The Military Academy

[Aqualung71]

It would be interesting to get some views from the other panel members.

[alexman]

Yes!
As well as from the rest of the AU community!

[Risa]

30 turns are too long. AI won't get enough armies by the time to show differences, and those few armies may be wasted by putting in weak units. Meanwhile human can accumulate more armies by generating MGLs, and can save armies for right thing.

I suggest 20 turns interval, if not shorter. It should be at least 15 turns, though, otherwise MiliTrad beelining will be too powerful.

[lockstep]

Re: removing the victorious army requirement and the 'improves army value' flag from the MA - I'm (obviously) for it.

Re: army-spawning MA - as long as the C3C AI won't build armies, I strongly second alexman's suggestion (even if it takes away some strategic choice for the human player). Spawning interval should be 20 or 25 turns.

[Krill]

Personally, I'd agree with almost anything that made the AI use armies, so long as we can still keep on using them, and (at least) in the same capacity in PTW and before.

[JimiD]

I think the current proposals are good, and would favour keeping armies separate from governments (MA can be linked back to a government if this was wanted).

I still argue for decreasing the 'multiplication' bonus to the Attack values that armies receive:

If they are still too powerful in the game (if the AI will not attack them) getting even one army earlier than the AI, though MGL or a beeline for MA, provides an opportunity for exploitative tactics by a human, and potentially a game ender in a MP game (limited experience here).

ie Armies should be good, but not invicible (or the equivilent), and form a part of a larger strategy when at war, not all of it.

ps good work alexman in rationalising this thread down to a proposal

[ducki]

Alright, I have to suggest "too small a sample" on your test again, Alexman. Or perhaps, "not enough information". I dunno. Maybe too many little nooks and crannies in the code for any test to be good enough to be "sure" of anything.(I'm not sure this screenshot means the AI will finish or if it will end up being a prebuild.) No offense intended, alexman.

I modded AU 1.04 to allow the Palace to enable the building of armies. (You have to also edit a txt file.) This works as confirmed by checking my build queue once I have enough Cities to support an Army.

So I'm playing a game to see what happens. I just started a war with Korea and decided to get an ally. I built an Embassy in Beijing and guess what?

[ducki]

To clarify:
I'm not impugning alexman's test one bit. I often wonder where folks that do so much editing and debug-testing find time to actually play. All I am suggesting is that perhaps there is too much unknown about build-queues and the governor and preferences and such that there may be some odd reason the AI does not tend to build Armies.

I also am not suggesting that I've found the silver bullet. This mod involves making the Palace a Small Wonder(to set the flag to enable army building) as well as editing the PediaIcons.txt file - a Wonder needs a splash graphic - so it may or may not be suitable for our "minimal" changes philosophy.

Additionally, I don't know why China is building an Army and I wouldn't even pretend to know where to look for reasons. This early in the game, 400 shields takes a long time, so he's making a Wonder-level commitment here. There's also no way to know what sort of units will end up in the Army. Past tests that involved starting the AI with an Army showed they will load a single warrior and fortify in the capitol; however, this may be simply because there is an Army and a "free", non-fortified unit on the same square and a need for defense.

All I know is, he is building an Army and it seems like a small change.

[Aqualung71]

Good pick-up ducki. And I tend to agree with you - there's too much we don't know to have any real sense of what the AI will do. The AI does some strange stuff.

For example....look at your screenshot. I'm no programmer, but my logical process goes something like this: "If government = despotism AND terrain = grassland AND no useful bonus resource in despotism THEN don't irrigate"....is that really difficult to programme? Yet, China lost a shield irrigating that grassland!

[alexman]

Good job ducki, but I'm reasonably sure that China is building an Army in Beijing because they lost a Wonder race.

I have seen the AI switch to an Army to avoid wasting the shields, but I still have not seen them build one from scratch.

[ducki]

That's entirely possible. I've been dreading the trudge through Ancient and Middle Ages to get to the point that 400 shields might not be such a huge investment just to see if any Armies would get built and therefore wasn't paying close attention to the AIs at this point.

I'll be glad to post a sav for anyone that wants it and I'll try to find an older one to see if that is what happened.

[alexman]

By the way, you don't need to make the Palace allow army builds. The AI builds the Military Academy just fine (if the victorious Army requirement is removed), and it has the same effect. The problem is that it doesn't build Armies except by a Wonder cascade.

So I think we can place this proposal under consideration:

Yes/No: Make all the following changes to the Military Academy:

• Remove victorious Army requirement.
• Remove 'increased army value' flag.
• Remove the ability to build Armies for all civilizations.
• Add ability to spawn an Army every 25 turns.
• Reduce shield cost of Army to 1.

Voting in 1 week, and we will take into consideration that the AI does build Armies in the rare case when it loses the race to a Wonder in the Military Academy city.

[ducki]

I knew that bit, alexman, and I didn't doubt that from your test. The point of my test was solely "If the AI can build Armies, will it build Armies ever?"

I'm inclined to agree with the wonder cascade theory but can't confirm (for my own peace of mind) until tonight when I can check a previous save if I have one(or do wonder initiations show up on Replay?).

At any rate, I wish we could find a solution that encouraged the AI to build Armies instead of removing the building of Armies altogether. I still think this will significantly alter both the balance and the nature/feel of the late game, but lacking a better proposal or hard evidence to support a lesser change, I withdraw my opposition to this proposal until something less, in my opinion, rebalancing is found.

[ducki]

I did double check and the Chinese army in my screenshot is, indeed, a cascade-result.

That said, I wonder if this is necessarily a bad thing. I'm going to think out loud, so bear with me.

1. Who loses out more often on a cascade, the human or the AIs(taken as a group, not any individual)?
-The AIs do.

2. If the AI doesn't have a cascade target, they lose a buttload of shields, exacerbating their bad decision effects.

3. If Armies are available very early, the main cascades - Late Ancient, Early and Middle Middle Ages - might be less painful for the AI.

4. If Armies are available very early, would the human player generally change the way they play?
-I don't think so. The uber-warmongers are going to likely get a MGL for an Army anyways and not be very likely to tie up a productive(very productive) city on a 400-shield Army. The builder would much rather have a wonder at that price, even if it's not his first choice. The hybrid might be conflicted and might end up with an Army as a cascade-target, but probably wouldn't tie up a city that could be cranking out improvements and units(remember, we're talking Ancient and Middle Ages, pre-Mil Trad).

5. The reason the AI doesn't choose to build armies after MilTrad might be due to the fact that there is too much other stuff that is a priority that late in the game. If the opportunity is presented earlier, even in the form of a cascade-target, we might see AI Armies, give the human some actual interest in the decision of whether to pursue Armies or Wonders, and not impact the game as much as it would seem at first glance.

6. To catch the Cascade-rich Eras, Army-building ability would need to be tied to a building that comes very early, can only be built in one town, and is guaranteed to be in one of the AIs top production towns. This means Palace or Forbidden Palace. Palace requires a PediaIcons.txt change, FP might be too late for the AI.

7. This leaves open the possibility of keeping the Military Academy as is. I won't expand on the potential virtues of having a second Army-building town or potential side-effects just now.


So, at first glance, it seems very radical, but when examining the actual effect it would have on the human player's decisions and experience as well as the potential for seeing AI armies, I think it is no more radical or unbalancing than the existing proposal.

Discuss. Rebutt. Ridicule. (But not just reactionary. I really think this is not so radical as your first reaction may be, so let it sink in.)

[bongo]

Much of your reasoning relies on the assumption that pre-c3c, humans would only spend one leader for armies and build additional armies with the military academy.

In c3c, the warmongerer can get armies as a by-product of fighting, and save the shields for wonders. 'Normal' wars should generate more than enough MGL to keep a human warmongerer happy.

However, humans often build large armies during peace as a preparation for war. Having two army-producing cities instead of one would be a tremendous advantage to a human.

Maybe we should just move the 'build-army' flag to the palace? It would give peaceful humans easier access to armies, but b]cause AIs to get more armies 'by accident'.[/b](which would be a good thing)

[alexman]

Allowing the Palace to build Armies will have a considerable effect on gameplay.

In the early-game, we will be able to use Armies as prebuilds (they cost as much as Pyramids or the Great Library) without rushing to Masonry, and without having to worry too much about what happens if you lose the race (in the worst case you'll get an Army to dominate the early-game against the AI).

In the late-game, you will get Armies twice as fast as you do now, unless you completely remove the MA from the game. In that case I would argue that allowing the MA to spawn Armies is closer to stock rules than removing the Military Academy and allowing the Palace city to build Armies.

Armies are not used very effectively by the AI. When the AI has one or two Armies, most of the time they sit in their capital, half-filled with obsolete units. An occasional lost Wonder race will not cut it. We need a more steady stream of Armies to give the AI a chance.

[nbarclay]

I do not like the idea of having AIs generate early-game armies during peacetime, even by accident. It's too big a change from the game's design, under which early armies are supposed to be available only through fighting.

Specifically, there are two things that bother me about it. The first is that if AIs generated early-game armies only as a result of fighting, the armies would generally have to survive whatever war they are generated in before they could be turned against a human player who is not involved in that war. (Similarly, human armies sometimes die in the war they are generated in before being turned against another target.) In contrast, with armies generated in peacetime, a peaceful human player (whether a builder or a warmonger who hasn't started fighting yet) could end up as AI armies' first target.

And the second is that the risk of AIs' generating armies would have nothing to do with whether or not we humans attack them. Indeed, early warfare against an AI might actually reduce the risk of the AI's building armies. So the fundamental problem that humans can get armies from fighting while AIs can't would remain.

It would be very nice from a perspective of game balance if AIs used leaders for armies. But I think having AIs get armies without fighting would add a new balance issue on top of the existing one rather than genuinely solving the current problem.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by alexman
Yes/No: Make all the following changes to the Military Academy:

• Remove victorious Army requirement.
• Remove 'increased army value' flag.
• Remove the ability to build Armies for all civilizations.
• Add ability to spawn an Army every 25 turns.
• Reduce shield cost of Army to 1.

It's time to vote. AU mod panel, you have 48 hours.

My vote: Yes

[lockstep]

YES

[Stuie]

Yes.

[Nor Me]

Yes.

[ZargonX]

Abstain

[nbarclay]

Abstain. If it were relevant, I'd suggest separating out the "Remove 'increased army value' flag." part so I could vote yes to it and abstain on the rest, but there are already plenty of yes votes without needing mine.

The reason for my abstaining regarding everything but the "Remove 'increased army value' flag." part is that I have very mixed feelings. On one hand, I like the idea of making the army situatiion between humans and AIs a bit less unequal. On the other, there are a number of interesting strategic choices regarding when and where to build the Military Academy and regarding whether to build only armies in the Military Academy city or sometimes other things as well (such as city improvements) that I hate to see disappear. I've been tossing the issue around in my head off and on, but haven't been able to decide which aspect I consider more important.

Nathan

[Theseus]

I am... conflicted, as well. For me, it is more about how the absence of MGLs would COMPLETELY change my approach to the game, and resultant strategies and tactics. I think the solution up for vote is very creative and balanced, but...

Would anybody mind if we tabled this till the weekend? I'd like to reach out to some Firaxians, through various means, to get feedback on just this one aspect of whatever patches the future might hold.

[ducki]

how the absence of MGLs would COMPLETELY change my approach to the game, and resultant strategies and tactics

Hrm... that sounds.... big.

Would any of the votes (or especially the abstentions) change if the proposal were restructured to be a 3 parter?

1. Remove Victorious Army requirement
2. Remove Increased Army Value flag
3. Implement "free and automatic" Armies changes.

Just curious.

[nbarclay]

My interpretation was that "Remove the ability to build Armies for all civilizations." would affect only the military academy, not MGLs, because armies from MGLs are not "built" in the normal sense. If it would also affect the ability to get armies from MGLs, that changes the situation considerably.

[alexman]

Yes, your interpretation was correct. Nothing changes about leaders in this proposal.

[Theseus]

/me slaps himself in the head with a large and particularly smell trout.

Sorry, I'm an idiot.

I vote yes... this is a good solution for now. It also addresses the whole argument about providing an opportunity (albeit limited) for builders to play with nice shiny Army toys... but does not preclude a warmonger strategy to *try* to get as many Armies as allowed.

[Theseus]

BTW, I did get responses from Firaxis, and they are working on the C3C AI Army problem for a patch, date to yet to be determined.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Theseus
Sorry, I'm an idiot.

be careful what you say, otherwise you may be quoted in peoples signatures