The Military Academy

[vulture]

BTW, in C3C, how did they use an MGL to build a warrior? Or did you give them SGL's - but then how would you expect them to build an army (never mind the number of cities)?

[alexman]

Good point about the number of cities, but I reduced the number of required cities to 1.

Also, I believe MGLs in C3C can still rush things, they just can't rush Wonders.

[ducki]

MGLs can rush anything except Great Wonders - they can still rush Small Wonders, according to my experiences and the docs.
SGLs are the only ones that can rush GWs, but, IIRC, they can also rush anything else.

How about this for a different test, alexman?
Change the Palace to spit out MGLs like the SoZ does ACs, but less frequently. That way you'd have a steady stream of MGLs for the AI to waste.
(I think I saw that you can do this, but I may be mistaken.)

[vulture]

As always, alexman is one step ahead of the game...

You'd think that the AI would be programmed to do nothing with MGLs apart from build armies.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by ducki
Change the Palace to spit out MGLs like the SoZ does ACs, but less frequently. That way you'd have a steady stream of MGLs for the AI to waste.
(I think I saw that you can do this, but I may be mistaken.)

Sounds neat, but how would you stop yourself getting the same MGLs from your own Palace?

And it would take some work... even if the AI did build armies with them, it might be difficult to find the balance of 'enough MGLs that the AI uses them for Armies' with 'so many armies there is no chance for the SIngle Player'.

[ducki]

It's only an idea for a test, MrWIA.
No balance necessary, since it's just to see what sort of situations arise, how "wasteful" the AI is willing to be with the MGLs, etc. Not for a real game, but just for a further test like alexman's above.

A starting leader went straight to a warrior, but if the AI doesn't "think" it needs more units, will it rush a temple? An aqueduct?

The SoZ-style MGL-spurting Palace would allow alexman to see how the AI uses a freebie leader at any stage of the game and with regularity.

I shudder to think of trying to balance something like that for actual gameplay.

[alexman]

Yes, that was a great idea ducki.
I actually did that, and the AI used them all to rush Warriors and Settlers.

I'm sure the AI builds Armies sometimes, because people have reported seeing them sometimes in C3C, but it certainly doesn't build them often enough.

[ducki]

Just pulling this to the front page to be close to it's brother, the Re-balancing Armies thread.

[Thoth]

Has anyone given thought to Player1's idea of changing the MA to produce an army every 15 turns instead of allowing their construction? It would remove the prebuild issue as well as guaranteeing the AI has armies to play with.

Combined with the removal of the "Victorious Army" requiement the changes will feel different from stock, but should help out the AI significantly in the mid-late game.

[ducki]

Personally, I think that's a bit too heavily weighted in favor of the human, with the caveat that I haven't tried it. As expensive as armies are to build, is 15 turns "realistic" in terms of how often you normally would build one? Plus you get to use that city's production for something to actually put in the army.

Just random thoughts about the player1 idea, nothing concrete.

[lockstep]

Regarding the idea of an army-spawning Military Academy: Every 15 turns seems way too often for me, given the current power of armies - I'd say every 30 or even 40 turns. Furthermore, testing results from korn469 indicate that army spawning ignores the cities-needed-per-army limit (whatever you set it in the editor). OTOH, this suggestion would at least force the AI to use armies (that is, if the AI doesn't disband them for their shield value, but I refuse to believe that for now).

Sidenote: I'm still for a Military Academy that doesn't require a victorious army, even if we don't change anything else in the AU mod. nbarclay's '400-shield-pre-build' argument is yet another reason for this particular change. But as for now, we should wait for possible changes to armies and the Mil Ac in upcoming patches.

[alexman]

Well, the 1.22 patch has done nothing to encourage the AI to build Armies, and the timing of the next patch is uncertain, if there even will be one.

This shortcoming of the AI is the most serious in the game, IMHO. Even Sid-level AI stands no chance without Armies against a human with inferior units but with Armies.

The power of armies in C3C along with the inability of MGLs to rush Great Wonders make it virtually a no-brainer for humans to use an early MGL for an Army, so the PTW stretegic decision that might have denied builders the Military Academy is no longer there anyway.

I say we should remove the victorious Army requirement from the Military Academy.

[bongo]

Originally posted by alexman
I say we should remove the victorious Army requirement from the Military Academy.

Would it help? I read some other thread where some guys tried to *encourage* the AI to use armies. They did get some success when they let the palace spit out an army every n turn and the AI had LARGE nubmers of units to put in it. Even then the 2-3 first armies just stayed at home, defending the capital.

[ducki]

That seems a bit far from stock(edit:referring to boingo's suggestion); I'd rather not start out there. If we end up there after trying less radical things, so be it.

Removing the Victorious Army is conservative, and we don't really have enough evidence to decide whether it will be effective of not.

I second alexman's suggestion.

[lockstep]

I second it also (or would that be 'third'?).

This change isn't that radical and has already been part of former AU mod versions.