Hey all! More of a general mechanics and game design question here… does anyone know of even an approximate points formula for unit creation?
I want to run some mega battles in my future and wanted to do up some custom units for those. However, I didn’t want to recreate the wheel! Just curious if someone smarter than I had noodled out a formula or general rules of thumb. Thanks!
I thought I would be able to find something for you, but I was not able to. 
Thanks for checking Fred! I’ve been searching unsuccessfully for a few days as well and figured it was a bit of a longshot…
As I understand the design methodology, each stat and each rule would need to have a points weight, and then we’d math it all up to get the points for the unit. Figuring all the weights out would be a bit much. And THEN there are the various unit sizes to consider! Sheesh.
I think I’ll just approximate it unit by unit if I do get these battles off the ground. But I’ll try and share my approach on the forum here, in case anyone else finds it helpful. Thanks for checking around though!
I seem to recall mention of certain Kingdoms of Men units being used as a baseline of sorts, at least.
That’s my recollection as well. I suspect if we could get an EasyArmy export of the units with stats and costs, we could run a regression analysis and get a pretty good idea of what drives the differences. I know that in the CoK 21 discussion, some RC members talked about adjusting the points away from the baseline formula for dual-use units (e.g. characters that cast and fight, for example, so they’re not paying extra for skills they aren’t using). Maybe asking on Fanatics? Someone might have a rough formula they’ve been using.
There are certain baseline units which the other variants are based off (KoM shieldwall regiment, ogre warriors, zombies) and the RC then tweak points to take into account synergies within armies etc (its why comparable units in different armies arent always the same points).
Similarly the scaling in points/stats from regiments to the other unit sizes are pretty consistent.
There is however no published formula or baseline equation, coupled with the fact that points etc have been changed in the CoK updates etc.
In most wargames which have “build your own unit” type generation, the ones you could create are more expensive than identical ‘original’ variants.
I did make a unit cost calculator for fun in 2019, based on an interpretation of the costings back then.
Update: It works! And its open for anyone to use. Just punch stats and keywords and get cost back.
(not all keywords are supported, those that work are listed below the unit fields)
(From the top of my head, the original formula that Nick make was “damage output plus durability”, then multiplied by speed in the end. And having a KoM Shield Wall (i think) unit cost 100, and scaling and tweaking everything from there. I wanted to capture the tweaks and cok updates into the pricing and try to quantify the value of keywords too. And see if I could recreate a non-linear but still quite transparent formula.)
Oh wow, this is just so cool! I am still coming to grips with it. This is more detailed than anything I was anticipating to be dredged up! Thank you so much for sharing this.
I was thinking small: “What if I bumped this unit Def 4… what if these could be taken as a horde”… but I think I may need to play around more with your sheet and aim higher! Very cool. Again, thank you very much for sharing this!
The new book has rules for custom units and mega monsters, including points costs, so interesting to see how that worjs
I’ve been interested in these formulas in other systems - intrigued to see what Mantic releases. There’s a reason they’re normally unofficial though.
It would be good if it laid the groundwork for monsters having some more options in lists. Would allow more variety to represent different conversions/minis, especially as they don’t get access to artefacts.
