Question about One Unit Armies

While trying to turn my mess into a working scenario, I also experimented with the Army.

In my scenario the Military Academy and Armies can be build without an existing Army.

And the KI loves to build both. But since they did not understand the added movement point, they ended most of the time with understaffed and therefor unused Armies waiting for a unit with 4 movement points (and it can be a long way to Synthetic Fibers, there one get the Armored Scout Vehicle ).

My current approach is to reduce the Army to one unit and give it instead 8 additional hitpoints (as if staffed with two additional veteran units).

While this seems to work and the the KI is able to use them, it seems to me that these one unit armies are inferior to the traditional three unit armies. I can not prove it, but they seem to have less punch and are more vulnerable.

I am just wrong with that or can someone confirm that observation?

What is your walkaround the Army in KI service?

Thanks for your cooperation!

Well, I have 3 upgrade-levels of foot-unit-only armies in addition to 2 levels of all-unit armies. The first army - Army I, is exactly as your 1-unit army. The AI (english for german "KI" I presume) uses them, but I haven't experienced what you call "less punch". I use them offensively, and they are much stronger than single-units, but not as strong as multiple-unit armies of course. Perhaps you're thinking of the random-generator that sometimes decides that a inferior unit beats a superior, and when that happens in a single-unit army, the army is defeated. When this happenes in a multiple-unit army, the losing unit withdraws and the next unit continues the attack - probably with "new" random calculation of the winning odds, making that army less likely to be defeated.

My Army II and army III have 2 and 3 unit capacity, respectively. The AI uses them if I make sure it has units with more than 1 movement points available. My impression is that unit number two in an army has to have one more movement point than number one for AI to load it into the army - for some reason (probably a bug). Having units with 2 and 3 movement points available at least makes AI use multiple-units armies, although AI is unable to use them very well (I know, "unable to use them very well" is a huge understatement - AI is pretty helpless in using armies).

Hope some of this helps.
Regards Sigurd

Am I to understand that the computer players only load fast units into their armies? I hadn't really picked up on that, if that is true. While I've never seen a computer-controlled army in a standard game, in a mod I have it autoproduced by Sun Tzu's Art of War, thereby forcing the computer to utilize them. The result is odd choices for what goes into the army, at times, but I've not noticed it restricted to mounted, mobile, and mechanized units.

Thank you both of you for your input so far.

Yes and sorry, KI is the shortcut for "Künstliche Intelligenz" (artifical intelligence), but goes also very well as "Keine Intelligenz" (no intelligence).

Sigurds observation seems to match mine: Since the units in a larger army switch places, then they take to many hits, they last longer. It seems, that a one unit army also take significant more hits then a standard three unit army, but I am unable to prove that (or it was really bad luck in the game with the small armies. ).

The problem with the additional movement point is not that the KI places only fast units in its army, but units with the same or more movement points. So if the first unit in an army is an Archer, the second has to be a Horseman. But if they place a Cavalry as first unit in an army, then they are unable to complete it, due to lack of units with four movement points.

This also explains some of the weird combination in the armies of a KI.


Regards, Thilo

Kirejara, I play pretty well the same set up as you, except I have 9 bonus points for a single unit army. I have been paying that way for years, seems to be the fairest way for the AI to be equal.

Erebras, the AI will load any unit as the first unit, but will load only a unit that has movement higher than the highest currently loaded movement, so if the first unit has a movement of 2 then the next unit must be movement of 3 or higher. Then the next unit must be 4 or higher. Don't know about you but 3 is the max movement of a unit in my game (makes army max 4 movement), so armies must stay small for fairness to the AI.

I tried playing with an army size of 2 for a while, so the pentagon would be of some used, but it was hit and miss for the AI getting two units into an army.

Here is a pick where the Koreons managed to get 2 armies with 2 units in each army, happens sometimes.

Pounder said:

Erebras, the AI will load any unit as the first unit, but will load only a unit that has movement higher than the highest currently loaded movement, so if the first unit has a movement of 2 then the next unit must be movement of 3 or higher. Then the next unit must be 4 or higher.

Click to expand...

This is almost correct, only that unit number 3 (and 4) has to have more movement points than the first unit - not the second or third. The movement-points required isn't escalating for each unit loaded into the army, only from the first to the second (unit number 2, 3 and 4 can be the same unit type). I often see AI use armies with four units loaded, where one has one movement point and three have two movement points (for example one musketman (MOV=1) and three infiltrators (MOV=2)). My armies aren't auto-produced, but I have several small wonders that allows building and upgrading armies. AI builds them a lot, but sometimes the first unit loaded has 2 or 3 movement points leaving the army understaffed. However, I have seen AI attacking with understaffed armies, too.

Sigurd

Cool I updated my armies after reading this. I got a 1 slot army now and they upgrade thru the ages giving them more HP per upgrade.

I also created 2 variants in the modern era since i downloaded ronnin's awesome army divisions. I made 1 army for infantry and 1 for tanks with different bonuses. If i got oil, then the armored division army becomes available for the tanks. If i dont have oil, then the infantry div army becomes available for the infantries.

The main difference is that the armored division one has bombard range +1, 50 value, 4rof (not deadly), and collateral damage so i can feel their 'bombardment' pain since i know the AI will not make use of the 'bombard' ability.

Lets see how it plays out. I might want the infantry division to auto-produce as well. I tend to handicap myself when i play with the AI, but not on purpose tho. I just like to build infantries as well. I hate playing with just a stack of tanks, artillery, and bombers. In my game some infantries got stealth attack vs tanks, so it evens out while at the same time i succeed in making it as fun as i can for me to play.