War Balance

[Alexander Rahl]

Maybe i just suck at this particular game...
but does anyone else feel like the AI, even when handicapped or on easy difficulty...
just seems to churn out soldiers like an assembly line?

like, ill declare a war, and have a reasonably sized army. task a few cities to train more soldiers to replace whats going to be lost, and all of a sudden its just a torrent of men coming at me from my opponent, in numbers i can hardly believe.
is it just me? or do wars seem really unbalanced here?

[Emergent]

Wouldn't you do the same thing?

If the AI declared war on you and started invading one of your cities, would you not pull all units from everywhere in your empire in order to meet and fight the enemy? Using water for quick movement as available, and even using Force March to bring units to the front.

And then the fighting rages on, and you can tell you've got a big problem on your hands, so you assign all cities to train units, and use every available rush-buying technique to you. You have 500 civics you wanted to save to enact a law. Too bad, you need that extra slinger asap, otherwise you might lose the game. So you rush out the slinger.

The thing is that the AI plays quite intelligently and will do what it takes to survive.

One thing that can be helpful is to make sure you mouse over the enemy nation so you can see their strength. If it's "stronger" or "much stronger", you may face a significant challenge. If it's "similar", it'll still be tough, because remember they'll put everything into the fight. Even at weaker levels, it's important not to get complacent.

[mk11]

What do you consider a reasonably sized army? About 2-3 units at cities likely to be attacked by raids and 4-6 at cities near enemy states? Do you use forced march to move reserves to the front. The enemy will.

[Alexander Rahl]

Originally posted by mk11:

What do you consider a reasonably sized army? About 2-3 units at cities likely to be attacked by raids and 4-6 at cities near enemy states? Do you use forced march to move reserves to the front. The enemy will.

i consider Reasonably sized to be about 5 - 6 units, but usually 5 - 6 *good* units. in this case, they were 2 axemen, 2 war elephants, a spearman, and an archer. With more archers and axemen on the way.
but the Greeks just flooded me with 6 slingers, and several warriors, 4 Biremes, and every time i killed one of their units, another seemed to arrive.

What i mean to say, is it almost feels like either they train a lot more soldiers during peace time than i realize, or they train units faster than we do

[mk11]

Turn 88 I have 7 cities and have 4 chariots, 1 horseman, 1 archer, 10 axemen, 2 spearmen, 9 militia, 4 biremes. My power is considered similar to all other factions. On the records screen I am rank 2 on military units produced and 7 on units lost and 1st on units killed. My two best producing cities take 2 and 3 turns to produce axe/spearmen.

That is what I consider a reasonable army.

I expect they are training more units than you realise, you can see in the records screen. Unless you specialise some cities for military production (iron mines, barracks/ranges, miners, etc.) you will have difficulty producing units.

[Alexander Rahl]

Nah, im fully convinced the AI cheats behind the scenes.
its turn 19, and i just got the option to reveal Persia's territory, and they have 5 cities already, 2 of which i know were barbarian camps. they physically couldnt have trained enough settlers *and* soldiers to handle 2 camps, in such a short amount of time. so i guess that answers that

[Mohawk_Solver]

The AI doesn't cheat once the game is underway, it doesn't get free units or training, but the AI does start with more stuff - check the tooltip for whatever difficulty level you pick to see. Unless you play with no starting AI development, yes they do have an advantage at going after early barbarian camps, although they will let you take some as well.

The initial AI development makes it so you shouldn't attack them early on, you should instead expand on the account of tribes, and use diplomacy to avoid war until you're strong enough. The AI will also not declare war on you for some time, depending on the difficulty level (30 turns on mid-range difficulties).

If you're coming from Civ, one of the key habits to learn is to build way more units. 5-6 units in Old World isn't an army, it's an okay force to defend one city, and in most cases wouldn't be enough to attack anything.

[Twelvefield]

If you're going to build units, make sure you build Scouts! That way you can see what the other nations are doing and at least gain some intel on their force composition and army size. Without that, the AI will sandbag you every time: it's smart and it knows all of the game rules to fight to its advantage.

Early Barbarian camps aren't all that hard to take. If Persia prioritized building units, it could take two camps and make them into cities in 20 turns if the map was ripe.

[Alexander Rahl]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

If you're going to build units, make sure you build Scouts! That way you can see what the other nations are doing and at least gain some intel on their force composition and army size. Without that, the AI will sandbag you every time: it's smart and it knows all of the game rules to fight to its advantage.

Early Barbarian camps aren't all that hard to take. If Persia prioritized building units, it could take two camps and make them into cities in 20 turns if the map was ripe.

20 turns
lets charitably say they have 2 cities, (they shouldnt, i made the settings as easy as possible to gauge the difficulty of the AI) they start with 1 slinger.
'settlers each take about 7+ turns to make, slingers take 5.
so they would have had to make 3 settlers, and enough slingers to defeat 2 whole camps.
lets say, 3 slingers total, plus taking a turn to heal them each. that math doesnt add up to me

[mk11]

You set easy settings so what level of barbarian activity did you set? If it was set on normal or less should only need 2 military units to beat a camp.

Persia get a -25% cost for ranged unit production - did you allow for that? They will need to research Stonecutting.

If they research Polis (they have the requirement for that) they can then get the Free Settler research so only need to build 2 settlers.

Have you looked in the records screen? The AI seems to fall behind on development, presumably because it rushes units and settlers before workers.

[r47926]

Yes, had a similar experience when I fought Persia. They built the units faster then I killed them. But I somehow found a good defensive position, built some forts and defended until I had researched better units. Persia never got better units until I've taken one of their cities and made peace. They must have put everything into building units and fell behind in research and city development as well.

[Lucky1]

A lot of this also relates to the starting advantage that AI may have. I generally give the ai no advantage, but then play on the noble (the setting I like). Having more cities at the start = more production capacity for units (including miltary). This can compound pretty quickly and is not that fun (for me). Play with your scenario settings....

[tiamats4esgares]

It seems ridiculous to me too. Even if EVERY city you have builds a unit for every other thing they make, it's not enough.

Assyria just went to war with me. At the start of the war I had around 12-14 units, and this was around turn 45-50. They had at least double what I did. I just don't see how.

[mk11]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

It seems ridiculous to me too. Even if EVERY city you have builds a unit for every other thing they make, it's not enough.

This isn't what you want. You need specialised unit producing cities.

Assyria just went to war with me. At the start of the war I had around 12-14 units, and this was around turn 45-50. They had at least double what I did. I just don't see how.

I assume you were playing with no AI early development.

Where were you power wise relative to the other nations? What position in the records file for units built, infrastructure built, etc.?

Typical for me at that time would be to have about that many units, see some of the other nations as weaker, some similar, and may be one as stronger. I'ld be about middle in the rankings for units produced, infrastructure built, and a bit above middle for other key indicators.

Basically, one nation may run ahead in military because of the luck of having iron nearby or lucky events. If that nation is near you, you need to invest more in military to deter it from attacking you.

[Twelvefield]

Also, Assyria is really geared towards early war. They like to go all-in, and unless you yourself are Assyria, that can be hard to counter. Beg for mercy and fight again when you are stronger.

[4X-Fan]

Originally posted by White Squall:

lets charitably say they have 2 cities, (they shouldnt, i made the settings as easy as possible to gauge the difficulty of the AI) they start with 1 slinger.

The one really important setting for this is called AI development. Anything above "none" will let them start with one or even more extra cities. But if you set it to "none", any "cheating" is eliminated in that regard.