The Military Academy

[Madine]

I agree that removing the victorious army requirement from MA would be good.

[bongo]

Well, it would give the AI easier acces to armies... It will still be uncapable of using them in an intelligent manner though

[Aqualung71]

While it's clearly a step in the right direction, removing one impediment that the AI may not currently be able to overcome on its own, it may not be enough to have any discernible results. Can we give Armies a "build often" flag also?

The next problem will be if the AI doesn't build the MA. Perhaps there is a way to "gift" the MA to all AI's at the start of the game, or upon discovery of MT?

[alexman]

Aqua/thriller, unfortunately, your fears were well-founded.

In a debug game I just set up, the AI builds the MA fine, but it doesn't use it to build Armies! I saw it even build Wealth in the MA city, but no Army!

In light of this, the removal of the victorious Army flag from the MA clearly hurts the AI.

Any ideas?

[Risa]

A 400-shield 0/0/1 ground unit IS almost useless, unless it's an army. That may be the reason why AIs always avoid to build army (by MA or by MGL). They may just forget its magic properties in the evaluation method.

[sabrewolf]

would it be an idea to remove the MGL's "rush improvement" possibility?
i know it's used by many people for rushing small wonders and the palace, but like this, the AI would maybe use the army.

alexman, have you ever tried to reduce the cost of armies? will the AI build it, if it costs only 1 shield? 10 shields? 100? i remember seeing someone (was it you?) seeing that the leaders are used to rush warriors more than create an army.

what would be if the army would get some kind of combat values?

my ideas shouldn't and won't be a solution, but maybe it'll help figuring out, how much the AI values the army and therefor what one could do to make it more worth it for the AI...

[sabrewolf]

well, first test didn't work... armies cannot have combat values (it's linked to the "army" flag)

maybe all we can do is wait for jesse...

[alexman]

Removing the MGL rush ability is not possible. The not only would that affect scientific leaders as well, but you even must have that ability to flag the AI 'Army' strategy.

Here's what I propose to do with the Military Academy until Armies get fixed properly from Firaxis:

• Remove victorious Army requirement (so the AI can build it).
• Remove 'increased army value' flag (as suggested by lockstep, to reduce the power of Armies).
• Remove the ability to build Armies (since the AI does not build them anyway).
• Add ability to spawn an Army every 20 turns.

What do you think?

[Aqualung71]

Alexman, I presume the "ability to spawn Armies" proposal relates to the discussion at the governments thread about the Fascism-SPHQ generating Armies, yes? For me, this is the bet idea, even if it's the furthest from stock rules.

As you've tested here, removing the victorious Army requirement doesn't seem to achieve much, since the AI still doesn't build Armies. In fact, in certain situations it can assist the human more than the AI - I recently played a game where warfare was limited and the RNG was not kind enough to give me a leader from my various Elite battles --> no Armies!

I don't think removing Armies from the game altogether is the right move. Armies are fun to use, if overpowered....and we do play this game to have fun after all.

[alexman]

Just to be clear, all the bullets above are part of a single proposal.

I think adding the Army-spawning ability to the Academy should be considered separately from adding it to the SPHQ. At the moment, I don't see how to make the Military Academy useful to the AI without removing the ability to build Armies and spawning Armies instead.

[ducki]

I categorically oppose a generic, anyone can build it, it always works Army-spawning building.

The would seriously unbalance the late game and is a very radical suggestion, IMO.

Armies are, what, a few hundred shields? So every 20 turns, you can - instead of using the freebie to actually make a standing army - rush buildings in your corrupt towns - anything but a great wonder, right - to the tune of something like 200 shields? In a corrupt town, that's, what, 40 turns? In my OPINION, that's insane.

And that's just the builder side.

For the warmonger, every 20 turns, you get an unstoppable force or an immovable object if you have tech parity or better.


I'm sorry, but I think this goes way too far. Any army-generating building(free generation) should be government limited, like the SPHQ.

Army-spawning ability to the Academy should be considered separately from adding it to the SPHQ

I couldn't disagree more and I hinted at this in the Government thread. This is a huge change. Enormous. We should not double-up on it simply because it seems like two separate, compartmentalized changes.

I wholeheartedly oppose the idea of having the MilAcad generate Armies. It takes decisions out of the player's hands, it seriously effects the balance and the scale of the late game, we're considering Army-generation for free elsewhere, and this is so far beyond what most of the AU warmongers were arguing against in the past.

I don't know how we went from "Remove successful Army" flag to "Armies, armies, and still more armies!" but I'm unsettled by the prospect, so I'll close with a bit of premonition...

Theseus will have said in a later post
Take it slow.

Or maybe he won't, but I sure hope he does.


I feel fairly passionately about this, so if my words seem pointed, be assured they are not pointing at anyone or any group in particular. I'm just flummoxed at how we rubberbanded from "Armies are the prize of the warmonger" to freely-generated Armies for everyone, every 20 turns. No offense intended to anyone.

[alexman]

In the late game, Military Academy in a good city can build an Army every 6-8 turns, but only for the human. With the proposed change, you get an Army every 20 turns, so you will have something like one third of the Armies being produced by the human (we can still play with the exact number of turns between Armies). The difference is that the AI will now have Armies too.

[ducki]

Sorry to post twice in a row, but...

In a debug game I just set up, the AI builds the MA fine, but it doesn't use it to build Armies! I saw it even build Wealth in the MA city, but no Army!

In light of this, the removal of the victorious Army flag from the MA clearly hurts the AI.

Any ideas?

What about flavors or build-often or something to make the AI think Armies are as valuable as the human knows they are?

Surely there are more things we can tinker with to encourage Army-building that just scrapping the whole thing and removing the option, no? I can't believe it's me that's yanking on the reins so hard, but I just think this is far too radical a point to start from.
That's just my opinion, but I don't think it would feel very stock and I don't think it would play very stock for anyone but serious warmongers that build a buttload of armies most of the time anyways.


I see your point on the turns and # of armies produced alexman, but the difference is that we've now freed up - in your scenario, a city that can now crank out the units(for the warmonger) to fill an army completely by the time it is generated or to steal a lot more wonders from the AI.
Basically we're gifting the human with 400 shields every so often - not small potatoes, IMO.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by ducki
ISo every 20 turns, you can - instead of using the freebie to actually make a standing army - rush buildings in your corrupt towns - anything but a great wonder, right - to the tune of something like 200 shields?

Armies can't rush buildings, only GL's can.

But I agree with you - I don't support the MA spawning Armies. I much prefer the proposal to tie it in the the Fascism-SPHQ, which IMHO quite neatly ties up a few difficult AI issues: It helps the AI, who despite our attempts to push it into Communismn as a wartime government, seems to prefer to stay in Fascism....and so by adopting the "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude, this solution improves Fascism, nerfs Communism somewhat by taking away the SPHQ (thus reducing the value of the "overpowered" Communism government in human hands), and gives the AI in Fascism the ability to spawn Armies from its SPHQ. Furthermore, it limits the human's access to this powerful feature unless the human chooses to go into Fascism, which is a trade-off. Increasing the corruption level of Fascism is a further deterrent to the human.

Overall, I think this "suite" of solutions sounds wonderful in theory and I'm keen to see how it will work in practice.....ie, will the AI in Fascism actually build the SPHQ?

[ducki]

Armies can't rush buildings, only GL's can.

If you disband an army in a town building anything but a Wonder, you'll get a couple hundred shields.

I should have clarified that, since "rushing" is a technical gameplay term.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by ducki

If you disband an army in a town building anything but a Wonder, you'll get a couple hundred shields.

I should have clarified that, since "rushing" is a technical gameplay term.

Ah yes of course. Sorry, I misunderstood.

[Jaybe]

An Army (with a cost of 400 shields) is worth only 100 shields when disbanded, regardless of any units in the army.

After I see that my current mod of Sun Tzu's wonder replacing the MA (with the MA being capable of building non-enhanced armies) does not work, I will probably adopt Alexman's principles ... adding enhanced armies to Sun Tzu's at the same rate.

Thank you again for the illumination in this thread.

[bongo]

Has moving the 'build army' flag to the palace been tried?

It would give the AI an opportunity to build armies in a high-shield city...and give humans fast access to armies as well

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki

Surely there are more things we can tinker with to encourage Army-building that just scrapping the whole thing and removing the option, no?

Um.. no. That's the whole point of the proposal. If anyone can think of a better solution to make the MA useful to the AI, please tell. Flavors have no effect on units.

Originally posted by Aqualung71

I much prefer the proposal to tie it in the the Fascism-SPHQ, which IMHO quite neatly ties up a few difficult AI issues: It helps the AI, who despite our attempts to push it into Communismn as a wartime government, seems to prefer to stay in Fascism....

The AI can be made to prefer Communism over Fascism. See my tests in the government thread. And with the usually bad FP placement, the AI gets the full benefits from Communism, while the benefits from Fascism somewhat depend on good FP placement. So it's better if the AI chooses Communism anyway.

I wouldn't be opposed to give Fascism an Army-spawning SPHQ. I just think an Army-spawning MA is a smaller change, since there is no other way to make the MA useful to the AI.

By the way, since the MA won't be able to build Armies any more, we can reduce the cost of Armies to 1 shield, which eliminates the rushing use if it without having any other game play effect.

[JimiD]

Some questions this thread has raised for me:

Are armies so powerful in C3C that they are unbalancing?

Do we want to provide them for the AIs, cause we run rapant with them?

If they are more readily available, through MA or other route, will war become a battle between armies, rather than units? Or would it become a rush to get armies, and then overun everyone else? In my, admittedly limited, experience they are unstoppable against a tech equivilent AI.

If they were less powerful, would the fact that the AI doesnt get them be less of an issue? They were still useful in PTW, but rushing wonders was better. Is using a MGL for a weaker army is more of a strategic decision against rushing a SW?




The argument about the benefit of attacking is someone elses, relating to another game, but applies here I think..

Quick summary:

Offense is good, cause you can concentrate your forces to one point, whilst on defence, you must defend everywhere. Therefore the advantage lies with attacking.

(complicated by railroads in the late stage of this game but the point remains)

Armies exemplify this problem, by allowing three units to hit one, and then worsen it by increasing the Attack (and defence) stats.

Armies are very difficult to defend against, whether 'fortified', or counter attacking. A defensive army can be created, but is that the most effective way of stopping an attacking army, or is another attacking one the way?

[alexman]

Originally posted by The pirate
Are armies so powerful in C3C that they are unbalancing?

Armies in C3C are so powerful, that it's now a no-brainer what you are going to do with your first few MGLs. Everyone except extreme builders or extremely unlucky players should already be in a position to build the MA under stock rules. So with such powerful Armies, the victorious Army limitation did not really add any strategic decisions to the game.

Do we want to provide them for the AIs, cause we run rapant with them?

Basically, yes! Even Sid-level AI has no chance against a human with a few Armies.

If they are more readily available, through MA or other route, will war become a battle between armies, rather than units? Or would it become a rush to get armies, and then overun everyone else?

As I said before, I don't think the above proposal makes Armies more readily available, or at least that is not the intention. You can no longer have a 80-shield city producing an Army every 5 turns. You have to wait for the full 20, or whatever the number of turns we agree upon.

If they were less powerful, would the fact that the AI doesnt get them be less of an issue?

Very good point, and there have been some ideas in the army thread about that. One of the ideas was to remove the 'more powerful armies' flag from the Military Academy, as proposed above. There is not much else you can do besides limit the number of units in an Army, which feels too drastic.

[ducki]

So with such powerful Armies, the victorious Army limitation did not really add any strategic decisions to the game.

Which seems to me a good reason to simply remove that flag/limitation for the MA and see what happens. There were AI Armies in our PtW mod. Not scads like the human builds, but there were some. I'd prefer to use that as a starting point rather than this current proposal. If we start small and build from there, I think we can find a solution that fits with the Mod's goals more closely than the current proposal.

I could be wrong, I just feel this is a radical departure from the previous discussion of how to enable the AI to build Armies.

maybe all we can do is wait for jesse...

We were waiting on Jesse and the 1.20 patch, hoping against hope - that's sort of why this thread died off for a while. Now we know we need to do something.

I like the idea of allowing the Palace to enable building Armies but would worry about early-game balance. Maybe the FP should take over the "Enables building Armies" duties - little risk of the AI putting it in a city that can't possibly hope for a decent shield output by virtue of it's other effects, yet it wouldn't give the human the ability to just build an ultra-early army and win before Mil.Trad.

Anyway, I'm gonna leave off this one for a while now - I think I've expressed my dislike of generating armies to give the AI Armies*.

It's only my opinion, I could be wrong.


* - At some point in this thread, I did suggest either giving the AI an army to start with(they load it with a warrior and fortify in the city) or having some mid-late game building(or the palace) generate an Army, but I wanted to have it do so every 4000 years - which you can't do in the editor - so as to only generate one, later in the game, which the AI would hopefully load with Offensive units and use, thust enabling the Mil.Acad. Since turns per year increase, there's no way to do this without actually populating the world with Armies.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki

Which seems to me a good reason to simply remove that flag/limitation for the MA and see what happens. There were AI Armies in our PtW mod. Not scads like the human builds, but there were some.

Yes, the PTW built Armies in stock too. The AU mod did nothing to encourage building Armies in PTW. We don't need to "see what happens", because everyone knows what happens in C3C. No AI Armies!

I like the idea of allowing the Palace to enable building Armies but would worry about early-game balance.

You're kidding, right? You like the idea of the Palace giving free Armies but you think the idea of the MA giving free Armies is too radical?

Edit: If it's the idea of allowing the Palace to build Armies rather than give free ones you like, then that would be the same as the MA. The AI doesn't build Armies.

[ducki]

The AI doesn't build Armies.

Are we sure? What I see us being sure of is that the AI will not use a MGL to create an Army.

I'm not discounting your test above, but I also don't know how many tests you ran, how many AIs successfully build the MA, how many times the opportunity to build an Army were passed up, etc.

The short-report above sounds like a single AI in a single debug game. Kudos for testing(seriously) but that sounds like a fairly small sample to rule out the proposal that prompted the test as ineffectual.

Oh, yes, you misread me - allow some building we know the AI will have that we know will be in a low/zero corruption city(Palace, FP) to replace the Mil.Acad. as Allows Building of Armies - NOT auto-generating armies. I wasn't clear, my mistake.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by alexman
The AI can be made to prefer Communism over Fascism. See my tests in the government thread. And with the usually bad FP placement, the AI gets the full benefits from Communism, while the benefits from Fascism somewhat depend on good FP placement. So it's better if the AI chooses Communism anyway.

I wouldn't be opposed to give Fascism an Army-spawning SPHQ. I just think an Army-spawning MA is a smaller change, since there is no other way to make the MA useful to the AI.

Ok, so leave the SPHQ in Communism, push the AI towards Communism over Fascism and still give the SPHQ Army-spawning abilities. Either way my point is, we are trying to generate more Armies for the AI.....we humans already exloit the game in whatever way we can to build lots of Armies and run amuck over the AI in the late game. So, the best solution is surely one in which the AI gets Armies automatically but the human doesn't.....and the easiest way to deal with this is through government. I say forget the MA - we'll still use our Elites against the AI red-liners and generate MGL's for Armies, regardless. Give the Army-spawning in an area the human doesn't use, or at least, must sacrifice something else in order to use.

Having said all that, I will still retreat to the Fascism preference, since the last couple of AU courses have shown quite handsomely that the human player has an unstoppable path to victory by moving into Communism in the late game. So adding an Army-spawning SPHQ into Communism won't necessarily help the AI, unless we seriously nerf Communism in some other way.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
I'm not discounting your test above, but I also don't know how many tests you ran, how many AIs successfully build the MA, how many times the opportunity to build an Army were passed up, etc.

The AI built the MA. Then it built about 10 riflemen, 5 Cavalry, with WEALTH sometimes in between the units. That's about 20 chances the AI passed up to build an Army, which would have taken about 10 turns in that city by the way. That's not one sample, it's 20 samples.

[alexman]

For those who have not experienced how insanely overpowered Armies are in C3C against the AI who doesn't have them, I would like to refer you to Sir Pleb's CFC HOF game.

[alexman]

Armies are extremely powerful in C3C. Their power is magnified against the AI because the AI refuses to attack Armies outside of cities, opening the door to human military tactics (funnelling, pillaging, blocking, etc - see SirPleb's HOF game above) that can easily bring the most powerful AI to its knees. The AI does not attack Armies because each individual AI unit has a very small chance of victory, even if several units together would have a good chance to defeat the Army. But if the AI had Armies, perhaps it would attack human Armies, since an Army versus an Army has a good chance of victory.

Clearly, the current situation where Armies are a human-only toy is not acceptable. The AI does not use leaders to build Armies, so it cannot build the Military Academy. If we remove the victorious Army requirement from the Military Academy, it will help the AI as long as the AI can use the Military Academy to build Armies.

On the other hand, when humans get an early leader, the decision to build an Army with him is a no-brainer. Therefore, we do not lose a strategic decision if we remove the victorious Army requirement from the Military Academy.

Unfortunately, the AI does not build Armies, even when given access to the Military Academy. The only solution I see here is to change the Military Academy so that spawns Armies instead of enabling them to be built.

In this case, since Armies will not be buildable by anyone, the shield cost of Armies should be reduced so that they are not used for rush-builds in peace time.

The interval of Army production should be such that the appearance of Armies is not increased for the human compared to when the Military Academy enabled a 400-cost Army to be built. A modern city can build an Army in 5 turns, but a medieval city would need much more time. Therefore, I propose a 30 turn interval.

Finally, since Armies are so overpowered in C3C, I propose we adopt lockstep's suggestion to remove the ability of the Military Academy to increase the strength of Armies.

From all of the above, the final proposal that I will suggest for the Military Academy is as follows:

• Remove victorious Army requirement.
• Remove 'increased army value' flag.
• Remove the ability to build Armies.
• Add ability to spawn an Army every 30 turns.
• Reduce shield cost of Army to 1.

If there are no other proposals, we will mark this one under consideration.

[ducki]

I still don't like this idea.
I feel this will significantly change the flavor and the feel of the late game.

Just for argument's sake, let's say you build the MilAcad as soon as possible after MilTrad(which the warmongers are going to do if only to get a jump on the AI, who will likely build this in a "crappy" city and take forever to do so(as opposed to giving the ability to build armies to either the capitol or FP, which is guaranteed to be productive).

So, let's assume(I know, I know) that you finish the MilAcad at about the time you get Steam Power/enter Industrialism.

At this point, if all is going well, you may be getting a tech every 6-8 turns on average. At this rate, an "building" an army every (approx) 3 techs doesn't sound too big a deal. I forget how many techs there are in Industrial, but I'm thinking you should have at least 5 Armies around the time you're getting tanks online, assuming you don't beeline for MotorTrans.

Not only that, but you don't have to sink 400 shields into building them - you just get them - so that really productive city that may have been on Army duty is freed up to the tune of ~70ish shields per turn, possibly much more - perfect for still more troops to fill those freebie armies or stealing still more wonders from the AI.


Additionally, since we are already considering a proposal in the Government Balance thread that would auto-generate Armies for Fascist AIs, I object to this proposal on principle.

I propose we either withdraw one of the auto-generated army proposals or put one on hold(or make this one conditional on the failure of the Fascist proposal.). I see no need to fix the same problem twice. The left hand knows what the right is doing and it's potentially confusing to have the same fix in two different places.

I'm still trying some tests out, so I don't have a "better" proposal right now, other than the proposal to coordinate the Army fix that exists in two different proposals.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
At this point, if all is going well, you may be getting a tech every 6-8 turns on average. At this rate, an "building" an army every (approx) 3 techs doesn't sound too big a deal. I forget how many techs there are in Industrial, but I'm thinking you should have at least 5 Armies around the time you're getting tanks online, assuming you don't beeline for MotorTrans.

More like 3 Armies (14*7/30), plus all the rest of the Armies you already have from leaders and the AI doesn't (you said we are warmongerers, right?)

Not only that, but you don't have to sink 400 shields into building them - you just get them - so that really productive city that may have been on Army duty is freed up to the tune of ~70ish shields per turn, possibly much more - perfect for still more troops to fill those freebie armies or stealing still more wonders from the AI.

70 shields per turn? That would have produced 17 Armies in the same interval as the new MA produces 3. 17, while the AI will have zero! Now which Military Academy is more unbalanced?

Additionally, since we are already considering a proposal in the Government Balance thread that would auto-generate Armies for Fascist AIs, I object to this proposal on principle.

The proposal in the government thread makes the AI unlikely to choose Fascism, so they will usually not get the Army bonus. Fascism will become a non-factor in the AU mod for the AI, as it is for the human. But even if the AI does choose Fascism (because they don't know Communism yet), double Armies are a good thing! Since the AI doesn't use leaders properly, it needs as many Armies as it can get, especially if it's unfortunate enough to choose a terrible government like Fascism.