How much weight does the AI place on number of units vs. type of units?

[tdy99]

For example, when measuring strength to decide whether or not to attack, does the AI place much weight on having more advanced units? Is it better from a strength perspective to have 2 archers or 1 Longbow?

 

[Ataxerxes]

For example, when measuring strength to decide whether or not to attack, does the AI place much weight on having more advanced units? Is it better from a strength perspective to have 2 archers or 1 Longbow?

In your example, the two archers would have more weight. As a general rule, numbers matter more. However, some city improvements, land, population and technological advances all figure into the equation.

However, I'd rather have the Longbow. Keeping the AI from attacking with your strength is very hard. You have to have almost double their strength in most cases. Diplomacy is what most players use to keep the AI off their backs. This is the reverse of the case in III, where the AI looked at strength a lot more and diplomacy a lot less. Friendly AI's won't attack (except Cathy in very specific circumstances) and about half of them won't attack at Pleased. The problem, of course, is that you can't please everybody. You pretty much have to be prepared for war at some point in most games.

 

[Steve the Noble]

tdy99: Stronger units have greater weight in the overall military strength sum, but IIRC the weights don't increase in obvious amounts.

All: So when the AI factors in military strength for DoW, do all the calculations just boil down to one number? That is, the human's strength ratio as shown in the scoreboard (e.g. 0.5).

 

[thecaesar]

Is the weight purely on numbers, or is there just MORE weight on numbers? Hypothetically, say two civilizations both had iron working and iron, but one has an army of 10 archers and 40 spearmen, and the other has and army of 10 archers and 20 axemen. Would the first civ (assuming that their leader isn't monty) declare war on the second? And say the second civilization had walls in all their cities, or they had a ton of forests that their soldiers could hunker down in. Would that affect the first's decision of whether to declare war?

This is all assuming that the two civs are "annoyed" with each other.