What is the point of an Army?

[MysteryX]

Interesting, so it seems like the best strategy when you get an army in the ancient and medieval age is to save them until the modern age. Once you load a unit onto an army then it cannot be unloaded right? So if I load up elephants onto my army then they are stuck there and cannot be replaced by armor later on?

Once you have a Military Academy, you can build armies without requiring leaders. To build a Military Academy, you must first have one army that is victorious in combat.

Therefore, when I get that first leader, I would almost always immediately create an army (because you can't get more military leaders from battle while you have one unused one), immediately load up that army with my most damaging units, and immediately try to win that first battle so I have the prerequisite for building the Military Academy out of the way.

Once you have the Military Academy available, I don't think there are situations in which it would make sense to save armies for later. Use them now, be successful now, exceed your current military goals. When those armies become later obsolete, let them get destroyed and replace them with new armies from your Military Academy.

Maybe if you were at the tail end of a war and very close to a new technology allowing significantly better units, saving the army for later would make sense. It isn't cheap to build armies with your Military Academy, you certainly don't want to waste armies. But I think it's a very limited set of circumstances under which you'd save an army for later rather than using it now.

 

[darski]

I have been known to go to war just to use an army when I am getting close to MT. (I have modded my game so I can build HE at Literature and get leaders every so many turns. Believe me it is the only way I will get them.)

 

[FeelGood]

Always fill army with similar units to get the bonus speed. Army is very useful if you don't want to wait for the slow artillery unit because of the extra movement and blitz.

I always try to get at least one army and then build them when needed. They are very useful in C3C. I remember in those days when I had a warrior, spearman and horseman in an army in vanilla thinking it would have the benefits of all units!

 

[Quasar1011]

Once loaded into an army the unit cannot be unloaded or upgraded. Somehow your advanced civilization can't figure out how to replace those swordsmen with TOW Infantry.

One way to simulate that, is to disband the old army in your least productive city, adding to that city's production; and fill a new army during the same turn with more modern units.

 

[CrashHydrogen]

Your statement about armies on ships is only a problem if you fully load the army right away. I usually take the army to another continent in "pieces" only to unite them once I reach another continent I am fighting on.

 

[bigFRANK]

Yep thats fine doing that unless you want to bring the army home, which other than using the city gift exploit you have to wait for galleons to become available.

 

[Lanzelot]

Yep thats fine doing that unless you want to bring the army home, which other than using the city gift exploit you have to wait for galleons to become available.

You can gift all cities on that continent to an "annoyed" AI, hope that they ask you to "leave or declare", and then if you obeye their boot order, your Army will be kicked out of their territory over to the next continent...
Afterwards you send "ordinary" units back to that continent to retake all the undefended cities...
See SGOTM14 for an implementation of that idea.

 

[Richie0]

the point of an army?

winning