When to build an army?

[SwahiIi]

What are the turning points of the game that let you know it's time to start building an army and start wars with people?

Also, how do you guys manage your happiness? Is it ever a good time to avoid growth? I've been having a lot of trouble managing my happiness when I start going to war with people.

I am a noob btw

[ThePlagued]

always build an army. gradually from the beginning. or Ghandi will laugh at you and take your seaside village... burn it to the ground, execute all your workers, impale their heads on spikes and dance on the ashes of your failed kingdom.

[Roarak]

I'm by no means an expert player of civ myself but, for military, I'd say once your borders start meeting up with another civ or 2 is the time to start building an army, if not for conquest then at least enough to defend yourself, though if one of your neighbors is a warmonger like montezuma or shaka then you'll want to have an army earlier than that. As for happines the best way to beat it is with unique luxuries, settle your 2nd, 3rd, and so on cities near as many luxury resources that you don't already have. War is going to drain your happiness as you take new cities, decide in advance of cpturing a city if you want to keep it there as more cities does not always = better, my personal rule is keep the enemy capital (duh) and 1 other city they founded at most.

[ForevaNoob Wonemorturn]

Right away. Barabrians are the first source of money and culture with the appropriate policies, and your scouts won't handle them. I always play with that mod that turns off the limited experience against barabrians. The only way to build heroes... The sooner you start with a few warriors, and archers, the stronger they'd get.
About hapiness, it depends on your difficulty level, a lot. And policies, and a good use of luxuries, on the map or through trading. I'm not a "growing" fanatic myself... but tending to be, more and more.

[mss73055]

You can pick from both tradition and honour: Tradition gives you 1 free upkeep per city, Honour adds happiness and culture for each garrison.
Each city has to carry its own weight where it comes to happiness. Don't conquer cities what add no new luxury. Razing cities causes a lot of unhappiness in the process. In civ5 you can't have a city in every place. Plan out your empire.

[Matthew]

I usually build a small classical army since I very often try to take a city or two about the same time. Taking a city or two off your neighbor that early on pretty much puts them out of the game, and whatever is left acts as a buffer between you and the rest of your competition.

I rarely build medieval units. I just upgrade what I already have from earlier.

Renassiance and beyond it varies depending on what my goals are in the game.

Most of my late-game units, like bombers, are purchased with gold. I rarely train late-game military.

[LSD]

Only military unit i build is a scout. Scout usually becomes an archer, warrior might be lucky enough to be a pikeman.
Until i'm rich enough to just buy units, or until the AI actually attacks, that's basically it.

[Vinyl Scratch]

Originally posted by LSD:

Warrior might be lucky enough to be a pikeman.

I dislike my warrior being upgraded in ruins personally. I'd much rather have my warrior to upgrade to Swordsman, and then into Infantry.
Once you hit Lancers, the "anit Mounted/Armored" class is quite bad.

[zxcvbob]

Originally posted by Vinyl Scratch:

Originally posted by LSD:

Warrior might be lucky enough to be a pikeman.

I dislike my warrior being upgraded in ruins personally. I'd much rather have my warrior to upgrade to Swordsman, and then into Infantry.
Once you hit Lancers, the "anit Mounted/Armored" class is quite bad.

True, but pikes are good for a *long* time. You can always find a use for one or two, even in the atomic age and later. If you have no iron and no horses, pikes and crossbows are all you've got until gunpowder.

[Count_Dandyman]

you need an army from turn one what differs is how large and up to date you have to keep that army. Its a bit too long fiddly and biased by personal preferences for me to give general advice on that front beyond keep it better than any of your neighbours.

[civ]

I just won a domination on emperor with assyria at the start regardless of which civ you are you want to have your starting warrior, scout (or 2) and an archer then decide what victory condition you want to go for, then set up your economy ahead of time to make it happen, because i wanted to go ham and destroy everyone i rushed markets and banks and once my financial/happiness situation was sorted it was time to start building army for the rest of the game literally.

[Les White]

The best time to build an army is yesterday.

The second best time is now.

[Tatanka]

Originally posted by SwahiIi:

What are the turning points of the game that let you know it's time to start building an army and start wars with people?

Main reasons for me to go to war:
1. missionaries converting your cities, I HATE THAT, especially since AI takes the most rediculous non helpfull bonuses and mine are always suited for terrain.
2. neighbours getting trashed by a warmonger, i tend to keep neighbours happy (and use em as shield lol)
3. if they declared war on me, destroy their army, every single unit, and b-line artillery and shoot their stupid empire to oblivion. Wich usually evovles to everyone hating me and shooting everyone to oblivion :/

Once im dug in, getting the basic wonders, library, stonehenge, oracle, hanging gardens, notre dame, encore t wat, from there i b-line artillery.
Get red fort and or brandenburg gate, by then got a ton of cash, build or buy a military academy and build or buy 4 artilleries, trash a religious freak or liberate some captured cities. If nothing really happens i just build, dont like going to war and prefer to just build.
War only slows you down, gamepace and advancement.
With a stupid AI in this game 4 artilleries and one horse unit with visibility upgrade, can easily conquer the whole map no matter what difficulty. Before you get those all you need is archery for defence and the following upgrades of those for defence. Once you get artillery, if you really must have a time to go to war, that is it.

[Eamos]

When should I build an army?

There isn't one exact answer. Every civ, and every victory has its own times, but there isn't one exact time per say. You should always have enough troops to defend, but you shouldn't build any more than you need if you aren't going to war.

If you're going for domination then you should start building an army just before you get your unique unit (not sure why you wouldn't have one if you're a warmongerer). Then once you get the tech, start building a lot of your unique unit. Now if you're unique unit is late in the game then you should do some warring before you get your special unit.

How do you keep up your happiness?

So there's 8 ways to keep up your happiness that I can think of.

1) Build your cities next to different luxury resources (if possible)
2) Build happiness buildings, especially so you can get natural wonders like the Circus Maximus
3) Build wonders that give happiness like Notre Dame (I recommend this only up until emperor level)
4) Ally yourself with city-states particularly mercantile ones
5) Social policies-- these can really boost your happiness
6) Ideology-- Autocracy can really help you
7) Keep a decent tourism rate so you don't get affected by others' ideologies
8) Raze bad AI cities

[ProperGhost]

I do it when I have good siege tech, like cannons or artillery. But really, if you have an archer in all of your cities, you can repel any AI attack(On price at least). On one of my playthroughs, japan attacked me super early, and all i had were 2 chariot archers. He had 5-7 archers and 4+ spear men, but he retreated and surrendered later on.

[Tapak]

Originally posted by Van Gent:

Originally posted by SwahiIi:

What are the turning points of the game that let you know it's time to start building an army and start wars with people?

Once im dug in, getting the basic wonders, library, stonehenge, oracle, hanging gardens, notre dame, encore t wat, from there i b-line artillery.
Get red fort and or brandenburg gate, by then got a ton of cash, build or buy a military academy and build or buy 4 artilleries, trash a religious freak or liberate some captured cities. If nothing really happens i just build, dont like going to war and prefer to just build.
War only slows you down, gamepace and advancement.
With a stupid AI in this game 4 artilleries and one horse unit with visibility upgrade, can easily conquer the whole map no matter what difficulty. Before you get those all you need is archery for defence and the following upgrades of those for defence. Once you get artillery, if you really must have a time to go to war, that is it.

I can see that you are not playing on a really big difficulty lol