Most powerful army

I'm kinda thinking that some Gamedev should take a look at this, this may be connected to recently fixed bug where all ships had 1hp

Is this meant as some sort of bug report? Please be more specific what is wrong and ideally show it in a screenshot, thanks.

The most powerful army stat in the newspaper is based on army strength (damage) btw.

One day before disaster.

yahya_ wrote:

One day before disaster.

Nah I didn’t think you were cringe like that

Proooobing

I’m just saying a simple fact

red army is still the strongest! Mostly because I am them right now!

freezy wrote:

Is this meant as some sort of bug report? Please be more specific what is wrong and ideally show it in a screenshot, thanks.

The most powerful army stat in the newspaper is based on army strength (damage) btw.

This has come up a few times. The army strength calculation, and the top military power calculation, both have issues. They are computed based on the top stat (like its unarmored defense or its air attack value). This overvalues specialized units while undervaluing general purpose units. It leads to ludicrous outcomes like a military with a lot of interceptors (which have unbalanced stats) being considered 2x as powerful as a military with a lot of infantry (which have balanced stats). This is not game-breaking but it's unnecessarily confusing.

This odd army strength calculation has a real impact as well. It affects garrison strength. A regiment of AA guns has a high air defense, giving it a high garrison value, so it can prevent a city from rebelling. A regiment of tanks has no outstanding stat, giving it a mediocre garrison value, so it cannot prevent rebellions. This is not intuitive. But if garrison values were based on manpower, the end result would be more intuitive.

The simplest, most logical fix is to consider the manpower of each unit. Manpower tracks very closely with a unit's cost and its utility, neither over nor undervaluing specialist or generalist units. Manpower is also how war losses are computed. It's only logical to use the same stat to compute army/garrison/military power. Simply multiply the unit's manpower by its % health, and there you go, a simple and intuitive power calculation.

z00mz00m wrote:

This has come up a few times. The army strength calculation, and the top military power calculation, both have issues. They are computed based on the top stat (like its unarmored defense or its air attack value). This overvalues specialized units while undervaluing general purpose units. It leads to ludicrous outcomes like a military with a lot of interceptors (which have unbalanced stats) being considered 2x as powerful as a military with a lot of infantry (which have balanced stats). This is not game-breaking but it's unnecessarily confusing.

This odd army strength calculation has a real impact as well. It affects garrison strength. A regiment of AA guns has a high air defense, giving it a high garrison value, so it can prevent a city from rebelling. A regiment of tanks has no outstanding stat, giving it a mediocre garrison value, so it cannot prevent rebellions. This is not intuitive. But if garrison values were based on manpower, the end result would be more intuitive.

The simplest, most logical fix is to consider the manpower of each unit. Manpower tracks very closely with a unit's cost and its utility, neither over nor undervaluing specialist or generalist units. Manpower is also how war losses are computed. It's only logical to use the same stat to compute army/garrison/military power. Simply multiply the unit's manpower by its % health, and there you go, a simple and intuitive power calculation.

The issue here is that this mechanic is cross title, so it is the same calculation in all of our game titles. But for example manpower does not exist in S1914, and in IO1919 it doesnt follow the same balancing formula as in CoW. So just changing it to manpower would not work. Implementing this title specific makes it harder, more prone to bugs and even less likely to be greenlit because the impact would be smaller. Finding a metric that can be used in all games is preferable, but even then the issue is small so I doubt it will be touched anytime soon. "Strength" is also used in many areas in the code, so its also not just a small surgical change in a specific place, but would need to be updated in many places, making it harder to avoid bugs again.

Would need some new smart average strength calculation that does not overvalue strong single values but also doesnt overvalue multiple mediocre values, both can be misleading.

Thanks for the explanation, Freezy.

Given the situation, I would not touch this code, either

It's not that obvious in normal games, anyway.

When an air cover player in AvA has twice the army power of anyone else, it looks like a bug.