Please Explain benefits of Corps and Armies

[LFRANK]

Since I can't find anything defining them in Civopedia I thought I'd ask here.

Now, I can see that joining 2 units (corps) then adding a 3rd (army) increased both the offensive and defensive strengths but doesn't seem to allow multiple attacks as one would expect from prior Civ releases. At least, not that I've observed. If I'm wrong then ignore everything below. With so many things popping on the screen to distract a player from their current focus I might have missed something along the way. OTOH, I don't remember being able to attack twice let alone three times with a corps or army unit.

So, does the increased strength work better than performing multiple attacks? Myself, I prefer the multiple attacks but am willing to be persuaded otherwise.

All comments and suggestions are appreciated.

 

[manu-fan]

A couple of things. Less stuff to move around, and decreased upkeep cost.

 

[Browd]

And don't underestimate the impact of a single, much stronger, attack vs. multiple, relatively wimpy, attacks.

 

[Ryika]

Both systems are meant to do different things, so the question doesn't really make sense.

Stacks were the expected outcome in previous titles, this title however does not use stacks but sticks with 1upt as Civ 5 did, and corps/armies are just an expansion of that system. By combining units into corps/armies you basically form stronger units by investing twice/three times the production. Those new units will not be as efficient as 2/3 normal units when looked at in a vacuum, and that's intentional: You're not supposed to just combine all units into Corps/Armies. But these units allow you to bring more combat strength onto a single tile, which is important when defending a small passage for example, or pushing into an opposing army.

Or when you just have tons of units in general.

 

[culdeus]

Is there some explanation of the rules and benefits of using them? i.e. 2x catapults CP = ???

 

[player1 fanatic]

+10 CP for corps, +17 CP for armies.

 

[PeteBDawg]

We don't have the code yet, and I haven't seen anybody do the math yet, but here is my sense for how it works after looking it up on various sites and videos.

The key for corps and armies is that their power doesn't scale linearly - it's a bonus relative to the strength of the unit that has a greater effect when absolute combat strength is high - and so they get much better later in the game.

We all know HP stay constant, but the damage one unit does to another unit in combat is based on the difference in their combat strengths - not their absolute combat strengths, but the difference.

So this means the combat system in any given era is going to hopefully be kind of stable within the era, as everybody's combat strength goes up, and the same modifiers are going to stay relevant, but a more advanced era has a big advantage over a less advanced era that is hard to make up with modifiers.

The civ6 wiki says in kind of a confusing way that an army might be a 20% boost in a unit's combat strength (before or after modifiers, I don't know). A corps or fleet is somewhat less than that - maybe 10%? Not sure, don't have numbers yet.

So, if you have two warriors fighting each other (20 combat strength), and one of the warriors were an army, then the warrior that is the army would be only 24 combat strength - the difference would be 4 combat strength, which is not very much - like as much as you might get from a card or a government or terrain.

If you have two infantry fighting (70 combat strength), and one is an army and one is not, the army would have 84 combat strength, making a difference of 14 combat strength. This is a much bigger difference - it's about the advantage a Swordsman has over a warrior.

But if you have two mechanized infantry fighting, (90 combat strength), and one is an army and the other is not, the difference climbs to 18 combat strength. And that's starting to get really big.

If we assume all this shoddily sourced math is right, one place where this really shines is when you're attacking. Imagine three regular tanks (80 combat strength) or a tank army (96 combat strength) versus an infantry (70 combat strength).

Each regular tank attack has a 10 combat strength difference.

The tank army has a 26 combat strength difference.

The underlying 70 combat strength everybody has does not matter in the calculations.

That's the difference between attacking a warrior with a unit weaker than a swordsman and attacking a warrior with a unit about as strong as a knight.

I have no idea what that actually means for how much damage both sides take, but it does start to show that corps and armies are deceptively powerful in battles even if they don't look that strong on paper and probably get more important as the game goes on.

If you do know better, please correct me, because I can't find good comprehensive info anywhere and it would be really good to have.,

 

[PeteBDawg]

I think the 10 / 17 number comes from testing infantry and might be different for different units - based on some sources saying the bonus is proportional. But I very much could be wrong.

 

[joncnunn]

In Quill's Russian game; America's capital was is in an awkward spot to capture; partially blocked by mountain range, and in addition forest & hills severely limited the number of hexes in which his siege units could fire upon it's capital; and so he beelined civics to Armys with great success.

 

[Machiavelli24]

When you form an Corp the unit gets +10 Str. Going from Corp->Army is +7. It is the same for all unit types. Damage is based on the absolute strength difference not the relative strength difference. So 10 v 5 is the same as 50 v 45.

It isn't really worth it to try to do a timing attack with corps. They only provide a gain of 10 Strength, which isn't as much as unlocking the next tier of unit. They also require more production than just making single copies of a new unit. The main way to use them is to follow up an existing timing attack to try and give it more legs. As you can have your new units form up with your experienced units to give them extra strength.

 

[Onii-chan]

Corps and armies are mostly intended as a way around the 1 unit per tile restriction. In small numbers you're probably better off not using them, but in the lategame when you have huge armies, there's no way you could get all your units to engage in combat at once since they would keep blocking each other. Using corps and armies enables you to put all your firepower on the front lines

That, and also combat outcome in Civ 6 is based on the absolute strength difference between the two units, not the % strength difference. I.E: a 15 CS vs a 10 CS unit will have the same outcome as a 80 CS vs 75 CS unit. A magnitude of about 30 CS difference between the two units will equal the weaker unit being one-shoted. So don't underestimate the CS boost you get from merging units into corps and armies; a single 80 CS unit is not necessarily weaker than two 70 CS units combined, especially with the right positioning. It's also easier to keep high CS units alive, pull them back and let them heal up, whereas a weaker unit might simply die. Plus in the lategame you can build corps and armies directly

 

[DrJones87]

Since I can't find anything defining them in Civopedia I thought I'd ask here.

Now, I can see that joining 2 units (corps) then adding a 3rd (army) increased both the offensive and defensive strengths but doesn't seem to allow multiple attacks as one would expect from prior Civ releases. At least, not that I've observed. If I'm wrong then ignore everything below. With so many things popping on the screen to distract a player from their current focus I might have missed something along the way. OTOH, I don't remember being able to attack twice let alone three times with a corps or army unit.

So, does the increased strength work better than performing multiple attacks? Myself, I prefer the multiple attacks but am willing to be persuaded otherwise.

All comments and suggestions are appreciated.

It's mostly just a way to beef up your promoted units with production.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

As many others have pointed, Corps and Armies shouldn't be overlooked. They have a number of significant advantages over normal units, even thought they are not an absolute weapon. Many of those points have been covered but in summery :

• Corps get a fixed +10 str and Armies another +7 (for total +17) and not a % increase. Since combat is based on the flat difference of str and not the ratio as it was in Civ5, that +10(+17) is just as relevant for 35 str swordmen as it is for 90 str modern armors.
• To give you an idea of the power, consider a warrior squashing a slinger. The warrior has 20str and the slinger has 5 melee str. Thus the warrior is +15str compared to the slinger. An army is +17. Quite significant (according to Onii-chan above, 30 str difference means instant death for the -30 unit).
  
• Going for the next unit in the melee line gives you between +15 and +25 str Warrior (20) → Swodrman (35) → Musketman (55) → Infantry (70) → Mechanized Infantry (90). So an army is globally slightly weaker compared to a single unit than the next unit in the line, but new units are 2 eras worth of progress.
• By combining your units, you can only attack once. They are in fact "stacked" but in an abstract way. All men in the army will fight, but they all attack at once, hence the higher str rather than allow multiple weaker attacks. Attacking with an army will usually deal less damage than attacking with 3 separate units, but they have some advantages compared to single units
  • Terrain might not make it possible to bring all your units into position to attack while an army occupies only a single tile
  • Damage inflicted is only half of the equation, you have to consider damage received as well, with higher str, you will take less damage when attacking making your army more likely to survive to counterattacks than individual, more severely wounded, units. Obviously this doesn't really apply to ranged units
  • An army will only attack once, thus giving you less war weariness as it's based on the number of attacks you make, the number of attacks you receive and the number of units you loose. This can be important in late game wars as war weariness can really cripple your amenities for a long time. If you can kill an enemy with 2 armies rather than 4 units, you take half the war weariness. It's worth considering even if your 2 armies are actually 6 units combined and won't deal as much damage as those 6 units.
  • If you can't finish of the enemy immediately, you give him less XP by attacking with an army than multiple units. This means the enemy is less likely to promote-heal before your next turn. This can be important on higher difficulty as often 2 attacks on an enemy unit is enough to give him one level on Deity.
• When you add a new rookie unit to an experienced unit to form a corp/army, you keep the experience of the best unit. This can create some really strong super-units if the opposition has similar era units, or allow you to keep up against more advanced units if you are behind in tech.