What is the reason for not being able to unload army?

[LockNLoad]

Well I just got Civ3 a week ago and I love it. I've been playing the French on warlord lvl cause its my first game of Civ3 so playing 2nd easiest difficulty setting. Playing French cause of Joan of Arc and they have useful civ bonus and unique unit.

Anyway I got 2 leaders. I built army with 1 of my leaders and loaded 3 Knights into it. Found army really useful (~1500AD) cause I never lose any of my knights, they always retreat on 1 red bar of health. However I now realise u can't unload units from army? I really want to change my knights to calvary and maybe a rifleman. So I guess im stuck with an army of knights that will probably end up having to fight tanks or infantry and get slaughtered?

I know there is a "cheat" to change rules of army unit using civ editor but really what reason did firaxis have when deciding army units cannot be unloaded?

I could use leaders instead to rush wonders but I've been using a little trick to have one city with high shield production to build a palace for 10+ turns before I gain technology to build new wonder. Then i switch palace to the new wonder and most of the time I complete the wonder like very next turn or few turns after that. So really I only use leaders for a cool useful army unit that will become outdated in like 50-200 years

I really hope the next civ3 patch will allow units in army to be unloaded or upgraded. Don't you agree?

 

[hamster]

the likely reason is that armies are already overpowering units. enabling you to upgrade units within would unbalance the game.

however, you can always disband an army for 100 shields. this would be a nice speed up if you had the military academy and were building more armies.

in fact, since the number of army units you can have is limited by the number of cities in your empire (1 for every 4), its a good idea to disband armies composed obsolete units.

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Ahem...you can unload armies I believe. We had a chat about this ealier, though I never followed up to see how well it worked. Anyways, go into the editor, >>units>>army and tick 'unload units' or something like that (like a transport ship would have) and you should be able to

 

[Marzipan]

I don't really like the way armies work, and they are way too few and far between. I think you should be able to unload and load whenever you want. They don't seem as powerful as they ought to be, since I've seen more than once an army go from full strength to zero and hardly do any damage. Last night I had an army of 2 knights and a musketman destroyed by one elite Hoplite when I attacked Athens! I think the army did maybe one point of damage Great leader? harumph