Sigh. You guys aren't getting it. So stuck thinking what you want to believe that you aren't looking at what's really there.
First off Widdomaker. If you're going to quote me, please don't take it out of context and apply it to the complete wrong idea. What I said was:
Which reminds me. How useless is the pentagon? Same logic. Armies are so ineffective on attack that you're just using up more units to build them. On defense, they aren't significantly more valueable with 4 units then three (given the AIs aversion to attacking armies, it's actually valueless). Anybody given serious thought to this?
My point was that the AI wont attack a 3 unit army any more then a 4 unit army.
Therefore, building a 4 unit army gains you
nothing if you're using your army defensively. See how that works? By the time you can build the pentagon, you probably can mount offensive campains without needing huge numbers of armies, and the offensive value of the units in the armies is more significant then the number of units anyway. Thus, the pentagon really doesn't buy you much (other then the culture you get). Heck. I'd *rather* have a 3 unit army then 4 until you get transports since you can't put a 4 unit army on a galleon.
Ok. Turner. You're not getting what I'm saying at all. Read. Slowly. I'll trim this down as much as possible. It's unfortunate that this BB doesn't support multilayered quotes.
Originally posted by Turner_727 The point here being that why would you use a GL to rush an improvement you can pop rush or rush with gold?
Ok. STOP. Right there (how many times do I need to explain this). Read what you just wrote. Now read it again slowly...
If you have the military academy, can't you also pop rush or rush an army? So what the heck is the difference? Basically, your leader is worth an amount of gold equal to the amount of gold it would take to rush an army.
If you could chose to pay for building a temple but get a cathedral instead, wouldn't you do it? That's exactly what I'm suggesting. Instead of trading that GL for an army that costs X gold to rush. You can instead trade that GL in for a factory that costs 4X to rush. You are instantly making your leader 4 times more valuable to you.
It's all about resources and how you use them. You are given a blank check with a GL. Doesn't it make sense to fill it out for the highest amount possible? That means that you should be finding the most expesive thing that you can build and using it to rush build that thing. Unless an army is the most expensive thing you can build in your entire civ then you shouldn't be turning the GL into an army.
I'm really flabergasted that you're having such a hard time with this concept. I thought it was obvious really.
Now, I realize that there are times when you want to rush something and may not have the gold handy. But personally, by the time I have leader waiting to be used I have more than enough gold to rush production. Right now, in my current game, I've got some 6000 gold in the bank, getting 300 gold per turn. I'd have a hell of a lot more than 6k gold in the bank if it wasn't for gold-rushing improvements/units. Besides which, even with out rushing my cities are productive enough that I'm pumping out 10 tanks a turn, with about 20 to 25 cities producing tanks each turn. Production is not a problem. So why waste a GL on rushing an improvement that I could buy, or save it for a small wonder, when I can pump out another army this turn and use it to attack and capture another city or two?
If you've got that much military production, and that much gold per turn. Why do you need to build the army this turn? Why didn't you rush build an army last turn if you have that much gold and needed another army? Remember. This whole argument assumes you've got military academy. You could have built that army at any time in the past. Why were you waiting on getting lucky and getting a GL? Your scenario makes no sense. In that situation, if you really did want/need armies for attack, you'd already have built to your max number of armies, so the point is moot. You use the GL to rush build something big.
If your military strategy is so poorly planned that you *have* to use that GL to make an army so you can attack this turn, then you're doing something horribly wrong. I'll grant you that this may be the case. In fact, I've stated several times that the
only exception to my statement is in the case where you absolutely need to have an army built this turn. I still think that something has gone horribly awry with your war planning if you're even contemplating doing that though. Forgive me if I give advice about what people should do with their GL based on the assumption that the person is actually trying to be efficient with their forces and isn't making horrible tactical errors. If you don't desperatly need an army, you shouldn't use the GL to make one. If you do, under the situation you described, then you really are doing something wrong (or are just blindly following a doctrine of GL usage that is flawed, which is what I suspect is going on here).
Um.... That's ignoring the fact that in order to build and army to "attack" this turn, you'd have to have 3 or 4 offensive units that are able to move to city where you just turned your GL into an army, load them into an army, then move the army to attack the enemy. Um... Why the heck didn't you just attack with the units? If you've got that many extra offensive units lying around not doing anything, is your situation really so desperate that you'd be willing to reduce the production gain from the GL use by several times just to get an army this turn? I don't think so.
Rushing production on an army by using a GL isn't breaking even. It's not even close. Considering that you could have taken that GL and made another army, and then had one pump out in the next couple of turns, means that you wasted production somewhere else.
You're right. It's not quite breaking even, but it is close. You lose exacly one turn's production from the city that's building the army. Depending on the age you are in, and the shields in the city, that could be significant, or not. I didn't bring that example up to say they were exactly the same cost, but to illustrate a point that they are "close" to the same cost. The idea was to make you realize that if a GL == X number of production points in a city, then if you can get more the X by using him to rush in another city, then you'll be ahead. It's just a relative statement, not meant to be exact.
Again though. It begs the question. If you can build an army every other turn, why do you need to use a GL to build one? If it takes you 8 or 10 turns to build an army, then the "rush loss" from rushing an army instead isn't nearly as significant. Again. I'm not saying that you should do it. My point is that you shouldn't be using a GL to build armies at all. You should be using them to build large improvements that would otherwise take more gold then rushing an army would, or would take more turns then you want to spend.
There have been games, we've all had them, where elite unit after elite unit has pumped out a GL. When you have 30 to 40 (on the low side) units running around winning battles, you're going to get a lot of GLs. But turning a GL into an Army in an environment where you have to potential to get a lot of GLs is not stupid. It's wisely using your resources. Especially if you can pick up two or three more leaders in the next turn or two. now you've got two or three production cycles clear for something else in your Military Academy city. I'd rather be pumping out armies than have a GL sitting around waiting for an improvement to rush, that may be 50 to 60 turns away.
Sure. If you "need" that many armies. If you're picking up 2 or 3 more GL every few turns, then you'll run out of armies anyway right? I still don't see the issue. You're arguing some very esoteric situations. It's still about how to effectively use your GL. If you "need" an army, and can't wait the time it takes to build one at your MA city, then by all means use your GL. I'm simply suggesting that in all other cases, you should use the GL for producing city improvements and SW.
Again, releasing your MA city for building something else for two or three production cycles is not a waste of GLs.
Again. How many armies do you really need? If you are using them in offensive zergs then maybe you go through them fast. I don't. I use them as defensive strong points in enemy territory, and lose them very rarely. In a typical game, I'll disband more armies due to them being obsolete then I'll ever lose in battle. I've never seen a need to have more then a handful of them. If you are going through armies at such a rate that your MA city isn't able to build anything else, then maybe you are using your armies incorrectly. Just a thought...
I have seen a stack of ten infantry go out of it's way to avoid a 3 Calvary Army. This right here is the single best reason to use that GL to make an army: The AI Avoids them at all cost. Even when they have the numbers to take them down. I've had Armies, and this was back with PTW, that were low on hit points, get totally avoided by superior AI units. Why? Cuz the AI is afraid of them. The only time I"ve ever seen the AI attack an Army is with another army. They've never dogpiled it, they've never brought in a SoD of arty, they've never bombed it to hell and back. They avoid it.
Yup. As I said. Use your armies defensively. However, you just don't need that many of them if you have a coherent battle plan and avoid fighting on multiple fronts.
Also. Go try this. Redline an army of calvary and leave it out in the open. The AI will attack it with regular units, not just armies. I've seen it happen. That's why using armies for attack isn't a great idea. That's how you lose armies. Use them for defense, Attack with your fast attack units (calvary, tanks, MA). Use artillery to weaken units prior to attack (and use your army to defend your artilery). You will have a more effective offensive force if you do it that way.
Keep in mind, too, that under Republic and Demo, WW goes up with units lost. So those three to four units that individually could have fought as opposed to putting them all in an army, would cause WW to go up if/when they get lost. The Army, by combining all the units hit points, has better battlefield survivability than the units do individually. This means that WW will take longer to grab hold. Of course, if you're in Monarchy/Communism/Facism, WW is not a problem. [/B]
Armies count as one more unit then the number in the army for upkeep, transport, and WW costs. An army does have great survivability, but mostly if you use it defensively (as I've been saying all along). If you use it that way, you shouldn't lose many (any) of them during your game. Thus, there really should never be such a huge rush to build one that you need to use a GL for doing it.
And it's really not going to affect WW at all. I almost never lose a unit offensively in warfare, especially in the later ages. It's really simple. You bombard units down to red, then attack with your attack units. Except for the extremely rare bad luck streak, you will never lose an offensive unit that way. I'd estimate the odds of losing to a 1 hp unit with an offensive unit are about equal to an army losing to a full HP unit. I'd much rather use artilerly and get the same effective offensive puch from every unit I have on the field, then use only armies to attack and take fortified positions. It means I've got much more flexibility with my forces. I can actually take more ground with fewer losses that way.
Civ3 is all about resource allocation and use. If you can do the same thing while spending less, you'll do better in the game. When using a GL to build an army instead of using your MA, you are "spending" an amount of production equal to the most expensive thing you can build at that time to "buy" that army. Certainly, there may be situations where you need to do that. But mostly that's going to be due to a lack of planing. Always be aware that the fact that you put yourself in a situation where you needed to get that zero-turn army built cost you the most expensive improvement you can build.
Look at it another way. Would you sell a factory in a city to build an army when you already had a miltary academy? You'd do it only in a desperate situation. You'd never do it as a matter of course. No sane player would. Yet, that's essentially what you are doing when you use a GL to make an army (assuming you could build factories at the time, if not substitute with something else). I can only assume that so many players just follow rote strategies and have never really thought this through. I can't think of any other reason why this is such a hard concept for you guys to grasp.
Once you have the military academy, an army is a unit just like any other. You can build them anytime you want. You can't build a GL. if you're going to trade your GL for something you can build, you may as well trade it for the biggest and most expensive thing possible. To me, that's just common sense.
), no more than 8 cities in regent, standard map. So, I appreciated wakboth advice a lot.
