military readiness

[omnibus]

What's your strategy with "military readiness" function? I always have at least one "hot" place, where fights are going on, while many units are just sitting in cities all around my country guarding them. I could save money reducing military readinnes of those inactive units, but I can't, because say 1/2 of my army is in combat with a neighbour.

At the beginning I was thinking of using special forces for active combats and non-spacial units for gaurding, but there are only few spacial forces.

[jpww]

...I could save money reducing military readinnes of those inactive units...

Actually, what you save by reducing military readiness is production.

As a rule of thumb, it is a good idea to set your military at war. You never know what can happen, so you'd better be prepared for anything.

[SoulFisher]

I would agree with you, omnibus, about using Special Forces units for attack, and regular units for defence. Keeping your Military Readiness at "At Peace" is 10 times cheaper in production than "At War". However, jpww has a point. With your defenders powered down, you tend to lose more cities from sneak attacks. I have yet to play an Awesome Aips game, but the standard game aips shouldn't be too hard to recover against.

[Solver]

Some guys use mods that make switching the readinesses require less turns. If low barbarian level, I prefer to put Alert or Peace in the very beggining of the game, as I will be finding and making units anyway. This will give you several turns of extra Settlers.

[SoulFisher]

At game start, I set my readiness level to "On Alert". It seems to be enough to defeat barbarians attacking my cities. When I discover Alchemy, I start building Archers in all my cities and scout groups. When the majority of them have Archer support, I knock my readiness down to "At Peace". Barbarian raiders tend to be obliterated by a Warrior-Archer pair in a city.

Verses another player, though, I would probably never drop below "On Alert", if I should decide to stand down from "At War".

[Dictatress]

My strategy with military readiness is simple: be on "at war" all the time. This way you know just how much your army really costs. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll build a giant army at peace and be unable to support it at war. Your enemies can't catch you off your guard. You can go to war whenever you like. You also have an excellent defense against Barbarians, and your armies look good.
As for losing production, I learned to live with it. I don't even notice it, and my empire prospers.

[chipsdw]

The last time I used military readiness was when the lesson made me.

[Cookie Monster]

I too keep military readiness at war all the time. If one must put military readiness at anything less then something must be wrong with ones economy.