Military Advisor:

[Locdog]

Does anyone know the benefit of this advisor except for telling you your troop count? I mean is there a way to know what other civs have in terms of troops and strength of them without a spy. Like in Civ 3 you contact a civ and the foregin advisor would say "there military is stronger than ours" Or they have riflemen etc. Is there a way to find this out in civ 4?

 

[flytyer]

I have yet to see this in CIV IV. I believe you are out of luck here. I use the spy unit to look up my oponets military and that is about it. Good luck!

 

[AmnesiaA]

The military advisor in CIV3 felt like it was cheating. All you had to do is establish an embassey and you're able to know a lot about the opposing military, which doesn't make sense. I prefer the spy/caraval way of finding out the military type in CIV4.

 

[kovach81]

i agree, it is more realistic now

 

[Kavatar]

Sometimes you can find out what their most advanced units are (besides by looking) through diplomacy...sometimes when you contact them they'll say "I have a cavalry, ho ho ho" or "Soon my camel archers will destroy you all!" Beyond that though, there's no way to tell anything about military strength except through spies/caravels/subs or with religious line of sight.

 

[Canuck Bill]

The worst thing is the pathetic world map you get. I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is there. Looks like my old Intellivision D & D map.

That being said, the game is better now that you have to spy and investigate to find enemy unit status. It is easy to tell what their strongest unit is using their tech info. If you have open borders unit #'s are a cinch, if not a spy or two will do the job. As soon as I get spies, I will pump out 20 at a rate of 1 spy every 1-2 turns. This allows me to spread them worldwide, know my enemy and have sabotage at the ready. In fact once I spread them around I usually pillage all tiles that have no units in them. Cheap and effective.