Useless Armies?!

[Crazy Jerome]

Just something that no one has mentioned yet--never underestimate the value of having 3 extra small wonders that you can build if the AI beats you to another wonder. Sometimes you are going for more than one wonder, or you really want that wonder in your capital, making the "switch to palace" trick not always possible. And of course, you can use the small wonders as mini-palaces to ramp up for more than one wonder (say, Theory of Evolution and save the Palace for ramping up for Hoover Dam).

I know a lot of folks will beat the computer by the start of the industrial age and lock in all the wonders, but I've been burned by the computer getting a leader and completing a wonder in 2 turns on several occasions. At least I got the Pentagon for my trouble.

 

[Hurricane]

One thing to note is that armies don´t retreat. They will always fight to the death. This makes an offensive army even more useless. Instead of having 4 tanks damaging the enemy and retreating to safety you risk getting killed or maximum kill one enemy with your army.

Only use armies for defence.

 

[Woody]

Mech infantry is a fast unit also so modern armor does not retreat when loosing. There are two ways to take mech infantry out in pop 20+ cities, bombard the heck out of them or have armies of modern armor. I prefer the armies because when I start a war I like it to go fast and moving in artillery takes way too many turns and I usually outrun the range of my bombers. Also with bombardment it can take 20+ attacks to get the defenders hit points down. Once I hit modern times I get my wars over in 2 or three turns by taking cities and being within range of modern armor of the next one, only quirks in terrian keep me from killing the enemy in one turn.