Is armies overpowered in civ3?

The fact that the AI won't attack full strength armies and that they have ZOC means you can basically use them as mobile barriers to kill units. The "funnel of doom" technique means you can pretty much kill a Sid AI without a lot of problems.

 

After thinking about this for a while now, I think I'll have to say "no" on both counts, at least with respect to cash-rushed armies.

That the AIs won't attack armies does come as a nice advantage to them. But, the AIs also won't attack a veteran infantry, and an artillery proper unit inside a fortress (and you could also set up a funnel of doom/other army walls tactic this way also... the infantry and artillery inside a fortress get a "free shot" also, and you can shoot with the artillery every turn also). So, armies don't end up overpowered in this respect, since there exists a potentially cheaper way to get the same effect... at least in many places on most maps, just not as early in the game.

Cash-rushing an army costs you 1640 gold every turn, or a little less than 1560 gold everyturn in a 1 shield city. If you don't have Leo's you can upgrade 10.4 horses to cavalry for 1560 gold... or if you have a bunch of 1 shield cities with barracks, you can buy a horse every other turn for 116 gold, upgrade for 150, and put out about 5.86 ((266x5.86)=1558.76) veteran cavalry every other turn. If you have Leo's, the same process yields you about 8.16 ((191x8.16)=1558.56) cavalry.

If you face enough backwards defensive units (spears, pikes, and maybe muskets too... though that seems like the toss up call), those cavalry actually end up a better value, in my opinion so far at least, than a cash-rushed army. If you don't face backwards units, but have a lot of well-positioned artillery type units, those cavalry will also probably do more for you. If you face rifles and infantry, without well positioned artillery type units, the advantage probably goes to armies... if you have multiple wars to fight... but if you only have one that might work out differently. So, armies might end up better here, but it comes as at least close.

The benefits of cash-rushed armies may come as easier to take advantage of earlier in some situations. No doubt though cash-rushed armies do have advantages in many cases over other ideas. But, it seems that those gains in general don't seem too overpowering... so long as you don't mind disconnecting and reconnecting for upgrades and/or building some fortress.

Armies spawned by leaders though come as another story, since one might argue you pick up the equivalent of several cavalry with an MGL for cavalry. And armies when the AIs have enough bombers also comes as another story.

 

The whole thing would be moot, if they had just made the AI understand that the extra move is not to be considered when adding units to an army.

They do not use them as they 1) can rush wonders with leaders and 2) once they have a unit in an army they think they cannot add more of that type as the movement does not match the army. At least that is what we were told.

I wonder what use would have ever been made of armies, if humans could use leaders to rush wonders?

 

Do you jest here?

Do you mean Conquests ability armies? I mean, leaders could rush wonders in Vanilla, but armies weren't as powerful.

 

You did not know that the AI can rush wonders in C3C with an MGL? The reason they can is they do not use the interface (gui) that humans use and that is where the check is to prevent use of MGL on a great wonder.

 

I did VMXA, I guess you didn't understand my question. No loss, just some conversation.

 

Yes, they are overpowered, as others have already discussed here. Do I use them? No, and I modded them out of the mod I use to play the game. The only time I ever used them was when I first got the game and played the Pacific War Conquests scenario.

If the AI could use armies would I use then? Probably not in the epic game mod, they are really unnecessary and seem out of place along side the rest of the units. They don't fit in with the rest of the units very well. The game seems more logical without them - I cant think of a better way to say it right now. In a scenario with a much more limited scope, armies could have been useful.

The problem, as I see it, is that besides the AI not knowing how to make or deal with armies, the combat in the game is too basic for a complicated mechanism like armies. The game would need a better way to resolve combat than the simple rng it uses now, which really does a dismal job already in combats between single units.

 

The AI does attack armies. In particular if an Army's health gets low they will occasionally try to kill it. The AI is way too cautious and doesn't do this enough but they do sometimes attack.

 

only time i would switch/use feudalism if is i'm doing early wars, and the unit support is destroying me in republic or i want to keep warring and don't care about the tech pace

 

I've had mine bombed into oblivion when I was attacking. First bombed, then attacked.

 

I had on Monarch level an Army consisting of 4 Infantry and wanted to pillage everything surrounding the Korean's capital. I went there and -boom- my Army was destroyed in 1 turn by Cruise Missiles coming out of all the major Korean cities in reach.

 

Just as an aside--- could someone please fix the title of this thread. One thing I always valued on this site was the literacy levels of the participants.

Pick your poison: it's either "Armies are" or An Army is"..

I will concede that there probably are not more than 3 teachers on this continent who are capable of teaching grammar but really folks...

 

I'm very sorry for this...
I meant "Are armies overpowered in civ 3"...
I'm not good in English. So sometimes I do such stupid mistakes...
I don't see how to change the title by myself.

 

Select [edit] your post then choose [go advanced]. that allows you to alter the title.

 

Armies are certainly overpowered but it is also incredibly hard to make one.

 

Depends on how you play and what the game settings are. I have many times made three leaders back to back to back. I think the most I made in a single turn was 10. You merely need to have lots of combats with elite units.

 

If you take a look at the following thread, you will see how I lost a full-strength Army to a horde or to of Barbarian Cossacks, with the Army in the open on Grassland terrain.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=463159

Are Armies overpowered? I guess it depends on how nasty you make the opposition. I am also playing on TeTurkhan's Test of Time scenario converted to run under Conquests, and without leaving the Chieftain Barbarian bonus set at 800, I would be in serious trouble. I forgot that in the Test of Time scenario, Barbarians are NOT conscripts, but a fair number are set to Elite status, and of course, I had to boost the combat experience hit point bonus of Elite troops.

At this point, I could really use a leader that could build a Fleet unit, as I am loosing veteran galleys like mad to TeTurkhan's pre-built Barbarians. As for Armies, I figure that this is going to be interesting. Might not be a Custer's Last Stand, but it could be a Battle of Beecher Island.

 

Interesting. In a recent game Cav Armies were slicing Muskets like hot knives through butter but when attacking underlying Pikes in the same city they'd invariably go down to yellow or redline before winning. Likewise with a Cav Army going against a Numidian Merc on a Mountain (strength of 9 vs def of 6 respectively) the same thing happened; in this case the Army got down to one hitpoint before finishing it off. Didn't have the same problem with individual Cav units going against Pikes. Curious, no?

 

No, that is just random fluctuation.

 

But there's no "fluctuation." This always happened in that recent game. Perhaps the fact that my Romans were in the Industrial Age and Maya were still Medieval had something to do with it.Here's a thread from CevRev forum that discusses the same problem with Tank Armies vs Pikes:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tank-army-vs-pikeman.389648/