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Let me throw in some more 'real' military stuff here, since I've both got more of the actual experience (20 years, US Army) and a military history background...
Mark's right in that size of units and the complexity of their composition will be strictly limited by tech levels. Until you are talking about Army Wings (1/2 to 1/3 of the entire army) you rarely have any units before 1800 that consist of more than 2 types of troop. Examples:
Ancient armies were almost entirely composed of Light and Heavy Infantry, Light and Heavy Cavalry. Exact weaponry varied, but units did not mix them. In the Macedonian Phalanx (which actually means the entire array of the army) the pikemen were organized into Taxeis (sometimes translated as 'regiments' because they were recruited territorially). These had 1600 - 2000 men (varying numbers of 256 man subunits. Why? because 256 is 16 x 16 and the standard formation was 16 ranks deep and squared for maneuverability) ALL armed with the Sarissa, or 15-20 foot pike. The Roman legion started as a Phalanx of spearmen, rearmed the front ranks with swords and javelins, and by early Imperial times had all the Heavy Infantry of the Legion armed with heavy javelins (pilum) and swords (gladii). The Cohorts and Maniples (subunits) of the Legions were always composed of a single type of troop. Auxiliary units, 500 or 1000 men each, were always of one type of armament: slingers, swordsmen, archers, light javelinmen, etc.
With gunpowder, the first combination units were combinations of muskets/aquebus (firearms) and pikes (no bayonets yet). The most complex units were the early Spanish Tercios, which had 'sword and buckler men', pikemen, and firearms - three types in one unit, very unusual.
After bayonets were invented, troops were either musket armed infantry or mounted.
Artillery was not even considered a combat arm until the eighteenth century - it was strictly an auxiliary service. Artillery up until Napoleon was mainly added in small units (batteries) to larger brigades/divisions of cavalry or infantry.
Modern armies started using 'combined arms' because no single weapon could handle all tactical situations, but the modern limitation is simply the complexity of the chain and span of command. You can't handle more than 3-5 subunits at any level, and you can only coordinate so many weapons in each unit. Therefore, an infantry squad might have small arms, a squad automatic weapon, and grenade launchers - 3 weapon systems. A platoon will have no more than 3-4 squads, a compay no more than 3 - 4 platoons, a battalion 3 - 4 companies, and so on. You can have units like the WWII German or Soviet mechanized reconnaissance battalions (600-1000 men each) which had 1 company of armored cars, 1 company of armored infantry (in halftracked APCs), 1 company of tanks, and 1 company of Heavy Weapons (light howitzers, antiaircraft and antitank guns). That is, 4 separate and different subunits. That's the most complex modern unit type that I know of, and it's because the mission of those units (like the modern Armored Cavalry already mentioned) was complicated: reconnaissance, screening, reaction force, assault force - it required a lot of capabilities under the same headquarters.
You should only have to address that kind of complexity in the modern period, though. Even an Infantry Division (15-18,000 men) at the beginning of WWII only had, essentially, infantry battalions, artillery battalions, possibly a tank battalion and reconnaissance battalion, and an engineer battalion. The artillery could include a battalion each of antitank guns and light antiaircraft guns, the rest 'field' artillery with the same mission and precise capabilities varying with the Tech level. The infantry were armed with rifles, machineguns, and light mortars.
In short, the basic building block of the army has at most 8 systems if you differentiate Engineer special capabilities and armored cars in the recon unit - and actually, three of those 8 are all Infantry Weapons that by rights should be lumped together, because twentieth century infantry without the combination of small arms, crew-served automatic weapons, and some kind of explosive (mortar, light artillery, grenade launcher) support cannot perform ANY of its missions successfully. That reduces your requirements down to 6. Tanks and armored carriers for the infantry are 2 more. Helicopters are a modern (1955+) addition, and you have completed the modern pantheon of combinations at less than 10 systems.
Of course, the complexities of air support can be daunting, especially if you believe the air force claims for how much good it can do, but most of your units throughout history, even the largest subunits in an army, can be defined with just 2 - 5 weapons systems. Even the AI should be able to handle this...
The real 'combat force multipliers' (and divisors) are not the weapons themselves, but the training, command and control, and organization of the units. As stated in an earlier post, though, the organizations are going to be templated, because that's how armies do it: there was only one type of Legio at any one time in Rome, one size (officially) of Fusilier/Musketeer Battalion in a given eighteenth century army, and only certain types of divisions in a modern army. Ebdless proliferation of division or unit types usually means the army is either riddled with shortages or is trying to operate in too many different types of combat/terrain situations - worst case I know of was the German Wehrmacht in WWII, suffering from both problems, which had 23 different types of divisional organizations by 1944: consider that the Worst Possible and reduce the allowable Templates to about half that: the game can't possibly replicate all the complexities of the Real World anyway.
Mark's right in that size of units and the complexity of their composition will be strictly limited by tech levels. Until you are talking about Army Wings (1/2 to 1/3 of the entire army) you rarely have any units before 1800 that consist of more than 2 types of troop. Examples:
Ancient armies were almost entirely composed of Light and Heavy Infantry, Light and Heavy Cavalry. Exact weaponry varied, but units did not mix them. In the Macedonian Phalanx (which actually means the entire array of the army) the pikemen were organized into Taxeis (sometimes translated as 'regiments' because they were recruited territorially). These had 1600 - 2000 men (varying numbers of 256 man subunits. Why? because 256 is 16 x 16 and the standard formation was 16 ranks deep and squared for maneuverability) ALL armed with the Sarissa, or 15-20 foot pike. The Roman legion started as a Phalanx of spearmen, rearmed the front ranks with swords and javelins, and by early Imperial times had all the Heavy Infantry of the Legion armed with heavy javelins (pilum) and swords (gladii). The Cohorts and Maniples (subunits) of the Legions were always composed of a single type of troop. Auxiliary units, 500 or 1000 men each, were always of one type of armament: slingers, swordsmen, archers, light javelinmen, etc.
With gunpowder, the first combination units were combinations of muskets/aquebus (firearms) and pikes (no bayonets yet). The most complex units were the early Spanish Tercios, which had 'sword and buckler men', pikemen, and firearms - three types in one unit, very unusual.
After bayonets were invented, troops were either musket armed infantry or mounted.
Artillery was not even considered a combat arm until the eighteenth century - it was strictly an auxiliary service. Artillery up until Napoleon was mainly added in small units (batteries) to larger brigades/divisions of cavalry or infantry.
Modern armies started using 'combined arms' because no single weapon could handle all tactical situations, but the modern limitation is simply the complexity of the chain and span of command. You can't handle more than 3-5 subunits at any level, and you can only coordinate so many weapons in each unit. Therefore, an infantry squad might have small arms, a squad automatic weapon, and grenade launchers - 3 weapon systems. A platoon will have no more than 3-4 squads, a compay no more than 3 - 4 platoons, a battalion 3 - 4 companies, and so on. You can have units like the WWII German or Soviet mechanized reconnaissance battalions (600-1000 men each) which had 1 company of armored cars, 1 company of armored infantry (in halftracked APCs), 1 company of tanks, and 1 company of Heavy Weapons (light howitzers, antiaircraft and antitank guns). That is, 4 separate and different subunits. That's the most complex modern unit type that I know of, and it's because the mission of those units (like the modern Armored Cavalry already mentioned) was complicated: reconnaissance, screening, reaction force, assault force - it required a lot of capabilities under the same headquarters.
You should only have to address that kind of complexity in the modern period, though. Even an Infantry Division (15-18,000 men) at the beginning of WWII only had, essentially, infantry battalions, artillery battalions, possibly a tank battalion and reconnaissance battalion, and an engineer battalion. The artillery could include a battalion each of antitank guns and light antiaircraft guns, the rest 'field' artillery with the same mission and precise capabilities varying with the Tech level. The infantry were armed with rifles, machineguns, and light mortars.
In short, the basic building block of the army has at most 8 systems if you differentiate Engineer special capabilities and armored cars in the recon unit - and actually, three of those 8 are all Infantry Weapons that by rights should be lumped together, because twentieth century infantry without the combination of small arms, crew-served automatic weapons, and some kind of explosive (mortar, light artillery, grenade launcher) support cannot perform ANY of its missions successfully. That reduces your requirements down to 6. Tanks and armored carriers for the infantry are 2 more. Helicopters are a modern (1955+) addition, and you have completed the modern pantheon of combinations at less than 10 systems.
Of course, the complexities of air support can be daunting, especially if you believe the air force claims for how much good it can do, but most of your units throughout history, even the largest subunits in an army, can be defined with just 2 - 5 weapons systems. Even the AI should be able to handle this...
The real 'combat force multipliers' (and divisors) are not the weapons themselves, but the training, command and control, and organization of the units. As stated in an earlier post, though, the organizations are going to be templated, because that's how armies do it: there was only one type of Legio at any one time in Rome, one size (officially) of Fusilier/Musketeer Battalion in a given eighteenth century army, and only certain types of divisions in a modern army. Ebdless proliferation of division or unit types usually means the army is either riddled with shortages or is trying to operate in too many different types of combat/terrain situations - worst case I know of was the German Wehrmacht in WWII, suffering from both problems, which had 23 different types of divisional organizations by 1944: consider that the Worst Possible and reduce the allowable Templates to about half that: the game can't possibly replicate all the complexities of the Real World anyway.
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