Armies

[007]

I'M WRITING HERE TO GET SOME THOUGHT FROM PEOPLE WHO WERE EXPERIMENTING WITH ARMIES.

for the first look armies are incradible. If managed properly it is an immortal unit that will kick any ass!

my problems begen when knights in my first army was a bit weak comparing to tanks
i wanted to get rid of the absolete units in the army and get tanks in. No such luck.
Since an army is a nearly immortal unit the problem of upgrade cuts in shurply. If anyone managed to do it - let me know.

The second problem is use of armies. In one game i was able to make 6 armies filled with 4 tanks each. Nothing was able to stand in my way.
However, the attack is taking waaaaayyyy to long, If i used these 24 takns separetly i would've stormed my rivals 6 times as fast (without even waisting time to build the academy and initial army leaders).
Of corse i would've lost some units but the simultanious devastating attack on 5-6 cities at the same time would not give a chance to evnemy to caonter attack.

So i'm coming to a conclusion that armies in a massive attack is useless.
the same i think about defence units simply 'cause they get obsolete faster than an army dies.

The only advantage i can see - would be using armies with units like sworsman (that cann't retreave from a batal). But all other more or less serious offensive units can retreve from batal without any army. And swordman army would get absolete faster that u can take real advantage from using it

Let me know if u were able to gain a real advantage in using armies rather then separate units.

[David Weldon]

The intended trade-off of flexibility for power is not a good one to begin with. The fact that Leaders or extra production must be spent for the privilege of making that unintelligent trade-off makes armies extremely undesirable.

The biggest problem with armies, however, is that they don't retain the blitz ability. Earlier armies become obsolete in such a way that rushing wonders is a _far_ better use of leaders, and tank/armor armies can only attack once! If they just let the tank armies attack the same number of times as the original tanks would have (just like they allow movement to be maintained as long as all units move the same), then the story _might_ be different, maybe (probably not). But as it is 3 separate tanks attacking a total of 6 times is infinitely better than 1 tank army attacking once.

Even though the tank army would only attack twice instead of six times, at least the trade-off is back to the original HP vs. flexibility question, without any additional penalties.

If you've built all the possible wonders, you've got a tech and production lead so that you'll be able to build all of the future wonders first, and you've got a bunch of extra Leaders because you've been whipping the AI's butt, then I would suggest that instead of making armies, you should start a new game at a tougher difficulty level! If you're in a close game, however, using Leaders for armies can only make it more difficult to win. The only possibly exception would be to get a first army so that you can build the epic to get more leaders, but never build a second army!

[007]

WELL, I was building academies to get armies. Heroic epic doesn't really do much.

I absolutely agree with u that an army should stike more than once.
It's gott to strike according to # of units. We already payed for the advantage of army bu sucrificing a leader of building academy + army. There is no reason to punish us in fire rate.

Looking @ the real world an argenized army by no means would have less fire rate than separate divisions

[David Weldon]

I personally wouldn't put the resources into a military academy and then armies, because those shields could do so many better things! (again, if you have them to spare, you're probably not playing a difficult enough level). But let's not worry too much about personal strategies in this thread, let's talk about armies...

I don't think the army should attack the same number of times as the individual units could. I think the 'story' is that the units coordinate their attakcs in such a way as to make success almost guaranteed without taking any permanent losses. Mechanics-wise, the vast HPs of the army is used to ensure its victory. This is the trade-off that I believe was intended by Firaxis, and although I think it is a poor tradeoff, someone out there might disagree with me. In short, I think this trade-off is at least close enough to useful as to warrant some discussion and analysis.

My problem is with the loss of additional attacks that the units would have been able to make (the blitz ability). That's why I mentioned an army of 3 tanks attacking twice instead of 6 times. This extra penalty makes armies clearly inferior to keeping the units separate, without even considering the extra cost of creating an army.

I think we can safely ignore any armies that are not tanks or modern armor because before you get those techs you either don't have the shields available to produce armies via military academies, or you should be using Leaders to rush wonders that are far more useful than armies.

[Sevorak]

Well, an army is an interesting trade.

You trade

Leader or 400 shields
3 units

and get one attack and a unit with high HP that has a nearly guaranteed win.

Otherwise, you have 3 units with 3 attacks with moderate to high chances of winning (or low if you're tech behind...then again maybe not).

It does ask quite a bit for a "trade-off" - I agree that an army is a fair trade for units and something else, but 400 shields is asking quite a bit.

Armies of modern armour are likely the only useful application, against full-up modern defences (4 jets, 6-8 Mech Inf, SAM, the works) Against that kind of defence an army's vast HP might actually be needed, since bombardment would not necessarily work that well against all those Mech Inf.

As for armies not being allowed multiple attacks, that's just because an army's a separate unit in the editor with Blitz unchecked. If an army WAS allowed blitz, a cavalry army would be allowed to attack 3 times out of the same giant HP pool, creating quite the late-Middle Age juggernaut.

-Sev

[uh Clem]

Anybody who's ever worked in an office has seen posted on somebodies wall that series of cartoons about a swing set: "How Marketing Described It"..."How Engineering Designed It"..."How Manufacturing Built It," etc. Each one more convoluted than the next. And the last cartoon is an old tire hanging from a tree branch: "What the Customer Wanted."

That reminds me of Leaders 'n' Armies in Civ3. Stacked combat and/or stacked movement would have been fine. Instead we got...this. It's a solution looking for a problem.

[007]

yeah, i'm reading your post and thinking-u r right, this solution is asking for trouble. Besides - making the game more complex.

Personaly, i quite enjoy the way it is done in call to power,
rather than messing with a bunch of units - group them and send as one.
also the way the batales r resolved in call to power makes more sence (artilery supporting ofrnse, 3 units gannging up on a single one and so on) Heroes of might & magic makes the most sence Only it would've taken too long. I'd rather see CIV batals being resolver as in Heroes of M&M only automatic. And the consept of army fits perfictly into the sceme

[Be Quicker]

It is like somebody else on this forum already pointed out, from your first leader you build your one and only army. Once this army has had a victory, you build the heroic epic. Once you have the heroic epic you'll get enough leaders to build a couple of really nice wonders fast. I've only played two games so far, but this works perfect.

[Der PH]

Originally posted by 007
Personaly, i quite enjoy the way it is done in call to power,
rather than messing with a bunch of units - group them and send as one.
also the way the batales r resolved in call to power makes more sence (artilery supporting ofrnse, 3 units gannging up on a single one and so on)

CTP has many weaknesses, especially the AI, but the combat system is great.
With simply dividing the attack value into one for infight and one for ranged combat and the ability to stack your units to armies, these games offer huge possibilities for tactical and strategic challenges.

It's a pity that the AI seldom is able to use the stacks properly.

But it's even a greater pity that Firaxis didn't copy this great idea. Perhaps they were too proud? I don't know.

[Grumbold]

An army is a piece with a party trick or two. One, it gets you the right to build the Heroic Epic. Not sure that I'd bother for a non-military civ since even as a militaristic player with 3 empires eradicated by my legions it has only generated 1-2 subsequent leaders in the games I have played to completion. Two, its an answer to the problem of a defensive unit sitting in a fortified location (hill+town/fortress) that you can't go around. You can either devote dozens of artillery shots on the problem and still be left with risking your prize elite units on eliminating the last HP or send in the army. On normal terrain I simply wouldn't bother using them, but I've seen too many elite tanks die to a 1 hp infantry in a hill town to risk another.

Once the army is technologically dated its time to park it in a retirement home or disband it to boost the development of a city. It may be worth keeping just to hold a dangerous border town - the AI seems very wary of committing any attacks against a 15 hp defender, no matter how antique.

[Fredric Drum]

Originally posted by David Weldon
I personally wouldn't put the resources into a military academy and then armies, because those shields could do so many better things! (again, if you have them to spare, you're probably not playing a difficult enough level). But let's not worry too much about personal strategies in this thread, let's talk about armies...

I don't think the army should attack the same number of times as the individual units could. I think the 'story' is that the units coordinate their attakcs in such a way as to make success almost guaranteed without taking any permanent losses. Mechanics-wise, the vast are far more useful than armies.

I think the main thing about armies is that you can attack a unit with an equal number of movement points (when you can not retreat) without losing any of your units. They will all fight until they're damaged, and then the next takes over. But no units die unless the unit you're fighting is so strong that it repels any attempt of attack. When trying to beat a mech inf fortified in a city with three modern armor, you'd most of the time lose at least two of your units, but if these three units were in an army, you wouldn't los any of them.

What I find weird is that the manual says something like "armies will appear to heal faster", but in my experience armies heal a lot slower than regular units!

Fred

[Zorkk]

I would like armies a LOT more if i could swap the units within that army.

I'm sure i've seen the computer do it, but it was quite a few games ago now...

Z

[David Weldon]

Sev:
For the price of a wonder (either GL or 400 Shields), don't you expect quite the juggernaut? I know I do! After that 3 cavalry army attacked three times and took all the damage three defenders can dish, I'll then blast it with my 8 cannon and follow with my own cavalry rush (remember, it's only useful if it's in my territory doing damage and I get to use the roads in my own territory). I bet I loose less total material than the army cost to produce.

All I know is that there's no way in hell I'll build an army at that point in time given that it can only attack once, and not 3 times. Even attacking 3 times, I would probably not build the army. The FP or Sistine or J.S. Bach are just sooo much more important than an army that soon won't be able to win against defending riflemen or infantry.

The question is: outside of the first army for Heroic Epic (if even that), do you ever build armies if the game is close? I bet not. Would you if they retained blitz? Maybe.

Fredric:
The point about appearing to heal faster was made because each unit in the army will heal one point if the army rests for the turn. This means that the army in total will appear to heal three points in one turn.

[rugbyprop3]

What I would like to see with armies to improve them and make them more useful is to increase the attack power with mulitiple armies. The same could be done with defense values as well.

What would work for example would be to create a modified attack value that is equal to the base attack strength of the unit +1/2 the AV of the second, +1/3 the AV of the third, etc... etc. The same would work for defensive values as well. So an army of 3 mechanical infantry would have an attack value of 12+6+4 = 22.

This would do a better job of representing the increased attack strength of coordinated arms, then by just adding up the hitpoints of the units together. Meaning that an army of tanks would actually have an chance of rooting out a bunch of mechanical infantry in a city. Also an army of mechanical infantry defending a key city would be a very tough nut to crack as its defense value would = 18+9+6 = 33.

I think this would not be 2 overpowering as the army only gets 1 attack and would mean that an army could defeat just about any single unit on the board.

just my 2cents

[David Weldon]

Sev, part 2:
I just realized over lunch that cavalry don't get the blitz ability, so this is a moot point. I'm not advocating that all armies get blitz automatically, only that they don't give up any abilities that the normal units already had. If you create an army of units with blitz, then the army should have blitz as well. Just like if you create an army with mobile units, the army moves more than 1.

As I've already stated, I feel the reduced attacks for extra HPs is already a poor tradeoff, so why penalize the army even more than that?

[tsnelson]

Could you use armies as defensive units?

Would it work to build defensive armies of Infantry, or Mech Infantry, and being fortified in the mountain square which is the only access point to your territory from your enemy civ. Sounds like a pretty defensive position to me!

Has anybody tried this? I don't get armies often enough to experiment with them.

Also, do armies count as 1 maintenance, or the full stack of maintenance? This would also be a helpful factor if it were the prior.

[Sevorak]

David Weldon,

For the record, I certainly agree with you on armies. The problem is, as I said, that in the editor and presumably in the Civ3 code, an army is treated as one kind of unit, with a flag on it that's either Blitz YES or Blitz NO. There does not appear to be a way to differentiate between types of armies.

Actually, something I thought up was to allow units to band together as armies at any time for a small cost (like Minor Army, 80shields), with no blitz, but to gain blitz with a leader or military academy created army. Then the first kind of army (our current army) is really a capability tradeoff for minimal cost, while the other kind that actually gains benefits (ie blitz) has to be seriously paid for.

-Sev

[007]

yes sure, if u fortify an army - noone will go through!!!, they will go around.
Besides, (if u fortified your spearman) sooner than u want there will be tanks & bombers, that are sort of hard to stop. What are u going to do with this army?

If Firaxis ever makes a new game, batal resolution got to be redesigned. After all, a single square cann't hold limitlen number of units.

the pool shows that there is alot of people who like armies.
SPEAK UP.
I want to hear atleast something good about armies!!!

[jack_frost]

I'd wager that the people who voted for armies are more along newbie lines.

Armies can be nice for spearheading early attacks. My first (and only army) army was all archer, and I gotta admit, it was useful for killing spearmen, and pikes and stuff - the first defender. Then my horsies could clean up the warriors or what ever else was inside.

But a) not being able to upgrade sucks.

b) wasting all those seperate attacks hurts alot if you need to take a town in a turn (which you almost always do in order to use their roads/rails to bring in reinforcements and attack the next town).

and c) it seems to me that what ever random number generator the game uses for combat is a little biased per actual combat. IE: Its more common to have a really good combat (your horseman kills a spearman with 1 or no damage) followed by a really bad combat (your longbow man dies doing no damage to a pike) then it is to have two close and even fights 3 damage taken 3 given. There are no hard numbers to back this, but I have seen ugly patterns like this crop up in other random number generators where certain number ranges occur more then others.

Anyway...have fun.

[dweez]

I see that nobody mentioned the small detail about armies that really annoyed me:
A well defended AI declared war on me. I know I will not be able to take any cities, so I decide to play havoc with his infrastructure. Do I have any units that have a chance to survive a few turns inside his territory? Oh yes, I have my one and only army. So I send it a long way into his land imagining my opponent on his knees once his precious railroads, fields and mines are gone, just to discover that... armies cannot pillage! Duh!
Isn't that just stupid?

[kmadel]

Originally posted by dweez
I see that nobody mentioned the small detail about armies that really annoyed me:
A well defended AI declared war on me. I know I will not be able to take any cities, so I decide to play havoc with his infrastructure. Do I have any units that have a chance to survive a few turns inside his territory? Oh yes, I have my one and only army. So I send it a long way into his land imagining my opponent on his knees once his precious railroads, fields and mines are gone, just to discover that... armies cannot pillage! Duh!
Isn't that just stupid?

Here is an idea that I saw elsewhere, use 2+ movement point units to do the pillaging, and then move the defensive army over them to defend them.

[Garth Vader]

Something else that would be useful would be to allow you to move units in and out of armies. That might make it worth it.

[007]

Garth !!

hey!!! That is such a simple and elegant solution.

Move units in and out!!!

u want to pilage? separate unit from the army and have your fun,

u want to attack a city muliple times with blitz bonus? separete from the army and strike

The units are too weak to atack next turn? Get them together into army and squizz out remaining HP.

want to upgrade the army? get ald unis out and new in.


all we have to do now is to lobby the change, so that
Firaxis let units move in and out from armies in the new patch

[gamma]

A tank army is not good, true. However, infantry armies can save your ass if your enemy can build tanks, mechinf, etc., and you can't. Especially if supported by artillery. That's what I'm facing right now.

Armies are a much safer unit for taking out enemy defenses. It tips the odds way over in your favor. I'll get some enemy infantry, tank, or mechinf unit fortified in hills or jungle, for instance. They're hell to get rid of. Even after pounding them down to one point with artillery, I'll send my best offensive unit in - infantry or cav - which often dies because it's a 6 vs. a 20 or worse. They win roughly 4 out of 5 rounds or better, meaning they often kill my full-strength infantry, and then they'll invariably get vet or elite status and an extra hit point, which I have to pound out again with more artillery before I can try the drill again with another infantry. Over time I'm using up 1-3 units for every 1 of theirs. Alternately, an infantry army with 4 units has to lose SIXTEEN times (they're all vets) before the enemy loses once. My guys can take four hits and still go, AND put up a great defense in the square they've just moved into when the counterattack comes. Often, they'll get lucky and take 0-2 hits, and can be used multiple times this way before they have to head back for repairs.

Armies help a militaristic civ make up for having no oil, in other words.

Armies are _very_ useful on defense. A normal unit trying to overcome an army has to overcome as many as 20 hit points before it loses 2-5. And if it loses, one of the army units has a chance of gaining a hit point. When fortified, a full army heals up to four hit points per turn.

Leaders are best used to hurry wonders. That's why you use only one to get an army. That starts a chain reaction, first to Heroic Epic to get more leaders, then Military Tradition to get the academy, and all the armies you want, then the Pentagon to increase army size. Stockpile the rest of the leaders.

The attack rate you lose in combining units into an army is worth it, IMO. Armies should be thought of as slow-moving juggernauts. Your three bowmen might take out three defenders per turn; on the other hand, you might lose three bowmen and take ten turns to replace them. With an army, the enemy WILL LOSE one defender per turn, and you will take no losses.

I do wish they'd allow upgrades of units in armies. I know you can trounce your 3-unit army around for a while, then build the Pentagon, and add one more unit to it. I'm guessing that if you could somehow get one unit to die without losing the whole army, you could then replace that unit with a better one. Also, armies should be able to pillage. It's not unbalancing if they can. (Has anyone tried selecting one of the units within the army and seeing if it can pillage?)

To answer tsnelson: you still have to pay upkeep on the units in an army, plus the army unit itself. That is, an army with three units in it counts as four units total. This usually isn't a problem for me. With militaristic civs, I tend to use "war governments", and am always under the limit of units I can have for free anyway. With non-military civs, I go democratic, and by then my cities are producing so much commerce that the army upkeep is negligible.

Garth Vader: being able to move units in and out of armies indefinitely could be unbalancing, actually. It amounts to an army that can fully heal every turn. If you could move units in and out of armies, I would advocate such an action using up the army's movement points for the rest of the turn. (It's a reorg.)

[Garth Vader]

If you could move units in and out of armies, I would advocate such an action using up the army's movement points for the rest of the turn. (It's a reorg.)

Good solution!

[jack_frost]

heh, what a simple, elegant solution...

But then wouldn't we all be complaining that they were powerful once you had the 'build armies' minor wonder?

[Venger]

Armies, yes, suck. They lose offensive attacks, they cannot be upgraded, are not transportable by galleys (4 unit armies). The advantages they have, though, is the gradually save production costs for replacement units.

This is not enough to balance them though. Armies should receive +1 attack point for every unit over 1 in the army, hence a 4 unit army should have +3 on attack or defense.

They also should be loadable and unloadable. An army is just an aggregation of units, these units can be broken into their constituent parts in real life, same goes here.

And allowing loading/unloading would allow them on a god damn boat...

Venger

[Admiral PJ]

Maybe its best to keep your second army unloaded for a while then, till you can get some decent units for it, the first being used to enable the Heroic epic function.
Do the army units gain promotions, going up to veteran etc?
It should be possible for an army to make another leader maybe, with enough success, this seems logical.
Armies like Wellingtons had lots of generals and created many heroes that could be seen as leaders in the way civ3 uses them.

Can armies be used for ships? that would be very useful.

I think armies are balanced enough like they are, though i've only had one battle with them - we should try reducing their cost though ; to 250 perhaps.

Admiral Peter
Civ3 is a brilliant game :>

[Green Giant]

I find armies useless because they always die on the first attack. Every experience I have had with them whether I attacked or an opponent attacked me with an army they have died instantly. I never use them any more.

[gamma]

Green Giant: Umm, did you try putting units INTO the army first? An army by itself is like a money clip; it's only worth what you put into it.