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Compared to Ronald McDonald your military is Average!!
What is both interesting and a bit silly, is that the AI thinks that the military power difference between China and India is only 4% as shown by the total ratio of unit count near the bottom of the 2nd column in the comparison table.
When the non-combatant units (workers/settlers/scouts/explorers etc.) are excluded the ratio begins to more clearly reflect that India is not currently a match for the Chinese military in the ratio of combat unit count since China has a 13% advantage.
When we apply the power calculation we begin to see the relative power of Cavalry and Infantry in Chinese army versus the Riflemen, Spearmen, and Swordsman of the Indian army. Chine currently has 1013 offensive military power points versus only 530 offensive points for India and this indicates a 91% advantage in offensive power.
A more revealing comparison ratio is found in the very last row of the comparison table. This "A-vs-D Ratio" compares the Offensive Power of China to the Defensive Power of India and results in a total advantage assessment of 39% if China were to simultaneously attack every Indian military unit with all the Chinese Military units. If India were to attack China, the "A-vs-D Ratio" is reversed and shows that the defensive Chinese units have a 90% advantage over the Indian offensive power.
In reality, military success is almost always a matter of creating localized conditions where your attacking or defending units outpower the corresponding units of the enemy.
But at least the use of some sort of military power ratio would reduce the frequency of the silly advisor messages that under evaluate the military situations and also lead to the absolutely suicidal AI behaviors where we see attacks on modern age units by groups of outdated AI units that have not been upgraded.
Your posted examples are a bit ridiculous and out of scale for the discussion here.
the 1 Infantryman versus 30 horseman would calculate a military defense power of 10 while the 30 attacking horsemen would result in a calculated offensive power of 78. So definately the the horsemen would have an overall advantage due to shear numbers. In the abstract sense, having and army of 30 horsemen would give you almost an 8 to 1 advantage over a civilization that had only 1 infantry unit in their army. The real point would be that the 8 to 1 advantage would be far more realistic than the 30 to 1 advantage you might assume if you just looked at the unit count.
In reality, a single infantryman fortified (+25%) in a city of population 7 (+50%) located on hills (+50%) could very well fend off all the attacks of an army of horsemen because the effective defensive strength of the infantryman would be 22.5 versus only 2 attack points for each of the horsemen.
I have in fact had a single infantryman survive an attack by 32 conscript barbarian horseman (but it was close).
Your other example of the cavalry unit attacking 9 spearmen defenders would depend very heavily on the terrain and fortification status of the spearmen. But using the Military power assessment would give us an effective offensiive power of 10 for a military force of 1 cavalry unit compared to a defensive power of 18 for a military force made up only of 9 spearmen. The ratio of about 2 to advantage for the defenders is again a much clearer representation of the realtive strengths instead of the tunnel vision approach of a 9 to 1 advantage you would calculate by just using the raw body count of units.
So my real answer is that I do not think that either of the two extreme examples that you cite would result in survival of the 1 units extremes.
Let me pose the question more in a way that would reflect how the AI makes decisions:
How many Jaguar warriors out of an attack force of 12 will survive an attack on a city defended by 4 rifleman even though you wise Military advisor has told you that your military is 3 times stronger than your enemy that has the riflemen?
Ok, so how can you edit how the AI adds up the military values. I think that everything should have a number. The stronger the unit, the higher the number. Then it is simple algebra to figure it out. Why didn't Firaxis see this sooner? This seems like a pretty big flaw if you have a bunch of people actually developing the game.
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You all might want to know that Soren stated some time ago that the AI DOES take into account the strength of a unit.
Only the military advisor doesn't. So you get wrong readings on the relative strength of your military but when the AI has to decide whether to attack or not it doesn't use the military advisors count.
Actually, no Th0mas.
As stated by cracker, the AI still does make bad decisions (like declaring war) based on comparative military strengths, when common sense would have them not. The function may take into account the strength of the units, but the evidence suggests that it is not properly balanced.
I'm building a wagon! On some other part of the internets, obviously (but not that other site).
Originally posted by Todd Hawks
On the original topic:
You all might want to know that Soren stated some time ago that the AI DOES take into account the strength of a unit.
Only the military advisor doesn't. So you get wrong readings on the relative strength of your military but when the AI has to decide whether to attack or not it doesn't use the military advisors count.
He was refering to an individual decision to attack a certain unit or not. There are several levels of AI decision making: Global, city, and unit specific. The unit-level AI takes relative strengths into account - the global AI does not. So the AI will change the way it fights depending on your actual strength, but it's tendency to make war is dependant on unit counts only.
I believe Todd is correct. There would be 0 point in bringing up the MilAdvisor in unit-on-unit calculations. And I recall, since he reminded me, that the topic under discussion was the AI evaluation of relative strengths of Civs.
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"The strength algorithm that the AI uses to determine power is [...]: It counts up military units and gives them a value according to their attack and defense values. This value is "Power" on the Historgraph (including some of factors including techs/cities/resources/wonders...)
The algorithm the foreign advisor uses to tell the user relative military strength is not used by the AI in any way. It is only used by the foreign advisor. (Also, it does not count workers. I'm not sure where that rumor got started... perhaps it was a bug in 1.07. At any rate, it does not count non-military units in 1.17. If you have experienced differently, please post a save.)"
Well, it sure seems in Coracle´s example that the mil. advisor sure enough counts workers, too. So I suggest, Coracle, that you email your findings to Soren. Maybe he will look at it.
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