Military Strength

[Bill_in_PDX]

I don't personally encounter much of the combat results issues that others complain about in this forum. However, something has bothered me for quite sometime and I am curious to get others feedback on it.

First, we know that the AI doesn't seem to place any priority on upgrading old units (something I think should be addressed at some point).

Second, I suspect that the display of military strength comparison on the advisor screen is based upon unit quantity, not comparitive quality (anyone confirm this? Does this number include workers?)

What concerns me is, does the AI then act on that apparent mismatch?

For an extreme example, myself (Americans...I think they are a challenging Civ to play) were on the same island as the Romans. There was a choke point between us which I quickly grabbed early on. Then during three seperate poorly timed wars (initiated by the Romans) I laughed as I watched him hurl the better part of his army against 12 fortified veteran or better pikemen. Once the dust settled, I would send out the horsemen to pillage his country.

Now, I know this map presented a challenging AI programming problem, because while the AI figured out that it needed control of the choke point, and also tried what limited amphibious options are available in the era of the galley, I have come to believe that it acted on the flawed belief that it was superior militarily just because it had about 50 workers and a bunch of spearmen.

Would a better way of calculating the military advisor number involve the use of hit points? or offensive/defensive value? etc?

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Bill_in_PDX
I don't personally encounter much of the combat results issues that others complain about in this forum. However, something has bothered me for quite sometime and I am curious to get others feedback on it.

First, we know that the AI doesn't seem to place any priority on upgrading old units (something I think should be addressed at some point).

Second, I suspect that the display of military strength comparison on the advisor screen is based upon unit quantity, not comparitive quality (anyone confirm this? Does this number include workers?)

What concerns me is, does the AI then act on that apparent mismatch?

For an extreme example, myself (Americans...I think they are a challenging Civ to play) were on the same island as the Romans. There was a choke point between us which I quickly grabbed early on. Then during three seperate poorly timed wars (initiated by the Romans) I laughed as I watched him hurl the better part of his army against 12 fortified veteran or better pikemen. Once the dust settled, I would send out the horsemen to pillage his country.

Now, I know this map presented a challenging AI programming problem, because while the AI figured out that it needed control of the choke point, and also tried what limited amphibious options are available in the era of the galley, I have come to believe that it acted on the flawed belief that it was superior militarily just because it had about 50 workers and a bunch of spearmen.

Would a better way of calculating the military advisor number involve the use of hit points? or offensive/defensive value? etc?

Wow. I hadn't realized that "the AI doesn't seem to place any priority on upgrading old units"!! That's a terrible indictiment of a bad AI. This is true??

We do know that the AI Advisor (always stupid) judges a rival's military strength on quantity of units, not type or quality. This is yet another problem with this faulty AI.

The problem with that is a civ can make an attack on it less likely by building lots of cheap junk units, such as warriors. This is really a big fraud, and makes our Military Advisor rather worthless.

If you've built all those cheap units - but put top quality offensive units near the border where you might be attacked - if you are attacked you can surprise the enemy with strong units where they are needed - as you mentioned. Same thing happened to me. I would be attacked by a foolish enemy, and then I'd counterattack. It got boring fast.

So what we see is that the Military Advisor is about as inept as the lame AI Diplomatic Advisor.

Don't expect Firaxis to patch it soon; they are making their sales.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Well don't take my post as a bash on Firaxis at all. I am impressed with the game, and have a great time playing it.

Just something I noticed and hoped that other could comment on their own experiences.

 

[Zouave]

We have very stupid AI's. . . and you are "impressed"????

There are a ton of problems with the game. And every day I read about more of them on the forums, some even I hadn't yet found, such as your first point.

There is no excuse for such a worthless dumb Military Advisor. The Diplomatic Advisor is none too smart either, and he holds grudges for thousands of years.

 

[Parmenion]

If that is the case and the Military Advisor judges an opponents strengths by their numbers rather than quality, then why does he come out with things like, "The Romans fear our Musketmen." ?
Surely, this is the AI judging a player by the quality, not quantity of his military units.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by Zouave
We have very stupid AI's. . . and you are "impressed"????

I don't think it is a stupid AI at all, especially for a $49 game. I'm not sure how anyone could program around all of the possibilities CIVIII presents.

I am curious though to the answer of does it just count number of units (and if so, is a worker/scout/settler included) or does it look at quality as well.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by Parmenion
If that is the case and the Military Advisor judges an opponents strengths by their numbers rather than quality, then why does he come out with things like, "The Romans fear our Musketmen." ?
Surely, this is the AI judging a player by the quality, not quantity of his military units.

I am guessing that it places much more emphasis on the unit count.....and don't call me Shirley....

This is why I am asking the question, I am curious to hear what others have run into. I knew that the Romans "feared" my horsemen, but that didn't stop them from attacking.

 

[Parmenion]

Yeh, I noticed that too. Several times I've been told that such and such a civilisation fears our Pikemen or whatever, and they still attack, throwing themselves to the front to fight my cities like teenage girls at a boy-band gig.
It's not that it bothers me, but it gets a little annoying at times when I want to chill out a bit and develop culture or science for a while and the bloody Zulus come and pick a fight.

"Stop frowin'..., them bloody spears..., at me..."

I suspect that the AI weighs all the odds up and makes a calculated gamble as to whether it can defeat the player, but obviously this doesn't always work. Still, it makes it more realistic. Take for example the real-life Zulus in the Victorian era who resolutely fought both the Boers and the British, even though both these opponents were armed with the latest rifles, machine-guns and artillery, and they only had spears and an awful lot of guts.

 

[Psychlone]

The AI does make it's strength assessment based upon sheer unit number, yes. Would you prefer that they just let the AI know at all times how many and of what your military consists of?

Look at it from the standpoint that their informants can provide them with rough estimates of the amount of manpower in your military, or extrapolate such information from your military budget, without specifically knowing your entire order of battle.

Look at the military buildup conducted by Nazi Germany between the World Wars. The Germans managed to train and equip a large military force, including plenty of weapons they were forbidden to possess according to the Treaty of Versailles, as well as manpower far in excess of treaty-condoned levels. They did this all under the noses of the Allied powers. Did the real world Allies possess omniscient military advisors? Nope. The Allies had little idea of Germany's true military strength until the panzers began to roll.

Your advisor is a very rough tool to give you information to use to formulate your own decisions. You have the benefit of your own mind and experience to weigh the worth of their advice. Just as you can make mistakes based upon this information, so the AI makes mistakes. But plenty of times the AI judges correctly, and sends in force so overwhelming that it will cripple your civ if not kill it, but, most people tend not to talk about when THAT happens...

I have found the AI in Civ 3 to be fairly impressive. Sure, it has limitations, it's only an AI after all, and thus it becomes predictable. But before people slam on it, I challenge them to program a better one.

 

[Selous]

im pretty sure the germans hid lots of stuff LOTS of stuff ... they built ultralight battleships to keep there tonnage down ... the good lod u boat was great here because u got so much bang for your buck and tonnage (they had tonnage restrictions) and they also set up "civilion" organisations like hitler youth and such that trained everyone up with basic survival and combat skills .... but yea ... the allies just didnt want a war so much that they did not see

anywho ... i think the civ3 AI is quite good .... sure sometimes it makes an "error of judgement" and assults a superior enemy ... u never attacked a AI that was a little tough for u? .... gone to wipe em out and extended your glorious now dead army a little to far?... it seems that sometimes the AI will throw caution into the wind and play now or never

and i think there are MANY more factors involved for the AI to attack u... because the AI will attack u for resorces, land position, diplomatic and despot resons ... and i think the military adviser is just a small part in the desision

 

[JimTheConqueror]

Its a tough one, but the point about the AI not knowing the composition of your force so having to make a guess on your strength by your army size is valid and a fair stab at a reasonable solution.

Personally I would rather that it had a vague idea of your size, was maybe 10 - 20% out either way most of the time and that it would make a judgement based on what units of yours it could see. For example on one occasion the AI thinks you have 20% less troops than you do, but it can see a couple of tanks, and assumes you have more. It comapres this to its units and decides that ok, he's only got cavalry but he thinks hes much larger than you are (20% under with his estimate...) and that he can handle the difference in tech with the superior numbers. So he attacks.

Sure you could bluff the AI by builiding loads of warriors and one tank, showing him the tank and hoping he wont attack, but he will make the size assesment too, and might go for it anyway.

Of course, if the AI is the Germans, he will always attack anyway ;-) i think they have their own AI routine which goes: Meet enemy, demand stuff, attack regardless of outcome, kill or be killed!

What do you lot think of this, I can see a few flaws already but if someone mentions them, we can discuss 'em...

As for "The Iroqouis fear our Vicious Gerbils" stuff that the military advisor comes out with, that seems to serve NO purpose at all. It just tells you that the enemy fear whatever s the most advanced unit you have...even if the enemy passed that unit by a long time ago, its quite silly :-(

 

[macaskil]

I also presume the AI civs don't know about MPPs either.

Last night I played

- French
- large
- continents
- 80% water
- 12 civs

Early on the English attacked me for no reason and nearly wiped me out. I fought back and eventually eliminated the English totally. Unfortunately the Germans moved in to some of the space created by the vanished English cities so I ended up sharing a small continent with Bismarck and the Russians. At this point because of the war I had no culture, no army and was well behind in tech. I first of all built up my culture so my cities wouldn't flip; traded techs until I was more or less level with the Germans. I had no iron or coal. I signed MPPs with all the other civs. I then traded so I could import Iron and Coal and start to build up my armed forces.

As soon as I did this the Germans attacked with Cavalry and blitzed their way through my cities. The MPPs kicked in and every single civ declared war on the Germans. Hooray! I was soon left with just a single city safely surrounded by Russian territory. So, I now had no hope of getting any sort of win. I kept going just to see what would happen to the Germans. With 9 civs against 1 they were eventually totally annihilated.

Obviously they would not have attacked had they known about those MPPs - or is the "militaristic" characteristic a synonym for "stupid"?

 

[Greadius]

I think its very historically acurate. Before satellite imagery and multi-billion dollar intelligence services, leaders guessed. They always, ALWAYS over-estimated themselves and under-estimated the enemy.

I'd like to see a little more creedence payed by the military advisors to technological levels when determining relative power of the military. But what you're asking for is the AI to use too much information when making tactical decisions.

 

[OneInTen]

I'm pretty sure you only need one of the unit to get the "fears" message. So the most cost effective solution to making the AI afraid of attacking you is one of the best unit of each type (attack, defense, air, sea, artilary) and a whole bunch of warriors (possibly workers if it counts those!).

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by OneInTen
I'm pretty sure you only need one of the unit to get the "fears" message. So the most cost effective solution to making the AI afraid of attacking you is one of the best unit of each type (attack, defense, air, sea, artilary) and a whole bunch of warriors (possibly workers if it counts those!).

During the Civil War Penisula Campaign here in Virgina, the Confederates would march in circles, and set up logs painted black like cannons. scaring away an army 5-10 times their size. The Union commander actually demanded that Lincoln provide for reinforcements before he made an ignominious retreat.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Parmenion
but it gets a little annoying at times when I want to chill out a bit and develop culture or science for a while and the bloody Zulus come and pick a fight.

"Stop frowin'..., them bloody spears..., at me..."

As a general rule, if it annoys you, it must be good from the point of view of your enemy.

 

[Moulton]

Well, the Chinese fear my cav... and have not atacked.
The Romans fear my cav, and allied against Aztec
The Iroquois fear my cav, and allied...
The Aztec considered my army about equal to theirs, and walked fearlessly through my land.... declared war when I objected...
Sent about 40 knights to their death. But it was not ignorant. Turns out, that cav attacked by knights tend t die, buat knights attacked by Cav almost always die. I had enough rails built that I could move units fairly quickly, destroyed the first wave of 15 knights, then destroyed a column of 21. Had I waited for their attack, or left my cav in exposed positions, I woul dbe dead now.
IE, there was a chance that they could pull it off, and without the right counter strategy, they probably would have.
The romans sent three spearmen, and sued for peace when they died. That's not fair. They also took a couple of cities on the far side. As far as I can tell, the iroq have not done anything effetive except sink a couple of galleons.

bTW-- had a frigate and galley attacked and sunk by their galleons.
I have also tracked some galleys on the ocean. Followed one for 23 turns and it never sank on the ocean. But I have seen some of them sink.

 

[vulture]

Originally posted by Psychlone
The AI does make it's strength assessment based upon sheer unit number, yes. Would you prefer that they just let the AI know at all times how many and of what your military consists of?

I would like it if they would multiply my unit count by some factor based on the best unit they know I possess.


Look at the military buildup conducted by Nazi Germany between the World Wars. The Germans managed to train and equip a large military force, including plenty of weapons they were forbidden to possess according to the Treaty of Versailles, as well as manpower far in excess of treaty-condoned levels. They did this all under the noses of the Allied powers. Did the real world Allies possess omniscient military advisors? Nope. The Allies had little idea of Germany's true military strength until the panzers began to roll.

They did some very interesting slights of hands and outright lies. After the Versi Rape they were not allowed to have an airforce. Nazi's encourage private fight schools and institute acrobatic flight as a sport.

The army was limited to 20,000 men and the French were afraid that Germany would set the enlistment tour to 9 months and rotate every adult male through basic infantry training and send them home with a rifle. So the enlistment time was forcably set to 10 years by the allies. When the germans abandoned the restrictions in 35 those 20,000 men became senior seargents for a new army of 1,000,000.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Bill_in_PDX
First, we know that the AI doesn't seem to place any priority on upgrading old units (something I think should be addressed at some point).

Actually, upgrading isn't always the best option. If you have limited cash, then building new units may be best. Then just send your old spearmen in as diversions and to pillage.

Beware the lowly spearman.
http://www.crowncity.net/civ3/counterattack.htm

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Bill_in_PDX
Well don't take my post as a bash on Firaxis at all. I am impressed with the game, and have a great time playing it.

Just something I noticed and hoped that other could comment on their own experiences.

Good post, Bill. I didn't take your comments as a bash at all.