Weird military strength calculation

[Dr.Acula]

In recent playthroughs of Civ 6 I've tried to pay more attention to scores for the AI and especially the military strength of opponents I intend to start wars with. Usually the numbers seem to be pretty consistent in terms of what units I'm seeing and what the numbers are showing.

In my current run though I'm confused with what I'm seeing because it doesn't reflect the actual force I'm encountering.

In this screenshot my military force in terms of score is almost double what China has which in combination of them being my neighbors is why I wanted to invade and take over. Should be a pretty straight forward victory.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3164009528

When I started the war though the numbers stayed steady but the units that I saw (you can see some of them on screen) are not reflecting the actual numbers. I've seen at least two cavalries (so one or two more in the FOW), at least two more bombards and musketmen as well.

So how can that be a force of 260 when my force (most of it visible on screen) is considered almost double that? Makes no sense to me...

[Evrach]

Military strengh is just the sum of the military strenghs of all your units. Including boats. He has better units, but you just have lot more units than him.

[Cryten]

Looks about right to me. He has significantly more advanced troops and your only seeing what he has on the border. On top of him being half your strength.

[Lemurian1972]

Yup that looks about right. For what it's worth, I never would have declared that war. You may have more total strength, but one thing that rating doesn't account for is City Defensive Strength.

You have to look at war as not just the total number of units you have, but how much power can you put into a single area, and how much force you can exert on a single target. With skilled gameplay you might be able to swarm some of his units in the field and take advantage of flanking bonuses to get some kills, but the amount of damage you'll be able to do to his city walls versus how much you're going to take is going to really be the difference maker. Even under ideal conditions (no garrison unit, city beseiged) Your Trebuchet corps are just barely going to match the strength on his weakest cities. With a swarm of units and clever swapping you can confuse his city strikes and keep your key units safe, but that takes serious practice and while he has high power units like Cavalry and Bombards nearby, will be next to impossible.

Best case scenario you might be able to Liberate Mohenjo-Daro and be in a good position diplomatically for the rest of the world to like you and hate him, making the next war easier.

[Maya-Neko]

Fighting a war against someone you can't break the walls of can still make sense. You might not be able to conquer any city, but when executed properly you can reduce the amount of units and have an easier time in a later war, especially since the AI has big problems replacing any casualties.

Though the space left of Ondini is insanely good for city growth and the AI is already trying to settle there, so that's definitely a target that's worth to conquering (or even better get the settler if possible). For that alone it can make sense to wage war.

[grognardgary]

There is a reason I do almost all my conquering in the ancient era.

[Evrach]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

Fighting a war against someone you can't break the walls of can still make sense. You might not be able to conquer any city, but when executed properly you can reduce the amount of units and have an easier time in a later war, especially since the AI has big problems replacing any casualties.

In some case, maybe, but not here. Here it's a joke. The chinese has twice his science and fourth times its culture per turn... Even if it is a dumbot, it's hard to declare war on a guy that as twice your science per turn ; of course he will have better units ^^;

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Evrach:

In some case, maybe, but not here. Here it's a joke. The chinese has twice his science and fourth times its culture per turn... Even if it is a dumbot, it's hard to declare war on a guy that as twice your science per turn ; of course he will have better units ^^;

If you manage to thin out their lines now, then it should be possible to overrun them with artillery and balloons a littlebit later. If you wait until then, then you're probably facing modern units, which you cities might not even be able to withstand anymore, unlike the current situation, where only the bombards are a real threat to your cities.

Obviously the downwards spiral has already began earlier, but being passive definitely won't make it any better.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

Originally posted by Evrach:

In some case, maybe, but not here. Here it's a joke. The chinese has twice his science and fourth times its culture per turn... Even if it is a dumbot, it's hard to declare war on a guy that as twice your science per turn ; of course he will have better units ^^;

If you manage to thin out their lines now, then it should be possible to overrun them with artillery and balloons a littlebit later. If you wait until then, then you're probably facing modern units, which you cities might not even be able to withstand anymore, unlike the current situation, where only the bombards are a real threat to your cities.

Obviously the downwards spiral has already began earlier, but being passive definitely won't make it any better.

Under other conditions, you're not wrong. This is completely the wrong sort of military to do what. The bulk of their strength is in those trebuchet and crossbowmen, and just popping out 1-2 more Cavalry will make short work of what's there.

They went to war at this tech level, yet they have none of Zulu's unique unit. That shows exceptionally bad planning. You can win a war from behind. You can't win a war from behind with completely the wrong army make-up.

[plaguepenguin]

I don't understand from observation how the strength score is calculated, specifically exactly how it weighs tech level differences and corp/army versus single units. A bit confusingly, it seems to reset to smaller numbers all around (deflation!!) from time to time (at the start of an era?). That said, it always seems to be a reasonable, rough gauge -- but only rough.

I'm not clear from the screenshot that something's off in your game. There's the fact that the gauge is only rough, then there's naval strength (which doesn't seem is going to help you here, but counts for calculating the number), plus the strength of land units, yours and China's, on land masses outside the scope of the screen shot. If what we see in the screenshot is all you have, it's probably the corps factor, that the calculation values your corps more highly than the tactical situation depicted here justifies, just because they are corps, and not taking into account your army composition, what mix of unit types you have.

Impi corps would serve you better here than knights or even crossbowmen. You need to take cities to succeed at conquest, and the open field aspect of war, where knights and crossbowmen do best, is secondary. Generals are especially useful in taking walled cities, and despite getting ikanda at half price, you only have them in two out of eight cities, and I don't see any generals, Between corps when your victim still only has single units, and extra points from generals -- the two gifts that being Zulu confers on you -- you can get away with promoted impi against musketmen in open field combat. If those are still medieval walls, siege towers supporting impi corps, rather than trebuchets, are still your best bet against walls.

If those are renaissance walls, you've probably missed the ideal Zulu window for late early war (or early mid-game war, whatever), the leg up with early corps and generals it gets from its uniques. Going at China earlier might have worked better, as even a warrior/spearman rush before you get all the elements of the Zulu uniques operating can be a good idea, to get some early conquest, to get promotions, and to supplement with pillage the economy you shortchange to build units for your early rush. If those are renaissance walls, you probably do need to back off now and wait until later to attack China. Get some pillaging in, take Bandar Brunei if you can, maybe snag that settler in the south, or the city it founds before it gets walls up, but that's all you're probably going to be able to do with this war.

If the walls are still medieval, you could probably manage more gains than that by first letting China attack you in the open field, where it will predictably lose big chunks of its field army because the AI is no good at open field warfare. During that interval you can transition from the civilian production you are doing now to producing impi corps and a couple of siege towers.

[omnius]

Can someone tell me how to get those numbers below the empire leader pics that I see in the picture Dr Acula posted? I assume it's a mod, looks interesting.

[pitonsnaboca]

Originally posted by omnius:

Can someone tell me how to get those numbers below the empire leader pics that I see in the picture Dr Acula posted? I assume it's a mod, looks interesting.

In Game options>> Interface Options there's an option "Show Yields in HUD Ribbon".
Change it to "Always show" (or any other option of your preference):

[grognardgary]

A lot of options right above the mini map I'd suggest anyone who hasn't already done so look through all of them and see which ones suit them best. There is also an alternative map view that is a hell of a lot easier to decipher.

[omnius]

Originally posted by pitonsnaboca:

Originally posted by omnius:

Can someone tell me how to get those numbers below the empire leader pics that I see in the picture Dr Acula posted? I assume it's a mod, looks interesting.

In Game options>> Interface Options there's an option "Show Yields in HUD Ribbon".
Change it to "Always show" (or any other option of your preference):

@pitonsnaboca - Thanks so much for the directions! Hard to know what options mean.

[omnius]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

A lot of options right above the mini map I'd suggest anyone who hasn't already done so look through all of them and see which ones suit them best. There is also an alternative map view that is a hell of a lot easier to decipher.

@grognardgary - I'll have to try some of those settings out just to see what they do. Thanks for the advice!

[Evrach]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

I don't understand from observation how the strength score is calculated, specifically exactly how it weighs tech level differences and corp/army versus single units. A bit confusingly, it seems to reset to smaller numbers all around (deflation!!) from time to time (at the start of an era?). That said, it always seems to be a reasonable, rough gauge -- but only rough.

Like I said up there. Just the sum of each military unit of the player.
Here we can see : 2 trebuchets (35x2), 1 horseman (36), 2 **crossbowmen (40x2), 1 galley (30), 1 skirmisher (20), 1 knight (50), 1 **knight (60) and 2 men-at-arms (2x45).
That's 436 on 495. But there's probably some bonus/malus (some units aren't full life) and some units offscreen :)
There's "deflation" when you fuse two units to make a corp. If you take 2 knights (50x2) and make a **knight of them, you'll technically lose 40 military strengh, that's all.