Increased Army Value Flag

I want to use the Increased Army Value Flag for the Pentagon instead of the Build Larger Armies Flag.

Does anybody use this?

It sounds like a better fit for fairness. The armies in my game are restricted to single unit armies to be fair to the AI and this sounds like a way to add strength to an army without adding units.

Any experiences shared would be welcome.

Edit june 5, 2011:

Question: Is the Build Larger Armies Flag cumulative.

I know that if I start with a max army size=1 and build a wonder that has a Build Larger Armies Flag than I can build Armies with two units.

Question: If I build a second wonder that has a Build Larger Armies Flag will I be able to build armies with three units?

If it is cumulative, then the next question is can you go past 4 units in an army. The transport capacity indicates that you can go to 100 units.

Has anybody done any testing on this.

 

Thanks for pointing that out, this one never appeared to me. Since my AI is using armies properly, I have no clue of how this is affecting single unit armies, though.

 

That sounds like it would work well, especially since you are controlling the army size already.

Sounds like you have found some good settings. Does the AI fully load his armies?

 

Hmm, I always wondered exactly what that flag did. Thanks for pointing it out, Pounder. Coming from a background in military history, I have gone for having the Military Academy having that flag, assuming that professional training will lead to more effective use, which is, of course, not always the case.

In theory, having a dedicated professional staff on a permanent basis should allow you to develop a larger force, which is why I have the Pentagon set for allowing larger armies. Again, this is not always the case.

 

I'm wondering: does the Increased Army Value flag alone really add any strength to an army? Because I can't see any change in the Attack/Defence values of the armies in my mod.

 

Yes, you might remember this thread.

 

That's not what I was hoping for.

 

The changes are hidden, just like terrain, city defenses, etc.

 

That is what I am hoping for.

I have made the changes and will test in my next game.

 

In my newest test of boosted barbarians and resources appearing with advances, I am about to build the Military Academy, so I will try to keep track if its appparent effect on my armies. Prior experience give me a sense that the Military Academy, with the more Increased Army Value box checked, is more effective, but that is just a sense, not supported by harder analysis.

 

I tested using single unit armies.

Offensive unit (Army):
Attack 6, Speed 2, Hitpoints 5

Defensive unit:
Defense 10, Speed 2, Hitpionts 4, Def Bombard 12

Test 1 (without Increased Army Value Flag):
After 100 test battles
Army won 32% of the time, Defender won 68% of the time.

Test 2 (with Increased Army Value Flag structure built [EDIT: my civ strength was strong]):
After 100 test battles
Army won 20% of the time, Defender won 80% of the time.

==================

Strange results, huh?

So what could have caused that? Well, the only thing different that happened, was:

In debug mode:
1) I researched a late tech that gave me the ability to build the proper improvement
2) I built the improvement.
3) I placed a few more strong units on the map (in my town), which made me go from 'average' strength to 'strong' compared to opposing civ.

Since there's no way to 'give' the AI the same tech I gave myself, can't test if being more advanced makes your units 'weaker'.

I can, however, test the civ strength, by removing all those 'strong units'. And then see what the results are.

Test 3 (with Increased Army Value Flag structure built and my civ strength average):
After 100 test battles
Army won 35% of the time, Defender won 65% of the time.

Test 4 (with Increased Army Value Flag structure built and my civ strength weak):
After 100 test battles
Army won 31% of the time, Defender won 69% of the time.

NOTE: 100 test battles isn't alot, but is probably enough to keep the margin or error around 5% I would hope.

So, does this mean that if your civ strength is strong, you get a combat penalty? Or could the 100 test battles that were done that turn had a very large margin or error?

Strangely, I noticed no real difference having the Increased Value Flag. It is possible that the game 'knows' if you cheated to get it? Of course, I did actually build it in debug mode, but I used the 's' button to provide the shields needed, and gave myself the needed tech.

 

I re-tested the test with my civ strength being strong, by adding strong units on the other side of the continent:

Test 5 (with Increased Army Value Flag structure built and my civ strength strong):
After 100 test battles
Army won 22% of the time, Defender won 78% of the time.

Results are pretty close to the other similar test #2 (20%/80%).

I think this should verify that if your civ strength is Strong, you will suffer an attack penalty (or civs that are weak to you get a [hidden] defensive bonus of some sort). Unknown if for all units, or only armies ? Although I would suspect for all units.

 

Those are unexpected results.

I would think that maybe the Def Bombard would skew the results.

Maybe matching the two armies with 10 attack and 10 defend and let them go at it.

First test both with no Flag set.
Then test with Flag set for the attacker and not for the defender.
Then test with Flag set for the defender and not for the attacker.

The question is how to set up this test.

 

Okay, def bombard probably was skewing results.

I set 10 attack and defenders to 10 defense. no Def Bomb. Army attackers have 5hp and defenders 4hp.

Came out to approx 70% win for army without the Increased Army Flag, and same with the Increased Army Flag. This time I did 180 battle tests for each.

Didn't see any difference. Improvement flag might not work in debug mode unless it's reached in the proper way.

 

Those are very interesting results. One other explanation would be that the combat RNG is set up to favor the AI over the human player, as a fair number of people, including me, suspect. Against that, you might also not be having enough of an effect to overcome any skewing of the RNG in favor of the AI with a single unit army with that flag checked. It might show up more clearly if you have a multi-unit army against a multi-unit army.

 

I'm going to leave the flag on anyways for my next game, I probably won't be able tell if it does anything, we'll see.

 

I might be able to do some checking in my current game as well. I just got hit with two streams of my boosted Barbarian Cossack raiders who in both cases hit my 3-unit boosted Crusader armies. In one case they dropped the army from 44 hit points to 26, the other from 46 to 37, but that one was in a city. Considering the number of barbarian camps my Explorers found before getting killed, I am going have to do some serious garisonning of my newly captured and renamed Zulu cities. This is what is caused being "hoist by my own petard".

As a side note, my Crusaders are all 5/5 units with 8 additional hit points. Crusaders were very tough to kill historically. The Cossacks, as the advanced barbarian unit, all have 6 hit points. I hate to think what I am going to hit on the land masses that I have not even gotten to as yet. The map I am on is 300 X 200, archipelago, with raging Barbarians.

 

Is the Build Larger Armies Flag cumulative.

I know that if I start with a max army size=1 and build a wonder that has a Build Larger Armies Flag than I can build Armies with two units.

Question: If I build a second wonder that has a Build Larger Armies Flag will I be able to build armies with three units?

If it is cumulative, then the next question is can you go past 4 units in an army. The transport capacity indicates that you can go to 100 units.

Has anybody done any testing on this.

 

I just completed a test with multiple wonders with the Build Larger Armies Flag and it is not cumulative, maximum only one unit can be added.

Edit: The limit for units in an army just may be 100 as the editor range indicates, I did a quick test with about 15 units in an army.

If your wondering why the hit points don't add up, it's because I gave the army a bonus of nine which I forgot to remove for the test.

 

Hmm, I have been wondering the same thing, as the way I have leaders being auto-produced, I can build a lot of armies. My limit on army size has more to do with the capabilities of naval transport than the limits on adding units to the army. As I play on continent and archipelago maps pretty much exclusively, I cannot move a 3-unit plus leader overseas until I have either the Galleon or the Carrack, anything larger than 4 total has to wait until I have the Transport.

I had not experimented with giving additional hit points to an army, but I very much like the idea. When you group smaller units into a larger unit under one commander, the effective combat power is greater than the sum of its parts, as the actions of the smaller units are being coordinated on a single objective. I will have most definitely have to add that to my next mod. I do keep wondering when I am going to run into an AI army, as I have the Small Wonders of Heroic Epic, Military Academy, and Pentagon all set to auto-produce leaders. Heroic Epic no longer needs a victorious army to build, just Literature, and while the Military Academy does require a victorious army, given my added and boosted Barbarian units, a victorious army is not that hard to achieve.

Based on my latest Debug run, I think that I have finally gotten the nasty Barbarians that I have been trying for. They are giving me and the AI fits. Now I just have to figure out how to add them as additional units so I can put the Celts and the Russians back in the game, along with the Privateer.