Heroic Epic and Military Academy: Do they stack?

[Willem]

One thing I've been wondering for quite awhile now is whether these two work together to build units faster. Since they both are supposed to reduce the time by half, then theoretically the two together should make it a quarter of the normal time. Is that how it actually works though?

And can anyone confirm that the Military actually does build units faster? Anytime I've built one while I was producing a unit, I've never seen a reduction in the build time. Now maybe it will only do so with the next unit that gets built, but I'm kind of wondering if it maybe it doesn't even work. Has anyone checked it out to see if it is or not, by comparing the hammers needed for a unit?

[clarkcd]

The Military Academy adds +50% production to units while Heroic Epic adds +100% production. What this means is that if you have 20 hammers and a unit requires 60 hammers it would normally take three turns. With these two buildings your 20 hammers are increased by +150% (you add all bonuses together and then modify the base number) thus giving you 50 hammers. This would increase your build time from three to two turns.

With high production cities it's harder to notice changes because of the greater raw hammer increases necessary to shave off turns.

While I have never built these two buildings in the same city I can tell you that they do independently function to increase the hammer output.

[Willem]

Originally posted by clarkcd
The Military Academy adds +50% production to units while Heroic Epic adds +100% production.

100% eh? I was thinking it was only 50%. Another thing I've been wondering, how would that 100% stack up to the extra production given by the IronWorks? I've always put West Point and Iron Works together and put Heroic Epic in one of my border cities. The problem is that both of those end up being available at around the same time so the city is first busy building the Iron Works, then West Point, with the result being that my principle military city is always unavailable for quite some time. I'm thinking I might be better off combining Heroic Epic and West Point like most people do since it's available much earlier, and I won't end up with as much down time all at once. Iron Works might be a good one to put into one of my coastal cities in order to build my navy. It always seems to take me forever to build up a decent fleet as those units generally require more Hammers than land units.

[Hauptman]

Everything adds it's percentage increase all at once. If you build heroic epic, forge, and ironworks, then they just add the percentage increases to the hammer output of the city. wich would be +225% all combined. You can mouse over the Hammers-per-turn in the city view, and it will give you the breakdown.

[couerdelion]

Since production is generally equal to tile production + bonuses, there is not a lot of scope for truly combining bonuses in the same way that you can for commerce and science/gold. Almost all production bonuses are added so that if you have +25%, +25%, +100%, +100%, +100% you get +350%. So a military academy will add +50% to production for any city (whether it has Heroic Epic or not).

That is not to say that there is not a synergy. For one thing, if you have the Heroic epic, you should be dedicating that city almost exclusively to the production of units. The terrain will support production generating improvement and improvements will also tend towards enhancing that situation. So while there is no direct synergy between the two, there will be synergy between City and Heroic Epic and City and Military Academy which makes an indirect synergy between the two.

Furthermore, this city will probably build West Point and will have military instructors so there are many ways to add to the indirect synergy of the two buildings.

[Ming]

My military city is usually the first good production city that I founded. In many cases it's land locked. I will build Heroic Epic there and West Point there. I'll do everything possible to maximize production. It will crank out units. If I have a spare general that I'm not using to create a superhealer, I'd rather turn him into an instructor in my military city instead of a military academy. If I've done it right, the extra production of military units caused by the academy is just plain overkill because the city already has enough production to crank out the early military units quickly. I might consider an academy there later, but that's rare.

Like some people, I save Iron works for my best production ocean city so that it can crank out a navy.

Once I get on a roll, I'll take advantage of other civs military instructor and academies to use as other military cities

[ColdPhoenix]

Re: Heroic Epic and Military Academy: Do they stack?

Originally posted by Willem
And can anyone confirm that the Military actually does build units faster? Anytime I've built one while I was producing a unit, I've never seen a reduction in the build time. Now maybe it will only do so with the next unit that gets built, but I'm kind of wondering if it maybe it doesn't even work. Has anyone checked it out to see if it is or not, by comparing the hammers needed for a unit?

It takes a turn to build the academy so maybe that's why. Or it's still 2 turns to build a unit but there's more overflow.

Does the overflow from the academy and HE get reduced by the % it was increased if you are not building a military unit next?

[Garth Vader]

Originally posted by Ming
My military city is usually the first good production city that I founded. In many cases it's land locked. I will build Heroic Epic there and West Point there. I'll do everything possible to maximize production. It will crank out units. If I have a spare general that I'm not using to create a superhealer, I'd rather turn him into an instructor in my military city instead of a military academy. If I've done it right, the extra production of military units caused by the academy is just plain overkill because the city already has enough production to crank out the early military units quickly. I might consider an academy there later, but that's rare.

Like some people, I save Iron works for my best production ocean city so that it can crank out a navy.

Once I get on a roll, I'll take advantage of other civs military instructor and academies to use as other military cities

I do similar, except I will usually try to make my HE/WP city coastal, and my Ironworks city is usually landlocked.

[Blaupanzer]

Re: Re: Heroic Epic and Military Academy: Do they stack?

Originally posted by ColdPhoenix
Does the overflow from the academy and HE get reduced by the % it was increased if you are not building a military unit next?

No. the hammers carry over no matter what you build next.

Try combining the Iron Works and the Moai Statues in a multi-sea square city for great naval builds. Then put Heroic Epic and West Point in your most productive city for your ships to have lots of troops to carry.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Try combining the Iron Works and the Moai Statues in a multi-sea square city for great naval builds.

Good idea. I was wondering what to combine Iron Works with if I move it to a coastal city. Those two have a pretty good synergy.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer


No. the hammers carry over no matter what you build next.

Try combining the Iron Works and the Moai Statues in a multi-sea square city for great naval builds. Then put Heroic Epic and West Point in your most productive city for your ships to have lots of troops to carry.

First off, you're incorrect - the earlier post was correct.

If you produce 10 hammers, and have it doubled to 20 hammers via HE, and produce a unit with 12 of those hammers (8 overflow), the 8 are then downconverted to 4 hammers before being applied to the next build. They would be 8 if you built a mil unit, or 4 if you didn't. That was fixed in one of the first Civ4 Vanilla patches (it didn't work right at first, was always intended to work this way but not fully implemented).

Iron works and Moai souns rather a waste... no way a city that is actually taking adequate advantage of Moai will have enough hammers to take adequate advantage of IW.

[Theben]

Originally posted by snoopy369

Iron works and Moai souns rather a waste... no way a city that is actually taking adequate advantage of Moai will have enough hammers to take adequate advantage of IW.

Seconded. I find that drydocks+military academy is sufficient to get ships built quickly.

[Hauptman]

My ironworks always gets built in a river city. So I can get that 3 gorges built fast...

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Hauptman
My ironworks always gets built in a river city. So I can get that 3 gorges built fast...

On large landmass maps this is also my strategy.

[Ming]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Iron works and Moai souns rather a waste... no way a city that is actually taking adequate advantage of Moai will have enough hammers to take adequate advantage of IW.

I agree... I usually save Moai for a city that has no other hope for any production except sea squares.