Filling out your armies

[uberloz]

Will the individual units that constitute an army continue to receive experience and eventually become elites?

Or should I wait until they are elites (that maybe generated a GL already) and then load them into an army?

Or is it just ok to have an army of veterans?

[Modo44]

Originally posted by uberloz
Will the individual units that constitute an army continue to receive experience and eventually become elites?

Yes, they will receive experience. They fight starting with the most experienced unit.

Originally posted by uberloz
Or should I wait until they are elites (that maybe generated a GL already) and then load them into an army?

Only add Elites that created Leaders before (the ones marked *). The others should fight alone, to retain the ability to make more Leaders.

Originally posted by uberloz
Or is it just ok to have an army of veterans?

Veterans are ok. I often get Regulars into Armies, because they tend to die too often fighting alone.

[uberloz]

Thanks Modo44, and thanks to everyone that responded here. You have helped me alot!

[Terra Nullius]

ok. who's been planting listening devices?

it seems the rng has heard about my feelings on armies

Originally posted by Theseus
Typically, if I have an initial force of Swords, I'll put two in, then later add a MedInf or possibly even later a Rifle.

yes - two, two, two

war with japan:
having finished off the major objectives, i'm winding up hostilities, just snacking on a few after-dinner burgs. suddenly, i pop a leader. praise the lawd!
rush barracks, build army.
just then a japanese galley sails past and drops off a lone regular spearman on undefended plains ... purrfect. cav is just around the corner, i'm not planning any new battles 'til then. i'll just load up a single knight, get my victory and have the epic built in time for the next outbreak. cav comes along and i've got an almost pure cavalry army ready to go.

of course, civ doesn't always turn out like you planned.

not happy mr washington, not happy at all

* lebensraum stares into darkened corner, muttering to self

[Gremnon]

I found the mixing units in an army normally makes it easier to kill.
But that something different.
If I make an army of anything I keep it until I lose it, at which point I make a new army, exactly the same but with the upgraded units from the original.

[joncnunn]

The #1 rule with armies is never, ever mix slow movers with fast movers inside the same army.

It's generally prefered to also have all units in a given army be the same type. This eliminates the risk of mixing. And plus units with special abilities can retian them inside an army that's all of the same type.

I like to place units that can never upgrade (or at least have a long time before they can upgrade) in armies instead of units whose upgrade is just around the corner.

In addition, offensive units in armies is better for a human than defensive units in armies. Filling the army is itself a form of defense.

[Solomwi]

I'd say the #2 rule is never attack anything that isn't red-lined with a single-unit army.

I know you're eager to get that first victory and build HE, but unless you're using poor tactics, you'll have a second unit to put it the next turn, most of the time, and the army's primary advantage is the increased hitpoints. In the grand scheme, delaying HE one turn in order to ensure that you keep your army is a good trade (and if you switch a city to pre-building as soon as you have an army, you're not even giving up that one turn of HE).

[trev]

There are times when I have no great desire to fill an army - I may be attacking weak defenders and want my tanks to keep their individual movements, but I will place 1 tank in the army, this gives the tank 1 extra movement point, so i gain an attacking move without losing attacking moves from multiple units

[vmxa1]

There are always special cicumstances and unique plays.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by trev
There are times when I have no great desire to fill an army - I may be attacking weak defenders and want my tanks to keep their individual movements, but I will place 1 tank in the army, this gives the tank 1 extra movement point, so i gain an attacking move without losing attacking moves from multiple units

If I have no great desire to fill an army (which does happen often), I keep it empty. I'd be very wary of a third attack with a single tank, even against the vaunted spearmen . Even if you're just looking for a second attack, I'd rather move in an extra tank than get it from the one. The risk of losing that army is just too great. I don't mind so much losing one 100-shield tank, but losing a 100-shield tank and 400-shield army just to whittle the enemy stack down one more unit or take a city this turn when I can probably take it easily next turn with the forces on hand is too much risk for too little reward. If I can successfully fight the war without that one tank getting an extra attack move, and therefore hold the army empty, it turns into an MA or MI army instead. As v says, there are always unique circumstances, though.

That brings to mind another tip for filling armies:

Unless you're filling them with units that will never upgrade, don't fill any during peacetime. For hypothetical example, you pop a few leaders at the end of your early Middle Ages war, have already had one victorious army, get excited and cram them full of knights, now ready to take on the world. You finish that war before your armies can play a role, and had thought you'd turn east to take out India. You decide to see what they have to offer first, and wind up trading tech for a lux or two, plus a significant amount of gpt. For that or whatever other reasons, your next conquest gets put on hold for a while. By the time you finally do go to war, you've got cavs. Keeping those armies empty would have let you fill them with cavalry, giving them M:4, but you're stuck with M:3 knight armies.