I've worked out that a very sudden rise in AI power is usually associated with them doing a mass unit upgrade when it becomes available. This kind of spike is usually over in a turn or two though. When you see a sudden, sharp rise in AI power over the course of 10 turns or so can this be a reliable indicator that the AI is seriously preparing to go to war? I'm getting nervous that the Japanese are tired of watching me out-tech them in my current game. Time to build machine-guns?

It _can_ be a sign that they're going to attack you, but the computer gets really cheap unit upgrades, and tends to upgrade all units as soon as it gets the tech to do so, so I would imagine something along those lines is what you are seeing here.

Maybe. It's a big spike though and its the first time in the whole game that Toku's power has passed mine. And he's saling round in galleons compared to destroyers. I think he's putting some serious stacks together (can't say for sure as he never seems to open his borders) but I was just wondering what other people's experiences of using the graph as a potential threat indicator are. If you can use it as an early warning that a civ is tooling up ready for war it seems like an unfair 'gamey' advantage. This is still only my fourth game though.

If you can use it as an early warning that a civ is tooling up ready for war it seems like an unfair 'gamey' advantage. This is still only my fourth game though.


Maybe, but the AI looks at the power graph closely as well for a lot of it's considerations, so it's not like it doesn't go both ways.

That's fair enough then. Thanks.

to prevent the mass upgrades, you need to bleed them dry from their money.
selling a tech for gold is a good military move :)

Of course you need to attack soon after that, or the gold will flow in again.

That's a sneaky tip, thanks. Must be tricky to get the timing right though.

I'm not considering attacking him as it happens. He's on another continent and it's more trouble than I want at this stage, especially as I'm in the late stages of finishing off Louis. I'm content to tech my way into space now (I haven't had a space victory yet) and I could do without him declaring on me when I'm already involved in a war.

From the title, I expected this to be a MOD request for an alarm when your power rating drops too far below Monty:

aaaOOOOOOOOOgah, aaaOOOOOOOOOgah, Dive! Dive!

From the title, I expected this to be a MOD request for an alarm when your power rating drops too far below Monty:

aaaOOOOOOOOOgah, aaaOOOOOOOOOgah, Dive! Dive!

you would need the same alarm for alex, and mao and a few others...

In my limited experience this spike happens 3 times: archers to longbows, longbows to rifles, rifles to infantry. Usually they're distributed between AI cities so not too dangerous in itself except that a rise in relative power is likely to trigger an AI attack. Edit: (can trigger an AI attack).

A better indicator that an AI is looking to go to war is in the diplomacy window. If the AI is not currently at war, yet their reason for not wanting to go to war with anyone else is something like, "We've got our hands full," you can be fairly certain they're gearing up for a war. Then, you take a look at the power graph and determine how likely you are to be the one on the receiving end. If you spot this early enough, you may even be able to do enough to avoid the war altogether.

A better indicator that an AI is looking to go to war is in the diplomacy window. If the AI is not currently at war, yet their reason for not wanting to go to war with anyone else is something like, "We've got our hands full," you can be fairly certain they're gearing up for a war. Then, you take a look at the power graph and determine how likely you are to be the one on the receiving end. If you spot this early enough, you may even be able to do enough to avoid the war altogether.

I want to add that if you see "We've got our hands full." then look at your cities if there is any they want there is a possibility they are going to after you to take one of them. You should keep those well defended.

go look at their treasury (gold)in the same window. you'll know if they upgraded or built military...

The only problem that on Deity you will be allwasy way below of any disent civ on power graph.