The idea of tailor-made units is kind of interesting, but I agree with most other people.. no one wants to take the time to physically send units through multiple buildings.

How about if you allow the user to customize the unit when he actually creates him? So instead of just hitting the "grunt" button to queue up a grunt, you can choose to specify that the grunt should have marksmanship training, or explosives, etc. Maybe these options would make the grunt take longer to build.

Or maybe you can have a soldier creation screen where the player initially designs his units from available options such as gear, knowledge, stats, etc and then simply produces these later on?

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Original post by Deleter Or maybe you can have a soldier creation screen where the player initially designs his units from available options such as gear, knowledge, stats, etc and then simply produces these later on?

Yes. Create soldier templates that you choose from when recruiting. The more skills you give them the more they cost and/or the longer it takes to build (train) them.

With the "assemble your own" troops you are describing, it would definietly have to take place before the battle, as doing it during the game would take more time than individually sending troops to a training facility.

They did this is Earth 2150, wher you could create your own units from components and had it ocure during the game. This was not only frustrating and took you away from the action, but during multiplayer games it could put you at a serious disadvantage if you were unsure of what design you wanted.

From my experence, a game where you can set waypoints between training buildings (like in Battle Realms) works well and allows you flexability.

Training does not have to take as long as unit production. If you have a building that equips the unit with a heavy weapon then it might just take only 1 second of game time to trin this unit, but it might have taken 5 seconds to produce it in the barracks. This makes similar to the system described that allows you to produce "more equiped unit in longer times", but the waypoints system has more flexability (in that you can adapt in game rather than befor the game).