Unload Army?

[zulu9812]

Originally posted by Lucilla
Do I understand it correctly, that the difference between attacking with an army and attacking with 4 stacked units is as follows:
When attacking with 4 separate units, you do a 1 by 1 battle, which means your 1st unit attacks the first counterpart, the 2nd unit the 2nd and so on. The 3rd unit will then only attack the 1st one, if no 3d, 4th, etc. units are left to attack.
An army will attack the 1st unit as a whole and then proceed to the 2nd, which means you concentrate your attack on the most defensive unit until it is beaten and then go on with the next.

Is this how it works?

Stacked movement - this was introduced in patch 1.17f but it's just allowing you to move all units of one type in a single tile all at once. It doesn't change how several units in one tile attack an enemy. So, with a 4 stack attacking an enemy 4 stack - friendly unit 1 (1A) attacks enemy unit 1 (1B). If 1A kills 1B, then 2A will attack 2B. However, if 1B kills 1A, then 2A will attack 1B. This is without any units being able to blitz.

Geddit?

I know, it's somewhat confusing.

An army will only ever attack one enemy unit per turn. I've never tried putting blitz units in an army, so I'm not sure if an army composed entirely of, say modern armour, is able to blitz. I doubt it, though.

[Lucilla]

Thanks for the explanation zulu9812.

Just to confirm that I understand it correctly, my English needs to be brushed up a little:
I guess "blitz" comes from the German word "Blitzkrieg", used for quickly won battles during WW2. But "blitz" in this case means a unit can attack multiple times in one turn?

[zulu9812]

Yes, that's right. Blitz units can attack once per point of movement every turn.

[Feyd]

I don't think armies are useless in two important aspects...

1.) Armies are the best defenders in the game: You can four mechanized infantry defending your radar artillery as you go into combat, but with a modern tank unit, the attacker has a good chance of killing one of your mech. infantry and keeping his tank. With an army, either he looses the tank because there's practically no way he can survive the attack. Granted, if the tanks attack in numbers your toast, but it's the same way without the army AND he gets to keep the tanks that kill the single units instead of just the one that kills the army. The computer knows this and will oftentimes stay away from armies and go for smaller fish (single unit stacks).

2.) Armies are the best attackers in the game: While it's true that they can take a lot of hp damage in an attack, Armies are true defense busters because, lets say the defender has an elite rifleman defending his city. You can either attack with four calvary or an army of four calvary. With the four calvary you'll hurt him with the first, but he'll be back and fresh as new the next round because his secondary defenders will have stepped up to fight the remaining three calvary. With the army you ensure that that pesky elite rifleman will be no more.

Basically it's a matter of utility. If you have to defend that one tile you could use four mech. infantry and have to keep replacing them or you could just fortify your army and let battlefield medicine work for ya. If you want to get rid of a town's best defender and not spend four units in order to do it, use one army...

Just my thoughts...

Feyd

P. S.-Modern armor (and tanks) can attack multiple times in one round anyway so an army of them might be good? Also, who attacks with mech infantry anyway (when you can attack with modern armor...

[zulu9812]

Originally posted by Feyd
Basically it's a matter of utility. If you have to defend that one tile you could use four mech. infantry and have to keep replacing them or you could just fortify your army and let battlefield medicine work for ya. If you want to get rid of a town's best defender and not spend four units in order to do it, use one army...

Just my thoughts...

Feyd

P. S.-Modern armor (and tanks) can attack multiple times in one round anyway so an army of them might be good? Also, who attacks with mech infantry anyway (when you can attack with modern armor...

1. Armies don't attack or defend in the same way as other units - you'll lose the first unit, then it moves on to the second. It doesn't swap them around when one unit gets injured. So your army will diminish and you can't then replace the lost units in the army. I know this because I was once defending against an army comprised of 1 archer, 2 spearmen and a warrior. The archer was killed first, then a spearman, and so on.

2. "not spend four units"? "one army"? That one army can be comprised of up to 5 units, including one very expensive 40 shield non-combat unit...

3. Are you sure that modern armour armies actually blitz? The Patch Suggestion Mod (aka Player1 Mod) added the pillage ability to armies - previously armies couldn't pillage even though normally the units inside would be able to.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by ixnay37

As units in an army don't recover from their injuries, the army becomes worthless for further battles.

I don't know about your armies, but mine heal if I let them rest enough.

Same here. The only difference is, that it heals at the same rate as a normal unit. With 3 units in an army it will take long for 1 army with 15 HPs to heal, than it will for 3 units with 5 HPs each.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by zulu9812
1. Armies don't attack or defend in the same way as other units - you'll lose the first unit, then it moves on to the second. It doesn't swap them around when one unit gets injured. So your army will diminish and you can't then replace the lost units in the army. I know this because I was once defending against an army comprised of 1 archer, 2 spearmen and a warrior. The archer was killed first, then a spearman, and so on.

it actually does swap them around, and starts killing them completely only if it drops down to red zone

yes, modern armor can blitz

[zulu9812]

Sorry, yes that is true - however it doesn't change the fact that you will lose units from your army and they cannot be replaced, resulting in a weaker and weaker army. I just can't justify the added cost of the army over simply stacking units. It's just a more flexible approach, since you can split them up and rejoin them.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by zulu9812
Sorry, yes that is true - however it doesn't change the fact that you will lose units from your army and they cannot be replaced, resulting in a weaker and weaker army. I just can't justify the added cost of the army over simply stacking units. It's just a more flexible approach, since you can split them up and rejoin them.

nope, army can also recuperate
very rarely will you end up with an army with less than 3 (4) units, and then you can add another one in
armies are pretty good for SOME tasks, spearheading your attack or guarding key points in your defense. they ARE a tradeoff

[Yurt]

Armies of Tanks can attack twice and I'm pretty sure that an army of cavalry can also attack twice. These are both from the most recent game I played, with v1.21, so it's up to date.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Yurt
Armies of Tanks can attack twice and I'm pretty sure that an army of cavalry can also attack twice. These are both from the most recent game I played, with v1.21, so it's up to date.

Yes, armies can blitz as long as they have units with high movement rates.

[zulu9812]

I think this was only changed with the 1.21f patch