The Military Academy

[Madine]

I agree that removing the victorious army requirement from MA would be good.

[bongo]

Well, it would give the AI easier acces to armies... It will still be uncapable of using them in an intelligent manner though

[Aqualung71]

While it's clearly a step in the right direction, removing one impediment that the AI may not currently be able to overcome on its own, it may not be enough to have any discernible results. Can we give Armies a "build often" flag also?

The next problem will be if the AI doesn't build the MA. Perhaps there is a way to "gift" the MA to all AI's at the start of the game, or upon discovery of MT?

[alexman]

Aqua/thriller, unfortunately, your fears were well-founded.

In a debug game I just set up, the AI builds the MA fine, but it doesn't use it to build Armies! I saw it even build Wealth in the MA city, but no Army!

In light of this, the removal of the victorious Army flag from the MA clearly hurts the AI.

Any ideas?

[Risa]

A 400-shield 0/0/1 ground unit IS almost useless, unless it's an army. That may be the reason why AIs always avoid to build army (by MA or by MGL). They may just forget its magic properties in the evaluation method.

[sabrewolf]

would it be an idea to remove the MGL's "rush improvement" possibility?
i know it's used by many people for rushing small wonders and the palace, but like this, the AI would maybe use the army.

alexman, have you ever tried to reduce the cost of armies? will the AI build it, if it costs only 1 shield? 10 shields? 100? i remember seeing someone (was it you?) seeing that the leaders are used to rush warriors more than create an army.

what would be if the army would get some kind of combat values?

my ideas shouldn't and won't be a solution, but maybe it'll help figuring out, how much the AI values the army and therefor what one could do to make it more worth it for the AI...

[sabrewolf]

well, first test didn't work... armies cannot have combat values (it's linked to the "army" flag)

maybe all we can do is wait for jesse...

[alexman]

Removing the MGL rush ability is not possible. The not only would that affect scientific leaders as well, but you even must have that ability to flag the AI 'Army' strategy.

Here's what I propose to do with the Military Academy until Armies get fixed properly from Firaxis:

• Remove victorious Army requirement (so the AI can build it).
• Remove 'increased army value' flag (as suggested by lockstep, to reduce the power of Armies).
• Remove the ability to build Armies (since the AI does not build them anyway).
• Add ability to spawn an Army every 20 turns.

What do you think?

[Aqualung71]

Alexman, I presume the "ability to spawn Armies" proposal relates to the discussion at the governments thread about the Fascism-SPHQ generating Armies, yes? For me, this is the bet idea, even if it's the furthest from stock rules.

As you've tested here, removing the victorious Army requirement doesn't seem to achieve much, since the AI still doesn't build Armies. In fact, in certain situations it can assist the human more than the AI - I recently played a game where warfare was limited and the RNG was not kind enough to give me a leader from my various Elite battles --> no Armies!

I don't think removing Armies from the game altogether is the right move. Armies are fun to use, if overpowered....and we do play this game to have fun after all.

[alexman]

Just to be clear, all the bullets above are part of a single proposal.

I think adding the Army-spawning ability to the Academy should be considered separately from adding it to the SPHQ. At the moment, I don't see how to make the Military Academy useful to the AI without removing the ability to build Armies and spawning Armies instead.

[ducki]

I categorically oppose a generic, anyone can build it, it always works Army-spawning building.

The would seriously unbalance the late game and is a very radical suggestion, IMO.

Armies are, what, a few hundred shields? So every 20 turns, you can - instead of using the freebie to actually make a standing army - rush buildings in your corrupt towns - anything but a great wonder, right - to the tune of something like 200 shields? In a corrupt town, that's, what, 40 turns? In my OPINION, that's insane.

And that's just the builder side.

For the warmonger, every 20 turns, you get an unstoppable force or an immovable object if you have tech parity or better.


I'm sorry, but I think this goes way too far. Any army-generating building(free generation) should be government limited, like the SPHQ.

Army-spawning ability to the Academy should be considered separately from adding it to the SPHQ

I couldn't disagree more and I hinted at this in the Government thread. This is a huge change. Enormous. We should not double-up on it simply because it seems like two separate, compartmentalized changes.

I wholeheartedly oppose the idea of having the MilAcad generate Armies. It takes decisions out of the player's hands, it seriously effects the balance and the scale of the late game, we're considering Army-generation for free elsewhere, and this is so far beyond what most of the AU warmongers were arguing against in the past.

I don't know how we went from "Remove successful Army" flag to "Armies, armies, and still more armies!" but I'm unsettled by the prospect, so I'll close with a bit of premonition...

Theseus will have said in a later post
Take it slow.

Or maybe he won't, but I sure hope he does.


I feel fairly passionately about this, so if my words seem pointed, be assured they are not pointing at anyone or any group in particular. I'm just flummoxed at how we rubberbanded from "Armies are the prize of the warmonger" to freely-generated Armies for everyone, every 20 turns. No offense intended to anyone.

[alexman]

In the late game, Military Academy in a good city can build an Army every 6-8 turns, but only for the human. With the proposed change, you get an Army every 20 turns, so you will have something like one third of the Armies being produced by the human (we can still play with the exact number of turns between Armies). The difference is that the AI will now have Armies too.

[ducki]

Sorry to post twice in a row, but...

In a debug game I just set up, the AI builds the MA fine, but it doesn't use it to build Armies! I saw it even build Wealth in the MA city, but no Army!

In light of this, the removal of the victorious Army flag from the MA clearly hurts the AI.

Any ideas?

What about flavors or build-often or something to make the AI think Armies are as valuable as the human knows they are?

Surely there are more things we can tinker with to encourage Army-building that just scrapping the whole thing and removing the option, no? I can't believe it's me that's yanking on the reins so hard, but I just think this is far too radical a point to start from.
That's just my opinion, but I don't think it would feel very stock and I don't think it would play very stock for anyone but serious warmongers that build a buttload of armies most of the time anyways.


I see your point on the turns and # of armies produced alexman, but the difference is that we've now freed up - in your scenario, a city that can now crank out the units(for the warmonger) to fill an army completely by the time it is generated or to steal a lot more wonders from the AI.
Basically we're gifting the human with 400 shields every so often - not small potatoes, IMO.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by ducki
ISo every 20 turns, you can - instead of using the freebie to actually make a standing army - rush buildings in your corrupt towns - anything but a great wonder, right - to the tune of something like 200 shields?

Armies can't rush buildings, only GL's can.

But I agree with you - I don't support the MA spawning Armies. I much prefer the proposal to tie it in the the Fascism-SPHQ, which IMHO quite neatly ties up a few difficult AI issues: It helps the AI, who despite our attempts to push it into Communismn as a wartime government, seems to prefer to stay in Fascism....and so by adopting the "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude, this solution improves Fascism, nerfs Communism somewhat by taking away the SPHQ (thus reducing the value of the "overpowered" Communism government in human hands), and gives the AI in Fascism the ability to spawn Armies from its SPHQ. Furthermore, it limits the human's access to this powerful feature unless the human chooses to go into Fascism, which is a trade-off. Increasing the corruption level of Fascism is a further deterrent to the human.

Overall, I think this "suite" of solutions sounds wonderful in theory and I'm keen to see how it will work in practice.....ie, will the AI in Fascism actually build the SPHQ?

[ducki]

Armies can't rush buildings, only GL's can.

If you disband an army in a town building anything but a Wonder, you'll get a couple hundred shields.

I should have clarified that, since "rushing" is a technical gameplay term.