Why small armies are stronger than big armies

I am known for making controversial titles like these. I'm also known for making rovers competent after complaining about them for years. But who cares? This isn't relevant.

There are big advantages for smaller armies that don't apply to big armies. A projectile may struggle to hit a single unit, but the projectile easily hits an army of units. A single unit does not need a varied army to be effective. An army will struggle without army-specific balancing units. It is easy to micro a small clump of units. It is hard to micro a big clump of units.

How is this relevant? Well, small armies being stronger is the reason it becomes so hard to attack into the opponent's army once it loses a lot of weight. Even if the big army crushes the smaller army anyway, it will take the big army more time to destroy a small army than it would take for the big army to destroy units from a bigger army.

For this reason, several small armies might even have higher power level than one big army. And for this reason, two teammates commanding two small armies may prove more effective than one ally commanding one army with the size of two teammates.

However, small armies being stronger also proves that strength is not always prioritized by "survival of the fittest." Even if a small army is more powerful, a critical mass of an army means that even if the critical mass loses some units, enough units deal damage to crumble the small army.



These all are just speculations and theory-crafting. Don't expect to use them in a game effectively. However, I hope you enjoyed my ramble.

tl;dr GO PLAY FRONTLINE

The main advantage of multiple armies is that you can push on multiple lanes. If you attack in 2 places, your opponent needs to decide how to split their army to confront the 2 fronts. If they choose wrong, simply retreat with the one they overcommitted to. Keep pushing on the other front until they fortify it with their army. Once they do, attack on the other front. Now if you can reliably control 3-4 arms, you could push multiple lines and they can’t reasonably defend. Their only option at this point is to attack themselves, which leads to both bases being destroyed and the game effectively restarting on opposite sides, which is always entertaining.

i feel asthough your wrong for the following reasons..

damage over time vs healing over time.
dodge vs reload

larger armies can mitigate enemy healing.. and can meatshield to protect the backline healing units
they can prevent enemy dodge with saturation fire and cover weapon cooldown moments
they can focus fire to reduce enemy numbers and damage outputs
they can collect reclaim!!
they can protect weak vitals such as construction projects glass cannons, aa and cons from surgical strikes

and these are just some of the ones i can think of right now im sure there are more..

yes i know that large armies also cant dodge.. but i feel like this is almost a non difference with the return fire of so many units essentialy equivilant.

If the big army wants to fight a low density skirmish, it can usually arrange that by sending a small vanguard ahead of the rest of the army. The full weight of the army is still there and ready to crush any opportunistic raiders, it's just far enough back to not take incidental damage from misses.