Armies: Bad news

[player1]

Bad news folks.

It seams that armies are totaly bugged.

I tested Mil. Academy similar tweaked as in AU mod (freely generating of armies), and results are very bad.
AI will not move those armies from their starting position and would add only one unit to them.

So armies are pretty much useless to AI even if freely added.


As far as I can see, only fair thing to do it to nerf Mil. Academy so it doesn't allow building armies.

That way it will be a wonder similar to Pentagon in way that it will increase effectiveness of exsisting human armies, but will not allow easy non-leader generating armies.

[player1]

Update:
After some extra testing here is one weird thing.
While like I said before in test game there were several civs with dozen 1-unit armies siting and doint nothing, something stange happend later.

Two cives got one of their armies activated!
They were used as they are supposed to, while still having dozen other armies siting in Mil. Academy city.
I have no idea why it is.

Maybe that lucky army somehow got generated by leader?
Or it has something to do with railroads?
Or Pentagon?

I have no clue.

[alexman]

Yes, the AI seems to keep a number of half-full Armies in their cities, but it uses them well after they get a certain number of them.

This has been known for a while, from mods that make the Palace spawn Armies.

And how did you come up with an update with new information to your first post just one minute later?

[player1]

I written first post in notepad several hours ago, but posted it just now.



I guess that Mil. Academy modif. needs to be reworked.



P.S.
I don't think it's tied to number of armies.
In my debug game, both Zulu and Byz activated one of their armies in similar times, while Byz have twice more armies in cities.

[player1]

I still have no idea what's the trigger for filling out armies.

Some observation.
In my test game, Zulus started filling all new armies regualry (with 3 non-full armies staying in MA city).
On the other hand Incas have dozen (13-14) on armies and never had a filled once.
As for Byz, they had one filled army and dozen (15-16) with just one unit. And when that full amry died thay filled a new one.

Also all MA cities are full of defensive units (and a few offensive too), which were all outside armies.

[Antrine]

Thanks player 1 for bringing this thread to my attention, as I am remiss in not visiting this fine forum. I connect the dots sometimes slowly, and habitually haunt the same-o, same-o. (good English eh).

I have the solution for AI use of armies. The picture of same is one of dozens I have (in my thread, AI Armies in Field, really), where the various AI's routinely field army after army with stacks up to five fully loaded armies (with offensive units) escorted by stacks of fast moving defensive units all coming my way or hitting another AI. I have observed the AI using all the different kinds of armies, (I have five now in my Mod). So seeing in play ten AI armies used in campaign time after time. All loaded nicely. AI utilizing different characterists, such as an Amphibious Army making landings, also using an Artilery Army to blast blockade ships and using armies with hidden nationality units to craftily attack my cities during peace. And of course just using them in stacks straight on.

The AI must have a plentiful supply of offensive units coming on board in or near the a capitol city or any city that builds a wonder that allows building armies without leaders. These cities with just such a wonder will be used to assemble good armies if, and only if there are offensive units nearby or coming on-line in the city that host armies. What this means in practical terms is having commonly AI built improvements, such as granaries, temples, arenas etc spitting out offensive units or fast moving defense units. A balance of both is a must. For the AI has a humor of ONLY sending out Armies when certain criteria are met. Namely, offensive units and preferring fast moving defensive units, both nearby or in the Army host city. This is because the AI stacks defensive units with Armies before they will send them out.

I hope this helps
Sincerely

P.S. I modded fast moving defensive units built by a common improvement and available to all CIV. That solves half the equation. Also dissable the 'pillage' trigger on ANY unit, including Armies themselves that you wish to load into an army or have the AI escort loaded armies. This is because this feature bogs down the AI thinking and use of said units, including armies.

As you know in modding we got to watch that 'bogging' down the AI's thinking!

[player1]

As far as I understand, without heavy moding, army generating buildings benefit more human player then AI, since majority of armies will stay in cities and do nothing.

I also noticed that such generated armies break normal limit of maximum number of armies allowed.

[Antrine]

So noted, and I agree completely. Heavy is the modding and some days I just wonder.... even though the game is playing great. However, I have so much catching up to do in the Text Files and some work in luxuries layout and the back end of the Tech Tree.

[Strollen]

Originally posted by player1
As far as I understand, without heavy moding, army generating buildings benefit more human player then AI, since majority of armies will stay in cities and do nothing.

I also noticed that such generated armies break normal limit of maximum number of armies allowed.

Frankly, I didn't notice it my last game. By the time I had a serious war with the Iroquois and the American's (the survivors on my continent.) The MA had time to generate two or three armies. My spy report showed 3 American armies. One army had 3 infantry units in it and didn't leave the city it was on. On the other hand the presence of an army persuaded me to leave the city alone. I didn't see the other two armies. Since the American's had a few tanks (before the oil was got cut off) and a lot of Mech I was surprised not to see the armies.

The Iroquois armies were far more effective. After they declared war on me while I was still fighting the American. The 1st Iroquois army consisted of 2 tanks and infantry unit and marched protected by Mech Inf. toward one of my border cities. The 2nd army consisted of 2 tanks and Longbow (oh well) and did the same. If it wasn't for the presence of a line of barricade on my border I might have lost a city.

I ended up getting 4 GL from conquest (all but one after tanks) so the additional 3 armies from the Armies for the MA was helpful but not essential. The Americans got one GL in the middle ages and the Iroquois got none so having the MA produce armies even if they weren't used or filled with optimal units was good.

My MA was built in a city with a production capacity of ~70 so I could have pumped out an army every 6 or 7 after hoover, ~18 to 20 turns before building a factory.The other advantage of modding the MA like we did is it eliminates one less prebuild for the human player.

[player1]

Well high number of armies to human by MA helps a lot since it opens an option for some heavy anti-AI strategies like funnel of doom/funnel of death (look civfanatics sid game thread by SirPleb).

MA generated armies (like moded in AU) benefit more human then AI since more then 80% (debug experience) of them will be inactive and filled with one unit. At least it's not so broken as original MA, which enables humans to pump them like mad.

So it all comes down to would you like AI to have any armies, if cost is to make human player even more powerful (although not as much as with original MA)?

[Strollen]

Well high number of armies to human by MA helps a lot since it opens an option for some heavy anti-AI strategies like funnel of doom/funnel of death (look civfanatics sid game thread by SirPleb).
MA generated armies (like moded in AU) benefit more human then AI since more then 80% (debug experience) of them will be inactive and filled with one unit. At least it's not so broken as original MA, which enables humans to pump them like mad.

The way I look at virtually every aspect of CIV (except for the difficulties levels) hurts the AI.

We shouldn't allow the human to manually move settlers, pick production, do wonder pre-build, select tech other than the science advisor, use the luxury slider, build artillery etc.

My actual game experience was that the MA in some cases resulted in the AI building and using armies in a reasonably effective manner. This is a significant improvement from the unmodified game, where the AI using armies at all was relatively rare.

In my game, it is possible that if the Iroquois had declared war on me as soon as war broke out between American and I, (instead of after I had really crushed America) the result of the game may have been different.

[player1]

Well, as far as I've seen, after some "mystical" conditions are met, AI will load one of thier armies and start to use them effectively.

Unfortunately, what triggers those considtions is pretty much unknown. For example, I had games in which some civs never had any active armies, some other had 1 or 2 of them, and once it happend that Zulus activated all of thier armies exept first two.

So it all comes down to weighting pros and cost of army generating buildings.

Pros:
-Some AIs will get some active armies.
-It's better their original rules, when player will get as many armies as he wants with MA, while AI will get nothing

Cons:
-it breaks max number of armies cap
-Most AI armies still stay passive
-Human, on the other hand, gets all his bonus armies (from army generating building) at full potential, so effectively human still gets more armies this way

[Antrine]

Strollen there is one thing broken if carefully managed via modding works almost always in the AI's favor.

Wondering? 'Hidden Nationality' and 'Invisible'. The AI's can wage effective non-declared war taking cities etc. Whereas the human is hamstrung by not being able to reciprocate so far as concerns taking enemy cities during peace.

Remember though that effective 'modding' part!

[Theseus]

I haven't yet read the DARs for AU 503, nor written my own, but the changes made in the AU Mod resulted in quite interesting AI use of Armies.

In fact, while at first I considered it a flaw, the AI consistently loaded Infantry on top of Knights and Cavs... although this limited movement to 2, it *dramatically* increased the power of its Armies.

In terms of the benefit to the AI versus humans? I think the MA approach is overall balancing, as pointed out above.

[player1]

Well it's certanly better then original.

But there is still problem of having most of AI armies inactive.
(compared to human one, which will always be used properly)