Army size graph

Tifone · #1 June 30th, 2008, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Ironhawk said:
PD doesnt effect the decision to declare war, I dont think, but rather which provinces the AI will choose to attack once it is already at war.

Mmh, I was sure I read somewhere (and in different places probably, as I was taking it as a fact :\ )that it was unwise to let a province, close to an enemy nation, without an army or 11 points of PD, as the AI would have seen this easy prey as a reason to start a war.

Of course I may be totally, horribly wrong ^^

MaxWilson · #2 June 30th, 2008, 07:23 PM

Tifone,

My experience is that this is correct. PD 1 everywhere gets me in wars with the AI a lot quicker than PD 10 (with pockets of 30). Or at least it seems to, I haven't measured it rigorously.

-Max

Ming · #3 July 1st, 2008, 02:29 AM

It is my experience too. When I first started I didn't read the manual (or visited this forum!) and did not know about PD. So I had PD of zero everywhere and got wipe out by the AI's pretty quickly.

Seve82 · #4 July 3rd, 2008, 09:28 AM

Games with no graphs on are much more interesting. Makes getting those scouts out to everywhere and using scrying spells much more important... also makes diplomacy more useful.

And in my experience getting pd of 21 on border provinces with AI makes them much less hostile.

thejeff · #5 July 3rd, 2008, 10:14 AM

Scouts don't replace graphs. Or vice versa. With graphs on, you still need scouts to find nations and see army movements. With graphs off, scouts can't tell you income, research, gem income, etc.
Spies and scrying can give you detail on individual provinces, but not on the empire as a whole.

Having graphs on tends to work against those who take the lead, which is, I think, a good thing. Though you could say they advantage those who develop in ways they don't track: Blood, clams, luck income, smaller elite armies, etc.