Compared to Ronald McDonald your military is Average!!

[cracker]

Compared to So-in-So your military is Average!!

When the Sid Clone Military Advisor pops up and tells me this, I just want to shoot him with acid filled paintballs.

The CIV3 military assessment by raw body count is stupid beyond a normally forgivable game design issue because this one factor tends to drive extortion demands and stupid AI behavior that just should not be happening. If Psycho Chaka or Ballistic Bismarck thinks that our military is average this doubles our triples the chance that they will do something stupid to attack us.

The problem is that the CIV3 game designers applied an Ancient Age military assessment formula to every aspect of the game instead and included total unit body count in the military power formula. Based on test data, every unit is included in the formula. Workers, Settlers, Scouts, Explorers, Land Units, Air Units, Naval Units, Transports, and Bombardment Units are all counted equally in the military formula.

To test this process, I used the editor to artificially build treasury and population growth so I could build a force of 20 workers and one warrior to compare to the AI’s military force of 12 spearmen and archers and 2 workers. In this case, the AI doesn’t attack me and I get messages from the military advisory saying “Compared to these bozos our military is strong”. All other factors (cities, etc.) are equal. So what are my 20 workers going to do to defend the empire when those weak 12 military units come charging into the realm.

I tested the opposite case, and manipulated the units to have 12 Mech Infantry units and 2 workers in my military while the AI’s military contained 4 warriors and 18 workers. In this case, my wise and knowledgeable Sid Clone Military Advisor popped up saying “Compared to these bozos our military is weak”. The next turn when I asked two evil AI warriors to leave my territory, they declared war on me because they thought their military power gave them that right.

Everyone who really thinks this is a conscious and logical game design issue; hold up your hands now so we can identify you permanently as someone who has absolutely lost all contact with reality.

[Inverse Icarus]

thats not sid. isnt that mike? sids the science guy.

[cracker]

In several recent games, this became painfully obvious because I had crested a major technology lead over the 4 of the 5 AI’s that remained in a game, only to find the backward AIs would attack when I joined workers into cities to reduce to support cost of field workers after the entire continent had been railroaded. Since I was China and had the Industrious workers plus Democracy plus replaceable parts I was up to the point where two of our Chinese workers could clear pollution in one turn. I also had about 35 slave workers from early conquests of other civs. The slave workers did not appear in the military power count.

It’s just really not appropriate to have the military power ratio shift because I have Infantry while the other civs have spearmen and riflemen and just because I reduced the non combatant workforce that was no longer needed.

This cries out to be fixed in the next patch well before any further incorporation of this flawed logic gets passed on to multiplier of the XP version.


What is needed is a conversion to some sort of military power assessment that takes effect when the civs have progressed out of the Ancient Age. If there was hesitation to make this the default assessment for the military advisor, then it could be implemented by adding the calculation to the military advisor’s arsenal when an upgrade to each foreign embassy called the “Military Liaison” or “Military Attaché” was purchased.

Military Power assessment would use the ADM and BRF factors to calculate the offensive and defensive power contributions of any given unit.

I processed several test games for the military power calculations and produced examples from the May Tournament Game hosted on Poly by Bill Chin.

To determine the simple military power of a unit (simple being the case where unit experience is not considered as in conscript versus elite) I multiplied the A or D value of a unit time the number of that type of unit. Movement capacity was used to modify these strengths by multiplying each value by a factor that depended on the number of movement points in excess of the base value of 1. Movement was taken to have more of a positive impact on offensive power than it had on defensive power because in many cases defenders do not have the power of using their superior movement capacity to retreat or avoid contact with enemy.

I used a factor of 30% for the increase in offensive power that a unit with 2 movement points would have over a unit with 1 movement point but the same A and D values. An example of this comparison would be between an archer (2/1/1) and a horseman (2/1/2). For units with 3 or more movement points, I used a factor 60% for the increase in offensive power due to enhanced mobility.

Similar logic was applied to incorporating the impact of mobility into defensive power. The increase in defensive strength due to mobility is justified by considering the impacts of retreat and counterattack capabilities. I used factors of 20% and 35% for units with mobility of two and then three or more respectively.

The offensive military power of bombardment capable units was calculated by multiplying the bombardment strength times the rate of fire (number of potential hits) and then modifying this power up by 50% when the range was greater than 1 as well as modifying the bombardment power up by 20% whenever the unit had mobility of greater than 1 move per turn as in the case of most naval units.

The defensive military power of bombardment units was very restricted because defending bombard units only got one shot per attacker and had no defensive capability on their own. Basically this calculation was just the bombardment strength of the unit times the number of units of that type.

Once these military factors where calculated they could be combined to provide an overall military power assessment of the units that were in the military force for a civilization. The offensive bombard powers were combined with the attack strengths to give an overall assessment of the offensive power of the military. Bombardment power was combined into the total power calculation by multiplying the bombardment power by 25% to account for the fact that bombardment power must be combined with offensive and defensive units in order to achieve effective military strength.

The total military power of a civilization was taken to be the simple average of the offensive and defensive military powers even though we should acknowledge that it would truly be mire accurate to compare the offensive military power of one civilization to the defensive military power of other rival civilizations in order to derive a more effective basis for decision making.

The results of these test calculations yielded an effective assessment system that can be simply implemented to eliminate the current discrepancies where the CIV3 AI’s are programmed to consider 2 warriors to be a superior military force to just one infantry or rifleman.

[Jon Shafer]

Yes, the game has many serious issues, we know. Hopefully they'll be fixed in the XP... if not, then I'll get back to working on my own game again.

But anyways, where in Colorado are you from?

[Alfonso]

[Thrawn05]

Okay, I give up. Is this a troll or not?

[Dinner]

This is a serious game design flaw that causes the AI to act irrationally. Why do some people try to shut down the conversaion by calling it a troll?
It seems like Firaxis could fix this easily jut by writing a code that takes each unit, counts up it's offensive and defensive power and then sums the result for each nation. That way we wouldn't have countries with nothing but workers declaring war on super powers.

[ChaotikVisions]

hmm

If they removed settlers/workers from being part of your military, it wouldn't be too bad then. Since some people even today think superior numbers will beat superior training/tech. It'd be nice if it went off the value of your units a/d, but for a quick fix(as in the next patch instead of several months away in the XP), they could just remove the settlers/workers. But yes, this is pretty annoying, but then again there attacks aren't too hard to fend off anyway.

[Carver]

Plant a spy with all other civs, this is the only way for you to know anything. The AI's swordsmen will still wind up charging your infantry - but oh well.

[Zurai001]

Originally posted by Oerdin
This is a serious game design flaw that causes the AI to act irrationally. Why do some people try to shut down the conversaion by calling it a troll?
It seems like Firaxis could fix this easily jut by writing a code that takes each unit, counts up it's offensive and defensive power and then sums the result for each nation. That way we wouldn't have countries with nothing but workers declaring war on super powers.

I believe he's talking about Alfonso, he of the posts-a-laughing-face-in-every-thread.

[Akka]

It's even more strange that they choose to count the mere numbers of units, as in previous civs and in AC your power was calculated by adding the A/D values of your units.
So here is really a design decision I don't understand ???

[notyoueither]

I don't know. I really think counting workers and settlers is silly. Agreed. But the formula they should use is...?

I don't think AD multiplicative is so good. Cav don't hold ground. I'd say add the higher of the AD ratings plus the 1/2 of the bombard values for 0 AD units. Something like that.

Although, I agree. Legions should count for 9.

BTW. Did you consider that counting workers makes it easier for builders to do their thing in peace? Maybe not, but that's the only reason I can think of to count workers.

[cracker]

I completed some example tables so it would be easier for people to visualize how this military power assessment should be implemented.

Here is a military power assessments for the military of CHine being played by the human player in Bill Chin's May tournament game:

[cracker]

And here is the militray power assessment for India being played by the AI player:

[cracker]

This Table provides a side by side comparison of the two military forces (China vs India):