Question about "Power"...

[Tattila the Hun]

OK, let's say I'm alone on a continent, with few civs on another, mostly hostile towards me. I have very few troops, one or two per city, but I also have the strongest navy in the world, almost as big as the rest of the world combined, placed in such manner, that any invasion force has about snowballs chance in hell at getting trough. Still, due to small numbers of groundtroops, I'm last in the powerscale.

Now, let's say one of my adversaries has a ground army that could essentially wipe the floor with mine, in both quality and quantity, being infantrys against my un-upgraded macemen. He also has enough sealift capacity to ferry enough of them to mount an invasion, and defeat me, squarely. He also has a spy, and has stolen my plans, so he knows my navy is about triple his size, with same tech.

Does the AI understand, that while he is more powerfull than me, and has much larger army than me, he could never mount a succesfull invasion, because of my naval superiority? Or will he only see the numbers, and declare war on me, and get slaughtered?

Something that has been bugging me after two games on my own continent...

[Ming]

It is "just" an AI... It will declare war and get slaughtered...

[rah]

You may be fine now, but.........
While at peace he'll slip in a artic garbage outpost and airlift in his army and your vaulted navy will be of no value.

[Solver]

The Civ4 AI is highly competent. That said, as far as military AI goes, naval invasions are the hardest thing to get right. The AI doesn't assess the tactical fleet position too well, however, and might fluke out on this one. Or it might always surprise you .

[Badtz Maru]

The AI decides whether it can take you based on power ratio alone - there's a ratio for total war, limited war, and war with distant powers. Some AIs will attack a neighbor with a power 130% the power of their own, but won't declare war with a distant nation unless the target's power is only 40% the power of their own - while some will declare on a distant nation with a power 90% of their own. You can find out these stats for the various AI personalities by looking in civ4leaderheadinfo.xml.

[Prussia]

Yeah, there is also the personalities that come into play.

If it is Gandhi who has that ultra powerful army, I don't think he will attack you at all, unless he's really pissed.

But I don't think that the game emphasizes the importance strategy-wise of a navy. Realistically speaking, If I had a million guys on 50 transports each with a battleship escort, but you had 300 battleships, there is no chance in hell that I can get through your naval fleet. Just look at the spanish armada.

However, in this game, if our continents are one or two turns apart, I could easily slip all of my transports around your navy, which couldn't happen in real life.

[Jaybe]

Prussia,
The US Navy lost a Japanese fleet in late 1941 quite successfully.
Now however, things are quite different. A navy at war has to be severely economical in its use of radar because using it will usually give your position away, and satellites (if they haven't been taken out) cannot be everywhere at once.

[Prussia]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Prussia,
The US Navy lost a Japanese fleet in late 1941 quite successfully.
Now however, things are quite different. A navy at war has to be severely economical in its use of radar because using it will usually give your position away, and satellites (if they haven't been taken out) cannot be everywhere at once.

What on earth are you talking about?

"The US Navy lost a Japanese fleet quite successfully"? What is that supposed to mean?

And what's all that about the radar and satellites? I didn't mention them at all, so what context did you base them off of?

[Jaybe]

I was referring to US intelligence losing the Japanese fleet as they approached for their Pearl Harbor strike. To me, this is an issue of slipping around enemy fleets, not slugging through them.

Originally posted by Prussia
But I don't think that the game emphasizes the importance strategy-wise of a navy. Realistically speaking, If I had a million guys on 50 transports each with a battleship escort, but you had 300 battleships, there is no chance in hell that I can get through your naval fleet. Just look at the spanish armada.

However, in this game, if our continents are one or two turns apart, I could easily slip all of my transports around your navy, which couldn't happen in real life.

[Tattila the Hun]

Thanks for the clearup.

[Prussia]

I see your point.