wait lets say that a battle is unfair such as 1000v500 not only would the defenders have to pull 2:1 ratio; They have to do it with half have the number of players on the field.  This would make the strong stronger and the weak weaker... imo

[CrazyCracka420]

Necro bump!

My original suggestion was a little much (there's no way you could have a proportional ratio for armies or the smaller army would get destroyed all the time).

But it does make sense if one side has the larger army, they should see the advantage IN GAME, not just over time by having more tickets to blow.  If your army is fighting a larger force, it should show it on the battlefield.

Some good maths has been done in this thread as well.

[Tomas]

-1 to the OP
 
Doing it by numbers is just an unnecessary buff for the bigger factions.  Yes it is fair that there are pros and cons to splitting a 1000 man army into two 500 man armies but what about the factions that have less troops to start with?  They will just get rinsed since they not only have less troops, but now they also have less mercs as well.

Do it based on Army equip instead

No Equip = +10 mercs
Lightly Armed = +5 mercs
Armed = +0 mercs
Heavily Armed = -5 mercs
Shiny Army = -10 mercs

It is unrealistic at face value but it does add the desired strategy to the game as people will have to choose between better gear or more mercs than their opponent.  The bigger clans will still have an advantage due to making more gold overall but they will have to choose between the easy way of simply sinking the gold into equip at the expense of merc numbers, making bigger armies at a cost of more upkeep, or running more small armies which comes with logistical complications as you try to coordinate.

[Lannistark]

I agree with Tomas. Even though the idea seems realistic, and I +1 the OP, I feel if the devs agreed on that, Strategus factions like the Empire, or Druzhinas would just rape the entire map from other players by abusing this feature. What Tomas suggests seems much more reasonable in my opinion - in an attempt to make things more fair for the weak teams.

[CrazyCracka420]

Well to me it seems ridiculous that you could have 50 people fighting 1000, and for those first 50 tickets the battlefield is 100% equal.  That just seems wrong.  In reality, the servers can hold 200 people, the enemy team should have 150 troops fighting your 50 (maybe not that drastic, but why aren't we using up the full slots on the servers?)

If the servers could hold 1000 people, and a 900 man army attacks 100 many army, you think both sides should be brought down to 100 troops each?