Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26553378-20170819231411

Just something to clean up your army by size a little bit, as well as aid in hiring.

Reasoning
There are many people with armies of 200 or more soldiers, or some servers with unit limits, sometimes depending on conditions. This suggestion is to make hiring those 200 soldiers go faster, and be able to organize amounts of each type of unit per squad accurately without you counting how many times you click a button to get the most cost-effective amount of banner bearers for maximum efficiency.

Table of Command Changes
Currently the table of command (ToC) will only open a gui if you are holding some sort of item of command (IoC) such as a horn. Due to this we can make creating these squads easy, and contained within the same central block as all other functions relating to military command. When you right-click the ToC with something other than an IoC it should now open up a GUI containing the following 2 options:

Create Squad
When this button is clicked a GUI will appear for the creation of a squad, inside this you would be able to input units from captains you are able from, but, if you input units from different captains it would show the following message above a grayed out "create" button: "This squadron is unable to be hired." You would also be able to create blank squadrons for purposes explained later.

Organize Squads
When you select this option it would open up a GUI containing a list of all the blank squadrons, or "squadron squadrons" you have created. Once you select one of these it will bring up a GUI where you can input the type of squad mentioned earlier consisting of hire-able units, or other squadron squadrons, however, if this squadron contains a loop back to itself you will be unable to save changes, and if it contains units from different types of captains there will be a warning alerting you of this fact, however you will still be able to save the changes to the squadron. This will allow you to create squadrons containing an "elite" squadron for every so many normal squadrons, or simply make one containing units from different captains.

Hiring squadrons
Now that you're probably wondering what on earth this will accomplish, I will explain. You will be able to hire these squadrons from the appropriate captains (the units would be hired under the squadron " #" with the number being the number squad of that type it is for you hiring), and even hire the more advanced squadrons with units from multiple captain types, but these would show a warning supplying the other types of captains you will need to visit, and when hiring another squadron of that type with the other captain will begin with n+1 with n being the last number of that type of squadron you hired from that type of unit captain.

Example
And now for the likely many of you confused by my suggestion as it seems there often are (well, for the long ones at least) here is an example: Bill is an evil player. Bill would like an army consisting of the following unit types: Olog-hai, uruk-hai berserkers, and mounted uruk-hai crossbowers. To accomplish this task he creates the following squadrons: Olog squad, uruk berserker squad, and mounted crossbower squad, with appropriate units (although the uruk ones could theoretically be blended), he then creates the blank squad "uruk squad", and combines 3 of the uruk berserker squads with 1 mounted crossbower squad in it. after doing this he creates another squad labelled "War squad" which consists of 1-2 uruk squads, and only a single olog squad so the uruks will act as a buffer from players reaching his ologs which will be decimating their armies. Finally he creates a squad named "War battalion" for when he wants a really big force for when he really wants to crush those stupid elves. He now goes forth with a bag of coins and hires the uruk portion of a "war squad" (in this case I am using the option of it containing 1 uruk squad). these uruks will be in the following basic squads: uruk berserker squad <1-3>, and mounted crossbower squad 1. they will also respond to the squad "uruk squad 1" as their squads were hired under it, and would also respond to "war squad 1" as uruk squad 1 was hired under it. They proceed to the mordor captain and hire the ologs which will respond to either "olog squad 1" or "war squad 1". He goes to war, and learns that he needs a larger force, he goes back to the captains and hires "war battalion" from the uruk captain, but is refused, and informed that he does not have enough money for the whole squad, and that he in fact requires coins to hire the whole thing. He gets the coins and returns (Now I am using the case of 2 uruk squads per war squad). he now hires the uruks under war battalion 1 (war squad <2-4> ((uruk squad <2-3> <4-5> <6-7> (uruk berserker squad <4-6> <7-9>, <10-12> <13-15>, <16-18> <19-21>) (mounted crossbower squad <2>, <3>, <4>)))), he then hires the olog part which would be in the following squads: war battalion 1 (war squad <2-4> (olog squad <2-4>)) now he doesn't have to worry about getting unit ratios right because the squadron hiring did it for him. Also, if he really wanted to he could command portions of the battalion at once, but that probably wouldn't be the easiest considering the amount of IoCs he would need, or the need to reset squad each time he commanded.

This isn't the most realistic example, but I feel it would cover all the bases, or most of them at least. the most basic squads contained in an advanced squad would be shown in a list (probably scrollable) when resetting an IoC.

I am unsure on how easy this would be to implement, but would be quite helpful to hire well proportioned armies rather than wasting money on excess banner bearers which are weaker than your normal units, espescially if there is a unit cap on the server you are on where this excess of banner bearers would cost fire-power in a fight rather than continue to strengthen it.

should squads responding to other squad names prove too difficult/messy to implement this would likely work as well with all units being hired under the uniform squad name of the advanced squad they were hired from.

Well, I believe I covered everything (although I know I almost certainly didn't). If you see anything I missed, or that conflicts, or generally have an idea that improves this, please comment. 