Does an advanced army prevent attack?

[Marshall Thomas]

I have read many times on these forums that a large army will deter the AI from declaring war and that a small army will invite the AI to attack. What about the technology of the army? If I up-grade my units the instant technology allows, could this prevent the AI from declaring war on me?

 

[pholkhero]

only if you have enough of them i think

 

[cairo140]

I think the "we fear their military might" factor happens according to Power on the histograph.

 

[zeeter]

It SHOULD be about total strength of all units, but in past games it has been total number of units. Therefore if you had an army of spearmen on one side that outnumbered an army of modern armor it would prevent the modern armor from attacking.

Not sure how they're doing it now.

 

[Benwallace]

The AI knows what type of units you have I think. Well at least they did in Civ 3 cause the military advisor would say so and so fears are cavalry etc. Also in Civ 4 the AI talks about what units it has. So I think they defintly know what your latest greatest is. However I think it just determines if you have the untit not but not how many of that unit you actually have. So what I always try and do is upgrade at least one unit to the latest greatest and save my cash to upgrade in the city that is in closest to the battle. I think the AI calculates what your best unit is then also calculates how many total units you have. Can anyone verify this?

 

[emills]

there is a good thread in the strategy section that explains it. Essentially a warrier is represents 1000 troops (not acurate but good for the argument). A tank is 100,000 troops (again not accurate but for the arguments sake). Upgrading your units will increase your power which is what the AI will use in the risk/reward equation on wether to attack you.

Other things like builing walls and just having certain techs help increase the troop/power number.

The hard part is to pay for upgrades. The AI has a bonus (countered by higher upkeep costs) that allows it to upgrade its troops more esily than you.

 

[MoonBase]

The hard part is to pay for upgrades. The AI has a bonus (countered by higher upkeep costs) that allows it to upgrade its troops more esily than you.

Which is why it cracks me up to see an AI stack consisting of two infantry, two riflemen, a longbowman, a pikeman, a cannon and two catapults.

"Sir, we must increase military funding! We can't send our men out armed with these obsolete weapons!"

"Bug off, I think catapults are cool!"

 

[emills]

True, if you have kept the AI from expanding, limiting its money base.

As a side note, the more money the AI has the more of its units will be SAM infantry rather than regualr infantry. A feature of its tech path choice, usually it gets rocketry prior to assembly line.

 

[Pantastic]

The power graph is what the AI uses to determine how strong your army is, and upgrading units definately bumps you up on the power graph. Parading your units where the AI can see them also helps. If you've got 2 units per city as your entire army, upgrading them isn't going to do much since you've just got too few to have much power, but if you've got a decent sized army upgrading could be all you need.

Though nothing short of destroying him will guarantee that Monty won't declare war on you.

 

[jimbob27]

I'm sure the type of unit has a big effect this time, at least..... nukes seem to have a big deterrant factor.

It seems once you've got a few nukes stacked up in your cities, its almost impossible to convince somebody to declare war on you.

 

[il-stark]

Which is why it cracks me up to see an AI stack consisting of two infantry, two riflemen, a longbowman, a pikeman, a cannon and two catapults.

Yup just had that in a Noble game I'm playing, I was at war with the Malinese and the Aztecs wanted some of the action. Granted they did take a recently acquired city but they lost about 30 units in doing so. It was quite funny to watch them send wave after wave of Macemen and War elephants against my redcoats. In the end though it didn't make any difference they held city for about 5 turns until my relief force re-took it... and a few other cities, including their capitol...

 

[Crighton]

frankly there are days when i think the AI has gone completely off it's rocker and just declares war because it gets bored

 

[Pantastic]

Nah, I do that all the time. I've actually been tempted to trade away iron before so that I could build catapaults to go with my infantry, since cannons don't bombard any better than cats.

 

[MoonBase]

Nah, I do that all the time. I've actually been tempted to trade away iron before so that I could build catapaults to go with my infantry, since cannons don't bombard any better than cats.

While that's true, cannons do attack a heck of a lot more effectively than cats.

 

[Pantastic]

Yeah, but their piddly 12 attack factor is nothing compared to 20 for infantry, especially since I normally have a decent body of city raider infantry. If I'm attacking with them once I have infantry, I really only care about collateral damage. So while they technically have a higher attack factor, for my purposes there's no difference.