When purchasing units for a skirmish open battle, I've noticed (for the first time!! ) that unit sizes vary by small amounts.
A unit of pike/shot may have 495 bodies or 510 bodies. This can affect combat and shooting factors by small amounts.
Is there a particular reason for the variations? Does a difference of 5 or 10 points in the combat factor (or more usually 2 or 3 points) make any noticeable difference during the game?
In all skirmishes and the historical scenarios, unit strengths in men are adjusted by up to plus or minus 5% at the start of a scenario. This is for the sake of historical verisimilitude. Units didn't historically all have the same number of men when they arrived on the battlefield.
It does affect combat strength by up to 5% though this won't have any immediate effect on large units, because they have spare ranks anyway. Standard pike and shot unit that start below average full strength will have slightly reduced combat ability to start with, those that are overstrength won't have increased combat strength because they are over the maximum fighting strength. A unit of 510 pike and shot will, however, be able to lose 10 men before it suffers any reduction in combat strength.
The variation isn't enough to be worth taking into account when planning tactics.
As the program cuurently stands Later Tercios that have 1,000 or more men count as keils, but they cease to count as keils as soon as they drop below 1,000 men - which is likely to happen as soon as they have been shot at once. It is not intended thst they should count as keils at all, and they won't after the first patch.
) that unit sizes vary by small amounts.
