Global Academies and Stacking Resources

[HermanntheLombard]

A couple of questions from a late-comer newbie:

Do buildings like the military academies, blacksmith, and workshop function on a global basis (meaning you only need one for your whole empire)?

Do resources stack, meaning that if a site has a potential of 5 food, if I eventually devote four plots to food will I be able to generate build four food sites with 5 farmers each?

Related to that, I'm not sure how or when the cattle options appear and whether they generate more or less food than the equivalent grain farms.

[anguille]

A couple of questions from a late-comer newbie:

Do buildings like the military academies, blacksmith, and workshop function on a global basis (meaning you only need one for your whole empire)?.

No, you need one per city.

Do resources stack, meaning that if a site has a potential of 5 food, if I eventually devote four plots to food will I be able to generate build four food sites with 5 farmers each?)

Resources stack. Yes.

Related to that, I'm not sure how or when the cattle options appear and whether they generate more or less food than the equivalent grain farms.

I don't have the manual here but i think that cattle farms produce some food and some Building Material...not sure.

Cheers

[HermanntheLombard]

Thanks for the quick reply!

A couple of questions from a late-comer newbie:

Do buildings like the military academies, blacksmith, and workshop function on a global basis (meaning you only need one for your whole empire)?.

No, you need one per city.

Hmm...so if you have an Archery Academy in a town you don't need an Archer Barracks? I doubled those up and see no apparent benefit (Archer Barracks can recruit the same units with or without the Academy). The manual says "Archers Academy: Allows archers to be recruited at your barracks." Sounds like *any* barracks will do, but I haven't built an Archery Academy without an Archer Barracks.

I'm confused about the Blacksmith. The manual says "Blacksmith: Allows shields to be manufactured and new infantry units
to be recruited." However, the manual also shows that each type of infantry (sword or spear) requires a specific level of barracks with no indication that a Blacksmith enables anything else.

Related to that, I'm not sure how or when the cattle options appear and whether they generate more or less food than the equivalent grain farms.

I don't have the manual here but i think that cattle farms produce some food and some Building Material...not sure.

From the manual: "Cattle Farm: Allows food to be produced" That's exactly the same as the Wheat Farm entry.

[anguille]

Not sure about the cattle farm...i think i build a little on random...

The manual isn't as good as the one for Spartan nor Legion imho.

[HermanntheLombard]

Some results of experiment:

One Blacksmith *anywhere* means that all infantry barracks can recruit Militia Spearmen.
One Archery Academy *anywhere* means that all skirmisher barracks can recruit Apiru Skirmishers.
The same applies to the Workshop and the heavy chariots.

I don't know if those buildings are required for higher-level units that require higher-level barracks (Megau Archers, for example).

I assume that if all Blacksmiths are lost then the ability to build Militia Spearment would be lost too, so having one of each building leaves a critical vulnerability.

[honvedseg]

The effects of Blacksmiths, Archery academies, etc., are global. One in your empire is needed to build the types of barracks that they permit. Once you've already got the barracks, you can keep building the army type, regardless of whether you lose the academy. It just means you can't build more barracks of that type. I don't know whether that prevents upgrading existing barracks of that type or not.

Certain barracks upgrades allow you to add Swordsmen or other more advanced units to them, although some of those also require a certain level of training camp in your empire. Again, I've never lost a Blacksmith to find out whether that would prevent the advanced upgrades once you already have the intermediate barracks types built.

If you have an Archery Academy in your town, it gives you an archer unit instead of a Militia Spearman or Hupshu skirmisher as a "built-in" garrison unit. That's about the only benefit the location gets.

At one of the early upgrade levels, you can choose either Farms or Ranches. Farms take more manpower, but I have yet to see an advantage to building them over ranches, which offer the same output with less population needed.

Edit - I rarely build more than 3 "production" buildings in a city. By the time you add a shrine or temple, and perhaps a library or university, there's not much room for a lot more, and 3 will generally occupy just about all of the free population. I dedicate about 1 city in 5 or 10 to cranking out troops, with a barracks or two and a training ground, and only one production facility.

[HermanntheLombard]

Regarding farms vs ranches, I tend to choose based on available manpower, choosing farms if I want to minimize unemployment and choosing ranches if labor looks to be scarce.

In production centers I usually have 3-5 production buildings, normally specializing based on the highest level possible (i.e. going with farms over bricks if I could get level 5 farms and level 4 bricks), but as an example level 4 tin may be more valuable than level 5 food...and for most kingdoms wood is proverbially worth its weight in gold. Another consideration: if I expect to use 2 or 3 slots for one product I now tend to develop those slots in parallel, for example building Basic Bricks in two slots before upgrading one to "full" Bricks. I think my production ramps up faster that way, though I have not tested quantitatively.

I usually only raise one type of troops per barracks city, but I may double up in frontier cities with advanced training facilities, especially as too many captured cities have infantry barracks but fewer have chariots or skirmishers. It is nice to be able to crank out 4-6 units in a bunch so that 2 or 3 cities can crank out a full stack each turn.

[honvedseg]

I find it cheaper to build up several production sites at low level than one at a high level. Of course, the two require slightly more manpower than one upgraded site.

As for barracks, if I'm at all serious about it, I'll build both a training ground and a barracks. At that point, it's more practical to build a second barracks type than to build both a barracks and a training ground in another city. Inexperienced units aren't any better than the bulk of what the AI throws at you in waves, and the AI can keep cranking them out while you can't. Unless I build units in my capital to take advantage of the training potential of the palace, I ALWAYS add a training ground to any site with a barracks, ASAP.

[HermanntheLombard]

I do the same with Training Grounds, though I may not make the upgrade to Training Complex. You're right that it's probably better to add a barracks than build another training ground, unless you want another source of the same troop type. Since the melee and melee chariot units take more casualties, having spares of those allows more rapid conquest or more solid defense.

I completely agree about inexperienced units, even as garrisons far behind the lines...and I don't usually need to allow the inexperienced since I usually have old barracks/training grounds from when the front was back there.

[Kissaki]

I usually only raise one type of troops per barracks city, but I may double up in frontier cities with advanced training facilities, especially as too many captured cities have infantry barracks but fewer have chariots or skirmishers. It is nice to be able to crank out 4-6 units in a bunch so that 2 or 3 cities can crank out a full stack each turn.

You can. The limitation is that you can't train more than one of a specific unit type, eg. not more than one sheridan swordsman unit per city per turn. But you can produce one sheridan swordsman, one 'Apiru archer, one Gish battle cart, one militia spearman, one Sabum Qallatum auxilia, one Hupshu skirmisher and one Khepetj auxilia. For example. You can produce up to eight (a full stack) in a city per turn, if you have the facilities.

Of course, if you choose to do so many of the units will not be of the quality you may want, so recruiting in the manner described above is more like a desperate defence when invasion is imminent. What I usually do, though, is train armies that contain three infantry, two cavalry and three archers/skirmishers (two if the cavalry units are also missile units, leaving room for another infantry). That means the city will be cranking out three units per turn, and that's how long it'll take me to build a full stack of my best units.


Edit: sorry, I misread your post. I thought you said it WOULD be nice to be able to get a full stack per turn. Now I see that my reply to your post was redundant.

I do the same with Training Grounds, though I may not make the upgrade to Training Complex. You're right that it's probably better to add a barracks than build another training ground, unless you want another source of the same troop type.

The training ground and barracks both have global values as far as being able to recruit certain unit types are concerned, but the training ground only affects the experience of troops raised in that particular city. So if you want your troops in Tyre to come out with some experience, build them a training ground. If, however, you just want Tyre to be able to recruit the new units, a training ground anywhere will do.

It just means you can't build more barracks of that type.

What do you mean? You can have as many buildings of any kind as you like, provided you have the space. You do not need more than one barracks, archery academy etc., but you can certainly build more of them. If for some reason I want another city to be the one to hold my archery academy, I build it in that city first before demolishing the one in my other city.

[honvedseg]

It just means you can't build more barracks of that type.

What do you mean? You can have as many buildings of any kind as you like, provided you have the space. You do not need more than one barracks, archery academy etc., but you can certainly build more of them. If for some reason I want another city to be the one to hold my archery academy, I build it in that city first before demolishing the one in my other city.

What I said, in the context of what I was replying to, was that if you LOSE your Archery Academy, Blacksmith, etc., you can't build any more of the types of barracks they allow until you build another academy, etc. I wasn't saying you could never build more than one of a specific type of barracks.

[Kissaki]

It just means you can't build more barracks of that type.

What do you mean? You can have as many buildings of any kind as you like, provided you have the space. You do not need more than one barracks, archery academy etc., but you can certainly build more of them. If for some reason I want another city to be the one to hold my archery academy, I build it in that city first before demolishing the one in my other city.

What I said, in the context of what I was replying to, was that if you LOSE your Archery Academy, Blacksmith, etc., you can't build any more of the types of barracks they allow until you build another academy, etc. I wasn't saying you could never build more than one of a specific type of barracks.

Ah ok, gotcha.

[HermanntheLombard]

I just started a new game and realized that I usually build one type of unit (infantry, skirmisher/archer,chariot) in each of my first three cities. My assumption is that those cities are too important to give up the extra production slots to multiple barracks. Thinking further, this means I have to devote three slots to training grounds. OTOH it lets me build an infantry barracks and a skirmisher barracks simultaneously, and it lets me produce some sort of trained unit on each frontier...while other units scurry across the heartland to try to balance the armies on each frontier. Tradeoffs, always tradeoffs.