Balanced Army

[Jamski]

I use these to cover my crawlers against air attack. Clean AAA silksteel or better... yum.

-Jam

[Curiosity]

HH,

To get Elites you need +5 Morale. Bioenhancement centres obviously don't factor much until MMI, so for the early wars facilities give only +2 from a command centre.

The other variables are; monolith visit, trained unit, fundie politics, power values, faction bonuses and combat victories.

Power values and high morale also tend to come after Air Power, excepting possibly for Yang, who may want to get Intellectual Integrity early for police units, and who can skip a tech on the way there.

Mostly that leaves monoliths, fundie, combat and faction bonuses.

So Santiago can get early Elite ground troops reliably with fundie-monolith-command centre. Others can have a load of infantry trawling the fungus for MWs until they get the upgrade to commando, then send them to a monolith, but it's too slow and unreliable to be useful for attacking.

Positive morale ratings will apply to your units whenever you're in a given SE choice, so Santiago can have a load of commando 4-1-1's, then switch to fundie and they become Elite.
The rub is, IIRC, that negative modifiers are permanent. Build units in wealth then switch out of wealth and into fundie and the -1 morale cancels the +1 morale.

So, for practical purposes, the Elite infantry rush is only relevant for Santiago, or in the late game when orbital insertion is available.

[Snowflake]

So for Yang, if you switch from wealth to power, the +2 morale cancel the -2 morale. Then your prototyped(+1) trained (+1) infantry produced in a command center(+2) who visits a monolith(+1) will be elite, right? And if you have a bio center then you don't need trained.

Sofar what I gathered from the discussion here is that if you were to form an offensive army, you need elite drop AAA infantry (or garrison?), best-1-8 copters, and a couple needlejet colony pods?

[Mongoose]

+2 for CC, + 1 for trained, +1 for Fundy, +1 for monolith...equals 5, by my count. Anyone can have elite infantry, given that they know Doctrine: Mobility, Intellectual Integrity, Secrets of the Human Brain and have a monolith or two ready to hand...except for Gaians because of their base -1 MORALE and Unversity because of their inablility to use Fundy.

Additionally, of course, given enough time and money, anybody can build elites, so long as they have Intellectual Integrity (and maybe ethical calculus).

It all comes down to how badly you want/need elite units and how much time you have to build/train them.

[Mead]

Originally posted by HongHu

***

Sofar what I gathered from the discussion here is that if you were to form an offensive army, you need elite drop AAA infantry (or garrison?), best-1-8 copters, and a couple needlejet colony pods?

That's kind of how I do it.

I also add some Locusts. They team up with the choppers to take care of the sea bases quickly because my drop units cannot drop into sea bases.

The classic 'chop and drop' I and many other people use can be a little bit harder (and slower to do) if your opponent equips its bases with Aerospace Centers (plus other defensive modifiers), and garrisons them with well-armored AAA units.


Mead

[HeymlicH]

Since I'm more a builder than a Warrior I use to build small, technically advanced armies. I don't run Power or Fundy. My standard for elite ground troops is: CC + Bioenhencement center + trained units(In most cases I don't have a monolith). My standard unit is a trained 8-1-1 or 5-1-1 infantry. This is not a waste of ressources, this kind of units is cheap (and I have a strong infrastructure). Defensive units don't have to be elite. The reason why the offensive units need to be elite is that you can move them towards a base and attack in the same turn.

There is one thing I forgot: Build some Probe teams and place them in the captured cities

[Curiosity]

Originally posted by Mongoose
+2 for CC, + 1 for trained, +1 for Fundy, +1 for monolith...equals 5, by my count.

True; but it's not necessarily worthwhile.

For units with impact weapons trained costs another mineral row, making the cost equal with a rover. +25% attack is handy, but attacking that much earlier is also worth a lot.

OTOH, if you have missile weapons and Int Integrity then you could generally have researched Doc:AP instead.