How to Make a Bear Skin Rug

P.S. Yall reading this should try writing a guide. You might just learn some good info!

Nice "how to" guide, however:

This is completely untrue. In fact, in most cases, the reverse is true!

If your commander has heroism 0, it won't matter how many you send as long as you send enough (casualties will remain the same)

If your commander is boosted by heroism you will actually get more casualties if you oversend.

Up to 65 troops sent, a 10 heroism commander will have the same casualties no matter how many you send.

If you send over 65 with a 10 heroism commander, then your casualties will increase. If you send 130, while you only need 65, you will be receiving about 33% more casualties than you have to. This is because of the following:

Casualties = Total army size * (def/off ratio)

1) Casualties are determined by def/off ratio. This would suggest that you should send as many as possible.

2) However, the way the ratio determines casualties is a percentage of total sent troops. So the more you send the more you lose also. 

Not counting the commander these effect are equally strong, meaning it doesn't matter how many you send as long as you send enough. 

At 65 troops your commander consists of half your total offense (with 10 heroism). That means by his presence, he halves your losses, because he doubles your offense, just counting heroism. If you then double your troop strength the following happens:

-Army size +100%  (times 2)

-Offensive strength +50% (= times 1,5)

2/1,5 = 1,33, thus 33% more losses! Try it with the formula with some numbers and you will agree. People have been known to grossly oversend and do not realize how much it hurts them.

If you use multiple commanders it is even worse. Sending 5 commanders with only 65 troops can reduce your casualties by a factor of 6. If you then decided to send 40k troops instead of 65 troops, you would receive roughly 6 times as many casualties, because the commander offense (from heroism) then amounts to almost nothing percentage-wise. 

There is however, one advantage to oversending and that's limiting commander damage as commander damage is calculated as:

Commander damage = 100 * (def/off ratio)

That means, the more troops the less commander damage. However, commander healing is free, lost troops are not. 

If it is something I know, like a pack of wild dogs or (in the jungles) golden monkeys, I skip the math and just send the army.  Otherwise, after scouting, I pick either the cav defense value of the NPC for cav training on plains, or the worst case defense value for other troops on any terrain.  And when exact calculations would need too much time I round the numbers up for a quick approximation.  For the attacker (= my troops) I skip the commander heroism or division bonus, and if these quick calculations result in a decent advantage it should be actually a big enough advantage.