07-05-2002 21:45									#1
	Beg Firaxis to fix Armies in the Next Patch Inflate your Upload Space

Some of this information is a Repost but intended to try and focus Firaxis on getting Armies fixed in a near term patch that gets released to the public.

The ARMY unit in CIV3 may be the most embarrassing set of examples of coding mistakes that still exist within the CIV3 Beta version that has been on the public market.
A number of features of the ARMY as a unit should be simply shifted in the coding to allow these features to be applied to other units, while there are some outright bugs in Armies that have to be fixed without further delay.

Fix ARMIES to eliminate the following bugs:
1) Allow the units in an army to heal damage at the same rate as units outside the army. Currently (as of 4/21/02) the units in the army heal slower than their peers and receive no healing benefit from barracks. It can take 6 or 7 turns for a badly damaged army to heal whereas the individual units of the same caliber will heal in one turn if located in a city with barracks.
2) Allow units in an army to exercise their zone of control powers such as taking pot shots at passing units. Currently (as of 4/21/02) an army 3 infantry does nothing as enemy units run past the army. The standard features of the Army indicate that it should confer a zone of control on all units, just like a fortress, but this feature does not work.
3) Fix the Armies defensive priority calculations to determine if the units in the army are intended for attack or defense purposes. Currently (as of 4/21/02) an army of 3 veteran Cavalry will be the priority defender even when stack with 3 veteran musket men. This appears to be due to the algorithm that calculates the defender power of the army as 4 hit points times 3 units times a D value of 3. The Army has to stand there and get pummeled until it loses at least 7 of its 12 hit points before a musket man with a stronger D value of 4 will take over and defend the stack.
4) Fix the unit attack and movement points calculations for armies to address the current bugs as described: “An army of 3 or 4 cavalry can only attack once in a turn. When faced by three spearmen defenders, an advancing army of cavalry will take three turns to reduce the defenders while a group of three separate cavalry units will almost always reduce the 3 spearmen defenders in a single turn.” Standard features indicate that armies should have blitz mode, so if the cavalry still have movement points they should be able to attack.
5) When disbanded in a city, Armies should yield the salvage shield points of the army AND the salvage shield points for the units contained in the army. Currently (as of 4/21/02) the units in the army just evaporate. Either yield the shields for the units in the army directly, or leave the disbanded units for us to disband individually but definately the units should not just vanish.
6) Increase the range of defensive visibility for Armies by 1 extra tile in radius to simulate the multi-unit capability of the army. Even when poised on a single square, the equivalent units to a cavalry army would have great visibility each turn due to scouting and reconsolidation. Movement of the individual units would cut a wider visibility swatch through terrain and then reconsolidate.
7) Give Armies the ability to pillage improvements in some appropriate scale to the units in the army.
8) Give an Army 1 extra defensive point to simulate at least the minimum power that a leader will have in military police or resistance and culture flipping suppression. Currently (as of 4/21/02) an army of 3 cavalry has no greater impact in these areas than just a group of three warriors. Since the army is a military unit with combat capabilities it should have some leadership and military police value. Answering the question “should it be easier to revolt against an army of powerful military units or against an equal number of similar but less well organized units.” This effect has been tested in V1.21 and has no unbalancing impact on combat strength.

Armies are a unique unit in that they are currently the only unit that is limited to the number of cities AND Armies are also unique in that they are the only unit that can be limited to being built in a city that has a specific small wonder or improvement already built.

FLASHING LIGHTBULB AND CLANGING GONG.

Why would someone spend the effort to write these coding constraints and then hardcode the restrictions into the general settings for the game that limits the use of the programming to only one specific unit???

Why not set these choices as options on the units dialog and then make Armies the only current choice where this dialog applies to the unit released in the standard Civ3 product?

Expanding the usefulness of this programming would only require adding a drop down menu to the units dialog page that would let the editor restrict building of units to a city where a specific wonder or improvement has been built. FLASHING GOLD STAR and CASH REGISTER DING.

You would also add a check box to engage a ratio restriction on the units that would let you restrict the number of units that can be maintained relative to the number of cities, or number of improvements, or number of another type of units. For simplicity this Ratio should be implemented per 100 items of the restricting prerequisite. ANOTHER FLASHING GOLD STAR and CASH REGISTER DING.

Implementing these army like features to be potentially applicable to any or all units will give you a set of tools that can be used by the game play balancing Nazis to help control balance without just simply making the units worthless, ineffective, technically and financially inaccessible.

Other simple unit features that should be implemented along the same philosophical approach should include:
• A unit support cost multiplier and a transport utilization factor. Both of these factors should be implemented based on a 100 factor being the 100 to 100 ratio.
• An “obsolete by upgrade” flag that allows units to be built and then upgraded without eliminating the ability to build the first unit as is the current default implementation.
• Units “upgrade cost multiplier” that allows the upgrade costs to be defined as more or less than the standard calculated shield to gold ratio of 100%. This feature will allow units to be built in some towns and cities and then “sent to school” in other cities for the upgrade without making it impossible for towns to build the lower units.
• A “targeted unit” selection box and factor that allows each unit to have a defined other unit where its major attack or defense strength is most effective. This last item will have significant impact on letting the game play balance advocates control specific results without creating universal destroyer or universally worthless units. Examples of implementing this set of choices would be perhaps an A10 Warthog against tanks or a machine gun against infantry. These selective choices would avoid the seemingly silly scenarios where a longbow man kills a tank or where galleys can sink privateers 60% of the time.

Note that most of these simple drop down box restrictions and other ratio restrictions already exist and have been tested in the game code for units and for improvements/wonders (witness Armies, Wall Street, Battlefield Medicine, and SDI). Just take the coding and tie it to the appropriate drop down boxes and ratio boxes on the units pages and improvement/wonder pages and the result will be 15 orders of magnitude closer to a rave reviewed product by the core group of users that will drive all the market expansion.

This open letter really is meant to focus on encouraging the philosophical shift to make the features of the game more accessible for simple adjustment because we need to recognize that the hundreds of creative minds in the game play and modification community will use features in new and creative ways that may go well beyond anything that the original creators can envision.

Also, this letter should emphasize a need for an approach to game play balancing that does not simply focus on rendering the included unit incapable of reasonable and cost effective functioning. There ought to be a winning game strategy that includes valid reasons for building and using each unit in the game instead of a philosophy that actively tries to prevent the units from being any advantage to the human player if the unit are built and utilized in an appropriate strategy.

	07-05-2002 21:54									#2
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Excellent post! Jeff and Soren, come over here, and gives us nice armies.

	07-05-2002 21:57									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

aye, sure is --heh, explains alot of things for me. thanks = )

	07-05-2002 21:58									#4
	Got spare money?

Actually, I find armies to be plenty poweful in you just cut the shield cost in half and allow one per city. In my modifications, I also made the Pentagon and Heroic Epic(thinking about changing this to palace) able to build armies. This allows for much more armies in the game, for both the human and the AIs. And the AIs build armies frequently and use them effectively. The problem is just the cost and number allowed.

	07-05-2002 22:18									#5
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Frantz,

Don't be distracted. The ability of letting the user mod the standard game to counteract errors or shortcomings in standard features does not equate to fixing any problem.

The standard out of the box game, should be functional and should have the features as promised in the documentation:

1) Units that don't heal properly in Armies = Bug
2) No Zone of Control in Armies when it is promised in the documentation = Bug
3) Offensive armies defending before the more powerful defenders = Bug (or logic cramp)
4) Armies' without blitz mode when it is promised in the documentation = Bug
5) Disbanding Armies resulting in unit evaporation = Bug
6) Armies' loss of mobility and visibility = Logic cramp and undue penalty
7) Armies' lack of leadership impact on Military Police effect = Logic cramp or lack of big picture perspective.

We need the basic game to be fixed and fixed properly to let that function well without modification as well as support a reasonable structure for modifying and/or adding units that the Firaxis team lacks the inclination or time to develop and support.

Thanks for posting

	07-05-2002 22:28									#6
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Along the same lines I have to wonder wh y they don't allow units in armies to have stacked fighting, u know things like flanking, and things like that. That is so much more realistic, and it makes for a much more strategically deep game.

	07-05-2002 22:51									#7
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Heh, if you want to get anal-realistic, you can say that all of those deficiencies are caused by the ineffeciency of military organizations.

1) About the healing aspect, I don't have a problem with it. I don't ever want to see a army of 4 Mech. Infantry that has 20 HP that heals to max is not completely destroyed.

3) An army of defense 3 with 10+ hp or a unit of defense 4 with 3 hp. The army may take more damage but has a better chance to win.

4) My armies of tanks blitz. I gonna have to test it with other units, though.

7) When is your citizen happiness so close to the edge of revolt that this would make a difference?

	07-05-2002 22:54									#8
	Remove this text

Armies ever since 1.17f can blitz, regardless of units in it.

	07-05-2002 23:12									#9
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Cracker,
What mods have you done to your game? Your item #1 I have had contrary experience with, and Firaxis "says" they have fixed #2 & #4 with 1.21 (I have my own rant with #2).

quote: 1) Allow the units in an army to heal damage at the same rate as units outside the army. Currently (as of 4/21/02) the units in the army heal slower than their peers and receive no healing benefit from barracks. It can take 6 or 7 turns for a badly damaged army to heal whereas the individual units of the same caliber will heal in one turn if located in a city with barracks.

With 1.17, armies heal in a barracks to just shy of full strength in one turn. Let the army sit for a second turn to top them off. My personal experience.

quote: 2) Allow units in an army to exercise their zone of control powers such as taking pot shots at passing units. Currently (as of 4/21/02) an army 3 infantry does nothing as enemy units run past the army. The standard features of the Army indicate that it should confer a zone of control on all units, just like a fortress, but this feature does not work.

As you SHOULD well know, ZOC effects only display when the ZOC attack is successful, so it might well not display. In this I am only saying that I seriously doubt that you have proof of it not working. OTH, I fundamentally disagree with the way ZOC works: the units passing through the ZOC have their defense doubled "because they are moving targets," which I think is a totally bogus rationale.

quote: 4) Fix the unit attack and movement points calculations for armies to address the current bugs as described: “An army of 3 or 4 cavalry can only attack once in a turn. When faced by three spearmen defenders, an advancing army of cavalry will take three turns to reduce the defenders while a group of three separate cavalry units will almost always reduce the 3 spearmen defenders in a single turn.” Standard features indicate that armies should have blitz mode, so if the cavalry still have movement points they should be able to attack.

In 1.21, even tanks in (or out of) an army should be able to attack twice (blitz) if they do not move. However, I recently had an experience which I suspected to be similar to yours with a Cavalry army, but I want to confirm it.
Perhaps Army blitz capability was only to allow blitzing if its components were blitz capable? -- I sure HOPE that's not the case!

Sorry to be so contrary, but your points that I objected to stood out first. Interesting ideas, overall.

	07-05-2002 23:30									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: quote: 4) Fix the unit attack and movement points calculations for armies to address the current bugs as described: “An army of 3 or 4 cavalry can only attack once in a turn. When faced by three spearmen defenders, an advancing army of cavalry will take three turns to reduce the defenders while a group of three separate cavalry units will almost always reduce the 3 spearmen defenders in a single turn.” Standard features indicate that armies should have blitz mode, so if the cavalry still have movement points they should be able to attack. In 1.21, even tanks in (or out of) an army should be able to attack twice (blitz) if they do not move. However, I recently had an experience which I suspected to be similar to yours with a Cavalry army, but I want to confirm it. Perhaps Army blitz capability was only to allow blitzing if its components were blitz capable? -- I sure HOPE that's not the case! Sorry to be so contrary, but your points that I objected to stood out first. Interesting ideas, overall.

Im using 1.21 and I attacked a city with a cavalry army.After I killed the first unit I thought -what the heck-and attacked again and to my surprise I was able to attack 3 times.
so this has been fixed however the other problems that are mentioned here still exsist.
Please firaxes give me an army that is useful.The blitz is not enough although I still try to build the military accadamy and pentagon just because I want everything.

	07-05-2002 23:47									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Apparently I was the only one frustrated today by armies today I would disagree with #3. The strongest unit is always the first line of defense even if its an army of offensive units (think of it as an immediate counterattack).

You gave an army a defensive value? When did that defense come into play? After each unit was down to 1 hp or when all the units were killed?

	07-05-2002 23:51									#12
	Blitz Mode Example 1 in V1.21 Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Using standard rules, except the cost of armies and build timing was reduced to let them be built early and fror 30 shields each so we would have lots of armies to test.

Basic Example: An army of 3 modern armor attacks a town defended by 6 spearmen.

Example 1a: when the army starts two tiles away from the town: army moves one tile to get nearer -- army moves 2nd tile to be adjacent to town (all units are down to one movement) -- army attacks first spearman defender and kills him -- army is now used up and cannot move or attack and the attack against the city does not continue until the next turn. Next turn army attacks town and kills 1 of five spearmen and then has 1 move point remaining which allows a second attack on the city to kill 1 of 4 spearmen. Third turn: army attacks and kills 1 of 3 spearmen and then uses its final move point to attack and kill 1 or 2 spearman, turn over. Fourth turn, army attacks and kills final spearman and still has 2 moves left after it moves into city.

Example 1b: three modern armor start two tiles away from the town anbd move together like an army: move one tile to get nearer -- all move 2nd tile to stay together and be adjacent to town -- first MA attacks and kills 1st spearman, 2nd MA attacks and kills 2nd spear, 3rd MA attacks and kills 3rd spear (all movement points have been used up). 2ND TURN: 1st MA attacks and kills 4th Spear, 2nd MA attacks and kills 5th spear, 3rd MA attacks and kills 6th spear and captures city with 2 move points left. 1st and 2nd MA move into town to join 3rd MA and have only 1 move point left each.

Army takes 4 turns to accomplish the same task a the same units without the army.

	08-05-2002 00:00									#13
	V1.21 blitz mode example 2 Got spare money?

Army of 3 Immortals attacks town defended by 3 spearman form a square immediately adjacent to the town.

Example 2a: Immortal army attacks and kills spearman defender with 1 hit point damage to immortals but then the turn is over because all movement points have been exhausted. 2nd turn, Immortal army attacks and kills 2nd spearman defender, turn over all movement exhausted. 3rd turn, immortal army attacks and kills final spearman taking one hit point of damage and captures town.

Example 2b: stack of 3 immortals attacks town. First immortal kills first spearman. Second immortal kills 2nd spearman taking 1 hit point of damage. Third immortal kills 3rd spearman taking one hit point of damage and captures town.

Attack by individual immortals takes one turn, attack by immortal army takes three turns under the same conditions.

	08-05-2002 00:18									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Cracker -

You have concisely reiterated my (now ancient) complaints about armies. But you didn't seem to include one of the biggies - the ability to either upgrade consituent units, or to replace/remove units as needed. The US still doesn't field Continental Soldiers in the army, we've upgraded...

Venger

	08-05-2002 00:33									#15
	1 D point for armies and armies of attackers do not make the best defenders Full PM-box? Change here!

For Alphawolf et all:

The defense point added to the army in the units editor had no effect on any combat results. The code for armies is hard coded to only total up the A and D values for the included units.

I tested the impact with a D value of 15 for an army itself and this had no impact on the combat results either.

Technically the D value would only come into play with the case where you would leave an empty undefended army out in the open to be attacked by enemy units or barbarians. In that case the army might defend itself without any included units (but I did not verify this as it border on the Ripley's BION category).

I will have to drag out the data on the defensive priority of armies because from the test results, Armies should definately not be the first unit to defend, if they are offensive units. The test examples I used were with cavalry armies accompanied by pikemen and musketmem defenders while attacking towns defended by persian musketmen and immortals.

The Cavalry armies are definately an important part of the attack scenario to try and dislodge the musketmen defenders.

But in something like 8 out of the 10 test cases, the cavalry armies were virtually incapacitated by persian counterattacks by immortals and cavalry while the accompanying defender excorts were almost never touched. When armies were used the attacks never succeeded while when the same units were used without armies then the defender escorts absorbed and blunted the counterattacks (as it should have been) leaving the attack force at full strength to attack the strong defenders.

The success rate of individual cavalry attackers versus musketmen defenders is lower than the same cavalry in armies, but since the cavalry armies could never reach the attack objectives with more than 3 or 4 hit points out of a possible 12 to 15, because they were maimed and victimized in the advance, the results overwhelmingly favored not using armies.

The key point is that an army of attackers that have D values lower than comparable defenders of their era will never be a comparable defender to the individual defensive units.

Longbowmen do not make a good real example because their D value of 1 does not exceed the D value of 3 for a comparable pikeman even when three longbowna are lumped together. But in the example of an army of Immortals (A=4 D=2) accompanied by pikemen defenders, the immortal army will be decimated and probably destroyed by just one or two cavalry attackers while the pikemen defenders will never be engaged.

A unit that is a weak one-on-one defender does not magically become a good defender in an army when compared to its defensive specialty peers. Remember that individual rounds of combat are resolved between the individual units on an individual basis. Even if an offensive army is not destroyed, it can be maimed beyond being any value if the current defensive selection logic continues to be applied.

	08-05-2002 00:51									#16
	Support Apolyton

From my experience, the AI tends to avoid attacking my armies so its usually full strength when it reaches it's objective. I understand your frustration with the inability to protect an army, but realistically and gamewise, i dont think it would be appropriate that a strong army (3x3d cav) would sacrafice one or more 4d musketmen. OTOH, a weak army (3x1d longbow) should definitely be protected by a 3d pikeman. I want my entire force to reach the objective, not just the army.

	08-05-2002 00:57									#17
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Venger,

Your point about upgrading units in Armies is a seperate issue that Soren and the crew have address (whether their answer is liked or not).

They have worked overtime to prevent units in armies from being upgraded, so I am certain this is not a bug or a battle to fight in the bug fixing arena.

When I build an early army, I have often just put one unit into it and then used it against a maimed defender to get the option of building the Heroic Epic. In GOTMV (Game of the Month on Fanatics), My first army was built and loaded with a single horseman, that later had a knight added to it to keep it at least marginally functional. One Elite horseman loaded in an army and then accompanied by 2 more elite horsemen outside the army is more effective and useful that three horsemen trapped in the army, at least in cases where you are not attacking Hoplites, legionaires, or Pikemen of any nationality.

After you generate the first victory to enabel the chance at the HE and Military Academy, if you are developing or trading techs at a stellar pace, then usually the best use for that first army will be to disband it it the HE city to contribute 1/2 the shields to getting the HE done early so you can get more chances at future leaders.

I should be on the record as stating that Requiring you to have a victorious army in order to have the ability of building the only method of building armies is a fairly severe conflict with the stated objectives of encoraging other styles of play beyond war mongering. This is a seperate discussion topic, but my first thoughts are always focused on planning to be in a positon to attack and kill or maim one of the psycho civs (you know who the bastards are) as soon as I can find them and particularly if they are near to my start position.

	08-05-2002 02:41									#18
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

All of crackers comments and suggestions should instantly go into the "DUH!" fixes inbox for the next patch.

Why didn't somebody think of this before? Oh yeah, they were rushed.

	08-05-2002 04:24									#19
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cracker: I would suggest that your experience with (or assumed way that armies works) directly conflicts with what EE4 says about being able to attack once for each unit in the army. Have you tested your argument about how the blitzing of armies work, or are you assuming that it works the same way as a individual unit (ie 1 attack/movement point). It's important, be cause otherwise all three of your blitz arguments may not hold a drop of water.

EE4: That said to cracker, are you sure that armies are allowing 1 attack per unit, not per movement? Have you modded anything in regards to the basic 1.21f rules about armies in your games?

	08-05-2002 08:39									#20
	Suffering from ads?

I did not want to conflict with Evil_Eric's observations without re-verifying the current status of armies in V1.21 as of Tuesday, May 7 at 9 PM MDT USA.

To get this data, I use a simple modified scenario file that makes it easier to build cheap armies early in the game. (the file also lets you build cheap artillery and cheap aircraft to test some of the discrepencies in the bombardment engagement rules, but that is another topic).

Using Armies of 3 archers to attack either groups of spearmen or groups of warriors, I have further isolated the coding problems that still exist in the army programming and which HAVE NOT been fixed in V1.21.

Armies containing 3 archers can only attack one unit per turn, because the code determines that the army only gets one move per turn at the time the archer units are loaded into the army. AN army of three archers standing next to a stack of 3 enemy warriors, takes three turns to defeat the warriors while a stack of three archers outside of an army completes the task in one turn.

Healing of units within an army is also still not functioning as promised. In 5 separate engagement sequences, the armies containing 3 archers never heal at the same rate as their peer archers that are not in the army. In a town with a barracks, armies of three archers heal at the rate of 4 hit points per turn.

Using the Civ3Multitool to monitor the healing process, the problem clearly rests inside the specialized unit code for managing armies because when units get loaded into an army their hit points cease to function on an individual basis. Individual units within an army, transfer their hit points to the army total when they are loaded into the army. So an army of three elite archers has a total hit point stack of 15. When an army of 15 hit points has sustained 12 damage points it has three hit points remaining, but inspection of the three individual units within the army reveals that none of the units show any damage at all. The damage and healing ratses are entirely controlled at the army code level and that is the reason for the discrepency. Not sure what level of genius arrived at the 4 hit points per turn healing rate for armies fortified in a city with a barracks, but that rate was verified in every case.

I did not verify the functionality (or disfunctionality) of armies containing units with multiple movement points on an individual basis, but upon first inspection it would not seem that the armies have been fixed to use the individual units contained within the armies in a blitz mode.

I also tried to verify the zone of control functions by placing the armies near to attacking units in such a way that would force them to run past the armies. In some cases I had four or five armies set up up like a gauntlet corrider to force the enemy units to retreat down the corridor. In three seperate examples, I baited the end of the corridor with a settler, a worker, or the enemy capital town (technically their only town). In each case where there were four armies lined up in two parallel rows, I would have expected at least one of the armies full of archers to engage the retreating spearman and warriors that passed down the middle. I never observed any Zone of control engagements with any of the examples. In total, there were 9 different retreating units moving across 8 army zones of control each containing 3 archers for a total of between 72 and 206 possible zone of control engagements. So if the army is conferring a zone of control, I am failing to observe it even under fairly severe test conditions of the "gauntlet of death".

	08-05-2002 08:56									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

I have attached the sample scenario file that I use to test armies, air power, and artillery in V1.21 of CIV3.

The file is a CIV3 .bic file with modified rules that just reduce the costs and prerequisites of these units to make them available to all civs almost from the first move of the game.

The Military Academy has been renamed to be the Army Factory and can be built right away in the game without a victorious army prerequisite. This Small wonder can substitute for a temple in the early build cycle for most cities of almost every civ.

The ICBM unit has been modified to be an army unit just like the standard Army except the ICBM Army has the one extra defensive point added so you can verify that it functions in the miltary police/culture flipping suppression mode without artificially increasing the defensive strength of the army. The ICBM army looks and moves a little weird and doesn't say " HOoo.... HOooooo ..." as it attacks but other than that it functions just like an army in the current Firaxis mode.

To load the .bic file, you need to download the .zip file that contains the map and then extract the .bic file to your civ3 directory. When you start your civ3 program then select to load a scenario and choose the "Tiny Early Air Power Evaluator" Scenario.

The map is has four civs located fairly close together on a single small continent to let you generate the maximum number of early test opportunities for these unit issues. You can choose the civs.

Note that this map also has functional helicopters and lethal bombardment capacity for all bombardment units so it lets you quickly test some function elements for these units as well.

Good Luck and please help us keep the focus on persuading Firaxis to fix the problems that still exist in their product that we have purchased.

Attachment: early army and air power test map.zip
This has been downloaded 1 time(s).

	08-05-2002 17:39									#22
	Re: Beg Firaxis to fix Armies in the Next Patch Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by cracker The ARMY unit in CIV3 may be the most embarrassing set of examples of coding mistakes that still exist within the CIV3 Beta version that has been on the public market.

Your diatribe shows a distinct lack of knowledge regarding the difference between design decisions (be they acceptable to you or not) and coding errors or bugs. Also, if you truly want to elicit a response from a company, a more conciliatory tone might be advisable.

I do not believe an army as a whole can be compared to the abilities of individual units that make up the army. They are apples and oranges. As implemented, they are a powerful addition to a civ's arsenal; your desired enhancements could very well be unbalancing.

Finally, I have in fact observed an army performing ZOC attacks against passing enemies. This has happened at least three times in my current game.

	08-05-2002 18:54									#23
	Support Apolyton

Stuie,

Try not to belittle other users or their approach to posting things. Focus on the issues if at all possible.

Your ZOC observation could be valuable if you decided to include two important details:

1) what version of patch ar you operating under

2) what type of units are in the army reacting with a ZOC action. i.e. are the units performing the ZOC engagement units that already have the zone of control feature even if they are individually outside of the army. There are several different states of behavior here for the army and you could be describing only the case where the individual unit already had a ZOC abd bow the army is not interfering with the exercise of the ZOC, This is not the same as having the army confer a ZOC on a unit that might not otherwise have a ZOC.

Since armies confer no special movement or attack/defense bonuses, the only way to evaluate their effectiveness is to compare there combat behavior to behavior of their constituent parts. The general expectation would be that the performance of an Army should provide some benefits and these benefits should be weighed against the added cost of the army (400 sheilds equivalent) and any performance losses.

The current performance issues have been:
1) healing
2) limited movement
3) limited engagement
4) loss of visibility
5) loss of upgradeability for units
6) lack of police power or culture suppression police power
7) loss of transportability
8) inability to disband and salvage units
9) lack of pillage abilities
10) vulnerability to attack (innability to provide strong defender cover)
11) loss of special abilities such as airdrop and am phib attack

Even though you may not agree with all the content or the approach, the greatest benefit from your existence on the planet would be obtained through providing input and suggestions to help focus and advance the discussion of issues.

	08-05-2002 19:57									#24
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by cracker Try not to belittle other users or their approach to posting things. Focus on the issues if at all possible. .....(snip).... Even though you may not agree with all the content or the approach, the greatest benefit from your existence on the planet would be obtained through providing input and suggestions to help focus and advance the discussion of issues.

Do I smell hypocrisy?

If you would care to run a search on this forum for previous army discussions you would discover that Firaxis personnel have discussed many of these points in depth with respected board members and argued the case for each decision. An army has been deliberately made less effective in many respects to counter its one overwhelming advantage, namely attacking a defensive unit which has a strong odds shift in its favour. Because it has 12+hit points to spend in attacking it is far more likely to succeed in an assault role without loss than three or more separate units of the same type, especially now 1hp retreat is not so likely.

The army container is not designed to be universally superior to seperate units. If it fought as often, healed as fast, had multiple ZoC chances e.t.c. then the lucky acquisition of an early leader would place one player in an extremely advantageous position. Instead the army is a valuable tool for smashing a single strong defensive unit. Those without armies have to resort to heavy bombardment and luck to achieve the same result.

Personally I wish armies were as key to victory and as well implemented as they were in the Call to Power series. Unfortunately Firaxis thought differently. We just have to live with that.

	08-05-2002 20:47									#25
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quote: Originally posted by cracker Try not to belittle other users or their approach to posting things. Focus on the issues if at all possible. Your ZOC observation could be valuable if you decided to include two important details....

I'll take issue with anyone that characterizes design decisions as errors/flaws/bugs/whatever in the code. It is a down-right misrepresentation of fact. If you don't like the way a system is designed, that does not mean it is improperly coded based on a design specification. It means your opinion differs from those who designed the software. Too bad.

I agree with Grumbold that the changes you suggested would give an overwhelming advantage to the first civ lucky enough to get a Great Leader. The game would be unbalanced. Armies have one overwhelming advantage that negates whatever disadvantages you perceive: they can have up to 20hp.

	08-05-2002 23:19									#26
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I took a few turns to verify that armies in V1.21 will allow units that already have a Zone of Control (ZoC) to exercise that zone of control against passing Enemies.

I did this by setting up the 4 army gauntlet with enemy units in located in the center so that the enemy units had to pass by the armies for at least two movements.

The I loaded and played a number of versions using enemy warriors as the victims (targets).

With the Armies loaded with cavalry, we get ZoC engagements about 25% of the time in 10 enemy moves across 20 zones.

With the Armies loaded with archers, we get no ZoC engagements in the same number of engagements. Cannot say for absolute certain that there is no ZoC, but so far I have been unable to detect one with any units like archers, longbowmen, riflemen, or infantry

So it would seem that Armies do not interfer with whatever minimal ZoC engagements that occur, but they do not seem to confer a zone of control as stated in the editor functions released by Firaxis.

In verifying the Blitz mode feature, it does seem that units can atatck more than once if they ALL have movement points remaining. The only challenge in the implementation is that units in the army that are not used in an attack also have one movement point subtracted for every attack that is initiated. This means that an army of one movement units can never defeat multiple units in a single turn even if they army units are superior in strength and well within range.

This is not a debate about game design priorities. The Released version of the Firaxis code states that Armies confer a Zone of Control and Blitz mode.

	09-05-2002 00:17									#27
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quote: Originally posted by cracker This is not a debate about game design priorities. The Released version of the Firaxis code states that Armies confer a Zone of Control and Blitz mode.

But armies DO have both those features, just not in all cases. I agree that giving blitz and ZoC to unts just because they are in an army is incredibly unbalancing. In my last game, I had an archer. 2 barbarian attacks later it was an elite. The iroquis were already settling too close to me so I killed off the nearest city with the archer. I moved on a second city. Not only was this city taken but now I have a GL. (this was as the Americans and truly shocked me). By now I have 2 swordsmen that get added to the army. I finished off the Iroquis before 1000bc. Had this little army been given blitz unconditionally, I could have ruled the world very quickly. It just means you cant give benefits to units just by adding them to an army. Also realisticallly, armies move much slower than units so a fast moving unit would definitely lose some movement flexibility (see battle of the bulge). I'm not saying that your opinion of the game is wrong, but just that your view is not necessarily the view of everyone. There's a tradeoff between keeping units mobile or getting the additional punch of an army. Then again, an army of all mobile units, you dont lose the blitz ability. My armies are either offensive or defensive, rarely do I mix the 2.

	09-05-2002 03:06									#28
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re Blitz mode. Have you tried an Army with 3 or 4 Knights?

	09-05-2002 17:12									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Venger Cracker - You have concisely reiterated my (now ancient) complaints about armies. But you didn't seem to include one of the biggies - the ability to either upgrade consituent units, or to replace/remove units as needed. The US still doesn't field Continental Soldiers in the army, we've upgraded... Venger

hi ,

yep they do , in the reserve's , ....

have a nice day

	10-05-2002 04:05									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Grumbold [quote]Personally I wish armies were as key to victory and as well implemented as they were in the Call to Power series. Unfortunately Firaxis thought differently. We just have to live with that.

The CTP method is SO simple yet SO superior it makes my nuts ache to think how either inane or obstinate Firaxis was not to utilize something similar...

Venger