Standing Army size?

[Smoo]

Just wondering what people are going with as a peacetime army/garrison. There are certainly ways to build every type of military unit quickly so the limiting factor here seems to be maintenance.

Certainly if one does as I've seen many people suggest here and build Commercial districts everywhere and use trade routes externally, to prioritize gold, you could afford to maintain a standing army capable of running over the world.

But say you would prefer to only have a handful of Commercial districts, and/or you want to use your trade routes internally, to prioritize production... what's the smallest level of armed forces that you'd feel comfortable with to defend your territory? And would you position them all on the border, or try to take advantage of garrison policies and spread them out very thinly?

 

[clarkcd]

The fewest I'm comfortable running is one ranged unit in each city plus a smaller reaction force usually placed near a border where I believe the next DoW will be coming from. As I usually play as Rome it mainly consists of land melee units backed by ranged units with an attached siege tower for opportunistic conquering.

 

[KmDubya]

I like to build commercial districts and harbors everywhere, that gets me lots of trade routes that I use only internally other than to send one to nearby cities or civs for road building. The trade routes get me food and cogs which I can send to where needed. The gold comes from the districts and their buildings.. With the gold I can afford the maintenance for the troops and their upgrades.

I usually run the reduced maintenance cards, the extra gold per trade routes, the extra gold per commerce building and drop in the reduced upgrade cost card after teching to the next troop level. When I can make corps and armies I'll add fresh recruits to veterans to make them stronger but with the maintenance cost of just one troop.

A large standing army can deter AI aggression, keep the fog back to keep barbarians away or to hunt the ones that do spawn.

Like the saying goes 'it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it'

 

[aimlessgun]

Well you need 8 land combat units for the Mercenaries boost, so that's a decent number. Assuming you keep them upgraded it should be able to take on most AI invasions. This is assuming your empire is somewhat compact. Sprawling empire over 10 cities and/or multiple regions or open fronts I might want more (though hopefully you can ally with at least one neighbor to keep a front closed).

 

[Smoo]

I like to build commercial districts and harbors everywhere...

Assuming you also build industrial districts everywhere, though, are you okay with building no other district type at all until a city gets to pop 10? While your system certainly sounds powerfully efficient, I do like to have at least one of each district as early as possible.

 

[KmDubya]

Assuming you also build industrial districts everywhere, though, are you okay with building no other district type at all until a city gets to pop 10? While your system certainly sounds powerfully efficient, I do like to have at least one of each district as early as possible.

If I go for a religion I'll have a few holy districts, if not my first district will probably be an encampment and the commerce districts for the trade routes, harbors for anything on the coast especially if I can get a commerce on the river next to it. I find gold the big limiter in the early empire building phase. Science can be caught up quickly with industrialized university spam and culture I'm usually way behind on until I catch up with industrialized archeology spam.

Also just expanding and growing can keep you competitive for science so early campuses are not needed.

The Ai starts aggressive immediately so expansion and troops are needed right away. This leads to the gold problem which is corrected by the commerce districts. The industrial districts help get everything else built. Not sure I've ever gotten an Artist, Writer or Musician before Atomic.

 

[Xenotitan]

I usually build a ranged and a melee unit for each city, minimum of four of each type if it is early and I don't have many cities yet. I keep an eye on the military strength scores of my opponents as well and try to at least match them.

 

[skyclad]

I usually go for 8 with minimum 3 archers--> and one spearman for eureka.

 

[Stacked_Deck]

I agree with 8 for a relatively peaceful game. Hits the mercenary inspiration and is enough to defend against an AI attack. There's also a lot of bonus hammers towards military production (especially for ancient and classical units with the GotF bug) so building some ranged units as static defenses and having some light and heavy cav as a quick reaction force doesn't cut into your build queues all that much.

 

[Gyromancer]

Warriors have free maintenance. So far I've had great success playing ICS and beelining industrialization. District build order (as techs become available) - Industry, Commerce, Harbor, Theater/Holy. Pack the cities in. Be careful of filling out unneeded tech (e.g. Archery) as each tech increases cost to lay down a district. Build a small army and keep it close to home. Don't research Ironworking. When the AI sneak attacks, start cranking out warriors (IWS?) like crazy and "Zulu dawn" them. Once you've out muscled them, leave loads of warriors on their borders (ignore any complaints) and get back to industrializing. Ironworking is ok once you have a mass army, especially if you are Rome (extra chop from each warrior upgraded to legion) Watch your budget as you upgrade them though. At some point declare war and take the remaining cities on your continent and fill it out with built cities. (Colonial war has been easy to achieve at this point so far, but I'm gonna dial up difficulty again next game to see how it goes)

 

[Gtdead]

I'd say a couple of fortified warriors and 3-4 archers. The trick is to not get the next era upgrades for units too fast, so if you are under attack, you can flood the place with cheap and weak units and upgrade them all at once.

You are going to need mercenaries civic tech for this to work obviously.