Is armies overpowered in civ3?

RedKi-rr

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Is armies overpowered in civ3?
One of the main reasons is that AI almost don't attack them. So, armies can pillage, cover troops and so on. In conquests they are even more powerful. If AI attack them then it would be more balanced to have armies.
What do you think?
Does anybody try to play without armies (and leaders) at all at Deity level?
 
Is armies overpowered in civ3?
One of the main reasons is that AI almost don't attack them. So, armies can pillage, cover troops and so on. In conquests they are even more powerful. If AI attack them then it would be more balanced to have armies.
What do you think?
Does anybody try to play without armies (and leaders) at all at Deity level?

Pretty much overpowered. Armies are a big human advantage. AI VERY seldom uses armies half-way well. This is why we go "leader fishing" with elite units instead of "Hey, this unit has less chance to die against top defenders".

Deity without SGL's could be done. Without armies I wouldn't want to try it.
 
Hey, just look at Rat43 in the Succession Games forum for an example of Deity without armies. Sure, CCM changes the dynamics a bunch, but it's still recognizably Civ 3 without armies.
 
Deity without armies absolutely works. You cannot expect to get a top ranking on the boards for your finish date, but you can surely win militarily. (And of course you can win by non-militaristic vc´s.)

Sid may be a different story. At least I have not tried yet to win militarily without armies. On a pangaea I believe it should still work. Not sure about continents though, because of the problems of getting a beachhead.

templar_x
 
The only thing that makes armies over powered is the AI does not know what to do about them or make them in C3C. If the AI attacked armies in the field with troops, the dynamic would be greatly changed.

Now I can park a knight army to cover units and not fear, unless they have bombers in range. A human with superior numbers that the AI often has would take that away from you. That is not even factoring in the human opponent would have armies of its own.
 
in a game where the AI attacks armies they would not be very strong in many situations. i think it would not even account for much if the AI would still not build them then. really, if you are using retreat units for attack, all the army would to for you is reduce your risk to lose the units in it ON ATTACK because it could use up more hitpoints before this situation arises.
in other words: if the AI would attack armies, i probably would hardly ever rush an army; since the AI does not, rushing and using armies is a very strong tactic on high levels.

templar_x
 
The AI will attack armies in the open when following things happen:
Assuming normal same unit 14hp army (elite*,elite,veteran),no military academy, no pentagon:
The AI will attack if he has a veteran with more then 3 times the defense of the army or an elite with a factor of 2.5. If the army is fortified or on hills the factors increase. The unassailability is not only for armies: Vet infantry on hill is not attacked unless the AI has tanks. The AI needs at least 25% success rate to attack.
Simple cases for healthy armies:
Archer/horse armies attacked only by MDI or better.
MDI armies attacked only by an elite cavalry or better.
Cav armies attacked only by tanks or marines etc.
Infantry or above armies are attacked only after sustaining damage.
In addition, When I had conquered cities on the same landmass the AI counterattacks totally ignored any defensive units, even outdated ones. A single infantry/rifle in the open was never attacked when there were unblocked conquered cities, bare workers or bare attackers .
 
Any full health army with 3 def or better will not be attacked by any unit. IOW a knight or cav army that is at least green is perfectly safe, UNTIL bombers. Then they will bomb it down and attack it.

The only exceptions are patroling units. If the AI sent out a unit on a goto and you move an army into its path, it will bump into it. I have run into that on a GR SG twice. Lucky, the unit did little damage and no others attacked.

This is how I know it was the patrolling. No other units attacked. If you are not running with the noaipatrol, you won't have to worry about that. The noaipatrol was put in after we cried about having to watch unit move in a circle in a town radius, till it used its movement up.

Turning it on again was to have the barbs go back to the old ways. In AW you normally do not have barbs so I am not sure why you would want to trade longer turn time for a 1 in 1000 or 10000 shot at a unit bumping into you.

True in one of the Sg's I did have a patrolling unit kill the army. It was a fluke as they had sent several units on move and each hit the army and finally dropped it to yellow. That was enough for the AI to use tanks to attack.

The only time I ever saw or read of an army killed, without bombers, when it was full health.
 
Thanks for your answers!

I saw Rat41 and Rat42, but they play CCM and there are 31 civs...This makes things completely different. And there are a lot of other rules.
I think "no armies" rule would up difficulty for about a half of level.

Actually, why does AI consider (when attacking) only its single unit but not its whole stack? I don't understand whether developers misslooked this or made by purpose (e.g, for winnable Sid).
It should defenitaly attack cavalry army with its 15 cavalries...It's so natural, especially if an army goes for pillage mission.
 
I don't know what the process used originated from, my guess is two reasons.
1) as you say not wanting the game to be harder for the average or casual player.
2) at what point to you say you have put in enough logic? Where they stopped or 15 more levels of consideration or when? The more conditions you evaluate for, the more processing power you need. The game is cpu bound too often as it is, so I suspect that is why they stopped where they did.

Times would increase while the game wades through all the options and fun goes down or you require better computers. The thing was they did not have better ones and still really don't.

I have no doubt that they understood many of the tactics that would be used and could have countered most, if not all.

The thing that could have been done with no effort, for sure changes cost time and that is money, is to have fix the AI to use and attack armies.
 
PS:

Rat games or GR games are played mostly as AW SG's. This tends to make the game play at a level lower than solo or nearly a level imo. Those games are also mostly made up of very experienced players.

The entire population of the board over the years consist of better than normal players. The vast majority of players that have play Civ3 probably abandon games and do not beat even Warlord.

They are not aware of the board or the other civ boards. Game companies have to make games for those players, except for a few. If they do not the games will be too complex and difficult for the average potential buyer.

No army rule would slow things a bit, but not change much. You still have the ability to adapt and the AI does not. I played lots of vanilla and PTW games without armies. In C3C, you would just used MGL to rush things and use numbers or combined arms.
 
I think if the AI systematically attacked and occasionally killed armies it would lend more value to the "Defensive Army" made up of defenders rather than the common knight or cav armies. An infantry army is really hard to shift, whereas a cav army is not so hard at all if you use a few cannons or artillery and are willing to lose a couple of units.

That said, I would pay a lot more for improved artillery use by the AI than them attacking armies. If they used artillery correctly the problem might sort itself out, with bombarded armies being redlined and thus "attackable" by the AI logic.
 
@vmxa, thanks a lot for your answer and explanation) I see your point about average player. Before this forum I even coulnd't beat prince or monarch...Or at least I had big troules there.

Civ3 was created long time ago and PC was rather weak at that time. But anyway it's takes a lot of time to see how AIs move thier troop (animation or fast animation) even at modern PCs. It would be very nice if developers added a couple of "if" for the cases when a unit has enemy army in its range...After that it should whether to attack it or not, depending on its neighbor forces.
 
I just had 4 armies destroyed in one turn along with about a dozen mechanized infantry. I had taken an enemy city with 3 luxuries and they wanted it back.

Now, I am sure some of those armies were less than full strength and all four may have been. In any event, the enemy had and was using stealth bombers prior to the assault.
 
Do note that only armies in the field are exempt from attacks. Put them in a town or on an airfield and they may get attacked. It depends on a number of things, like the armies composition and the enemies troops.

Also, if the town was captured or not plays a factor. I have put down a town and filled it with dozens of armies and been attacked and put in 2 armies and not been attacked. I do not recall ever not being attacked if I land and capture a town.

Subsequent towns may or may not be attacked, again depends on what I put in them and what they have to attack with. Airfields are the same. I do not make airfields, until I can either prevent them formreachingthem or have strong enough forces to defend.
 
I'm currently playing a Huge Continent game on Regent and I can confirm that armies do get attacked while they are fortified in towns.

Japan decided to attack me out of the blue towards the end of the second page of tech advances stage of the game, when most people were still using iron based weaponry and crude saltpeter based arms.

Their first assault took out two of my cities. I immediately sent in my 3 armies to the town with the most enemy forces surrounding it. They quickly reclaimed the town and heavily reduced the attacking force.

One army (cavalry) was unharmed, one army (cavalry) was slightly injured and the weakest army (knights) was a bit weaker. So I fortified them in the city to help them recover quicker (I had the barracks wonder).

The next turn the invading Japanese attacked the city again with individual Samurai. One samurai killed and army all by itself, the next army fell ridiculously easily to similar treatment, but the knights held out bizarrely enough.

But yes, in the main, I have noticed that armies tend to get ignored on the field. Is this a bad thing? I don't really think so. I think it makes a good balance between matching a reality concept with the practicalities of gaming.

Historically, armies pretty much did move about free from hassle (aside from guerilla harassment) as it would be suicide for individual units to engage them. The whole point of armies is to meet and defeat the opposing army and/or apply pressure and resignation to the mentality of the area they march into.

I'm also happy the AI isn't really permitted armies to any great degree and this does not bother me. There are several easter-egg-like moments in the game where the human player can steal a boon or two and it's part of the fun of the civ games to spot and manipulate these as part of the challenge.

What is more annoying to the concept of warfare is the fact that general troops gain nothing for being packed in large numbers. They all still just attack one at a time and have no combined value. On a recent Tiny Continent Monarch game the AI sneakily delayed my victory by some 20 or 30 turns simply by refusing to let 8 archers finish off one spearman in Rome's last city. The worst part being that units can even become stronger by being attacked in this manner rather than weakened which goes against all kinds of battle logic. Not only was my entire front-line wiped out, but the AI off course quickly re-built more defenders in two or three turns as if by magic and now had an elite spearman headlinging it's defence.

I think armies should be a tech advance at quite an early stage and that leaders should be a bonus you can add to armies to increase their defence and attack by, say, 35%. I also think that if you entirely surround a city then it's citizens should surrender after surrender matrix has been calculated. I'm not sure any city would wait until all the citizens were dead before making deals with people who aren't going to massacre them but instead give them more luxuries, security, trade etc.

Bit of extra waffle there, hope you enjoyed it, but yeah, I'm happy with the army thing.
 
i don't find armies overpowered actually, unless it's a cavalry army going up against pikeman, or knight/swordsman army going up against spearmen.

a horseman army can defeat a spear, maybe two, but it cannot steamroller a town like a swordsman army can. it's the same for a knight army against pikemen; they'll take down one, maybe two, but they won't flatten it like a cavalry army can.

cavalry armies themselves meet their match in riflemen, who are in turn flattened by a tank army etc.

if you're finding your armies to be overpowered, then check the tech disparity, because that's probably what's causing it.

that last bit assumes you're not silly enough to attack units fortified over rivers, or on hills, or behind walls, or in cities over size 6 etc.
 
Are you playing vanilla/PTW or conquests? Vanilla and PTW armies are not overpowered. Conquests armies are. A cavalry army in conquests can take down a TOW infantry in a metropolis, though not with ease, and it will slaughter several rifles per turn.
 
i don't find armies overpowered actually, unless it's a cavalry army going up against pikeman, or knight/swordsman army going up against spearmen.

a horseman army can defeat a spear, maybe two, but it cannot steamroller a town like a swordsman army can. it's the same for a knight army against pikemen; they'll take down one, maybe two, but they won't flatten it like a cavalry army can.

cavalry armies themselves meet their match in riflemen, who are in turn flattened by a tank army etc.

if you're finding your armies to be overpowered, then check the tech disparity, because that's probably what's causing it.

that last bit assumes you're not silly enough to attack units fortified over rivers, or on hills, or behind walls, or in cities over size 6 etc.

I think your missing the point about how armies are overpowered, the fact that under most circumstances the AI wont attack them is what makes them overpowered, not there attack potential, you can basically use them to cover units from counterattacks.
 
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