Military Advisor oddity

The Mil Advisor reports that i have 58 Transports. I have 2 Transports not carrying a Settler. Thus, i have 56 Settlers currently at sea. Right?

Here's the rub: the Mil Advisor says i have 62 Settlers. I can roll around the lands and clearly count 7 Settlers not on a boat. Thus, i have 55 Settlers currently at sea, right?

Obviously, had to do a count. 56 boats have one Settler each aboard, and 7 are on land. Got 63 Settlers, not 62 as the Military Advisor reports. Hit the Unit Limit a few turns ago and had no idea why, and this explains that.

The Mil Guy gets stuck and inflates the numbers, but never saw him under-report before.

I'm certain he often underreports defenders, omitting from the count many of those that are fortified in cities. Maybe something like that happens with units on a boat?

Not sure, wish i knew. Am paying lots more attention to things in this game, things which i never bothered with before. With some hours i could probably work back through time, checking savegames and identify exactly which Settler is not being reported.

The Mil Advisor in this game says i have a Catapult, but i do not. He says i've got 2 Militias, but in fact i have only one military unit, a Militia of NONE on Trap Island. The phantom 'Pult and Milly are both units which i bought off a rival civ, back when there were rival civs.

Just now, i thought of an easier way to identify which Settler is not being reported! Am just ready to disband all the Transports and Settlers and move into the population-building phase of the game, leaving me with only one unit of any kind. On the way from 127 to 1, i just need to check the Military Advisor after each disband, and at some point, i will go down by a Settler but the Mil Advisor's reported number of Settlers will not decrease. This *should* work, assuming that the Military Advisor is not capable or reporting -1 Settlers!

When i know which Settler it is, will be able to tell then, whether it was a Setty i built myself, or one i bought from someone else, or one which appeared at the starvation of a city i replaced (some centuries ago i busted down the entire civ and rebuilt all the cities so they'd have RailRoads underneath them).

A followup:

Checking the Military Advisor after chucking each Settler did not yield an answer. Now down to 2 Settlers (from 63) and the Mil Guy reports that i have only 1 Settler. So weird, i always knew the Mil Advisor over-states unit counts, but never noticed an under-reporting before. Will need those 2 Settys for a later manipulation, so will be a while until we know if the Mil Guy can report -1 for Settlers when they're both gone. I predict he can't, and the category Settler will disappear from the report while i still have one left.

Mil Guy says i have total units: 1 Catapult and 2 Militias, plus 1 Settler. Actually have 1 Militia and 2 Settlers.

Relatively, a clean game. Normally, my Military Advisor's report is cluttered with a bunch of vestigial nonexistent units. The difference in this game is that i only bribed away enemy units very sparingly. I was gunning for tech in the early game here, so never had sacks of bribecash laying around. Glaringly obvious now, that the Mil Guy's discrepancies are caused by buying units off rival empires.

Next game, will try to prove this by never bribing any unit. Would need to favor my military early on instead of techs, and only remove rival units by bribing their supporting city out from under them.

I have noticed that if you start of with a bonus settler, that settler doesn't count against your unit total at least. Have not seen other units not counting, but maybe there are other sources of units that is not counted. It looks like it's not actually counting your units when asked, but are tracking numbers, and likely increase them when you aquire them and decrease them when you lose them, but maybe not all the possible ways of gaining and losing is accounted for.

At least one source of the frequent overreporting appears to be that the advisor does not eliminate a bribed unit from his statistics when it gets disbanded. On the other hand, the original settlers are a source of underreporting - the military report is empty when the game starts. Usually, that "miscount" is just temporary because the settler is almost immediately lost when founding the first city. However, a second settler might stick around indefinitely. Also, when you're doing something experimental like wandering around with your starting settler visiting villages until you find one that becomes a city or even capture an undefended enemy city, even a single original settler might stay around. In either way, the continuing presence of an original settler unit will not be reflected in the military report.

However, original settlers do not appear to be special in the same way as bribed units are: Disbanding them or using them to found cities will cause the settler number on the F2 screen to go down. You can test this by using a 2-settler-start to keep the second settler around until your city builds a settler. At that point the military advisor will report only one settler in existence. If you then proceed to disband the bonus settler (or use it to start a city), the count will go back to zero, although you still have a new settler. (A recent 3980 BC save with London just founded and a bonus settler still around is attached. If you are in a hurry, you'll have to reallocate citizens to speed city growth and sell the palace to rush the settler unit.) This indicates that the overreporting is not tied to the bonus settler staying around: it continues until it is "cured" by using up/disbanding all settlers because - as Posidonius suggested - the count cannot go negative.

It would be interesting to know whether Posidonius has any recollection of (a) starting with a bonus settler and (b) keeping it around just long enough for other settlers to appear to avoid a zero-settler situation.

Verrucosus said:

It would be interesting to know whether Posidonius has any recollection of (a) starting with a bonus settler and (b) keeping it around just long enough for other settlers to appear to avoid a zero-settler situation.

Click to expand...

I keep a log of each game with notes and milestones and lessons learned, so can answer this. Thank you for the useful info on the topic, but still unexplained is how i ended up with an under-report of Settlers. I know the over-report of a Militia and Catapult came from bribery. But my log says in first paragraph: "No extra techs or Settlers, so this must be a good startsquare."

Next entry is:
"4000 BC - Settler on a river, can see 3 more river squares, 1 grass, 1 desert, 1 hills, 1 horseplains, and a village which looks like it might be on top of a plains. Question is whether to found here, move Settler to village and hope for a free capital, or move and uncover more land to decide where capital should go."

So this was not a double-yolk game at the start, but i did indeed try to make that village hut turn into a 1st city. I tried over and over, using the arcane knowledge in darkpanda's exposè of the Randomness Bug, but had no city to rename, and no city to 'check in on' to re-roll the dice. Gave it about 20 tries, opening/closing various Advisor boxes and various combinations of orders to the starting Setty, all to no avail. Have tried darkpanda's technique before and it's hilarious. A mindbender that it really works, you can force a hut to give whatever you want.

But still a mystery, how i got a Settler who didn't +1 the count on the Mil Advisor page. Can testify that none of the 63 Settlers were bought off a rival civ. They were all my own builds, because i tore down the civ after i got RailRoad and rebuilt the 'burgs atop rails. All i can guess is, that maybe the Settler attached to the new capital became a quasi-Start Settler once the new Palace was built?

Not building a settler anywhere, I trust? (those count)

Come to think of it, if you are doing something like building NONE settlers, I wonder if the city that gets deleted still counts the next build, which is another settler, towards the advisor total. This is the sort of thing that would not be able to be changed until another city was built that overwrote that city's entry.

Verrucosus said:

Also, when you're doing something experimental like wandering around with your starting settler visiting villages until you find one that becomes a city or even capture an undefended enemy city, even a single original settler might stay around. In either way, the continuing presence of an original settler unit will not be reflected in the military report.

Click to expand...

This is off-topic, but, never pop an advanced tribe before founding the capital! You don't get a palace!

Tristan_C said:

This is off-topic, but, never pop an advanced tribe before founding the capital! You don't get a palace!

Click to expand...

This is most certainly not true. I've gotten dozens of palaces by popping a hut with my first settler (in DOS ver .05). You don't get a palace if you conquer (not destroy) an enemy city before founding your own capital. If you want a palace at that point, I think you need to starve out the enemy city first and then found yours. Not really sure if you'll get a palace even then.

Verrucosus said:

At least one source of the frequent overreporting appears to be that the advisor does not eliminate a bribed unit from his statistics when it gets disbanded.

Click to expand...

In my experience, any unit that you bribe is counted twice by the military advisor. You don't have to wait until you disband it.

Valen said:

In my experience, any unit that you bribe is counted twice by the military advisor. You don't have to wait until you disband it.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I never bothered to check right after bribing.

Regarding Posidonius' surplus settler, I'm afraid I'm out of ideas.

I also often see underreporting of settlers and caravans.
Though it's expensive, I like to bribe one settler to get the advisor to report settlers accurately again.
Once caravans get underreported, there is no way to get an accurate report again. No AI caravans to bribe - ever.

Valen said:

I also often see underreporting of settlers and caravans.
Though it's expensive, I like to bribe one settler to get the advisor to report settlers accurately again.

Click to expand...

Does it matter how they die, bribed units? Sometimes it seems like a unit who dies in battle is properly handled by the Mil Advisor, but one merely disbanded aggravates the over-reporting. As far as under-reporting my Settys, i don't know. It's not due to the number of Settys; i've had 120+ in a game before. Not due to bribery, could it tie into the idea of "quiet" builds, like boats and tanks, where the build is not announced in the start-of-turn housekeeping?