How is Military Strength Calculated?

I thought it was total Att+Def...not so?

from GalCiv2 Forums
How is Military Strength Calculated?

The reason I ask is because in my last game, during the colonization stage (I'm still playing DL) I noticed my closest neighbor, the Altarians, had the top rated military. At the time I had 4 1 Beam defenders. I looked at his planets, and then talked to him to see what ships he had, and he had 12 unarmed scouts.

How do 12 unarmed scouts give a better military rating than 4 defenders?

Also, letter in that same game, but this has happened before, I have been rated very low in the military rankings, despite having few but very up-to-date ships. Both in the stat rankings, and in reports, I appear to have a weak military. Consequentially I get attacked by 'more powerful' militaries, only to have their fleets absolutely destroyed by my few but powerful ships.

The number of times my weak military has annihilated an opponent who attacked me becuase of such weakness is ridiculous. Why don't they know my military is good enough to wipe them out?
6,703 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The military rating equals attack + defense + hp/10 summed over all ships that have 1 attack or more. So it's measuring quality and quantity, but doesn't say anything about the power of individual fleets.

If you are ridiculously more powerful than your opponents, you should attack them instead of waiting for them to attack you. And increase the difficulty level in your next game.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Note that the diplomacy screen will not display ships in fleets. So somone who appears to have 4 scouts might have 4 fighters and there's no way of knowing it unless you see them on the map.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well it was a few days ago, but I swear that the altarian military was rated higher than mine, and they and a negative military strength modifier, and all they had were unarmoured scouts.

And yes, I will put the dif. level up next time. by the end of the game i didn't i had my ships moving at 50spaces a turn, since i didn't need more weapons or armour, and i just wanted to win!
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
You will never see any ships that arein Fleets in the Trade Screen. This is misleading info.

You can see the categories of ships they have (attack, defense, etc) and the amount of those ships in the Foreign Policy/Stats screen with the right amount of espionage. This screen will allow you to get a better feel for their strength...when they are builidng up or losing ,military power.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This screen will allow you to get a better feel for their strength...when they are builidng up or losing ,military power.


Good tip, but you would have to sacrifice the random event wars to do it (by using espionage spending). I like the random event wars so as a result, i can never use espionage spending.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

This screen will allow you to get a better feel for their strength...when they are builidng up or losing ,military power.


Good tip, but you would have to sacrifice the random event wars to do it (by using espionage spending). I like the random event wars so as a result, i can never use espionage spending.


Random event wars? You mean like, when the leader of x is assassinated and two civs go to war? Espionage spending disables this? I'm totally confused.