Ermor balance?

[Norfleet]

So, the AI sees Ermor growing huge and is afraid to attack it. The human player knows that Ermor needs 2-3 times the army size just to be close to even. The AI has no clue on this. The AI then picks on Ulm, seeing the small army in the graph. The AI refuses to declare war on Ermor, thinking it has the baddest army, even though it is mostly paper thin. Eventually, since ermor is left alone, it DOES get the baddest army.

Actually, the AI isn't afraid to attack Ermor, but it doesn't do so successfully: Fighting Ermor requires that you exploit its weaknesses, rather than attempt to dogpile it with superior numbers. Even really good, strong troops can hold out rather well, but the AI doesn't build these: It builds tons of indy crap, which doesn't stand a chance against a mile wide mass of undead, as he does not back them with effective mages or priests. Furthermore, Death Magic, Ermor's primary mode, is the magic type most effectively utilized by the AI in battle, due to its simple and straightforward self-contained combos, which the AI itself likes the cast by default.

Also, the simplistic way in which the game keeps track of armies really warps the army size graph. Ermor is so much higher on the graph that the other races tend to squish down into the bottom of the graph, making it hard to see who is really doing well.

The Army graph is so misleading it's not even really useful. A vast army of Mictlan slave patrollers, while totally useless in battle, can rival the size of anyone's army, while contributing absolutely nothing in real combat performance. Besides, the AI is not daunted by visual squashing, since it is #blind and suffers no ill effects from lost eyes or the blindness affliction.

All they need to fix this is to modify the army size to make a troop approximately worth its true value. Something like 1*gold + 2*resources + Bonus (like for sacred) for each troop. A lot of programing perhaps, but far more realistic than what it does now.

So how do you assess the fact that Ermor's troops are cheap-as-free, and have neither gold nor resource cost? Obviously, they're still worth SOMETHING.

[The Panther]

Maybe each troop should have a fixed value based on how strong they are perceived to be. That would be far better than the one-size-fits-all method currenty in use. As you say, Norfleet, the army size graph is not useful and can be very misleading.

[Norfleet]

That's as inherently useless as an assessment based on pure numbers. The value of a troop can vary greatly by both technological level of game, and circumstance. The wrong kind of unit at the wrong time can be not only worthless, but even counterproductive. Does this mean that for every militia the player hires or acquires, his army strength goes down, as militias tend to do nothing but chew up upkeep while being difficult to get rid of?