XP progression planning with West Point

[Artichoker]

I don't like the idea of building West Point in my city with the HE. What a terrible waste of military potential , spending 800 hammers (+100% for stone) that could be turned into units including the +100% for HE... that's a lot of cavalry or whatever. Normally I build the West Point in another good production city (with forge, maybe plus factory and power) and then add a Military Academy later as the units get more expensive. I view WP as the equivalent to 2 GG, it is effectively a double Military Instructor that takes a lot of hammers to build.

I don't think it's a waste of hammers, because the assumption is that West Point is built during peacetime. During peacetime, one of the goals is to keep maintenace low, so that technology can progress, and military maintenance is one of the factors to consider here.

If the buildup of military units is done over a very long time, the maintenance of the new units accumulates as more units are produced.

In order to implement this theory, the timeline can be divided into phases of wartime and peacetime. Fortunately, the game rules accomodate this type of strategy by providing the civics Organized Religion and Theocracy.

Organized Religion is for peacetime building, whereas Theocracy is for wartime.


Another way to look at it...

Say, for instance, you've just finished a war and gained some new cities. Thanks to proper military planning, you have a lot of remaining assault forces that are still alive. What do you do with those units?

The kneejerk answer is to continue attacking, but this of course contradicts the reason you signed the peace treaty. Obvioiusly, you will need some time to rebuild your economy and reorganize your cities.

So, this creates a situation where there are more units than are necessary. The peacetime phase allows the HE city (along with other key military cities) to take a rest from military production, and produce buildings & wonders instead. The West Point wonder just happens to be one of those.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Interesting to see that someone else on the forum has come up with a similar plan.

But, I'm curious...how are you providing the XP for each city? If you have either the Pentagon or Theocracy, then I can't see how any city with a Barracks would have less than 5 XP for its units.

Sorry ... I was a little ambiguous ... 3, 5 & 9 are the "base" XP gained from buildings and GGs settled as Military Instructors: Barracks (3), Barracks + MI (5), Barracks + MI + WP (9).

The "3/5/9" idea is the basic strategy behind my military production and usage and doesn't change even when it becomes "5/7/11", "7/9/13" or "9/11/15".

 

[Hackapell]

Now that you mention technology, we can agree that there are 3 factors to consider: unit production, technology, and experience. The key difference, however, is making the most of these 3 factors.

Totally agreed. I tend to favor Experience and TEch over numbers, typically because again, The AI mindlessly spams units, and thus I'd rather have better quality than more troops,as I, unlike the Ai, am trying to get a tech lead to hammer the AI with.

I agree that technology is the key factor of these 3, when it comes to determining the efficiency of units on a unit-per-unit basis. But I think bringing technology into the picture strengthens the argument for faster unit production, since a technological advantage will reduce the significance of experience.

Again, totally agree, but it doesn't strengthen the argument, because what it actually argues is that you need less units to have a successful conquest.

Say, for instance, the defending AI units were CG 2 Longbowmen. Assuming equal numbers of attackers and defenders, would you really care whether your Cannons were CR 2 or CR 3? If you had 95% chances of success (I'm taking a number out of the hat here) because your units are technologically superior, would you really care whether you could improve that to, say, a 97% chance of success, by making that unit a bit more experienced?

Yes, because a standard longbowman gets more benefits from the walls and the terrain, as the AI has an annoying habit of building cities on hills. In my games, that CR3 makes an almost 20% difference. This is even more important with cannon, as they now only get 1 exp per battle, so the more promoted the better.

On the other hand, fast troop production magnifies the advantage gained from technological superiority, by increasing the sphere of influence your military can affect as a whole. Before Factories come into play, the HE city has a +125% bonus to production, considering the bonus from HE and a Forge. If you add a Military Academy, that becomes a +175% bonus to production. If you consider the proportional improvement, it's a factor of (1+1.75)/(1+1.25) = 1.22. I'd say that's a pretty significant margin--especially considering that your West Point city's units have at least 4 XP more than other cities' units. If you consider the same for a non-West Point city, the proportional gain is (1+0.75)/(1+0.25) = 1.4, which is a higher margin, but it's applied to less experienced units.

Yes, but that goes back to my argument of efficiency, maitinence, and quality over quaninty. We must play differently, because my military games are usually done by the time west point is built. Also, I usually have a large, well-promoted army left over from my earlier conquests, so its a matter of upgrading them and auguementing their numbers.

Finally, we have to consider the amount of XP needed to gain the next level of experience.
I think everyone agrees that it's optimal to have the most basic military cities produce at least 5 XP units. The only question here is how experienced the West Point city's military units should be. The higher in level you go, the more XP it takes to gain a new level.

Yup, and for that argument I'll agree with OTAKUjbski, who I completely agree with.

Just because you can promote the 11 XP unit to lvl 4 doesn't mean you must. The primary difference [to me] between 11 XP vs 9 XP is the option to promote. (I.e., if I have a 11/10 unit with 75% odds, I have the option of promoting to better odds; the 9/10 unit just has to "suck it up".)

I like keeping my options open.

Options are a greta thing. More is always better here

Somebody with the Pentagon still defends with longbows?

It's relatively easy to get up to CG2 Longbowmen before the pentagon. Simply use a barracks, and 2 of 3 of the following; Vassalage, Theocracy, or a GG.

Also, 5 cannons and 5 rifles is more than twice the hammer investment of 15 longbows. So in this example it's quantity and quality for the offense!

Then again, I don't need to rebuild 15 longbows, and At worst, I should only lose 2 cannons and a rifleman. 5 to 1 kill ratio? Yes pls

 

[Artichoker]

I see the advantage of producing 11 XP units instead of 9 XP units. But still, there's a cost involved there.

It comes down to the value of the extra 2 XP vs. the quantity of units you get from a new Military Academy. From my experience, attack probabilities increase steadily each time a Collateral Unit is sacrificed to attack a stack, even with low odds. This is easier to do if you have many units, even if they are just 2nd level--which is possible with 5 XP, the amount you get from a Pentagon + Barracks.

One question I'm thinking about is the definition of a "core military city". West Point and Red Cross allow for a 2-city core to be very viable, because of the increased quality of troops from these 2 cities. A Military Academy built in both cities would leverage the troop quality with extra quantity.

The 3rd core city would have neither of these wonders, so I'm wondering whether it deserves to have a Military Academy. If many high-production cities exist that produce 5 XP units, any extra core cities would just be making more 5 XP units, which results in less yield than making more 9 XP units.

So, it just comes down to assigning priorities of GG usage. To me, the priorities would be:



1) Military Academy in HE/WP city.

2) Create Warlord, to speed up access to 6th level unit.

3) Military Academy in 2nd core city (which will later have Red Cross).

4) Settle GG in HE/WP city.


So, it would take the 4th GG to be able to have 11 XP units in the HE/WP city, assuming that only 1 of either Pentagon/Theocracy/Vassalage is taken.


One selling point of this scheme would be the quality and quantity available of mounted units such as Knights and Elephants, pre-WP, if you combine Barracks + Theocracy + Vassalage + Stable. This would result in Knights and Elephants with 9 XP, just 1 XP shy of 4th level. Since they are offensive units, it would be quite easy to accumulate the 1 XP needed for advancement.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

West Point is low priority for me. I don't like to give my HE city a holiday from producing units - its a lot of hammers to build. Exception is when I have an engineer to rush it - which is a great use for a late game engineer.

If I am warmongering then I have often generated 3GG by this time in the game, which means they will be settled in the HE city for +6xp. Add a barracks for +3 and I can produce level 4 units when running theocracy (which I would probably be doing in a warmongering game). In those games I can't afford to give my HE city a holiday, so it just keeps building units. Adding West Point doesn't take me to level 5 and isn't worth the reduction in my military.

If peaceful, then I have a choice with my first GG which might come from privateers or maybe a skirmish war. I can either create the necessary level 6 unit for west point or just settle the GG immediately. Both let me produce level 3 units. So I will just settle immediately and put the hammers into military instead.

So the only time I end up building West Point is when I can rush it with an engineer. Or maybe sometimes with an Industrious leader that has lots of hammer cities.

 

[Catan_Settler]

I tend to settle all but one or two of my great generals in 2 or 3 core production cities, to spread that free XP around. The way I see it is its better to have lots of mid level troops than a few highly promoted ones that you are paranoid about losing in battle. Once you settle a general, it only takes 10 builds from that city to start out-pacing the XP generated by burning him as a warlord... Sure super medics are handy and all, but it's nearly as effective and far more practical and flexible to crank out level 2 medics every 5th or 6th build from your superbly engineered military training facility, and attach them to your stacks instead. Of course I like having multiple battle stacks anyways, so if you're the type that hits one city at a time with some monster stack of 50 units then maybe all those extra medics would be inefficient. I like the flexibility of having large amounts of mid level troops as it allows you to respond to sudden declarations of war from unexpected corners of the world, nevermind deal with those raging barbarians that suddenly appeared outside your youngest and weakest cities.

 

[Artichoker]

Good to see that there's a variety of strategies used for producing experienced military units, even those not based on West Point.

The HE/WP-based strategy is geared for late-game warring when you are planning to produce a lot of high-tech units.

Many of the units in the modern age come at late stages in the tech tree, and it's really important to have a strong production base in place--along with the experience boosters such as West Point--to ensure that you can make those modern units quickly, and with a good amount of XP.

It's like waiting for the next line of Intel processors, so that you can get more for your money, once the better processors become available.

 

[Artichoker]

Yes, but that goes back to my argument of efficiency, maitinence, and quality over quaninty. We must play differently, because my military games are usually done by the time west point is built. Also, I usually have a large, well-promoted army left over from my earlier conquests, so its a matter of upgrading them and auguementing their numbers.

The maintenance issue does not become a problem when you use low-experienced units as suicide units. In this role, high quantity is the key.
If I send a swarm of CR 2 Cannons at a city defended by CG 2 Riflemen, the attack odds improve with each Cannon I sacrifice, and the maintenance goes down as well.

I think the key is not either quality or quantity, but composition of forces.
How do we maintain overall quantity of forces, and still have a decent % of those forces as experienced units?

The key, I believe, is to concentrate both quality and quantity in the same cities. As I suggested earlier, maybe a 2-city core should exist for producing high-quality units, and the remaining cities can produce low-quality, high-quantity units.

The core high-quality cities will still need to boost their production rates, because their production will still be outnumbered by many cities producing low-quality units. This is why I suggest placing Military Academies in the 2 core cities.