[C3C] Did the buffs to armies in Conquests make them overpowered?

[BlueSox14]

Hi all,

After reading Sulla's critique of Civ 3 Conquests written back in 2004, I'm curious as to the communities feeling about the Army unit today.

In Conquests, the army unit was significantly buffed receiving the Radar and Pillage abilities. Pillaging doesn't consume a movement point. In addition, the army receives +1 movement (relative to the slowest unit) and can heal in enemy territory. Other information can be found here.

I'm interested only in their use in a single player game in respect of game balance, and I'm not particularly interested as to how well the AI uses them.

Sulla suggests armies are overpowered. I tend to agree. I'm curious as to what the community thinks?

Do you prefer armies the way they were in Vanilla/Play the World or do you prefer the buffs introduced in Conquests? What would your ideal army capability look like?

Thanks everyone!

Trent

 

[templar_x]

I'm interested only in their use in a single player game in respect of game balance, and I'm not particularly interested as to how well the AI uses them.

If I take that sentence as it is, I couldn´t say anything about it really.

Because, the big problem with armies in a SPG in fact *is* that that the AS won´t attack it in most circumstances. And that it won´t use them (properly) themselves.

Play against a HP and you find that there is nothing too OP about armies. See the Triel SG here on the forum as an example.

t_x

 

[vorlon_mi]

Hi all,

After reading Sulla's critique of Civ 3 Conquests written back in 2004, I'm curious as to the communities feeling about the Army unit today.

In Conquests, the army unit was significantly buffed receiving the Radar and Pillage abilities. Pillaging doesn't consume a movement point. In addition, the army receives +1 movement (relative to the slowest unit) and can heal in enemy territory. Other information can be found here.

I'm interested only in their use in a single player game in respect of game balance, and I'm not particularly interested as to how well the AI uses them.

Sulla suggests armies are overpowered. I tend to agree. I'm curious as to what the community thinks?

Do you prefer armies the way they were in Vanilla/Play the World or do you prefer the buffs introduced in Conquests? What would your ideal army capability look like?

Thanks everyone!

Trent

I have been playing Conquests (a.k.a. Civ3 Complete) for so long that I've forgotten what armies used to do.

Base case, I like what they do. I like having an army comprised of single-movers that can cover my siege units (catapults, trebs). For those times when I need pillaging, an army comprised of fast-movers (knights, cavs) is fun. They are relatively safe from attack until the CPU players get aircraft.
I've been known to add an infantry unit as the 4th to an archer army or medieval infantry army, to make it more durable in the Industrial Era.

Agree that the CPU players don't know how to use them. IIRC, it's a bug related to the increased movement; they can't decide which units to add to the army.

An ideal new capability would be either: a) upgrade the units in an army, or b) ability to swap out units, similar to the way that we load/unload ships by individual units.

 

[tjs282]

Sulla suggests armies are overpowered. I tend to agree. I'm curious as to what the community thinks?

Yes, definitely. But playing at DG, I'm usually quite glad of that!

Agree that the CPU players don't know how to use them. IIRC, it's a bug related to the increased movement; they can't decide which units to add to the army

That was true, but has been fixed by Flintlock. I almost wish he hadn't, because seeing an AI-controlled, fully-loaded Knight- or Cav- or Tank-Army rolling along (or worse, across!) my borders can be quite unsettling.

An ideal new capability would be either: a) upgrade the units in an army, or b) ability to swap out units, similar to the way that we load/unload ships by individual units.

Agree with all of these, but also wonder if a "combined arms" Army, which acquired all the abilities of all the loaded units, might have been a more interesting buff than the averaged + boosted A/D-values, +1MP, and auto-pillaging.

 

[Quintillus]

Agree with all of these, but also wonder if a "combined arms" Army, which acquired all the abilities of all the loaded units, might have been a more interesting buff than the averaged + boosted A/D-values, +1MP, and auto-pillaging.

*visualizes a paratrooping army with blitzing tanks which treats all terrain as roads*

 

[BlueSox14]

Thanks everyone! I really appreciate your interesting thoughts!

Trent

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Someone remember which patch enabled AI to build armies?
I remember Ai building armies and then, with the last two or three patches, they took this out.
I want the AI back to being able to be building armies.

Also, there might be a config file that could be tweaked to get the Ai to build back armies aside from looking for
that patch???

 

[justanick]

You probably want C3X: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/c3x.28759/

 

[Lazy sweeper]

You probably want C3X: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/c3x.28759/

Io got that, but I rememeber it was something like 1.09 and it was an official patch that came out around december, the year conquest came out.
And it was an official patch. In the download page the patches only go back to around 1.2.
I remember that patch as being really good for the AI being really good at forming armies, and then with the next update, they where back to square zero.

I started a new game yesterday with C3X. I got myself an army of Gallic swordsmand, but none of the AI has yet built one army.
Need to try again.
tnx. I read the description and it says they are enabled, but I don't know if there are modifiers I can change in the conf file to boost them up a bit.

 

[Miniskirt]

The Armies in the C3C Mod: Conquests Of Might And Magic III (CoMM3 Epic) are downgraded in that they only contain up to 1 unit. I found that this limitation works quite well, and have played 5+ games of CoMM3. I believe the other abilities remain, but it may be more complicated than that. I don't remember the old Armies from PTW/Vanilla. I definitely find the Armies in C3C overpowered otherwise. However, they do take effort to create which offsets their super powers some.

My Notes on CoMM3

 

[ronning]

Io got that, but I rememeber it was something like 1.09 and it was an official patch that came out around december, the year conquest came out.
And it was an official patch. In the download page the patches only go back to around 1.2.
I remember that patch as being really good for the AI being really good at forming armies, and then with the next update, they where back to square zero.

I started a new game yesterday with C3X. I got myself an army of Gallic swordsmand, but none of the AI has yet built one army.
Need to try again.
tnx. I read the description and it says they are enabled, but I don't know if there are modifiers I can change in the conf file to boost them up a bit.

ive had some success by making the Palace a wonder, toggle the palace to make armies available. generally speaking the AI will build armies more frequently.