Please explain armies

[Sirotnikov]

From what I understand and know so far, armies are basically land transports that apparently give you smoe bonuses.

What are they?

Why am I better off having armies than storms of single troopers?

How does defense / attack / movement work?

Does the AI use them properly?

[SteveJH]

Re: Please explain armies

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
From what I understand and know so far, armies are basically land transports that apparently give you smoe bonuses.

Why am I better off having armies than storms of single troopers?

I read a while back that they pool all the attack and hitpoints, thus making one powerful unit.

How does defense / attack / movement work?

The movement part is a very good question, I suspect there's just a standard movement for all army units, but using the movement value of the lowest unit would be more realistic IMO.

[Akron]

I don't think they pool attack, just hitpoints. Also, its likely that they have the movement of the slowest unit or 1 since anyway they will be very powerful with their pooled hitpoints.

[Inverse Icarus]

THIS IS HOW I SEE IT. multiplayer.

if you have 1 legions (3-2-1) and 2 chariots (1-1-2) and your army attacks a city, the Legion, having the strongest attack, goes in and fights. multiplayer.

when he is exausted (hp in the "red zone") he steps down, DOESN'T DIE, and lets one of the chariots come up to fight. multiplayer.

the process is repeated until you win, or all your units are in red and die. multiplayer.

multiplayer.

[SteveJH]

Originally posted by Jingo
THIS IS HOW I SEE IT. multiplayer.

if you have 1 legions (3-2-1) and 2 chariots (1-1-2) and your army attacks a city, the Legion, having the strongest attack, goes in and fights. multiplayer.

when he is exausted (hp in the "red zone") he steps down, DOESN'T DIE, and lets one of the chariots come up to fight. multiplayer.

the process is repeated until you win, or all your units are in red and die. multiplayer.

multiplayer.

GREAT!!! Now Dan will NEVER read this thread! It will be filtered out!@$#

[Inverse Icarus]

im doing that with all my new posts. multiplayer. i'm putting multiplayer after each setence. multiplayer. firaxis hates me. multiplayer.

multiplayer.

[squid]

I like that sig, but I would rather

chmod -x /bin/laden
vi /bin/laden
rm -rf /home/terrorists
rm -rf /bin/laden

[SteveJH]

Originally posted by squid
I like that sig, but I would rather

chmod -x /bin/laden
vi /bin/laden
rm -rf /home/terrorists
rm -rf /bin/laden

ph33r th3 l33t uNiX c0mm4ands.

[Sirotnikov]

Oh gee, why not, deteriorate my thread so that Dan Magha won't answer...

*cries*

[Jason Beaudoin]

How do you know that Firaxis filters out messages about multiplayer?

[FrostyBoy]

you know he's joking... right?

SteveJH, that's merely ftp commands it's about as 'l33t' as a squirrel

[Grumbold]

I've never seen the army info appear all at once so some of this may have changed or been misunderstood by me:

An 'army' is a container which can hold up to 3 units, 4 if they are great leader created armies.

You can have (city count/4) normal armies in the field irrespective of city sizes once you have the tech/wonder to create them. If you lose cities and have too many armies we don't know what happens.

The army moves at the speed of its slowest unit.

When you attack your best offensive unit is used. It continues to attack the enemy until it is badly damaged. At this point the second best unit will fight for you instead. This continues until you halt the fight or one side dies completely.

Defence is either the same as attack, with units defending in turn using their own ratings or the best defensive unit gets to play with all the hitpoints of the entire stack. Not sure about that.

In either circumstance a 4 unit army will not get any bonuses for outnumbering, flanking or surrounding even a 1 unit opponent.

Army recuperation of damage is no different to how the individual units would recover if not stacked.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I've never seen the army info appear all at once so some of this may have changed or been misunderstood by me:

An 'army' is a container which can hold up to 3 units, 4 if they are great leader created armies.

You can have (city count/4) normal armies in the field irrespective of city sizes once you have the tech/wonder to create them. If you lose cities and have too many armies we don't know what happens.

The army moves at the speed of its slowest unit.

When you attack your best offensive unit is used. It continues to attack the enemy until it is badly damaged. At this point the second best unit will fight for you instead. This continues until you halt the fight or one side dies completely.

Defence is either the same as attack, with units defending in turn using their own ratings or the best defensive unit gets to play with all the hitpoints of the entire stack. Not sure about that.

In either circumstance a 4 unit army will not get any bonuses for outnumbering, flanking or surrounding even a 1 unit opponent.

Army recuperation of damage is no different to how the individual units would recover if not stacked.

That's a pretty good summary, Grumbold. IIRC, losing a city won't force you to disband an army, the only time your number of cities is checked is when you're actually trying to produce an army.

One thing you had wrong was the number of units in an army: it's 3 unless you have the Pentagon (Small Wonder), then it's 4.

You always need a Great Leader to build an army, unless you've built the Military Academy (Small Wonder), then you can build armies without them. The catch here is that before you can even build the Military Academy, you need to have an army that has been victorious in combat.

IMHO, the only real motivation for using an army is that you get to pool hitpoints. Consider that if you have the Pentagon and you put 4 elite units into an army, you've got TWENTY hit-points to play with during an assault. It allows you to even the playing field somewhat if you have a lot of weaker units and you need to take out a couple of stronger ones, but it doesn't tip the scales so far that you're going to see warriors taking down a tank.

Dan

[Jason Beaudoin]

So... does that mean that you don't use them, Dan? Are they not effective for long campains?

You'd figure that they would be able to take a beating, so that if you're far way from a city you could send an army out like an expeditionary force.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Jason Beaudoin
So... does that mean that you don't use them, Dan? Are they not effective for long campains?

You'd figure that they would be able to take a beating, so that if you're far way from a city you could send an army out like an expeditionary force.

No, on the contrary! I use them whenever I can... in fact, sometimes armies are the only good way to take a heavily fortified city.


Dan