Useless army

[CerberusIV]

An army of marines can attack as any other unit but not make amphibious assaults from ships, unlike individual marine units.

The problem is that if armies are edited to have amphibious assault, and it works, then all armies would have amphibious assault capability. Imagine what a four MA army attacking direct from a transport would do!

[Rommel2D]

Armies inherit the abilites of the units in it. In Civ3v1.29, this only applied to mobility and the blitz attack.

In PtW, armies are now supposed to inherit any ability. Amphibious assault is one specific I've seen mentioned. Paradrops should also work. I'm guessing these need to be pure armies of Marines and Paratroopers, but I'm still waiting for my copy of PtW to arrive. Free shipment from Amazon looks like it will take until after the next patch to arrive. :[

Also, each unit in the army takes up one space for transport, including the leader guy. That means 2-5 units in any army- no way to fit on a helicopter. Does anyone use helicopters?

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
An army of marines can attack as any other unit but not make amphibious assaults from ships, unlike individual marine units.

The problem is that if armies are edited to have amphibious assault, and it works, then all armies would have amphibious assault capability. Imagine what a four MA army attacking direct from a transport would do!

You know that would not be a bad thing actually, I think ALL armies should have this ability. I mean if you look at all amphib invasions very few were undertaken by proper marines. Amphibious invasions were used by ancient civ's as well. The Greeks, Romans, and Carthage were particularly adept at this. Finally the invasions in operations in Africa, Italy and Normandy in WW2 were not marine units but army units. In the game the army unit should be given the AA ability to enable other troops to be able to land on foreign shores. If Kuwait and Saudi Arabia kicked us out of their countries; do you think that the marines would be the only units in an amphib assault on Iraq? I think not!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

A point well made... but a lot of modern-day "units", and ancient "units" as well, after disembarking on a shore, required "set up" time to get going on a proper attack. In this sense, they couldn't be said to have AA capabilities. Often, throughout history, a landing force would be destroyed by local defenders before they were able to fight back. On the other hand, sometimes the defenders have had little to fight back with. I think Civ does a good job representing AA, but I'm no expert, to be fair.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
A point well made... but a lot of modern-day "units", and ancient "units" as well, after disembarking on a shore, required "set up" time to get going on a proper attack. In this sense, they couldn't be said to have AA capabilities. Often, throughout history, a landing force would be destroyed by local defenders before they were able to fight back. On the other hand, sometimes the defenders have had little to fight back with. I think Civ does a good job representing AA, but I'm no expert, to be fair.

The point of my argument is this: There are too few units that can perform an AA in the game. think about it; almost all footsoldiers could be properly trained to make an AA and designing specialized landing craft is not really that difficult. I think that by reserving this function to an army it would represent a group of units specially trained for an Amphibious Assault. If you don't understand why this is needed try playing Marla Singers World map. An Invasion of Crete or Sicily is impossible due to barbarians completely ringing the island with units. Either give the army the ability to AA or create an ancient and midieval unit with the ability to AA. Finally, Marines have been around since at least the seventeenth century (and as I indicated, have origins of a FAR earlier date) so having them be available in late industrial era is simply not correct.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, with that I can most certainly agree. I don't think it would be appropriate for cavalry/horsemen or very "heavy" (legionaries, med. inf., etc.) units to have the AA ability, or units in general that require some time to "set up" (re: musketmen). I think it's totally appropriate for swordsmen, pikemen, riflemen, etc.

[Hugfrty]

All Hail the Immortals

I had a metropolitan city on a hill with walls. 6 ELITE modern armours were fortified inside. Here is how the stupid computer (Level: Monarch) took it:
Step 1: Waste a ten minutes moving immortals and longbowmen (all veterans, thanks to their barracks).
Step 2: Spend thirty minutes attacking my city (human tidal wave). By the way, I managed to kill all but 5 of the bastards.
Step 3: Raze the city and steal the 6, I repeat, 6, settlers sealed inside.
Step 4: Get your ass whipped by the blitzkrieg.

[vmxa1]

Why would you not have sent over bombers and arty to whack them as they approached and MA to finish off the wounded? At least send in reinforcements. You must have had RR by then and gobs of troops to use.
Ancient troops are sitting ducks, but if you have only 6 units in a metro and they send lots of units, they will win enough battles to take the city, no way I let that happen.

[Mad Bomber]

Hugfrty:

I don't doubt that the Ai is that stupid but your Metro could not have a city wall and why didn't you have a MI or two in the city? Finally How did the AI get so far behind that they had to resort to immortals and longbowmen? Why did you have 6 settlers inside?

[badams52]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
Armies inherit the abilites of the units in it. In Civ3v1.29, this only applied to mobility and the blitz attack.

Actually in 1.29f, all armies can blitz, even cavalry and knights and horsemen...you just have to have the movement points left.

[Hugfrty]

Damn... I didn't know that about the walls...
The settlers were inside because they were all preparing to expand when the persian bastards put some immortals near my city and declared war. I hurried them all inside before he managed to marshall his troops.
The main reason he used his immortals was because this city was basically a rubber colony within his borders and he must have removed troops from outlying cities.
The other reason was that his only strategic resoure was iron (ROFL) since all the maps I play manage to have no real resources (phooey).
I couldnt build artillery because the city went into unrest as soon as the *****es declared war. I hate democracy. Anarchy is even worse. I controlled an entire continent on the other side of the map so the stealth bombers had no way of rebasing there. The transports were almost to the rescue when I got raped.

[Hugfrty]

I didn't have any MI because I expected to be on the offensive in any war and I didn't expect the Persians to so stupid as to declare war on a superpower.

[Theseus]

Hugfrty:

Keeping this thread on-topic...

6 elite MAs = 15 dramatically advantaged attacks (reserving 1mp for each of 3 healthy units) = much destruction of enemy units and high likelihood of a GL = fortified 3xMA Army (appr. 12hp) = probable survival.

[Hugfrty]

I'm sorry, but I don't speak abbreviation gibberish.
I admit, it is PROBABLE survival, but not DEFINITE survival. I thought I was going to live, but they were damn lucky and they got an average of 0.5 hit points off my tanks per veteran longbowman/immortal.
And yes, from now on I will remain on topic.
By the way, armies need to keep the special abilities of the units inside (assuming all one type, of course). Someone needs to make a mod or something that does that, if possible.

[Hugfrty]

In all my playing experience, although it was almost always peaceful, I have only had ONE great leader, and this was not one of those occasions. I made an army with three marines and it couldn't do an assault landing... very annoying.