To FIRAXIS: Army Comparison

[FrantzX]

Your military advisor is often way off when comparing you military strength to another civilization. The best way to fix this would be to make a civilization's total troop strength would be that sum of all their ground forces attack and defense values. Because workers, settlers, artilery and the like do not have attack or defense values, they will no longer skew the comparison. Also, the military advisor should compare the strengths of navies.

[Allemand]

IIRC, Civ2 did this.

[Stuie]

There was a discussion about this over at that OTHER civ site. One thing that came to light is that the AI is using the same estimations to gauge whether or not they can take you out in a war.... so they compare number of units without regard to strength (one warrior = one modern armor). This leads the AI to enter some obviously unwinable wars, and keep fighting them long past the time when their strength is spent. Also, it keeps the AI from upgrading old units. My thoughts on the matter from the post "over there":

The calculation definitely needs to be fixed. The one to one comparison is doing a disservice to the AI, thinking his one swordman matches up evenly with my Mech Infantry. However, I would suggest the formula per unit go like this:

non-blitz unit = HP + A + D + M
blitz unit = HP + D + (A * M)

That would provide me (and the AI) with a fair asessment of my opponents strength.

[King of Rasslin]

Stuie, do you mean civfanatics.com? That is one AWESOME web page, man I wish Apolyton was as cool as they are!!!

J/K

[Stuie]

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
Stuie, do you mean civfanatics.com? That is one AWESOME web page, man I wish Apolyton was as cool as they are!!!

J/K

I only go there when I've read everything here and there's time left to kill in my work day.

Seriously though, I wish Firaxis would do something about the way the AI treats army strengths.

[Arrian]

I remember Soren posting that the AI does NOT use the same strength comparison as the idiotic military advisor. The military advisor does a 1 to 1 comparison (warrior/modern armor), but apparently the AI has a more sophisticated method that runs "under the hood." I have no idea where that post from Soren was, though.

-Arrian

[Solver]

Arrian is right, Soren said so, and so it is. An AI with 100 Cavalry won't attack you if you have 60 Moden Armor.

[fittstim]

Maybe, maybe not...

But in the game I'm playing currently, I was amazed to see the Russians declare war against me when my attempt to plant a spy in Moscow was detected. Russia had maybe 10 horsemen and a mishmash of warriors/swordsmen which at max was 25.

My force consisted of over 100 panzers and 183 cavalry.

Needless to say, they didn't last many more turns after that declaration.

So either the statement concerning strength comparisons is wrong or there should be an asterisk next to it to say that sometimes other things overrule the AI's sense of a winable war.

[Arrian]

Yeah, if the AI owes you money and cannot pay. That will trigger a war sometimes. Sometimes they just seem to hate you enough to commit suicide.

I agree that the AI occasionally picks fights that make no sense. Last night, Rome (#3 civ) attacked me (#1 civ). That, in and of itself, was fine. The problem was that Caesar used ONE ARCHER, which he dropped off on an island of mine. Next turn, Caesar found himself at war with three civs. I don't think he much enjoyed dealing with Impi, Samurai and Riders all at once. Heh. He gets to spend the rest of his days on a little offshore island, kinda like Napolean.

-Arrian

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Arrian
I remember Soren posting that the AI does NOT use the same strength comparison as the idiotic military advisor. The military advisor does a 1 to 1 comparison (warrior/modern armor), but apparently the AI has a more sophisticated method that runs "under the hood." I have no idea where that post from Soren was, though.

-Arrian

I must have missed that one. Still, the AI (in my experience) seems to routinely get into unwinnable wars with units that are older than mine.

And the idiotic military advisor should be able to give me the same information that is used "under the hood" once I have an embassy with the other civ (or maybe increment it - better knowledge with embassy, best knowledge with spy).

[Spiffor]

Stuie :
In the chat, Mike said the military advisor was fixed, and will be more sophisticated in its calculations. It won't count workers in your military might.

[Jaybe]

Another solution, when the time is right, is to plant a spy.
For me, the time is right just AFTER I save the game, in case I don't want to face the results of a captured spy.

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Stuie :
In the chat, Mike said the military advisor was fixed, and will be more sophisticated in its calculations. It won't count workers in your military might.

It will also take into account the relative strengths of the individual units in your military (so a Modern Armor counts more than a Warrior). It now uses a calculation that's very similar to what the AI uses.

[King of Rasslin]

The advisor should be more specific. More than just "we have a strong military!" or "we need more knights!" He doesn't give great advice. And he should get smarted as you get a spy in there or an embassy.

[Solver]

Does what Mike said apply to PtW or the fourth Civ 3 patch?

[Spiffor]

Thanks Mike ! Now we have a precise info !

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Solver
Does what Mike said apply to PtW or the fourth Civ 3 patch?

Yes

[Jon Shafer]

*Shakes his head*
And people say Firaxis doesn't listen to us!
(That's not true, they just aim to be the bane of our gaming experience after listening to what we want. )

[cracker]

Thanks Mike B for the advance notice of a Fix that is really needed.

To Solver, your perception of the way the military advisor has used the strength ratings has been demonstrated to be not correct. When the Military AI thinks it is stronger, this leads to stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid^1000 wars that just make the game a joke. The tactical AI is smart enough to know that it cannot successfully attack three mech infantry fortified in a hill city by using 50 Cavalry and 50 Longbowmen, but the stupid Military AI declares war anyway because 3 is not as good as 100.

This will leave us with some bad habits to fix in our game play because I know that I have personally exploited this feature by using mass numbers of workers and lower grade units to bump up the military strength count. I deliberately leave saltpeter disconnected until I get cavalry discovered because I know it is cheaper to build lots of pikemen and horsemen and this will have a stronger effect on having the AIs respect me in the morning.

I did a very controlled experiment where I was playing China on Bill Chin's May Tournament map and I had about a 1.5 to 1 total unit count advantage over India. When I got to Replaceable Parts + Democracy + The Chinese industrial worker, I had my entire part of the content covered with railroads and decided that I did not need 50+ workers anymore.

As I joined the workers into my cities to expand the population I watched closely as the Military advisor reported Stronger-Stronger-Stronger- Average-Average-etc. This was in V1.21f without any modification and using Bill Chin's standard sized random map. The Mahatma's mood also soured progressively and by the time I turned all the workers into citizens, Ghandi was peeing across the border into my rivers.

The next turn Ghandi charged into my territory with about 30 riflemen and spearmen plus a few token elephants, selectively ignoring my 90+ Infantry and 30+ artillery as well as the average of 10+tanks and cruise missiles that I was cranking out in each turn.

I also have repeated examples of Montezuma attacking my pikemen and mounted warriors with bucket loads of jags.

Again I am so very pleased with the Firaxis responsiveness on fixing problems like this military power assessment snafu. It makes me wonder if these guys like Mike and Speedbump were around when the game was released in its incomplete form back in the Fall.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS
It will also take into account the relative strengths of the individual units in your military (so a Modern Armor counts more than a Warrior). It now uses a calculation that's very similar to what the AI uses.

Thanks Mike! Good to know that he'll be of some use going forward. I still think that a "nice to have" feature would be to increment what the advisors know about other civs - better knowledge with embassy, best knowledge with spy

[Skanky Burns]

Nice thread!
Good to hear that the Military Advisor is getting better at his job, and not confusing those pesky civilians with military types.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Solver
Arrian is right, Soren said so, and so it is. An AI with 100 Cavalry won't attack you if you have 60 Moden Armor.

hi ,

the chance they can win would be like 2 percent , ....

have a nice day