Scoredump army graph listing

[rdonj]

Ever since I enabled --scoredump to be able to see numbers like you do on the llamaserver, I've felt the army graph just didn't make sense. It would tell me numbers that I knew could not possibly be true as my armies were not nearly so large as it would make them out to be. I did a little checking of figures and, near as I can tell, the army size figure is not actually how many units you command, but the combined size of all your units added together. Any thoughts on this?

If this is the case I am not sure why it would be so. It seems easier and more direct to just count how many units the player actually has than to give some strange, quasi-estimate of the player's available army strength.

[Nikelaos]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Ever since I enabled --scoredump to be able to see numbers like you do on the llamaserver, I've felt the army graph just didn't make sense. It would tell me numbers that I knew could not possibly be true as my armies were not nearly so large as it would make them out to be. I did a little checking of figures and, near as I can tell, the army size figure is not actually how many units you command, but the combined size of all your units added together. Any thoughts on this?

If this is the case I am not sure why it would be so. It seems easier and more direct to just count how many units the player actually has than to give some strange, quasi-estimate of the player's available army strength.

hmm never noticed that, the rationale could be that that larger units are almost always more costly and better than smaller troops so it would tend to give a better indication on the actual strength of ones army MOST of the time.

without that sort of thing the score graphs would be very deceptive, for instance showing kailasa had great military when in fact it was just hordes of spammed markata chaff, similarly Jotunheim could make some giants and because not so many are made (thanks to cost) the graph would give the impression it has a weak army.

[JimMorrison]

If nothing else, it is necessary to allow the AI to function in its absurd way. The AI isn't looking to see who makes what kind of troops, it simply looks at your "Army Size", and uses that to determine whether or not you are fit to attack.

[fungalreason]

Perhaps gold cost of your units (or some modifier times gem cost for summons) would yield a better graph?

[thejeff]

Certainly better, more complicated measures could be found, but size is better than just strict numbers.

Gold cost would be better, though as you suggest summons would have to be accounted for. But it would also make sense to figure in resource cost somehow?


Added: Besides it tells you right upfront what it's measuring: It's the Army Size graph.

[archaeolept]

the number is based on size, w/ a bonus I believe for commanders.

[Agema]

There's no perfect way to do it.

Gold cost is flawed also. A GP10 Res20 unit is a lot better than a GP10 Res5 unit. The game would have to have to have some way to take into account units without a gold cost (LA Ermor for instance would perpetually have an army size of pretty much 0), unless they have "hidden" values just for the graph calculation. A modification by unit size would make most sense to me, although I'd suggest they'd still be under-represented as a size 4 giant is probably worth about 3-5 size 2 humans.

[rdonj]

I'm pretty sure that for the actual graph, what you see is a direct comparison of the numbers of each nation's armies. I think it's only for the army size value in the scoredump file that it does the unit size based calculation.

I'm not sure a size-based helps a lot. There's a significant difference between, say, a troglodyte and heavy cavalry or a war minotaur. On the other hand, you don't want the actual graphs showing a completely accurate graph of exactly how strong each person's military is or the game will become a lot less interesting. It just seemed very odd to me to have a value based on the units actual sizes, but I suppose if it's meant for the ai there may be something more to it than is immediately obvious.

[llamabeast]

It's literally a measure of the total size of the army, if you put them standing on each other's heads. It's certainly an entertaining concept at least, if not actually very helpful.

[Gandalf Parker]

Everything has its pros and cons.

I think that the main reason is that the game already figures armies that way. So rather than refigure it all just for the score sheet, it pints out the numbers its already using.