Armies of workers

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by Crouchback


So basically what we're saying here is: there are no stacks? Just armies and individual units who may occupy the same tile.

David

Exactly.

[Civ Dave]

It'd be cool if you could make military units go and help settlers in times of peace, sort of like the national guard

[Crouchback]

Originally posted by Sabre2th
Exactly.

Glad to help your post count Sabre.

Originally posted by Stuie
I know that it was specifically mentioned somewhere that armies can only consist of land based units. I'll try to find a link.

Where does it say you can't make armies out of non land based units? Aircraft I get, if I understand this concept of airstrikes correctly, but not early naval units. Combining the hit points of war galleys could be very useful indeed.

David

[Blake]

An argument for stacking workers:
It is less effort to move 1 stack of 3 units and give it one order than moving 3 units seperately and giving the same order 3 times...
It would reduce MicroManagment.
An argument for them working quicker (gameplay, not realism):
Say you have a job requiring 10 turns to complete.
3 settlers require 4 turns, but 2 would be free to work on a different task on the 4th turn.
a stack of 3 settlers would require 4 turns, resulting in 2 settlers work being completely wasted for one turn. Thus a slight (20%-30%) workspeed bonus would mean you could stack workers without having to worry about the cost-effectivness.


A 'follow' order would be cool, whereby a unit can be order to follow another unit, and an "assist" order, whereby a unit mimic's the unit it has been order to assist. This would have almost the same effect as stacking in terms of effort / amount of clicking / orders, but without any implicit bonuses.

[Crouchback]

Blake,

Problem with using workers in an army is that once an army has been created you cant easily get the units out again and there is no way to replace them. So you're stuck with these 3/4 units in lockstep whether you need them to work together or not. Better to move workers around independently IMO.

David

[Inverse Icarus]

putting a battleship/ageis/carrier into 1 army (fleet) could be very effective. ::nudge nudge::

[Jaybe]

Dan has mentioned that Armies cannot be rearranged, reconstituted or anything, once it has left the city it was created in. It made the Armies way too powerful, otherwise.

Jingo, if we can put a fleet together, I definitely agree! OTH, with the multi-tile bombardment range of naval units, it may not be available.

I suspect with the added emphasis that (most) everyone is going to be putting into building culture, along with rush builds being MUCH less common, that there will be not nearly as many units to move around as people are used to from Civ2.