Did you know that your armies can do this:

[Panag]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


I know, but I try my best not to edit the game too much. If I'm going to do that, I'm going to have to do that with all civs.

hi ,

let each civ start with an army and a leader then , ...

have a nice day

[Gen.Dragolen]

As nice as an army is, I still manage without them. In games where i take a militaristic civ, the GL's appear from defending units that are killed that same turn, and bye-bye GL...

But I agree that you should be able to unload an army and reform it. With one provision: the army doesn't disband and you don't get the GL back. It would be nice to have a standing army that you could replace the swordsmen with a Pikeman and a pair of Longbowmen.

And it would not be unfair: if we can do it, the AI Civ's can do it. Just need to write the code to allow it. It might make some of the militaristic civ's into serious killer civ's.

D.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by vmxa1
50-75 of anything can be good, but suoerman is no good if he can't get there or gets there late.
And how long is it before they have spearmen, not long. A huge problem with archers are they can not be upgraded to anything worth while. Longbow when you finally get it is junk as Knights or better will be smacking them.
Horsemen are weak, but they can become so much more.
I must say skipping Knights is insane


If you dropped the speed is not an issue I could go along ith you. But speed is the issue much of the time, hence you could make use of Horses. True they are not good for many jobs, but a Hammer is a good tool, it just can't to everything.

Part 1: I skip knights because Cavalry is better, and you'll be suprised if you b-line for them how weak knights becomes. Not skipping and wasting time on researching knights is insane

Part 2: Speed is not an issue. So long if you have a well thought out plane. Keeping units in certain locations for chock points and such is FAR better then having a horseman sitting around waiting to intercept an army (no, the army unit, army as in enemy units) of swordsmen. I agree speed is an issue with the navy, but not with land battles. Sure you can get your horsemen to the enemy quicker, but good are they when they get there? Pulling down the enemy's pants? Get your legions right next the enemy border in key locations THEN DECLARE WAR! Or better, don't do it at all, this early in the game reputations can be ignored.

---
The thing with Rome is that you get archers right away, and a 2/1 unit is better then a 1/1 unit. So while I'm busy hammering my enemies, I'm researching for legionaries and then I withdraw my archers, dismantle them so that I build my legionaries much more quickly. Legionaries can act as pikemen while I'm b-lining to cavalry (which on the ways picks up musketmen).

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by panag


hi ,

let each civ start with an army and a leader then , ...

have a nice day

I know, but I rather have a surprise. IF I get a GL... you'll be the first to know.


have a great day

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


Part 2: Speed is not an issue. So long if you have a well thought out plane. Keeping units in certain locations for chock points and such is FAR better then having a horseman sitting around waiting to intercept an army (no, the army unit, army as in enemy units) of swordsmen. I agree speed is an issue with the navy, but not with land battles. Sure you can get your horsemen to the enemy quicker, but good are they when they get there? Pulling down the enemy's pants? Get your legions right next the enemy border in key locations THEN DECLARE WAR! Or better, don't do it at all, this early in the game reputations can be ignored.

That is not always possible. My present game I was at war with EVERYONE on my continent. I had to keep creating horses and sending them out to newly taken cities or my offensive would grind to a halt because nothing but horses could get to the cities in time for me to continue.

With Riders I was actually able to blitz. That is, take a city and then from there take one even farther away on the same turn. I was often expanding two cities away PER TURN. That can't be done with one move units. Can't even be done with two move units but at least with two move units I was able to expand outwards at one city per turn. It takes two to three turns to expand one city out with one move units and then you have to stop again. Have to replace more loses as well.


It took a long time afterward the rapid expansion for me to replace all the Riders with one move units which are better defenders. I didn't finish the job till I had Riflemen. I now have 52 cities on a standard map and most were taken with Riders. Early on it was Horses and the last ten or so were with Cavalry and by then it was getting hard for the Riders to handle the pike that were finally showing up.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Ethelred
That is not always possible. My present game I was at war with EVERYONE on my continent. I had to keep creating horses and sending them out to newly taken cities or my offensive would grind to a halt because nothing but horses could get to the cities in time for me to continue.

Thats your problem. You shouldn't have a world war. I b-line for Cavalry and do just that when I'm at war (no more than 2 at a time).

With Riders I was actually able to blitz. That is, take a city and then from there take one even farther away on the same turn. I was often expanding two cities away PER TURN. That can't be done with one move units. Can't even be done with two move units but at least with two move units I was able to expand outwards at one city per turn. It takes two to three turns to expand one city out with one move units and then you have to stop again. Have to replace more loses as well.

I group my cavalry/tank/etc. into a stack of 10. I hit multiple targets at the same time. Garrison damaged units (no more than 2) and have defensive units come in take their place.


Like I've said before, my views are not popular, so there is no need to drag this on. I find my way to be the best.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


Thats your problem. You shouldn't have a world war. I b-line for Cavalry and do just that when I'm at war (no more than 2 at a time).

It wasn't my idea. Hasn't happened to me in a long time either and never so early.

I was thinking it might be because I was playing a militaristic Civ on Monarch. All I know is suddenly everyone thought I was the target to go for despite loads of room for them to expand into elsewhere and the instigator Americans haveing to come through France to get at me with is measly warriors. Now it remains in the area it should have gone in the first place. Its homeland is mine and I was able to take it with France as my allie and by going through France to get at them.

France was mostly taken with Cavalry. They were close enough for foot soldiers but musketmen are just worthless for offense.

I group my cavalry/tank/etc. into a stack of 10. I hit multiple targets at the same time. Garrison damaged units (no more than 2) and have defensive units come in take their place.

I would have been dead long before Cavalry showed up. I needed to take out the beligerents then, not later. I had over 40 cities when I got to Military Tradition and I got there first.

Like I've said before, my views are not popular, so there is no need to drag this on. I find my way to be the best.

I find them to be best if I get the chance myself and if I am going the builder route. Which is what I did untill lately. Early conquest just isn't early if its done with Cavalry. They are great for a later conquest though. For the same reasons that horses are good in the Ancient Era.

[vmxa1]

Regardless of wheither it is best or worst, I refuse to make very many units with no upgrade path with the exception of Legionare. I remember all the early games I had where the AI would show up for war with low level units that could not be upgraded (not that the ai would have at the time). Archers fall in this camp in a big way for me. I do not even regard them as much when they first bcome available on a one on one basis. Yeah you can rush with them as you can with nearly any unit in mass. It is painful later to have all of those useless units and have to scrap them or toss them to the wolves.

[Theseus]

Well, I wouldn;t call Archers exactly useless.

People forget that Longbowmen come with Invention, not Chivalry. There are times, for instance if you've got a Legion military, where adding a couple LBs to an attack stack can be useful.

Also, over time I've found that I can use up my non-upgradeable units pretty effectively as they become more and more obsolete. Home Guard. Armies. Insta-builders and extra garrisons in captured towns.

It's the price you pay for early power.

[Ethelred]

There is one use for them. You can disband them in captured cities while the city is still in resistance. I found that artillery is ideal for that. Three or four and you have the improvement while the population is ranting and raving in the streets. Archers however, that is going to take a lot them. Them must be rendering the bodies for fat or something because they aren't worth much.


I need a Demon Barber of Fleet Street improvement to get more out of obsolete foot soldiers:

Fleet Street Barber Shop and Food Center Complex:

30 shields

Disbanded foot units pay half shield cost instead of one quarter. Units are converted into Prize Winning Pie. Does not effect disbandment of Naval Units nor Tanks, or Modern Armor.

Decreases unhappy population by one.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Theseus
Well, I wouldn;t call Archers exactly useless.

People forget that Longbowmen come with Invention, not Chivalry. There are times, for instance if you've got a Legion military, where adding a couple LBs to an attack stack can be useful.

Also, over time I've found that I can use up my non-upgradeable units pretty effectively as they become more and more obsolete. Home Guard. Armies. Insta-builders and extra garrisons in captured towns.

It's the price you pay for early power.

No not exactly worthless, just nearly. Yes all obsolete units can be used to make shields or do home guard duty, which is what I do with some left over legionares. Archer will be hard to use for garrison of captured towns as they will not be there for some time (too slow)and can not be relied upon to defend once Knights or better are around, which is when I tend to do my real expansion. Note that does not mean it can not be done, only that I do not care for it.
Never bothered to make a longbow in all the games I have played. I will have discovered Chivalry already and not want any Bows of any kind. Talk about a dead end unit. Yeah I understand a LB could do this or that, but tell me who would trade me one Knight for one LB? Knights are not king, but they do become Calv and smack most of their contemparies with out much trouble.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Regardless of wheither it is best or worst, I refuse to make very many units with no upgrade path with the exception of Legionare.

I combated this with my upgrade path. I did this not for me but for the AI's sake. I always hated charging in with modern armor while the AI still has it's old Swordsmen and longbowmen.

Here it is, UU's are understood ('...' means continue with normal path.

Warrior -> Swordsman -> Rifleman...
Archer -> Longbowman ->Rifleman...
Chariot -> Horseman -> Knight -> Cavalry -> Tank...
Frigate -> Ironclad -> Destroyer

The idea is, just retrain the guys to use new weapons and run tanks. The navy path was done only for the AI's benifit.

[Theseus]

I'm with you, Thrawn, but I wanna see this Med. Infantry unit.

vxma1, don;t get me wrong, the Archer / LB path sucks. I'm just saying that for a limited number of units, achieving relative strength through numbers (i.e., the Archer Rush) has value. The later disposition of those units can be handled for greater or lesser benefit.

Would I ever BUILD a LB? Maybe after Longevity...

[vmxa1]

Theseus, sounds fair to me.

Trawn05, I think some form of that could be reasonable. Not sure what exactly is the way to go. Maybe a skip for some of the units in the path to not give too much value to cranking out massive numbers of warriors that will be upgraded. I dunno what makes the most sense though.

[JohnM2433]

Personally, I think I might upgrade the swordmen to knights. Knights are basically mounted swordmen, right? (I mean functionally, as they're used in the game. I'm not talking about taking a vow of chivalry or anything like that.) They're kind of a combination of the swordmen and horsemen that precede them. That way you would preserve the unit's status as an "attacker", too. Of course, you would then be upgrading a foot soldier to a mounted unit.

Cavalry to tanks isn't a straight "upgrade", really, because the unit sacrifices a movement point. But that's already the case for upgrading some of the UUs, anyway.

It would help to tie things together if there was some sort of mounted archer unit, too. I don't know if any such unit has been used historically to any significant degree.