Less known facts about armies

Hi again!

I thought it would be interesting to do a compilation about all the unusual stuff we know about armies. Not the stuff that most people knows, mind you. I'll start with my 2¢. Please feel free to add anything you think might be of interest!

• An army of marines or berserkers can attack from the sea, ONLY if it has no other units in it.
• An army can't be airlifted.
• An army of paratroopers can't paradrop.
• Armies of crusaders can't build fortresses.
• An empty army produces no military police, while a loaded army produces MP from the units loaded plus the army itself. Say, 3 infantries + an empty army produce 3 content faces, but if you load those 3 infantries in the army, it produces 4 content faces
• An empty army can't be loaded in an helicopter. One would expect that, since a 3 units army occupies 4 seats in a transport, one could load an army of 2 units in an helicopter, but no It can be loaded if it only has 1 unit. And then you can load another unit in the helicopter. So you can load an army of 1 unit, plus another unit, but not an army of 2 units.

That's about it, from me. I'd like to hear how they work with flaks or mobile sams, so if anyone has tried, please share your comments!

In Play the World, armies can finish improvements and Wonders. I have not checked Conquests yet.

Edit Note: No, Rodrig0 and I are not twins, we both just like Crusaders.

An army can not bombard an enemy or city, even if all of its units have offensive bombard ability.

Also it seems that enslaving units (mayan Javelin Throwers) no longer do it either.

BTW what happens if you put units with hidden nationality into an army?

Your both avatars irritated me for a moment.

and even though we are not triplets...

great post! great info!

@to - it is an MGL who does it, not an army, right?

t_x

timerover51 said:

In Play the World, armies can finish improvements and Wonders. I have not checked Conquests yet.

Edit Note: No, Rodrig0 and I are not twins, we both just like Crusaders.

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LOL yeah, I just noticed in the previous thread we have the same avatar and we also usually post one after the other.

Kirejara said:

An army can not bombard an enemy or city, even if all of its units have offensive bombard ability.

Also it seems that enslaving units (mayan Javelin Throwers) no longer do it either.

BTW what happens if you put units with hidden nationality into an army?

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Are there in the scenarios units with bombard ability or hidden nationality that can be loaded in armies? I've never played those, so I can't say. But in regular maps only artillery type units have bombard, and only privateers have hidden nationality, and neither can join armies.

Do elite units inside an army produce MGLs?

Are there in the scenarios units with bombard ability or hidden nationality that can be loaded in armies? I've never played those, so I can't say. But in regular maps only artillery type units have bombard, and only privateers have hidden nationality, and neither can join armies.

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Yes, in the historical Sengoku scenario in Japan the Ronin and Ninja are ground units with hidden nationality, while Archers and Arquebusier have bombard abilities.

I will have to test a Ninja Army sometimes.

But Archers and Arquebusier lose definitly their bombard ability when entering an Army.

And no, Elite in Armies do not produce leaders. Thats my main reason why I usually put the leader producing elite in the freshly created Army.

Kirejara said:

And no, Elite in Armies do not produce leaders. Thats my main reason why I usually put the leader producing elite in the freshly created Army.

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Eh why? And are you sure?
I would've sworn I've gotten leaders from them.

No, Kirejara is correct. Elites in Armies cannot produce leaders. That's why an elite* often goes immediately into a newly-created army. If I remember correctly, UUs in an army can trigger a Golden Age, though.

Kirejara said:

...while Archers and Arquebusier have bombard abilities.

I will have to test a Ninja Army sometimes.

But Archers and Arquebusier lose definitly their bombard ability when entering an Army.

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Now I'm lost. In this post you are refering to defensive bombardment, as that's what these units have, while in the next...

Kirejara said:

An army can not bombard an enemy or city, even if all of its units have offensive bombard ability.

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you refer to offensive bombardment? Units with offensive bombardment are artillery types, and they can't join an army. And I'm not even sure unit lose their def. bombardment in an army. I'm going to try it.

Aabraxan said:

No, Kirejara is correct. Elites in Armies cannot produce leaders. That's why an elite* often goes immediately into a newly-created army. If I remember correctly, UUs in an army can trigger a Golden Age, though.

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Yes, Unique Units in an army can and will trigger a Golden Age.

Does the unique unit have to be the one that finishes the battle to trigger a Golden Age? Let's say I have a Cossack in my army, and it attacks a Musketman, but retreats, and a Knight finishes off the Musketman. Will a Golden Age be triggered?

If so, does the unique unit have to fight at all? Could I put a Jaguar Warrior in with an army of Tanks and get a Golden Age when the tanks won if I'd never had a Golden Age to that point?

Nice post, Rodrig0. I didn't know most of these things about armies.

Quintillus said:

Does the unique unit have to be the one that finishes the battle to trigger a Golden Age? Let's say I have a Cossack in my army, and it attacks a Musketman, but retreats, and a Knight finishes off the Musketman. Will a Golden Age be triggered?

If so, does the unique unit have to fight at all? Could I put a Jaguar Warrior in with an army of Tanks and get a Golden Age when the tanks won if I'd never had a Golden Age to that point?

Nice post, Rodrig0. I didn't know most of these things about armies.

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In my limited experience, it has to be a Unique Unit to make a kill in the army. The unit cannot simply be in the army.

Rodrig0 said:

Now I'm lost. In this post you are refering to defensive bombardment, as that's what these units have, while in the next...
...
you refer to offensive bombardment? Units with offensive bombardment are artillery types, and they can't join an army. And I'm not even sure unit lose their def. bombardment in an army. I'm going to try it.

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May I unconfuse you?

In the Sengoku scenario the Archer and Arquebusier have got offensive bombard abilities. And they lose this ability then entering an Army.

timerover51 said:

In my limited experience, it has to be a Unique Unit to make a kill in the army. The unit cannot simply be in the army.

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I suppose the same holds true for enslavement? If I put the same 2 tanks and 1 jav thrower in an army, and the tanks kill an enemy, it won't be enslaved?

Does anyone know in what order do their names appear? Incidentally, I just finished a game a few minutes ago, and I had a bunch of empty armies. So it came to mind to load the game and do some tests, but I just remembered I deleted the saved games

Kirejara said:

May I unconfuse you?

In the Sengoku scenario the Archer and Arquebusier have got offensive bombard abilities. And they lose this ability then entering an Army.

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Well everything makes sense now.

Edit: Nevermind, I was able to recover the saved games! God bless recovering utilities

I noticed that, regardless of what order they are loaded, their names appear in alphabetic order. So an army of an infantry, marine an cavalry would appear as

1. Cavalry
2. Infantry
3. Marine

Then if there are various units of the same type, they appear in order of veterancy. So an elite cav, veteran cav an veteran infantry would appear as:

1. Elite Cavalry
2. Veteran Cavalry
3. Veteran Infantry

And last, elite units with custom names appear separately from units of the same type. So a vet cavalry, an elite cavalry and an elite cav who produced a leader and was renamed Rodrigo Diaz would appear as

1. Elite Cavalry
2. Veteran Cavalry
3. Elite Rodrigo Diaz

A bit useless info I know, but hey, someone got paid to add those lines of code!

It doesn't mean they attack or defend in that order though. The strongest attacker attacks first and the strongest defender defends first.

Hey, that's really useful stuff! (And I thought I knew everything about Armies...)

Be sure to turn it into a strategy article, when the collection is finished!

I can add another interesting point I just recently discovered in a game of mine: it is possible to create one more Army than the number of cities allows. Example: Assume you have 40 cities, which would support 10 Armies. You currently own 9 Armies. You have built the Military Academy and you own an unused MGL.
The way to proceed is: first set the town with the Academy to produce an Army. (You can cash-rush it, if you want to and have enough gold.) Afterwards convert your MGL to an Army, giving you your 10th Army. Next turn (or whenever the production is finished) your Academy town will produce another Army, increasing the total to 11!

I just testet an Army with Ninjas (hidden Nationality).

I did not had an right of passage with my victim... ehm... test civilization America and they asked my Army to leave.

The Army was able to attack military units (Horseman and Archer), capture some workers and destroyed improvements (roads and mines) next to Washington without declaring or causing war.

Like single units with hidden nationality the Ninja Army was unable to attack a city (please note, that the AI can and will attack cities with hidden nationality units without causing war).

The Americans did not attack the Ninja Army, so I can not say if that will cause a war. I also put a cannon into Washington, but the Americans did not bombard the Army. Sorry!

Lanzelot said:

Hey, that's really useful stuff! (And I thought I knew everything about Armies...)

Be sure to turn it into a strategy article, when the collection is finished!

I can add another interesting point I just recently discovered in a game of mine: it is possible to create one more Army than the number of cities allows. Example: Assume you have 40 cities, which would support 10 Armies. You currently own 9 Armies. You have built the Military Academy and you own an unused MGL.
The way to proceed is: first set the town with the Academy to produce an Army. (You can cash-rush it, if you want to and have enough gold.) Afterwards convert your MGL to an Army, giving you your 10th Army. Next turn (or whenever the production is finished) your Academy town will produce another Army, increasing the total to 11!

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There is another way of doing that. I have the Pentagon set to auto-produce Armies once it is built. It will produce those Armies whether there are supporting cities or not, and then they can be loaded and used.

Blows dust away...

I have discovered one or two new things about armies.

First I have to point out my presuppositions: In my mod are four different types of armies.

The first to be build without leader is the Army Corps I (one foot unit, 3 extra hitpoints) autoproduced by the Landsknecht Guild (small wonder, Feudalism).

The original Army is now Army Corps II (two units, 3 extra hitpoints) and can be either build by a Military Leader or with Military Academy.

Army Corps III (three units, 3 extra hitpoints) comes with Motorized Transportation and Army Corps IV (four unit, 4 extra hitpoints) with Robotic. They use a Jeep and a Mobile HQ by Wyrmshadow. They can also be build with the Military Academy.

All Army Corps are set to update to the next one and the Pentagon requires now 6 armies.

But now to my discoveries.

- An Army with foot units can be stored into a transport for foot units (Helicopter in unmodded game) if there is enought storage area (Army with only one unit in unmodded game) and the Army is also marked as "foot unit".

- If set to be able to bombard (III and IV in my case), the Army will use its fidget animation as bombard animation and not the attack animation of its units. :?

- If set to be upgraded to an other Army type, this can be only done in the city with the Military Academy. I was hoping, that this will also unload its present units, but this is unfortunatly not the case.

- A Leader will allways produce the type of army set in "General Settings" in the editor (II in my case), even if the army tech level has reached a more advanced army. A Leader can not build an army, if the standard army in the "General Settings" requires a yet undiscovered tech (for example Military Tradition).

I hope this will be helpful!

Wait. Crusaders can build fortresses? When did that happen?

Well, when the Crusader unit was introduced with the C3C release in 2003...