Demographics: Military Service

[William Keenan]

Debeest's discovery of the formula behind GNP inspired me to have a look at Demograpics myself.

I think I have uncovered the formula for Millitary Service.

(Units * 10) / (Population + 1) = Years of Service

How about you civers put this formula to the acid test.

[jcarkey]

What do you mean population? DO you mean population points or true population. Does it also include non-combatant units in that classification? I will test it and I guess I will answer myself.

Didn't work for me any way. I excluded settlers and diplos, it didn't work. I included diplos and settlers and it didn't work.

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If someone doesn't agree with you, you haven't explained yourself well enough-Luther Ely Smith


She turned me into a newt...well I got better- Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail


How many boards could the Mongols horde, if the Mongol hordes got bored?- jcarkey
[This message has been edited by jcarkey (edited February 18, 2001).]

[William Keenan]

I used ToT to determine the formula. I'll install FW and try there.

[William Keenan]

OK I loaded and tested it under FW and found that the formula works in a small two city model. I will continue to test it in larger settings.

Population is the total of all city sizes.

Units is the total number of units owned by the civ exclusive of units with roles 5, 6, an 7.

[jcarkey]

I will try it tommorrow on the same save game. I might just have done the math wrong though.

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If someone doesn't agree with you, you haven't explained yourself well enough-Luther Ely Smith

She turned me into a newt...well I got better- Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail

How many boards could the Mongols horde, if the Mongol hordes got bored?- jcarkey

[Qin Shihuangdi]

I tested the forumula and it works exactly if one lops of the decimal points (as opposed to rounding). In my experiences in programming I have made extensive use of the "truncate" function which does exactly this, and I suspect that's what is used here. So the final formula could be something like

years of service = TRUNC[(units * 10) / (population + 1)]

Nice work William Keenan!

(This is Don Quixote from the past, but the system has apparently lost my information)

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One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not skillful. Subduing the other's military without battle is skillful.

Sunzi, The Art of War

[La Fayette]

Nice work William Keenan and Qin Shihuangdi!
(BTW QS, Don Quixote is a very nice name (unless you prefer Sancho Pança); you should e-mail Ming and get it back).

[William Keenan]

Yes, I for got to mention that all remainers are truncated (rounded down for non-programmer types). Thank you Qin for pointing that out.

[jcarkey]

Oh, then in that case it works!

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If someone doesn't agree with you, you haven't explained yourself well enough-Luther Ely Smith

She turned me into a newt...well I got better- Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail

How many boards could the Mongols horde, if the Mongol hordes got bored?- jcarkey

[East Street Trader]

My military service figure is always adrift of the AI (as will be the case for every other expansive perfectionist's I guess). This formula makes it abundantly clear why - I will have both far fewer units and far higher population than the AI civs.

"All under Heaven" has a pleasantly poetic flavour Qin Shihuangdi. Does it reflect the same notion as saying that you are a citizen of the universe?

[Archangel MasterBob]

Excalty what does this demographic mean?

When looking at demos I look mainly at 3 things, civ rating(I have yet to figure how this is figured), Population, and Land area. Those are the keys to success.

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[SilverDragon]

I noticed a while ago, during one of those nomad games, that my military service was the # of real units x 10. I had a suspicion that it was something like whats been mentioned above, but i never cared about service years anyway, so I didn't research it.

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- SilverDragon, scourge of the western skies

Email me at
SilverDragon141@aol.com