F3 Strong/Average/Weak

[nbarclay]

Does anyone know much about what standards are used to define a player's civ as having a "strong," "average," or "weak" military compared with another civ on the F3 screen?

[Jurimax]

IMHO I believe that you are weak when you have less military, average when you have about the same amount and strong when you have more. However, I don't think it's in the number of units. Last night I was playing and I was weak compared to an AI, after upgrading a Warrior to Swordsman my Military advisor told me we were average compared to that AI (was during same turn, so the upgrade was all that happened to either military).

Greetings Jurimax

[Konquest02]

Just a guess, but they might add all the points (A/D) of all your units and compare the total between all civs. If this number is roughly the same, you are average, if etc...

This is a wild guess, and the roughly needs to be determined but it could be a good way to quantify military power...

[Catt]

I have nothing definitive to add. But will contribute that Firaxian's posted on several occasions that the F3 military advisor was modified in one of the patches to adopt the "strength evaluation" process of the AI in general, i.e., taking into account both numbers of units and the A and D vales of such units. IIRC, in earlier versions of Civ, an army of 200 workers was "strong" compared to an army of 100 infantry (but the Firaxians always insisted that AI-civ evaluations of the enemy took into account A and D values for purposes of declarations of war, etc.). At v1.21 or perhaps v1.29 of vanilla civ, the military advisor's advice was apparently modified to decrease the weighting of unitnumbers and increase the weighting of unit power. Perhaps in one of the ReadMe's to the vanilla patches there is a reference to this? No idea with respect to MP.

Catt

[CerberusIV]

I was always under the impression that the total attack value of a civs units was the main factor. Upgrading units always seems to significantly boost my military rating. I tend to have more defensive units than offensive and introducing musketmen or riflemen tends to dramatically improve my rating and deter the AI civs from attacking.

I just lost three knights (out of fourteen) in my current game and this seems to have reduced my military power sufficiently for the Spanish to try a sneak attack whilst I am crushing the English. Since I have nearly 30 cities, all with a couple of spears or pikes garrisoning them this suggests that A and D values are now far more important than unit numbers.

[DaveMcW]

I did a *very* quick test in debug mode.

10 warriors / 8 warriors = Stronger
10 warriors / 9 warriors = Average
10 warriors / 13 warriors = Average
10 warriors / 14 warriors = Weaker

10 warriors / 1 tank = Weaker
11 warriors / 1 tank = Average
16 warriors / 1 tank = Average
17 warriors / 1 tank = Stronger

[Datajack Franit]

The advisors are so damn stupid.. who is paying attention to them anymore?

[CerberusIV]

The only reason I look at the F3 advisor is to check how the AI civs perceive my military. As long as I am strong compared to them they usually won't start a war. Occasionally, as now with the Spanish, one of them has a suicidal impulse but not very often.

[Harovan]

In SP, this may be of limited value, but for MP could be useful, if we know the mechanism.

The warrior example looks like weaker, when the attack (or defense?) points are less than 75%, average between 75% and 125%, and stronger above 125%.

The tank example looks similar (what was a tank again, 12.8.2, I forgot), but not entirely.

May be the number +/- 25% has to be tweaked a bit, but probably not much.

[Arrian]

SR,

Tanks are 16.8.2

-Arrian

[alexman]

Judging from this limited test, it looks like attack gets a 2:1 or 3:1 weight over defense.

Also, if the ratios are 0.75 and 1.25, since they are not the inverse of each other, you can get your advisor saying that you are average, but your opponent's advisor saying they are strong compared to you.

[nbarclay]

It would be interesting to see whether movement rate plays any role (e.g. do the calculations regard a Gallic Swordsman as worth more than a conventional one).

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
The advisors are so damn stupid.. who is paying attention to them anymore?

I liked the video animated advisors of CIV 2, with Elvis and Schwartzkopf look-a-likes. They never got boring.

[Datajack Franit]

Schwartzkopf sounds more like some kind of German brand of shampoo

[Napolean]

hey, point taken there. the civ2's advisors are so cute, esp the science advisor.