What do you consider a BIG army?

[Spec]

I dont understand.....On a huge map, with about 35 cities, I have 83 musketman, 39 legionairs and 147 cavalries and my military advisor says:" Compared to these guys our military is weak". Why? Is it compared to the whole planet or to each civ one after the other? I could kill anyone whenever I want!! I'm also the only one with cavalry right now. Anybody got an idea why my military is the weakest? Or, like me, you think that my advisor had one too many beers.

Spec.

[Zouave]

I completely ignore anything my military advisor says. The only advisor that seems to know what the hell he is talking about is the foreign advisor, and he is omniscient.

[godinex]

Advisor

If You have 100 Calvalrys and the Germans have 121 horsemen, they are more powerful for the advisor. Take your own conclusions.

[Dida]

Just ignore your stupid military advisor.
I have 50 Modern Armor in my arsenal, and the Persians have nothing but 100 workers and 20 Chavalry , and my military advivor told me they are more powerful

[Technoron]

as far as i've been able to figure, it's purely a quantity calculation. A million guys with pithforks will be more powerfull than 999,999 tanks. Whatever.

The power calculation is only for the currently selected civ. You can select diffent civs on the right half of the screen.

Think you need an embassy for accurate counts.

*shrug*

Seems most people just ignore the screen. I sure do. Unless I get bored with the game and need to look at something new and novel.

[DrSpike]

Also great is when a civ about 6 or 7 techs behind you "feels they are our technological equal". All advisors talk rubbish. They aren't even amusing for the first game like in civ2.

[Thrawn05]

I think Aeson and his 375 Impi's is a large army. I forgot what thread it was that had a screenshot of his Zulu empire. But he had a total of a thousand or so units.


Pretty small to most civ players

[Shadow_Cougar]

How it should be calculated

The numbers should just add up the Attack value of all the units and compare those. It wouldn't be perfect, but would give the AI a better idea of "relative" strength. That way England wouldn't make silly demands to me and make my tanks and MI crush their 3x as large army of calvary and musketmen.

[Tarquelne]

Re: How it should be calculated

Originally posted by Shadow_Cougar
The numbers should just add up the Attack value of all the units and compare those.

The system I favor would be adding up the costs of the units.
I saw someone suggest a simpler system - the value of a unit depends on it's Age. An Ancient unit might be 1, an MA unit 2, etc. Very simple, but I think it'd still be a vast improvement.

[Shadow_Cougar]

Re: Re: How it should be calculated

Originally posted by Tarquelne


The system I favor would be adding up the costs of the units.
I saw someone suggest a simpler system - the value of a unit depends on it's Age. An Ancient unit might be 1, an MA unit 2, etc. Very simple, but I think it'd still be a vast improvement.

While I agree that my workers are about as dangerous to you as my warriors, I think my swordsmen are much more menacing than my settlers.

Currently, I am busily reducing French cities to piles of rubble. My army is decreasing in size, but I have added many French slaves. China now fears my swordsmen (instead of having a larger army). The only units I have added have been settlers to live in those lovely French river valleys. That should not scare anyone, yet.

[Dom Pedro II]

Yes, I was playing a game as the Japanese, and the Chinese bordered me to the South. They had about 50,000 warriors and 10,000 swordsmen (hyberbole of course) and I had about 20 Musketmen, 15 Samurai, and about 20 swordsmen... well, I'd probably win a war against them... but they'd just keep annoying me perpetually with raids on mines, irrigation, roads, etc. That's where the real power of obsolete units in numbers comes in. They're an annoyance.

[Andrew Cory]

One of the things that I dig about the new unit suport system is the fact that armies in my rear are an actual threat that must be dealt with before I advance. In Civ 2, I was able to just take over cities, and watch the armies dissapear...

Hmmm, here is a thought: What if armies still in the feild after the nation has been destroyed still get to stick around for the next 10-15 turns. Perhaps they would be able to "liberate" cities, alowing the civilization to come back...

[Provost Harrison]

64 Modern Armour, 12 Stealth Bombers, 50 Bombers, 10 Carriers, 12 Battleship, 8 Destroyers, 16 Radar Artillery, 126 Mech. Inf

I didn't think that was bad myself, enough to take on the rest of the world singlehandedly when used correctly...

[Skanky Burns]

Just remember one thing - the AI civs will also be viewing you as 'weak', and will treat you as such. They will violate your borders, give you less in trade deals, and be prepared to declare war on you (despite the fact that you know you will win).

If you want the AI to respect you, there is only 2 things you can do:
First one is to increase your "military". This may involve building more units (doesn't matter what they are), conscripting more units, or buying workers off another civ.

The second is to decrease the AI's military strength in its eyes. You can either buy his workers off him (as workers are included in the military strength calculation) or you can declare war and smash his units.

Doing either of these two things will now make the AI respect your borders (as much as an AI can respect them), give you better trade deals, and really make the AI think twice about declaring war on you.

[Dida]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
64 Modern Armour, 12 Stealth Bombers, 50 Bombers, 10 Carriers, 12 Battleship, 8 Destroyers, 16 Radar Artillery, 126 Mech. Inf

I didn't think that was bad myself, enough to take on the rest of the world singlehandedly when used correctly...

I only have 50 MA and 80 Mech Inf, but I'm already taking on the rest of the world singlehandedly.