Armies - all sorts of questions

[Lance93035]

Hi all,

after a few weeks of playing on and off, I finally got my first Great Leader, made an army out of him, got the heroic epic and the military academy.

I understand now how to load armies, but how do you unload?

Are armies like a ship or transport on land, specifically, can you replace or add units to and army or is it that once you've created it, you're stuck with what you've got?

Thanks
Lance

 

[slothman]

No you can't unload.

 

[Lance93035]

do armies move at a movement rate of 1 or is it only as fast as the slowest unit. In building my first army, I wanted to put in 3 cavalry but hit a musketman by mistake. That army can move at a rate of 1 I'm assuming that because of the musketman

 

[stevenx]

army will move with the speed of the slowest unit, defend with the statistic of its best defensive unit and attack with the statistic of its best offsensive unit... best combi-- MA and MI

 

[MadScot]

stevenx

It will only defend with the best unit until it gets redlined. Similar for attacks.

Suppose you had an army with a vet mech inf, inf and rifle.

Initially it defends as an MI - 18 defence.
Once the MI takes 3 hits, though, it then brings up the infantry - 10 defence - until it takes another 3 hits.
Then the rifle defends for 3 hits, then each unit in turn for the last hit.
So while you get the strongest defender most of the time, a mixed unit army has a hard crust but a soft centre. If you can get the mech inf out of the way, the other units are easier to kill. It is not like a mech inf with 12 hit points.

 

[stevenx]

oh... is it??? sorry Lance93035 for the wrong info... i always thought it to be so...

thanks Madscot for clearing that up...

 

[TheNiceOne]

MadScot is correct, but he is talking about one single battle. As soon as the first battle is over, the army will start using the best A/D factor for its next battle the same turn.

Example:
Assume an army of 1 MI (D=18), 1 inf (D=10) and 1 rifleman (D=6), with 12 HP that is attacked. For its 4 first HP it defends with a rating of 18 - assume that it kills the attacker after having lost 3 HP. The army now have 9 HP left, which is immediately distributed among the three units, so the MI now gets 3HP.

If it gets attacked again, it will therefore defend with a rating of 18 for its 3 first HP. When those 3 HP are lost in a single battle, it will start defending with a rating of 10 for its next 3 HP. Assume that it kills the attacker after having lost 4 HP, thus having 5 HP left. Those 5 HP gets distributed before the next attack: 2 HP for the MI and inf, and 1 HP for the rifleman. So the army will start to defend with 18 HP for every attack until the army is eliminated.

It is weaker than an all-MI army, but not by very much since the HP are re-distributed between each battle.

 

[Grille]

Assuming you could "expect" an army win in a single battle, you might join newly gained (but outdated) elites* to an army as "hitpoint reserve".

For example: load 2 elite* Cavalry units and 2 veteran Modern Armor into an army. The cavs are at the end of an upgrade chain, thus not very useful in the modern age, but they would add 10 hitpoints (18 HP total).
The MA do the fighting, HP re-shuffling freshs up their health status after a succesful battle. Plus, chances are that MAs get a promotion to elite (having a 19 or 20 HP army afterwards).

This could also work the other way (adding actual units to old armies), somewhat circumventing the missing unload option:
China and Germany have a good potential to keep 3MP armies (=3 possible attacks per turn) up to date. That is, if you do not really need fully loaded armies w/ Rider, Cavalry respectively Panzer units.
China could build an army loaded with 1 or 2 Riders in the Chivalry era (just to trigger Heroic Epic, Military Academy), later eventually adding Cavalry and/or MA. Germany could mix w/ Cavalry, Panzer and MA. In both cases, you could succesfully use a rather old 3MP army all the way up to modern times. Well, any civ could do that w/ 1MP or 2MP armies.
Of course, there are often games that end before Synthetic Fibers due to earlier war mongering (or "planned" diplo win). Then such army mix up isn't recommended in the first place. But it may be useful for die-hard modern warfare fans that want to build the Academy early (=enough time to produce army units).

 

[Lance93035]

thanks everybody, that was helpful
Lance