A ranking system for cities (as potential conquests)

[Hirohito]

Hi All,
I have been trying to come up with a ranking system for cities, in terms of their desirability as conquests. I'm wondering what everyone thinks is more important and how would you weight the numbers?

A city can have:
oil production
HI
resources
manpower
repair shipyards
port
airfield

What I'm wondering is how important each of these is in relation to the others. Without oil you don't have fuel, without resources you don't have supplies, without HI you don't have armaments or planes or engines, without manpower you don't have new factories or replacements/reinforcements, without repair shipyards your ships sail around shot all to pieces, that makes the Emporer look bad, and the Emporer hates to look bad. Without ports and airfields you can't defend the place and you have logistics difficulties.

I did a simple minded ranking system which weighted everything the same. To make the numbers equivalent I took the highest number for that item in the game and for any given city divided the number for that item by the highest number, this gave a numbering system from 0 to 1 for each item. For cities that had more than one of the items I just added them together.

For example, the highest resources number in the game is 900, so any city that has resources, I divided by 900 this gave a number from 0 to 1 (0 if the city had no resources, 1 if it was the city with 900, or something in between).

This ranking system ignores the special value of oil, if you don't have oil you wont have fuel so it won't matter what else you have.

Interestingly India is the juciest target having a total of 879 in the ranking sytsem, DEI is a close second at 850, Australia is third at 720. (This number was obtained by adding all the oil production, resources, manpower, HI, and repair shipyards for all cities in that country, each of these adjusted to a number between 0 and 1 then the total multiplied by 100).

Burma and the phillipines weren't even worth bothering with in terms of the rankings.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the importance of oil vs HI vs resources vs manpower vs repair shipyards?

Hirohito

[Mr.Frag]

As HI production is tied to oil+resources, you need to rank accordingly.

There is little point having 10,000 resources coming in if you don't have the 10,000 oil to convert that into Heavy Industy points.

Oil drives the game. Everything else pales in value. You'll find excess of everything else.

[AmiralLaurent]

Agree with Mr Frag. Japan has more ressources than oil so oil is really the limiting factor to your production.

But it is IMOO a bad idea to rate cities, it's better to rate areas. Any ressource/HI city in range of enemy bombers or ground troops will be of a reduced value.

[Andy Mac]

You need to apply a risk adjusted discount factor to the value of India because the RAF will bomb any industry you capture back to the stone age......(also its easier to pile on engineers in India to wreak havoc as they withdraw)

Andy

[BraveHome]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

As HI production is tied to oil+resources, you need to rank accordingly.

There is little point having 10,000 resources coming in if you don't have the 10,000 oil to convert that into Heavy Industy points.

Oil drives the game. Everything else pales in value. You'll find excess of everything else.

And we must remember to stockpile twice the Oil as desired HI to initiate the HI too, right [;)]

[Arkady]

ORIGINAL: BraveHome

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

As HI production is tied to oil+resources, you need to rank accordingly.

There is little point having 10,000 resources coming in if you don't have the 10,000 oil to convert that into Heavy Industy points.

Oil drives the game. Everything else pales in value. You'll find excess of everything else.

And we must remember to stockpile twice the Oil as desired HI to initiate the HI too, right [;)]

nope, it is not necessary, manual is wrong
Oil requirement is equal to HI

[BraveHome]

ORIGINAL: Arkady
nope, it is not necessary, manual is wrong
Oil requirement is equal to HI

The manual states that only one Oil is used, but 2 Oil must be stockpiled. You are certain that during the Oil/Resources move phase (invisible to us) the AI does not attempt this for us?

Thanks!