I haven't had the luxury of having someone to game with in years so my focus is mainly on collecting and setting up scenarios. As I have made a painful decision to limit my focus of collecting to mainly the late 18th through mid-19th Centuries - formal lines of battle and having good looking formations that are impressive to the eye dominate my decisions in unit sizes.

Therefore, I want a "battalion" or "regiment" that is going to represent the massed formations while allowing for the limitations of my table (which generally is our dining room table built for my five sons and their families when they visit - it's about fifteen feet by three feet as I recall).

So I generally make my formations of around fifty enlisted with various command figures to represent a battalion or regiment. With the release of Strelets' Highlanders I had to stretch that a bit as I amalgamated the new issues with my older sets, retiring older figures (such as most of my Airfix Highlanders). Right now my Highlander battalions are averaging eighty figures - among the largest of my regiments (pardon the interchanging of terms). But I have yet to paint up a multitude of boxes of recent releases from several companies, including our erstwhile hosts so I imagine my units will get larger. No problem for me, they just look better. As I don't mount my guys (both for storage utility and flexibility in setting them up) it means it will take longer to set up a battle, but boy will they look great.

Gotta get a bigger house...

For the 18th and 19th centuries, four to six figure bases seems to work well with most national organizations that have the battalions deployed in four roughly equal firing platoons. First World War armies seem to work best at 1:10, giving a "rifle platoon" of four figures, but in 1918 it starts to get complicated as more and more support weapons come into the line. So for WWII we use individual figures fo the rank and file and weapon teams of two or three (plus additional figures "attached", so a mortar team for example has the two men on the base and three others based separately but placed next to it). We play Battlegroup rules.

I've tried others but just can't get my head around three guys on a stand being a company with all its various weapons,(too much like boardgaming), or worse a tank being three or four - and and being unable to deploy in formation and make flanking maneuvers.

Interesting thread. I'm looking for a rules set for large WW2 battles where a figure ratio is in the region of 1:200 to 1:400 for figures and 1:20 to 1:50 for tanks. Anybody?

I use Carnage and Glory computer moderated rules. All my Napoleonic
Era Infantry is 4-6 to battalion and 4-6 Cavalry regiment, 1 gun
per battery. All units have their historical numbers painted on
the rear of the base such as the French "1/57 Ligne". I can keep
a record of battle honors for them by unit.