Civ 3

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Great Leaders are random, I have had many games I havent got a single one despite intense warfare and games where I have perhaps had 2-3 minor wars and got several GL's. Being militaristic or not plays in of course but there is still a large bit of chance in it.

You create an army by moving a GL into a city and then it gets an icon to "Create army", it also have an icon of "rush production" for when you want an instant wonder. When the army is created you just load it up with units, three units from the start and four after you have built the pentagon. When you have your one army you never need to use a GL for it again, after your army wins its first battle you can build the military academy which can create armies. In battle an army works pretty much as you said, I do think it lets one unit fight until it is redlined and then move on to the next one.

Actually, armies arent all that good, most of the time it is actually more efficent, especially in the modern ages when you have units which can blitz. It is most of the time better to let three Modern Armour attack each on its own, thus it can attack up to three times every turn, if you have luck your three MA's would then attack nine times that turn while your army of three MA's could only attack three. I also think that armies cant blitz at all in vanilla civ and can only ever attack once even if they are full of MA's. Armies also heal slower, an army heals one unit in it per turn, while a city with a barrack can heal an infinite number of solo units each turn. I tend to fill up my armies with defensive units, nothing can crack an army of four elite mech infantry.

[ July 14, 2004, 19:44: Message edited by: joacqin ]

 

Oh yeah, that's another thing that stinks. You also can't make a military academy until you have an army, which you can't have until you have a GL.

That having been said, 4 mech. inf. does sound like a tough nut to crack.

 

The other main issue with armies is that they are expensive to build and you could crank out a higher value of units for the same amount of production. They do have their uses in certain tactics, especially when they are loaded up with defensive units they can go cruising around the enemies territory pillaging and distracting, especially if you want a unit that can survive long enough to reach their capital and cut off the roads there (which then causes problems across their whole empire)

 

In vanilla Civ III the only units that can blitz are: Cossack, Panzer and Modern Armor.

An army's advantage is that it moves one square faster than its fastest unit, you have to eliminate ALL of its health to destroy the army AND the units it is comprised of (even if it is on one health bar all the units within the army will still exist and can be healed). On the HP it is made up of the sum of all the HP of the units it is comprised of.

A brilliant army I found was one of elite war elephants, each possessing +1 to hp and if you have 4 of them that's a total of 24 HP. Makes the indians a damn powerful civilization.

 

I have never noticed that armies move faster than normal, where have you noticed this? In my experience an army moves as fast as its slowest unit. So an army composed of two Modern Armour and one Infantry can only move one square in my experience.

 

It might be because I have 'conquests' installed and I usually make armies out of knights, cavalry, tanks or modern armor. Yet I've always found them to travel one square faster than the unit's max speed.

 

It must be something from Conquests because I have never seen an Army go faster than its slowest unit.

 

heh I build armies of the same units and I also have conquest and yes armies do travel faster, which makes them very useful.

 

I guess it's logical that armies travell faster than their slowest unit. It's probably the General displaying his skill in logistics.

The one thing I hated about Civ was the sheer amount of time it takes a unit to move from one place to the next. In 4000BC it takes a unit 25 years to leave its starting city. What does it do? Get lost on the way?

 

That all depends on the scale of the map, which is not provided. Who knows how far they have to go?

Alternatively you could say that a 'unit' is not actually one person, but maybe a small group of people and their initial journeys might involve a fair amount of 'there and back' forays which are summed by one unit moving one square on your map.

 

Plus, it just makes sense that it takes longer in 4000 BC. I would imagine that one square represents a distance of many square kilometers, as two food units from a square produce enough food to feed tens of thousands of people.

So, it makes sense that it would take many, many more years to lay roads down in such an area than it does in modern times.

 

Indeed it would take longer in 4000BC, but 25 YEARS? That's one hell of a long time. It seems like the Jews after they escaped from Egypt getting lost in the desert a cake-walk. You can picture a Civ III settler saying "only forty years? Damn, we got lost following a RIVER, it took us 150 years to find the sea."

Sure, it's back and forth movements but you'd only send 5 people back to the nearest city to report the unit's findings. I could walk the distance between these places and it wouldn't take me even half a year to do it. Think about what Alexander the Great did also, how long did it take him to move from modern day Greece to India? 9 years. Try doing that in Civ III starting in 334BC, it'll take you at least 50 years.