Tips for raising armies faster?

[LightSpectra]

Maybe I'm just impatient, but I feel like it takes so long to raise a full army to invade a larger country that all the units I'm training become out of date by the time I have a sufficient force.

Any tips, on epic or normal speed?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. Heroic epic with a lot of hammers
2. Whip, even at the expense of massive happiness.
3. Draft like crazy
4. Settle more cities earlier, and use more of them for hammers.
5. Use a tech lead so that your units can kill many more inferior ones

Pick one or preferably several of the above.

 

[UWHabs]

Well, the best ways to speed it up are through civics.

Police State: Build them faster
US: buy them
Nationhood: draft them
slavery: whip them.

My current way the fastest way to do it was through slavery and nationhood. Playing as the Ottomans, basically I would draft Janissaries, and whip either other jans or Trebs.

Ideally, you'll have good production in maybe 3 cities - your capital, your HE city, and then either another production city, or often someone else's capital. A good HE city can build units in maybe 2 turns, which throw in a few other cities, some whipping and drafting, means that it doesn't take too long to get a decent invasion force in place.

Another tip is sometimes (careful about this - it could backfire), you can declare war a few turns before you have your full stack. Since it often takes a couple turns to bombard the defenses in a city, you can declare, and send a stack of Trebs/Cannons with enough defensive units to protect them. Keep your other units back, withstand their counter-attack, then send your guys to the front once their defenses are torn down.

Or another good strategy is find a friend who you can bribe to war with your target. They'll take out the main stack of whoever you're invading, so you'll have it a bit easier.

 

[Bleys]

Look for chops as well. If you have 1 worker per city, have each worker chopping a forest into whatever unit you wish to build. Then, combining it with a whip, you can usually get another one with all the overflow.

 

[LightSpectra]

I do chop a lot, but that only works for the first army you raise.

 

[Lansky]

Getting the heroic epic up and running is the big one early on. A decently set up city will pump out 1 unit per turn on epic, and one with excess on normal. Even at a technology disadvantage up to emperor at least (my immortal play is still very shaky) the AI cannot handle that many units. Enough catapults will still weaken protective longbows or even muskets.

Later on IW and Military Academies. Military Science is often an ignored technology, however if you are fighting often taking a quick detour is very effective. Getting a few of these up in marginal production cities makes a huge difference in late game wars.

Yeah I know obvious, but I still tell myself "I need more units now, not Heroic Epic in 15 turns". More often than not this thought is the reason I find myself deficient in units later.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Pre build troops to 1 turn remaining, then, put a different troop type in front of the queue.

Be careful of hammer decay, otherwise its just civics, hammers, whipping, drafting.

Try leaving back area cities with no troops, its application of force at critical points that matter, not overall numbers.

Siege weapons, tech leads, or just application of force at critical points. (hit one point with all your troops)

Await the Enemies stack of doom, declare war, threaten a city, draw in the troops, kill in open(many horse based troops), or in city, if you have many city raider promotions.

 

[Nissin]

Whip. Mine. Win.

 

[mirthadir]

Several good tips have been offered, here are few more that might be a bit more esoteric:
1. Position your HE city well; not only do you want high , but you also want it to be close to your likely targets. Within 3 moves of the sea is also good as you can then use naval shuttling to get to the front (even it is just ring around the coast). If you intend to have multiple cities, try to weight them near the target.
2. Spies + mounted halves your walk time, at the price of making you extremely vulnerable to counterattack and eating into your or specs.
3. Rushbuy. The multipliers for are the first set to reach 100% in the game (aside from 5 mons or GP buildings); getting out to banking quick can allow you to have virtually no production cities so you tech fast and once you get a tech advantage after that (cannons are good), you just go 0% on all sliders and "build" faster than you can with hammers until assembly line. This requires that you snag the mids and commit early to heavy CE; not always wise. An alternative for early rushbuy (still requiring the mids) is to burn a few GM on trade missions and flip over for 5 turns and then rushbuy your units (you can queue load if you want more than 5 units per city you can devote to units for the iterim). This can be extremely useful for a GA or as a religious civ - slip into US/Vassal/Theo; rushbuy the newest wonder unit (phants maybe, perhaps maces or trebs, but definately good for Curis, cannons, and rifles).
4. Upgrade your units. Again it costs a pile'o'cash, but the fastest way to hit the AI with catas is to start with HA. If you manage to beeline Guilds before the AI hits feudalism this is extremely powerful, you can literally hit the turn after you get the tech. More commonly this is used to make CR rifles/grenades for a quick bash the LBsfest.
5. Resource denial. Hit using phantapult, camp their Fe before they get engineering and the age elephants lasts until gunpowder (or rifling if you have enough promos). This gets even more insane in the late game. 2 turns after getting nukes you can irradiate all the foreign U in the world and have a monopoly until they tech ecology. With oil you can have a tank advantage, but more importantly you can own the air. Each SAM enages only once and using carriers you can have enough fighters to never hit a full strength unit, ever. Camping on the enemy oil gives you ai supremacy for the long haul; after AdFLight Al functions similarly. Camping the oil and the U gives you naval supremacy for the long haul.
6. Don't attack at the AIs exterior. Landing your troops next to his main and cities (normally near his cap) allows you to nerf both his building rate and his tech rate.
7. Use diplomacy to isolate your target beforehand. AI-AI wars are great for depleting units and slowing research, but at the cost of GGs getting settled and making nasty defenders (CG III anything is damn annoying). Trade emabrgoes ruin AI-AI relations and help nerf the economy.
8. Privateers. Burn the seafood and either blockade while racking up caravel kills or play the navigation/circumnavigation game to burn and run; unhealthy low food AIs tech poorly. A properly managed Nav II/Circumnavigant privateer can play hit and run for a long time.
9. Spies, a dedicated EE has too many tricks to ennumerate. While most serious espionage comes out of research one way or another; if your research is EP then you can just go to town on your target.

 

[Elkad]

One not mentioned, when invading.

When you decide to war and have the key tech for your main attacking unit (whether that be swords or modern armor), build one in every city immediately. Put those libraries on hold. The more cities you have building your initial stack, the faster you get to start the war. If every science city builds even one unit, you can often shave quite a few turns off the delay up to size and moving.

 

[Yamps]

Just to add on drafting, look for a massive Globe Theater site rich with food for 1 per turn drafting. You could even shut down your GP farm if you don't have another place rich with food and turn it to Globe if you don't really need great people so badly anymore.

You could also prioritize bulbing Chemistry and getting Guilds to increase the output of your workshops for more hammers.

 

[Bostock]

[...] might be [...] esoteric: [...]

mons [...]

phantapult [...]

Fe [...]

Yes, maybe a bit esoteric.

(And yes I know what you mean by these words... but for the uninitiated... )

 

[UncleJJ]

The best way to raise an army quickly is to prepare for it beforehand by planning for the new military tech. Drafting and Slavery both turn population into troops and you can build up the population of your cities to act as a "store" of hammers. This is in addition to special military production cities with HE and Globe Theatre. So build several cities with this in mind. For your cottage cities add a farm or two (instead of a cottage) so they can recover quickly from pop loss.

So with the Ottomans and their great UU the janissary I would beeline to Liberalism and then take Nationhood as the free tech. Now trade for Machinery and Engineering which were bypassed by the beeline and then research Gunpowder. Start building trebuchets in most cities including the HE one. Once Gunpowder is researched and janissaries are available, switch civics to HR, Nationhood, Slavery and Theocracy. Work around all your cities drafting a janissary and whip a trebuchet or other troop, which turns 3 or 4 pop into 2 units and gives 4 unhappiness. Some of your whipping and drafting cities might start out with 12 pop and after 2 rounds of whipping and drafting produce 4 units (2 janissaries and 2 other units) and be reduced to only 4 pop. But with sufficient farms it will regrow rapidly and after 10 turns 4 unhappiness is recovered.

Once Steel is researched another trick can be used to strengthen your army and that is using gold to upgrade existing trebuchets to cannons (costs 85 gold on normal). The combination of cannons and janissaries is particularly powerful.

 

[budweiser]

To avoid large numbers of outdated troops early on, only build a few of each kind and when a new military unit bcomes available, stop building the old and only build the new. Keep up to date on your military techs.

Example, assuming normal speed, you probably only need or have time to build 3-5 axemen or chariots before either swords or cats come online. Then build 5-8 cats or swords before Horse archers or Longbows or x-bows come.

In this manner, you will always have troops, decent numbers of the latest and they are never out of date and will be uesful if needed. You wont end up with 12 axemen and a bunch of archers that can only really sit in your cities.

Instead of building a new unit, build gold in your hammer city for a few turns and upgrade exisiting units.

 

[Monsterzuma]

Globe Theatre + Nationalism: quickest way to amass an army when you don't give a . .. .. .. . about unit quality (and even the unit quality issue is quickly resolved with a beeline to Rifling; play as mechmed/suliman/zara and the issue isn't even there).

add in the Heroic Epic and you've got two cities 1-turning units. Later on you can add in the Ironworks for a third production powerhouse.

 

[Elkad]

when you don't give a . .. .. .. . about unit quality

or it just doesn't matter

Quantity has a quality all of its own

 

[JammerUno]

I find it doesn't matter if my units get obsolete, as long as the enemy has no counterunit, the army will do the job. Trebs, for example, are good until steel, and even then they're upgradable for a fair price. Anyway, the key is to either outproduce the enemy or to outtech them at production parity. If you're outproducting, it doesn't matter they're obsolete, if you have a techlead, your troops will be obsolete for you, but will still be up to date for the enemy.

 

[tycoonist]

if im teching towards rifling, and have a cottage based economy with little production, i focus on building macemen, then run at 0% science for a few turns and mass upgrade them to CR rifles. this is because it is particularly painful to draft/whip citizens working cottages and macemen cost less hammers than rifles. upgrading is painfully expensive, but not as painful as the sight of a horde of CR rifles is to the enemy.

 

[futurehermit]

Definitely drafting + GT.

Also, I find that I end up with larger armies if I simply dedicate myself to building more units through the eras, even if I am not at war. Especially siege (catas, trebs, cannons, etc.). Outdated units can be upgraded, which adds to your overall army strength. For example, you can turn the spoils of war into upgraded units. So, get that HE city pumping, as well as other good production cities.

 

[DaveMcW]

this is because it is particularly painful to draft/whip citizens working cottages

Whipping is painful, but drafting cottage cities is great. They tend to have surplus happiness so it only costs 1 pop.