Someone please explain why suciding militia is so effective

Militia have the highest attack/def : gold ratio and are supposed to be cheap defense troops.

So why is it that 4 miltiias cost the same as a tank but have 12 attack and 16 def...vs a tank's 8 attack and 4 def?

Using equal gold amounts you can just spam militia and beat any unit in the game...tanks, marines, destroyers, bombers...they all get raped by militia. Just spam militia and force your opponent to run out of money.

The sad part is that you mass a militia army to form a doom stack that your opponent cant destroy. 50 militias cost only 1,500 gold and have ATK 150/DEF 200. 1500 gold of any unit will die horribly to this doom stack and it costs almost nothing in upkeep. Just walk towards your opponent's capital. Your opponent needs more than 3k gold of tanks to kill the 1,500 stack threatening his capital...giving you a massive economy advantage.

The matchup gets even more ridiculous if the militia are PD militia or you are trying to use anything other than tanks to kill the militia stack threatening your capital.

So...your opponent is sitting outside your capital with 50+ militia. What do you do?

You can't leave it alone because 50 militia can beat 20 infantry (costs roughly the same) in a city. So you don't have any choice but to kill it but it costs you WAY more to kill the militia than it costs your opponent to make the militia, which means he has basically won.

Obviously this doesn't work too well when you are playing in europe where most cities are high income but low production, which allows you to use a wide variety of units. But it seems the best thing you can do on low income/high production continents like africa is to just spam militia because :

3 militias do more damage than 1 tank but cost less
2 militias do more damage than 1 infantry but cost less
3 militias do more damage than 1 AA (AND they work against all targets, not just air units) but cost less
4 militias do more damage than 1 destroyer but cost less

So on so forth...

It is just sad when 90 gold worth of "cheap defense" unit easily kills a 250 gold destroyer...

Can someone explain this design decision to me...why should i use infantry to defend cities when i can just spam militia instead...

Well militias have way limited mobility. they can not move far so they are no good for surprise attacks unless you have transports

Because infantry have higher defense, and they get defense bonuses when they're defending in a city.

In a city with good production you can build 8 troops there every 4 weeks. If you build infantry your going to get 48 defense. If you build militia you'll only get 32. Plus as Gking said infantry get a bonus defending and militia do not. So Infantry give more power given what you can produce.

Milita are good if you are not that rich. But with higher income there's not always need of milita when you can build stronger units. For instance marines. A player massproducing milita vs equal number of tanks would have very little chance to win. Why? Tanks are more powerful.

Because of range. That is all.

Militia are op in GW. cause same attack as infantry, with same range, one less defence but costing half as much.

lol do you guys remember when militia had +2 attack, that was the shit.

Written by nonames, 20.05.2012 at 19:29

lol do you guys remember when militia had +2 attack, that was the shit.

I want that back...

Written by Question, 20.05.2012 at 13:33

Militia have the highest attack/def : gold ratio and are supposed to be cheap defense troops.

So why is it that 4 miltiias cost the same as a tank but have 12 attack and 16 def...vs a tank's 8 attack and 4 def?

Using equal gold amounts you can just spam militia and beat any unit in the game...tanks, marines, destroyers, bombers...they all get raped by militia. Just spam militia and force your opponent to run out of money.

The sad part is that you mass a militia army to form a doom stack that your opponent cant destroy. 50 militias cost only 1,500 gold and have ATK 150/DEF 200. 1500 gold of any unit will die horribly to this doom stack and it costs almost nothing in upkeep. Just walk towards your opponent's capital. Your opponent needs more than 3k gold of tanks to kill the 1,500 stack threatening his capital...giving you a massive economy advantage.

The matchup gets even more ridiculous if the militia are PD militia or you are trying to use anything other than tanks to kill the militia stack threatening your capital.

So...your opponent is sitting outside your capital with 50+ militia. What do you do?

You can't leave it alone because 50 militia can beat 20 infantry (costs roughly the same) in a city. So you don't have any choice but to kill it but it costs you WAY more to kill the militia than it costs your opponent to make the militia, which means he has basically won.

Obviously this doesn't work too well when you are playing in europe where most cities are high income but low production, which allows you to use a wide variety of units. But it seems the best thing you can do on low income/high production continents like africa is to just spam militia because :

3 militias do more damage than 1 tank but cost less
2 militias do more damage than 1 infantry but cost less
3 militias do more damage than 1 AA (AND they work against all targets, not just air units) but cost less
4 militias do more damage than 1 destroyer but cost less

So on so forth...

It is just sad when 90 gold worth of "cheap defense" unit easily kills a 250 gold destroyer...

Can someone explain this design decision to me...why should i use infantry to defend cities when i can just spam militia instead...

*** GW doesn't count in this assessment ***

- Infantry, under nearly all cases, are better than militia because I said so. The "answer" is knowable, but not simple arithmetic.

- The easy demonstration: If you assume that any one of the factors that affect gameplay are limited (usually they're ALL limited) the best way to achieve a certain threshold of defense at one point is to build Infantry -- they have at least 2x the movement range of Militia and are approximately 2x as able for defense, but cost 2x as much. So once you figure in production capacity and limited gameweeks Infantry have high utility.

- To go to the heart of your question, it isn't merely a function or ratio of attack and or defense divided by cost, it is very much a matter of "Bandwidth" and "Friction" -- how many units can be produced over the amount of time, and how quickly these units can be delivered to the area to be defended -- these concepts, not so named of course, introduced by TheScorch and TopHats respectively, and I'll add a third consideration: "Effort".

- So, if you're looking to isolate the function to define "why (you) should use infantry" vs militia, you would need to calculate the *true* defensive value of each unit (as mentioned infantry gain significant bonuses in a city), then figure out how the number of weeks to evaluate. Once you have done these two tasks, you would then need to look at the number of units that could be delivered in that span of weeks, by determining the available cash, production capacity of each city, support cost and range. Finally, and this is a cost difficult to evaluate: Figure out the "management" cost to move the larger number of units, and their lack of flexibility (because of limited range -- we'll call this "effort" -- unless you're playing a "Casual" game, there are only so many minutes of gameplay to shuffle units.

I already addressed the production issue...(see the part about africa)

Infantry are stronger only on a one on one basis. 2 militias cost 60 gold but have 6 atk/8 def, a infantry in a city costs 70 and only has 4 atk/7 def. Militia is better.

Range is only an issue if you are trying to take cities fast. If you have a large stack of militia walking slowly towards his cities...well your opponent cant just ignore it, because he will lose his cities. He has to spend at least double of what you spent on the militia to take them out, which gives you the econ advantage. (I wonder why nobody responded to this part)

Or people building infantry to fortify a capital city? Why do that, when you can build militia for a fraction of the cost...i see people putting like 12+ infantry in their capitals for the whole game to defend it against surprise attacks, which makes sense...until you realise that militia are better. Range isnt an issue when you want static defense.

Once again its just absolutely ridiculous that 90 gold of militias do more damage than a freaking destroyer...

Not to mention that militia on transports are just so much cost effective than actually than trying to attack with tanks, destroyers or any other unit.

Militia isn't a bad decision. But if you have the cash to produce infantry instead of militia, then why would you produce militia? Militia should be considered a better option over other units only if you can't afford the others (assuming you are not using gw atm).
I do agree, that you cannot leave the militia stack moving towards your cap unresponded, but seeing the range of militia, you have so many time to respond to that. More time -> more weeks -> more income -> more units to build. And while you move that single stack of militia, the other player can just wipe out your weaker spots in defence with it's better and more mobile units, giving him the upper hand in units AND economy, in the end.
If you still think that militia is the best choice for you, just try using GW to make the best out of your strategy and see for yourself, how it works ; ).

The key word is "if you have the cash".

Sure, you have the time to respond to that militia stack, but do you have the funds to take it out AND take his cities at the same time?

You need 3k+ gold to take out 1.5k gold of militia. This means he has at least 1.5k gold to do whatever he wants.

So lets say you have 3k gold assigned to take out his 1.5k gold of militia...and lets say you have another 1k of tanks running around trying to take his cities. Well, now he has 2.5k gold of units to take out your 1k of tanks...

You forgot the Time, 3k Gold in Bombers, could easly take out your Militia and reach your City, same with Tanks etc

Well until you reach my city with your 1,5k worth militia, i've already managed to secure it, so i don't see a problem there. By the way, no one uses stacks of militia normally in a game. As i said, you can go on and try it, but it just won't work. The range of militia just won't do the trick for you. And if it would, there would be other people already using the method you're trying to develop here. But yeah, i'm saying that give it a shot and speak about your outcome ; )

If you make militia it costs more reinf..

Actually it could work in small maps...I was playing with four players and 2 of us were fighting each other while the other two fought. I managed to beat my guy and the other guy did too. Well i look over and see about 200 militia headed towards me and they moved extremely slow but there was nothing i could do and he slowly moved into my capital :/

Just one point:

Consider choosing Imperialist as your strat. This gives you free militia. This force then has an infinite cash per attack point ratio.
Does this grant victory?

Written by themartinmcfly, 20.06.2012 at 04:26

Just one point:

Consider choosing Imperialist as your strat. This gives you free militia. This force then has an infinite cash per attack point ratio.
Does this grant victory?

It's no longer free...

Theres a massive problem with this. where the hell are you gonna get the reinforcements? if u have very few reinforcements, any money you have could be better spent building stronger units. if u have plenty of reinforcements, they would probably be spread out over a wide area, and it would be difficult to consolidate your militia, given their tiny range. tiny range= less expansion = less reinforcements and income. if u managed to consolidate a massive militia army, you could have wasted much less time and resources by using faster and stronger units to invade instead

In order to amass an army of militia to match the strength of your opponents army, though, you'd need three times the amount of reinforcements used than him: And if you have three times the countries of him, saving money probably isn't your biggest worry at the time.

Good job bumping a thread where the guy hasn't been on for nearly two months.

Of course.

I'm too used to ROBLOX forums where almost everything is already an active post :c

I used to know that feel.