1upt discourage massing troops ? Because if I going to take the world by brute force like the way we do in Civ IV, for example a grand army of 40 rifles and 20 trebs/cannons. So I need a whopping 60+ tiles for my force ??? lolz.
or how an AI Monty attack us with 50+ outdated units now ? It will be a mess and I dont think AI can handle it!

My solution : 1upt , but different quantities ! For example, you can merge 4 unit of 1,000 warrior into 1 unit of 4,000 warrior, thus save lots of spaces and a lot of time too! (there will be a cap how many man you can have in 1 tile, obviously)

Your thought ?

If everything works the way it's supposed to be, wou will never be able to attack with 60 units in civ5.

1upt discourage massing troops ? Because if I going to take the world by brute force like the way we do in Civ IV, for example a grand army of 40 rifles and 20 trebs/cannons. So I need a whopping 60+ tiles for my force ??? lolz.
or how an AI Monty attack us with 50+ outdated units now ? It will be a mess and I dont think AI can handle it!

My solution : 1upt , but different quantities ! For example, you can merge 4 unit of 1,000 warrior into 1 unit of 4,000 warrior, thus save lots of spaces and a lot of time too! (there will be a cap how many man you can have in 1 tile, obviously)

Your thought ?

your logic fails

you dont take the world with 60 cannons etc

you take the world with *WHAT IS REQUIRED* to take the world

and "what is required" in civ4 was 60 cannons and stuff
"what is required" in civ5 is probably going to be 10 strong units

I doubt you'll need sixty units on a single front, but I also doubt that you'll only need ten soldiers on a single front.

Based on the mechanics as they have been described, I get the feeling that most wars will end up being limited, with maybe a city changing hands before both sides need to retire due to war weariness.

Well, the number of units that your empire will have at a given time will also be reduced what with limited resources and all that so you can rest assured that a global clusterf*ck of units is less likely. You'll be concentrated more on managing a smaller (but in many ways more valuable) set of units.

If that the case, it will be totally boring , for sure.
OMG a Diety lvl Monty attack me ... with 5 unit :facepalm
I'll better stick with Civ IV :D

Or perhaps you could wait until it is released and see how it actually works before judging it.

I doubt Monty will attack you with so few units, but maybe he will have 10 'modern' units (for whatever age you're in) and an assortment of older units that are too expensive to upgrade and can be used as bait. However, you could possibly defend from this army with 5 or so modern units used well with the landscape in mind (ie. ranged units firing over hills fortified melee units). Both sides would become v weak, and to attack you would need overwhelming numbers and good use of the surrounding terrain.

1upt discourage massing troops ? Because if I going to take the world by brute force like the way we do in Civ IV, for example a grand army of 40 rifles and 20 trebs/cannons. So I need a whopping 60+ tiles for my force ??? lolz.
or how an AI Monty attack us with 50+ outdated units now ? It will be a mess and I dont think AI can handle it!

My solution : 1upt , but different quantities ! For example, you can merge 4 unit of 1,000 warrior into 1 unit of 4,000 warrior, thus save lots of spaces and a lot of time too! (there will be a cap how many man you can have in 1 tile, obviously)

Your thought ?

They have already said, there cutting back on the troops you can have, resources, maintenance and initial cost will prevent you from building too many troops.

As I said in a previous thread, setting a limit is reasonable, but setting that limit to one is not reasonable. I see no flaw or fault in allowing n units per tile, if n is a reasonable compromise.

As I said in a previous thread, setting a limit is reasonable, but setting that limit to one is not reasonable. I see no flaw or fault in allowing n units per tile, if n is a reasonable compromise.

This is a very good explanation by aziantuntija (http://forums.civfanatics.com/member.php?u=183043) on why that would by a bad idea as found in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=370195).

"You should really understand that for example 3upt (or any other stack limit bigger than 1) WOULD NOT just be an tactical option, it would be A TACTICAL MUST, because now IF YOU ARE HAVING just 1 unit inside a hex, it is going to be ran over by enemys 3upt SSoD (SSoD=Small Stack of Death). So basicly, 3 units in hex are NOT 3 units in a hex at all, it is a one (1) full unit and anything less than 3 units in a hex (1 or 2 units in a hex) is an incomplete unit wich will be ran over by enemys full unit SSoD wich is goint to be 3upt or 4upt or whatever you might want it to be. In SSoD (lets say 3upt) civ game, you wouldnt even be moving your three different units one at a time, you would select all the 3 units that are occupying that tile, and move them all at once. So basicly, you would be ALWAYS treating them like being 1upt! And i really mean ALWAYS cause you CANT break your full 3upt SSoD unit in a combat because then it will just be picked up by a enemy SSoD. So it doesnt really add anything to tactical decision making in battle.

The only thing that 3upt brings to 1upt gameplay is micromanagement. After all, you dont wanna put 3 Modern Armours in the same hex cause then enemy can easily run them over with 3 Gunships, you would always have to manage what units you are having in your SSoDs, so 3upt, 4upt or whatever, would just be a micromanagemental hell compared to 1upt where you DONT have that kind of MM problem. You dont have to be constatly checking what stack needs what kind of unit right now to stay alive.

The bigger the SSoD gets, lets say 8upt, it will just get more closer to the infinite SoDs in civ4, wich are horrible. Also, to occupy more hexes effectively, you need more units (9 units to occupy 3 hexes when 3upt), this encourages unit spam wich also increases micromagent.".

The new resource model automatically limits the number of units you have, but it also provides incentive to the warmongering civs to get more resources so they can have bigger armies. So resources like copper and iron can be much more common than they are in Civ IV, and you're less likely to be completely screwed by not having any in your territory, but you might have a short supply and have to be clever about using your few units to acquire more. And because you can only have a limited number of units, there's better incentive to make sure those units are up to date, instead of keeping obsolete units around forever.

Depending on how they implement this unit cap, protracted war could be complicated (in which you need to replace units as they are lost, to get back up to the cap). If you aren't allowed to begin construction of a new unit when you're at the cap (which seems most likely), then there's going to be a long lag time between loss of a unit and production of a replacement. So there's most likely not going to be a steady stream of reinforcements coming to the front; wars may become more of a "come as you are" kind of affair.

As I said in a previous thread, setting a limit is reasonable, but setting that limit to one is not reasonable. I see no flaw or fault in allowing n units per tile, if n is a reasonable compromise.

There is no possible compromise.

Any stack size of size n (where n>1) reduces your frontage (where frontage is defined as width of the minimum {tile space} your soldiers require to fight effectively) by (frontage/n).

It should be obvious that the greatest absolute drop in frontage size is the change from n=1 to n=2.

Frontage and reaction costs (where reaction cost is defined as the time and expensve of moving a unit from one extreme of a formation to the other, and then responding to the attack) are directly proportional -- as one rises, so does the other. Both frontage and reaction costs are inversely proportional to concentration (where concentration is defined as the number of units able to fit in a single tile).

By definition, the defender gains from lower reaction costs -- the attacker has already concentrated and committed their troops for the attack, and the defender must react by concentrating their troops after the fact. As reaction costs plummet and concentration rises, the defender becomes stronger and the attacker weaker.

cIV is a textbook case of the effects of an unbounded positive n. Defense was a trivial task for a force roughly equivalent to the enemy ( If(location == forest hill) {defender wins}), while offense was something that the AI was, practically speaking, incapable of even in AI on AI wars. They could win offensively if they overwhelmed the defender through tech or numbers or both, but not against an equally matched foe.

The player, on the other hand, was able to offensively dominate through strategic concentration (stacks on the border before wars start), rushing and a refusal to engage in offensive action on a target not currently occupying a city unless the odds of winning were better than 80% -- thereby forcing the AI to eat the costs of field warfare.

While n=2 is not nearly so bad as a positive unbounded n, it is still significantly worse than n=1 for the reasons described above. Which is why, as I said, compromise on this subject is impossible.



tl;dr
The player should not have a monopoly on offensive action. n>1 reinforces that monopoly (see above for why). Therefore n>1 is bad.

I think the main drawback of 1 unit per tile is simply going to be that moving units is suddenly going to get a whole lot more complicated. Most games that feature 1upt use smaller scales than the worldwide scale in Civ, and you're often going to want to move units through heavily defended areas, but as they can't stop on an occupied tile there will be problems. Especially since building roads everywhere isn't going to be a viable strategy any more.

IMHO if thing stay like this, CIV V will be in too favour the peace teaching or wonder spamming strategy because the warmonger AI no longer have overwhelming forces you have to fear.

IMHO if thing stay like this, CIV V will be in too favour the peace teaching or wonder spamming strategy because the warmonger AI no longer have overwhelming forces you have to fear.

Considering they've said several times they have focused on war this time, I find that hard to believe. And since the cities protect themselves this time, it frees up a lot of units.

I think the main drawback of 1 unit per tile is simply going to be that moving units is suddenly going to get a whole lot more complicated. Most games that feature 1upt use smaller scales than the worldwide scale in Civ, and you're often going to want to move units through heavily defended areas, but as they can't stop on an occupied tile there will be problems. Especially since building roads everywhere isn't going to be a viable strategy any more.

I actually found the opposite to be the case. Usually the grognardy games will have oodles of boring units to move around, because they're obsessed with having every last one represented. And you're right, that's massively irritating.

CiV's dev team has made it very clear that they understand that that's an issue, and that they were putting mechanisms in place to prevent unit sprawl from taking over.

Which is a positive sign, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been thinking about how to implement a maintain formation group move functionality.

yes a group move will be massively helpful, if its not in the game ill be suprised, ill be even more suprised if its not moded in by christmas

IMHO if thing stay like this, CIV V will be in too favour the peace teaching or wonder spamming strategy because the warmonger AI no longer have overwhelming forces you have to fear.The whole idea is to upgrade to a combat system where victory is not determined by overwhelming numbers, but by skilled use of the units you have. I'm really looking forward to it.

Honestly, I expect competent human players to totally dominate the AI in Civ V combat, because it's going to be very complex, and the AI has to play competently to challenge you, because it can't any longer spam mega stacks of doom. They're promising better AI, but that's something that's always promised and rarely delivered.

The whole idea is to upgrade to a combat system where victory is not determined by overwhelming numbers, but by skilled use of the units you have. I'm really looking forward to it.


Overwhelming numbers should be a determinant for victory, clearly not the sole determinant but still. This is one factor which, if not handled wright, will surely subtract strategy from combat.

Well, the number of units that your empire will have at a given time will also be reduced what with limited resources and all that so you can rest assured that a global clusterf*ck of units is less likely. You'll be concentrated more on managing a smaller (but in many ways more valuable) set of units.

I think that 1UPT has very good omens coming up. Specially because it might ease the ground for the programmers to effectively set up a truly better AI. And clearly it also eases the mayor numbers of units which appear at some stages of a CIV IV game. Personally, I always thought CIV IV lacked for a higher maintenance cost of units as tech advances; this together with a slightly higher cost in unit production as from Infantry and on might be a proper solution to the matter (for excessive numbers, but not for the poor AI).

Still, I can foresee that 1UPT, together with all of it's so claimed virtues, may bring less strategy to some aspects of the combat system, particularly due to the reduced number of units & unit capacity.

I am very fond having to manage say 20-25 units within this frontage instead of 50-60, that is certainly good. But, if the number of units is terribly reduced, the cost of opportunity (marginal cost) of risking these much smaller (but in many ways more valuable) set of units in alternative missions, diverting attacks, exploring missions, etc, might be too high to go for. Thus reducing our options in regards to unit placement and usage. Maybe I put it too complicated, hope not.

As to unit capacity is concern I fear any civ might be almost compelled to have it's army at the maximum of it's capacity (i.e given capacity at a certain point) or it will be selling itself out if it doesn't; or even having very little operational range. Again, taking away the player's (and AI) choice about the size of the army (given the capacity). Compared to CIV IV where unit capacity is very flexible, specially around some broad margins (depends on the structure of your empire but still). I can't possibly know how the game will play out here, but it will be sad if it turns out that you are always working to keep your units at theirs maximum capacity.

I should have said "not determined solely by overwhelming numbers," but yes.

Ok man, no worries. I am more interested Arioch in your opinion about my next post #21. Thanks.

Ok man, no worries. I am more interested Arioch in your opinion about my next post #21. Thanks.I'm also a little bit concerned that the number of units might be too restricted, but hopefully that's not the case. So far the only hard unit cap I've heard about is for units that require certain resources: we can probably assume that units requiring copper or iron or horses will be limited and you'll want to keep those capped at all times. However, "auxiliary" units like archers and club-weilding warriors (and perhaps even catapults) don't require any resources as far as I know (though they probably have significant monetary maintenance costs), so I suspect you will need to use these less-critical units as best you can to preserve your primary units. Which is relatively realistic, from a historical point of view: the heavy infantry of Roman legions and Greek hoplites were usually in the minority of the total force.

The one example I've seen from gameplay footage shows an Iron tiles providing 2 resource points, so that seems pretty tight. However, we have no idea how common these tiles are. I'm assuming that they're going to be a lot more common than in Civ IV.

edit: However, if you're going to be at the cap all the time, then you may be changing production a lot and having resources capped and uncapped a lot, and hopefully the build system will be forgiving enough that this does not turn into a nightmare. Currently in Civ IV if you're building a unit and lose access to a resource, the build is terminated and removed from queue, and you lose any hammers invested in it (iirc). That could be a serious problem if it's happening regularly.

From the screenshots I have seen, most all of the maps look quite small IMO. It may be that there are much larger sized maps available that we have not seen, but after counting the number of cities on them, and extrapolating from that an estimate of possible max cities for that map, it looks as if 20-50 total cities give or take may be the norm for the maps. With this in mind, if you are playing against 10 civ's, that would be about 5 cities each per civ.

This holds pretty consistent with the screenshots. With 5 cities , there is no possible way you will ever have 60 units per civ, otherwise the land would become gridlocked with 1upt. To be able to keep with free-flow of units, my Guess would be that a 5 city civ would have maybe 15 units in the field; just my guess.

Civ 5 MiniMaps
http://i.imagehost.org/0548/Civ5Maps.jpg

From only what we can see, I am disappointed with having 5 cities. Seems 'small' to me, and is completely opposite of the founding Civilization idea of ruling a mighty massive epic nation that will stand the test of time!

-----------------

Compared to the thousands of units and hundreds of cities Civ 3 and 4 were capable of (generalized here), the tactical game better be genius to compensate for such a change to the long-running foundation that the game was built upon; that has been erased in 5.

its probably the small map setting so i wouldn't worry about it.

Indeed. And if maps don't get any bigger for release, someone will mod it.

I actually prefer not having to juggle dozens of cities and hundreds of units, honestly. It all blurs together and bogs the game down. That having been said, they probably aren't going to break out the Huge maps when they are just doing a demo. So there's no reason to think that's the biggest map size.

Those are also not real games, but demonstrations that were probably mocked up with a map editor.

The top minimap looks like a small map, and the others look like medium sized maps. So I would agree that the large and huge maps are probably not shown. My guess would be that a huge map may contain 150 cities possibly (or more), since the medium looks like it has about 50.

So it may not be 'out' of having to deal 1 dozen of cities ;). With 150-200 theoretical cities on a huge map, with all civs in play, you would have about 10+ cities to maintain, and you may have 30-50 or so units to maintain. I give that estimate in my own view that the developers don't want to cause landlock problems with having too many units. I would guess 3 to 5 units per city may be common, but it may easily be more with other things taking place (such as 1 unit able to be used in each city for defense).

I can deal with this if it is the case for epic sized maps. On the other hand, I sometimes play tiny maps just to experience the gameplay difference occasionally.

I would not worry too much about the size of the maps. 5 cities may sound small, but keep in mind that ancient civilizations barely had more cities that were really noteworthy. If you keep in mind that a lot of the places on the map are supposedly there and only the greatest cities are under the control of the player, then 5 cities seems fine,especially in earlier era's when large empires were logistically very hard to manage anyway.

Also I like smaller maps, the games are over faster and they drag out way less. Larger maps make me want to smack my head against the wall.

Also I like smaller maps, the games are over faster and they drag out way less. Larger maps make me want to smack my head against the wall.

Your opinion! :p ;)

No seriously, I agree and still find myself playing larger maps with 12-15 civs and 10 cities average in the lategame. I just love the way the game looks and feels then, although from a pure gameplay perspective it's a bit annoying. Paradox feelings stuff! ;)

Concerning warfare, I have three fears:

1) The "ball of doom": Like in Warcraft 3, the fixed number of units could force you to always keep your entire army in a tight formation. Two fronts, distraction maneuvers, or a navy not involved into the current battle would immediately mean defeat.

2) The large empire autowin: In Civ4, they managed it nicely to give small, but well-developed empires a chance. If you need ressources to build troops, an early landgrab could give a massive advantage. countries like real-world Russia would be in an excellent position (many ressources, bad infrastructure).

3) The warmonger autowin: If you can't beat an agressor by pumping units with your superior economy, his experienced troops will always win. You can't outnumber him.

From the screenshots I have seen, most all of the maps look quite small IMO. It may be that there are much larger sized maps available that we have not seen, but after counting the number of cities on them[...]

You assume, that you can see all cities on the minimap.
This could be wrong. If you look at the minimap of a gigantic Civ4 map, you will not see all cities. -> on the minimaps you show us there could be a lot more cities.
Could. I don't say there are, but there could be more.

My worry: Having an ally AI messing up with my strategy (ie. occupying the spaces I intended or leaving empty those I needed him to stay in). That's a BIG issue for me.

Realistically you wouldnt be showing a huge/marathon demo... those games can last for many many hours of gameplay. So these Demo's probably have everything on "normal" so they can show more.

My worry: Having an ally AI messing up with my strategy (ie. occupying the spaces I intended or leaving empty those I needed him to stay in). That's a BIG issue for me.

Good Point. I'm very curious already about the general AI quality...

You assume, that you can see all cities on the minimap.
This could be wrong. If you look at the minimap of a gigantic Civ4 map, you will not see all cities. -> on the minimaps you show us there could be a lot more cities.
Could. I don't say there are, but there could be more.

Are you implying that it could possibly be a Scrolling Minimap??? :eek:

:rotfl:

That would have to be the best thing ever if they implemented that!

Are you implying that it could possibly be a Scrolling Minimap??? :eek:

:rotfl:

That would have to be the best thing ever if they implemented that!

I think he is saying that when you start a game you don't see anything else than what you start troops show you. Then when you explore place the minimap grows showing the new parts. So how do we know if the minimap is even fullsize yet.

Are you implying that it could possibly be a Scrolling Minimap??? :eek:


No, i don't imply that ;).

On a gigantic Civ4 map, you can sure see the whole landmass. But not every city is marked there as a white dot, only the bigger (?, not sure) ones are represented.
That could also here be the case.

Oh, and Wezqu :yup:.

I think he is saying that when you start a game you don't see anything else than what you start troops show you. Then when you explore place the minimap grows showing the new parts. So how do we know if the minimap is even fullsize yet.

Isn't this already in place with civ 4?
So wouldn't they keep this for civ 5 (Can't think of a better idea)

@The_J: I think you're right not all cities are shown on huge maps, though I never noticed

I really hope they implement some sort of "group-move", in any form, because I don't want to spend hours just moving my 10ish unit army a few tiles in ordered formation. Seriously they got to do something about it, or I am going 100% peacefull

Someone mentioned units being land-locked, I believe I red that there will be a swap function for units in adjacent hexes, reasonable enough. Fear vanished.

We also know that:
- Battles should generally take place rurally (i.e within the surrounding hexes of a city), were formations/units placement is crucial, and defending in a city will be a measure of last resort (realistic enough).
- A City's range of working hexes goes 3 tiles now.
- Units have a base movement of 2 instead of one.
- There is ranged bombardment at least two hexes away.

These are all solid indicators that maps will be in fact pretty much larger too those from CIV IV. Not to include more cities & units, but to effectively accommodate all these features. All in all this seems way more realistic to have bigger maps and less concentration of cities.
Have to admit I am a bit inconclusive towards this new game, having much improved and also many things (entire systems) completely screwed up.

My worry: Having an ally AI messing up with my strategy (ie. occupying the spaces I intended or leaving empty those I needed him to stay in). That's a BIG issue for me.The units of a friendly civ definitely have the potential to get in the way, but at least you will have the option to move "through" them (all units having a move of at least 2). But if you're expecting an AI ally to magically know that you want him to defend certain hexes and act accordingly, you're going to be disappointed.

Someone mentioned units being land-locked, I believe I red that there will be a swap function for units in adjacent hexes, reasonable enough. Fear vanished.You can swap your own units, but this won't help if a friendly civ's units are blocking you. There's no way they will allow you to move units that aren't yours (nor should they... I would be enraged if another civ swapped my units around). You should be able to move through a single allied unit, but if there are more, logjams may still result. I can see human players deliberately using double-ranks of units to bar passage to "friendly" units.

These are all solid indicators that maps will be in fact pretty much larger too those from CIV IV. I'm not sure this is the case; the desire may be to increase the rate of movement overall, which I think is a good thing, because it shouldn't take decades just to move a unit from one city to another. So far tiles seem to be proportionally larger than in Civ IV, and the land masses we've seen have relatively fewer tiles. Although the maximum city radius is 3 tiles, it only expands one tile at a time, and in an irregular fashion, so putting cities 6 tiles from each other may not make sense. A full 3-tile radius is 37 tiles (including the city tile)! Most cities will probably never be able to fill out this full radius, and even ones that can, perhaps not until the late game. The few on-screen examples we have show cities relatively close to each other, at about the same distance as in a typical Civ IV game.

@Kaiser, group move isnt really a feasible option in 1UpT, as your formation you wish to move your troops in may very well vary, you may want to keep a +50% forest defence unit in forests for example, which wouldnt be the case if you moved the entire line all at once.

@Ricci, if someone mentioned units being land locked they were mistaken, units will be able to simply "transform" into a transport vessel when moving onto water terrain, however this will consume the rest of thier movement points, or a whole turn or w,e.

1) The "ball of doom": Like in Warcraft 3, the fixed number of units could force you to always keep your entire army in a tight formation. Two fronts, distraction maneuvers, or a navy not involved into the current battle would immediately mean defeat.


I played WC3, know what you are talking about, and am guessing it will -not- be a problem in ciV.

This happened in WC3 because the cost per unit was not a smooth function of the number of units. When you jumped past 50 food, you harvested only 7 per trip instead of 10, a discrete jump in costs that made people hover at 50 until they had a good reason to jump.

However, to my knowledge and based on the approach firaxis has taken in other aspects of the game, I think per unit costs will be a smooth increasing function of the number of units.

If you think about it, optimizing with a discontinuous cost function often results in corner solutions (it is optimal to stay at 50 food for a while), whereas optimizing with a continuous cost function yields interior solutions (the exact size of optimal army depends on the value of available objectives.. exactly what you are looking for I think).

To be specific, I think we'll have, and correct me if I'm wrong:
1) A hard cap on a the number of a specific kind of unit (e.g. swordsman) per resource controlled (e.g. iron).
2) Some as-yet unknown cost of making new units that prevents huge armies. My guess: a per unit maintenance cost that is an increasing function of the number of units you have. The first few may be free (as in cIV), the next few may cost 1gpt (as in cIV), but after a while each new unit may cost 2gpt, then 3gpt, etc (similar to how each new city in cIV costs more than the previous one).

Together these things make an fairly smooth increasing cost of each new unit I was talking about. Sure you can reach a point where you can't make more swordsmen, but you can always make more archers or catapults.. it will just become really expensive to do so eventually.

Finally, I agree it will probably be optimal to have most (90%) of your army on the front, and the rest holding down key resources or perhaps in reserve in case of a sneak attack from another direction. Sounds about like how real armies were deployed, its not like we had a big garrison in chicago during WW2.

---
tl;dr = ciV not like WC3 because there are smooth costs instead hard food caps.

1upt discourage massing troops ? Because if I going to take the world by brute force like the way we do in Civ IV, for example a grand army of 40 rifles and 20 trebs/cannons. So I need a whopping 60+ tiles for my force ??? lolz.
or how an AI Monty attack us with 50+ outdated units now ? It will be a mess and I dont think AI can handle it!
Your thought ?

This sounds like a good thing to me.

@ travlake:

Interesting thoughts!

I never thought about the exact mechanic they will limit non-ressource units with. Exponentially increasing upkeep seems like a very viable concept. The alternative would be a hard cap, based on your population or something similar - but your idea sounds better.

There is also the possibility that EVERY unit needs a ressource, but this would seem artificial and punish unlucky civs even further -> Not likely.


A bit offtopic, I've only seen iron and horses as strategic ressources so far. Apart from other ores, what could be other ressources that limit unit production in the early game?
Otherwise, before steam power there would basically be "heavy" units needing copper/iron, and light units (and cavalry versions of either)

I would think they will limit the units by population as its quite realistic way of doing it. I also think that the population number does also prevents building resource units if the limit set by population has been reached.

The units of a friendly civ definitely have the potential to get in the way, but at least you will have the option to move "through" them (all units having a move of at least 2). But if you're expecting an AI ally to magically know that you want him to defend certain hexes and act accordingly, you're going to be disappointed.

That would be an incredible and probably easy piece for them to implement. When you sign a pact of alliance, you can work with your allies and ask them to guard a hex or row or hexes. They can do the same. It could count for or against your reputation if you do this or not (or try to).

Might be difficult to program for AI, but none-the-less would be a nice military-diplomatic feature.

I'm sure that you will be able to move through allies, like you can move through your own troops, not sure if you will be able to remove through neutral parties, you could do it in civ4 but not in civ3, we will see exactly how movement is restricted.

i'd like to see a, move this bloomin unit or we go to war, diplo option.

@ travlake:

Interesting thoughts!

I never thought about the exact mechanic they will limit non-ressource units with. Exponentially increasing upkeep seems like a very viable concept. The alternative would be a hard cap, based on your population or something similar - but your idea sounds better.

There is also the possibility that EVERY unit needs a ressource, but this would seem artificial and punish unlucky civs even further -> Not likely.


A bit offtopic, I've only seen iron and horses as strategic ressources so far. Apart from other ores, what could be other ressources that limit unit production in the early game?
Otherwise, before steam power there would basically be "heavy" units needing copper/iron, and light units (and cavalry versions of either)

If they balance units properly I don't think there is a real need to cap non-resource units. It would just be too ineffective or expensive to wage war, at least offensive war, with only one or two unit types. For example, you could spam archer units, but they would be so vulnerable in the open to horsemen if they don't have spearmen to protect them that you would lose too many of them to effectively wage war. Archers fortified on hills, in cities and behind rivers would still make for a good defense though.

I would think they will limit the units by population as its quite realistic way of doing it. I also think that the population number does also prevents building resource units if the limit set by population has been reached.

I hope number of units is not directly tied to population. For me, this links together two separate tactics that I might want to balance and pursue independently. If you start in a food poor location you want the ability to build a sufficient force to rush a nearby neighbour.

The resource limit on certain units is interesting. An increasing (perhaps exponentially) cost for large armies would be familiar - linking military and economy. But if you add another link to population I think it's just too many constraints.

Civ for me is about the choices to expand or not vs. war or not vs. develop tiles or not and those should be linked but not to the extent where you must have a strong economy and a high population before you build a capable offensive force.

I hope number of units is not directly tied to population. For me, this links together two separate tactics that I might want to balance and pursue independently. If you start in a food poor location you want the ability to build a sufficient force to rush a nearby neighbour.

I too hope units are tied to eco not pop. MB a combination of both would be cool, i.e. you get x units for free and x increases with your pop.

If they balance units properly I don't think there is a real need to cap non-resource units. It would just be too ineffective or expensive to wage war, at least offensive war, with only one or two unit types. For example, you could spam archer units, but they would be so vulnerable in the open to horsemen if they don't have spearmen to protect them that you would lose too many of them to effectively wage war. Archers fortified on hills, in cities and behind rivers would still make for a good defense though.

Do you guys think there won't be melee units without the need for iron? I mean, is it likely that civs with a lack of iron will only be able to field an "incomplete", crippled army (e.g. only archers).

And, do you think there will be new ressources, something that limits wooden ships, archers, catapults,...? something like "high quality wood"? Or will only melee units be limited (pre-gunpowder)?

Do you guys think there won't be melee units without the need for iron? I mean, is it likely that civs with a lack of iron will only be able to field an "incomplete", crippled army (e.g. only archers).

And, do you think there will be new ressources, something that limits wooden ships, archers, catapults,...? something like "high quality wood"? Or will only melee units be limited (pre-gunpowder)?

I think being completely without iron will be rare, far rarer than Civ4. But you might well be limited to 2-3 iron based units. Mounted units will be limited as well, screenshots have shown horses as a strategic resource (and oil and probably aluminium).

warriors wont need iron, its just like in civ4 if you fail to get copper/iron/horses your early military possibilities are limited,

Do you guys think there won't be melee units without the need for iron? I mean, is it likely that civs with a lack of iron will only be able to field an "incomplete", crippled army (e.g. only archers).The basic "Warrior" unit with the two-handed maul (seen in this shot (http://well-of-souls.com/temp/civilization/68792_CivilizationV-Screenshot-20.jpg) in both regular and barbarian versions) will probably not require metal, as in Civ IV. Hopefully it is a little less useless in Civ V than it is currently in Civ IV.

The basic "Warrior" unit with the two-handed maul (seen in this shot (http://well-of-souls.com/temp/civilization/68792_CivilizationV-Screenshot-20.jpg) in both regular and barbarian versions) will probably not require metal, as in Civ IV. Hopefully it is a little less useless in Civ V than it is currently in Civ IV.

With cities now having an inherent defense value so that you don't immediately need archers, no indication so far that copper/bronze is a strategic resource and of course metal based units being limited based on the number of resources, warriors might have an extended shelf life. Although I expect that Civ5 has more emphasis on upgrading existing units, so your initial warriors won't become redundant.

can't tell as of yet , but the ability of build warriors will proably be blocked out with discovery of iron working. my guess.

.

@Ricci, if someone mentioned units being land locked they were mistaken, units will be able to simply "transform" into a transport vessel when moving onto water terrain, however this will consume the rest of thier movement points, or a whole turn or w,e.

Has it been confirmed that this can take place anywhere, or just in coastal cities with harbours, as it did in Panzer General? I have not heard which is correct.

As far as I know, this has not been confirmed either way.

Your thought ?

My thought is that they know what they are doing way better than you do. For example, I kinda bet they tested if the AI handles it or not, and maybe it was AFTER testing that they noticed the AI works better this way than with SoDs. Just as a reminder, most turn based strategic games nowadays come in this fashion, there is evidently a reason, AI wise.

I am SO looking forward to 1 UNIT PER HEX-A-GON!
(imagine that last bit in a Powdered Toast Man type mock superhero voice!)
:woohoo:
:banana::hammer2::bounce:

@confirmation, we do not have any confirmation on units turning into water vessels other than we know for a fact that its in, and what they look like, thier is a screen shot that catches them in the top left corner.
Will the ability be restrictive to cities coast tiles? No I don't think so, I assume you will simply be able to spend a turn moving onto any water tile, (might not count for lakes though) as this is the easiest and best way to use the strategy. We have no further information however other than that we know they will be in the game, maybe some more information will come out later.

On the topic of water vessels: I hope the transformation will be constrained to coastal cities and maybe specifically improved coastal tiles (something like fortification). Otherwise is would destroy the tactical value of land choke points. I don't know if I like the whole water vessel idea in general...

no it doesn't and no it shouldn't, if you don't want armies ascending from the seas to conquer you, then control your seas. Its true someone may try to avoid your heavy land defences and take on your nothing of a navy to avoid unecessary losses, this is no difference than in civ4, if you didnt protect your sea's the enemy could drop in behind you and take you by surprise, the only thing different is with 1upt you wont be so suprised as you will see the units coming and wont be like "ooo i wonder how many units their are" it would be obvious. So if anything the strategy of "Suprise!" by water has been lowered, its also worth mentioning that your navy has a much easier job of killing enemy water civilian boats, (thats practically what they are) if you can do a little "suprise! im behind you" for yourself and go round the enemy navy protecting the unarmed transports you can devestate an enemys attack, where as before if your navy wasnt as big as thiers thier 1 tile SOD on the water could not be breached, now you have a chance to stop the armada from hitting your beaches.

no it doesn't and no it shouldn't, if you don't want armies ascending from the seas to conquer you, then control your seas. Its true someone may try to avoid your heavy land defences and take on your nothing of a navy to avoid unecessary losses, this is no difference than in civ4, if you didnt protect your sea's the enemy could drop in behind you and take you by surprise, the only thing different is with 1upt you wont be so suprised as you will see the units coming and wont be like "ooo i wonder how many units their are" it would be obvious.

But in Civ 4 you actually had to build a water vessel (a.k.a ship) in a city to transport your troops on water - and you had to protect your transport vessels with warships (although they were admittedly not completely defenseless).

With the transformation mechanics it's a bit like "Ooh, there's a well defended outpost on that chokepoint! Let's conjure some ships out of thin air to move our complete army by sea".

If the outpost on the chokepoint is well defended, then this will probably include some battle ships, or something like that ;).

Well, you have ranged attacks for the tiles directly adjacent to the chokepoint. If a narrow landbridge is heavily fortified and the defender has no navy, it's totally realistic to use ships. It was no different in civ4.

the only difference is that you don't have to plan 5-10 turns in advance to cross the sea.

From a realism perspective, there should be significant costs for a huge number of troop transports, but in gameplay terms most players just didn't bother to micromanage a sea-based invasion, this should be different now. I also hope settling on islands will be more attractive now.

Has it been confirmed that this can take place anywhere, or just in coastal cities with harbours, as it did in Panzer General? I have not heard which is correct.

This would be preferable. I remember it being a pain to deploy across a body of water, but at least it wasn't an annoying game of "build the otherwise irrelevant unit a billion times."

Plus it's fair, and makes ports even more important than in prior versions of Civ, where you could just hop into and out of a transport at any old place.

This would be preferable. I remember it being a pain to deploy across a body of water, but at least it wasn't an annoying game of "build the otherwise irrelevant unit a billion times."

Plus it's fair, and makes ports even more important than in prior versions of Civ, where you could just hop into and out of a transport at any old place.

What if you land on a land mass to explore and it turns out theres no harbour there?

You could potentially send a worker but then the map would be covreed with these little boarding locations.

I don't think this is necessary. Just take a turn to transform into the transports. I'm sure it could be abstracted to something.

you don't need a harbour to build small wooden transport ships, hell even rafts.

Well, you have ranged attacks for the tiles directly adjacent to the chokepoint. If a narrow landbridge is heavily fortified and the defender has no navy, it's totally realistic to use ships. It was no different in civ4.

the only difference is that you don't have to plan 5-10 turns in advance to cross the sea.

From a realism perspective, there should be significant costs for a huge number of troop transports, but in gameplay terms most players just didn't bother to micromanage a sea-based invasion, this should be different now. I also hope settling on islands will be more attractive now.

Ranged attacks go even further than that. I have seen a screenshot where you can see a city firing at a ship 2 or 3 hexes away.

On the topic of water vessels: I hope the transformation will be constrained to coastal cities and maybe specifically improved coastal tiles (something like fortification). Otherwise is would destroy the tactical value of land choke points. I don't know if I like the whole water vessel idea in general...

Moving to 1UPT required that units be their own transport because making a transport for each unit would be micro-management nightmare and you cannot stack units in one transport.

For the same reason of "non-stacking", focal coastal tiles will not work either or it would take multiple turns to move each unit through your coastal focal point.

It is a new game mechanic that "we'll" have to get used to. From the screen shots there is a "go-to" order that each unit has that allows you to give an end point of where you want that unit to go. Movement points are given to the terrain/terrain improvement that will allow the unit to only go so far. If there is a "body" of water in that path it's movement point amount will just be subtracted from that unit's move points. The unit will only move as far as it can each turn. If it is near the coast then it has a greater chance of becoming a transport and moving away from the coastline on that turn.

For those who "need" more realism, if anything maybe there would be a penalty somewhere the more units you have that are further away from your cultural borders. As for choke points, I think they have re-implemented zones of control. This would keep enemy units from "slipping" past your front between your units if you have them "strategically" placed on any terrain.

But in Civ 4 you actually had to build a water vessel (a.k.a ship) in a city to transport your troops on water - and you had to protect your transport vessels with warships (although they were admittedly not completely defenseless).

With the transformation mechanics it's a bit like "Ooh, there's a well defended outpost on that chokepoint! Let's conjure some ships out of thin air to move our complete army by sea".

Your just not getting the point, Transports could have been built prior to a "oo theirs a chokepoint lets avoid it", now Transports have been removed so we just go "oo avoid that chokepoint mode" But thats not of massive importance, If you have a navy anyone stupid enough to just wade out into your seas without a large navy force supporting them they will get blasted away, if you choose not to defend your seas well then thats your choice, your leaving yourself vinerable. If you want to move your army into the water you will still need to support them with your navy, if anything moving out into the ocean like this, the army is more vunerable than it was previously.

@Calouste: I seem to remember something like that also, but don't quite remember; perhaps you can tell us where to find/link us the picture?

@Calouste: I seem to remember something like that also, but don't quite remember; perhaps you can tell us where to find/link us the picture?

Found it in another thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9376437&postcount=92):

http://downloads.2kgames.com/civ5/site13/images/media/screenshots/08_xl.jpg

On the right side of the picture you see a city firing at a ship two hexes away. The ship has a blue band on the funnel and is in the territory of a red civilization. It looks like a Liberty ship, i.e. a WWII era transport with an anti-air gun on the rear deck and no other armament, so I assume it is an "auto-transport".

Well, technically it could be "We love the king day" fireworks, but they look a bit too boring for that :)

well we've known bombardment can de done up to two hexes away for ages now. (and 3 for mobile artillery/missile artilery.)

Archers firing over the English channel? Seriously??

Archers firing over the English channel? Seriously??

We have not seen the map of the English Channel. How do you know they fire over it?

Found it in another thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9376437&postcount=92):

http://downloads.2kgames.com/civ5/site13/images/media/screenshots/08_xl.jpg

On the right side of the picture you see a city firing at a ship two hexes away. The ship has a blue band on the funnel and is in the territory of a red civilization. It looks like a Liberty ship, i.e. a WWII era transport with an anti-air gun on the rear deck and no other armament, so I assume it is an "auto-transport".

Well, technically it could be "We love the king day" fireworks, but they look a bit too boring for that :)

Actually the "auto-transport" is the little galley right above the city. From this screenshot though it is hard to tell which Civ it belongs to.

Actually the "auto-transport" is the little galley right above the city. From this screenshot though it is hard to tell which Civ it belongs to.

I think that boat is working the tile.
If you look closely you can see the outline of what appears to be a whale, below the water next to the boat.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6323/whaler.jpg

Archers firing over the English channel? Seriously??

Civ leaders living thousands of years? Seriously??

Get my point CivIVMonger? ;)

Thank you for teh picture Calouste! :goodjob:

It looks like a Liberty ship, i.e. a WWII era transport with an anti-air gun on the rear deck and no other armament, so I assume it is an "auto-transport".


Could it be an.... Ironclad!?! :)

Civ leaders living thousands of years? Seriously??

Get my point CivIVMonger? ;)

:high5:

Could it be an.... Ironclad!?! :)

I think its a dreadnought.

I think that boat is working the tile.
If you look closely you can see the outline of what appears to be a whale, below the water next to the boat.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6323/whaler.jpg

definitely not a galley and most probably a fishing boat. The two ships in question look rather ironclads than transports to me.

Has it been confirmed that this can take place anywhere, or just in coastal cities with harbours, as it did in Panzer General? I have not heard which is correct.

As far as I know, this has not been confirmed either way.

AFAIK it's confirmed that units can't enter cities, hence I think it's safe to assume it can't work like in PG.

AFAIK it's confirmed that units can't enter cities, hence I think it's safe to assume it can't work like in PG.

There is a screenshot with archers defending a city hex, and there are screenshots from the strategic view with worker icons on the city hex. So I think you might be mistaken.

But who knows...

There is a screenshot with archers defending a city hex, and there are screenshots from the strategic view with worker icons on the city hex. So I think you might be mistaken.

But who knows...

well workers aren't combat units. Can you link the fantomatic only screenshot with a combat unit in a city please? I remember reading a review that said that because of this rule (no combat units in cities), when you build a new unit it is automatically placed in one hex outside the city.

They stated that 1 militay unit could defend a city (or add to a cities defense).

well workers aren't combat units. Can you link the fantomatic only screenshot with a combat unit in a city please? I remember reading a review that said that because of this rule (no combat units in cities), when you build a new unit it is automatically placed in one hex outside the city.

http://well-of-souls.com/temp/civilization/garrison_icon.jpg

this image was posted in other thread... but you can see on the left frame, there's an archer unit inside the city. You can even see some men between the buildings.

AFAIK it's confirmed that units can't enter cities, hence I think it's safe to assume it can't work like in PG.

Units can enter cities, but the 1upt rules still applies. < This is 100% confirmed

What isn't compeltley confirmed is the ability to merge the unit into the city, and how tht will affect the 1upt rule. My assumption based on good reasoning is that, merging increases th defence of the city, and maybe improves thier ranged attack, and allows another unit to enter the city, but only 1 unit can be merged in this way, thats the way it seems to me anywho.

It has been stated that you can have 1 military, 1+ air, and 1 civilian unit on a tile.

Withdrawn:
What is really going to be unrealistic is airplanes. They will never "land" or you will only have one per city. Where will they go between turns?



In addition to the garrison feature, there are also several screenshots that show a unit positioned on top of a city. And it certainly makes sense that you'd have to move a unit into the city before attempting to garrison it. Guessing that once you have a unit garrisoned, though, you probably can't move any more into the city.

I suspect that there will be special rules for air units, but that's something we really have zero information about.

I stand corrected. Back in April Dennis Shirk did say Air units are in a different "layer" and can be stacked. Hopefully this has not been changed.

also confimred that missles and airplanes can defy the 1upt rule.

In addition to the garrison feature, there are also several screenshots that show a unit positioned on top of a city. And it certainly makes sense that you'd have to move a unit into the city before attempting to garrison it. Guessing that once you have a unit garrisoned, though, you probably can't move any more into the city.

I suspect that there will be special rules for air units, but that's something we really have zero information about.

edit: shot of archers occupying city hex
http://well-of-souls.com/temp/civilization/tokyo_archers.jpg

Civ leaders living thousands of years? Seriously??

Get my point CivIVMonger? ;)

Yes, I get your point. I understand that this game is not modelled to live up to historical/realistic standards, and I don't expect it to, but I at least expect something less obscene as to archers firing over miles and miles of land, or armies spanning land the size of a city states' territory.

I really commend the fact that they are trying to emphasize tactics and strategy into the combat system instead of mass numbers, and that is a good idea, but they could have picked a more logical approach.

The game looks awesome though! And :):):):):)ing about minor flaws in a game series as great as Civ is stupid. ;) Sorry for the rude comment, not everything is in accord with my opinion.

Yes, I get your point. I understand that this game is not modelled to live up to historical/realistic standards, and I don't expect it to, but I at least expect something less obscene as to archers firing over miles and miles of land, or armies spanning land the size of a city states' territory.


Even though the giant men look like they aren't firing far even over 2 hexes of land, this is actually many many miles.

You can't really represent realism in Civ, not with the scales we have. So to say not firing arrows over the english channel is realistic but firing arrows from london to machester is fine, is just silly. Nothing is realistic, everything is completely obscene. That is civ.

To turn back to the "transport" debate, i.e, do we know what they look like, are they confirmed e.t.c
They can be seen in a screen shot and I have a couple cutting's of transports here uploaded by another user.

http://well-of-souls.com/temp/civilization/troop_transports.jpg

These are not the same as any of the other vessels, or indeed that working boat, and one of them is a horse in the boat as you can see.
Not sure why their arent more icons hovering over the boats for the different boats, but anyways, there is the evidence of what they will look like.

Yes, I get your point. I understand that this game is not modelled to live up to historical/realistic standards, and I don't expect it to, but I at least expect something less obscene as to archers firing over miles and miles of land, or armies spanning land the size of a city states' territory.

I really commend the fact that they are trying to emphasize tactics and strategy into the combat system instead of mass numbers, and that is a good idea, but they could have picked a more logical approach.

The game looks awesome though! And :):):):):)ing about minor flaws in a game series as great as Civ is stupid. ;) Sorry for the rude comment, not everything is in accord with my opinion.


If you understand it then why are you complaining? What is the so called "more logical approach" of yours to this "problem"? Id really like to hear it.

It would be more realistic to have archers only able to fire into adjacent hexes, but in the new combat model this would make archers all but useless, since realistically archers can't stand up to a melee charge. So we have the small conceit of archers being able to shoot as far as trebuchets or cannon, so that we can stick a melee unit between them and the enemy. It's a small price to pay in terms of abstraction for a big improvement in gameplay.

To turn back to the "transport" debate, i.e, do we know what they look like, are they confirmed e.t.c
They can be seen in a screen shot and I have a couple cutting's of transports here uploaded by another user.

http://well-of-souls.com/temp/civilization/troop_transports.jpg

These are not the same as any of the other vessels, or indeed that working boat, and one of them is a horse in the boat as you can see.
Not sure why their arent more icons hovering over the boats for the different boats, but anyways, there is the evidence of what they will look like.

It could be that the transports where you don't see an icon are the enemy. Very hard to see which civ they belong too anyway.

seeing as the red and white horse icon represents the evil japanese empire that the just french are battling i think you are wrong there.

Yes, I get your point. I understand that this game is not modelled to live up to historical/realistic standards, and I don't expect it to, but I at least expect something less obscene as to archers firing over miles and miles of land, or armies spanning land the size of a city states' territory.


Imagine it like this, when your army battles you are not viewing the miles of terrain which they are fighting on, you are viewing a close up of the actual battle.
So, when your building your empire, that hex is miles of terrain.
When you are fighting on it, it is a few hundred meters.

During the cold war the Pact and Nato armies spanned the entire E/W German border.

As I said in a previous thread, setting a limit is reasonable, but setting that limit to one is not reasonable. I see no flaw or fault in allowing n units per tile, if n is a reasonable compromise.

Well said and in few words.
Part of the skill in army building and campaigning is getting the right mix of units and having them work together. 1 UPT leaves out so many logical and proper unit mixes such as pikes and crossbows, infantry and anti-tank weapons, etc. With 1 UPT, the pikes are left wide open to be attacked by say, macemen. Yes, a counterattack with crossbows the next turn is possible but that is equally absurd as those macemen should not have to also be left so vulnerable. :confused: Not looking forward to that kind of illogical frustration!
Here is another absurdity, in order to properly escort a siege/artillery weapon against marauding cavalry or other units, it must be surrounded on all sides, thus requiring 6 units to do the job of 1 or 2. More than one siege weapon multiplies the problem further. That is absurd in terms of logic and highly problematic in game terms with units now being more difficult to produce. Effective campaigns will be much more difficult except on narrow, restricted fronts.

Well said and in few words.
Part of the skill in army building and campaigning is getting the right mix of units and having them work together. 1 UPT leaves out so many logical and proper unit mixes such as pikes and crossbows, infantry and anti-tank weapons, etc. With 1 UPT, the pikes are left wide open to be attacked by say, macemen. Yes, a counterattack with crossbows the next turn is possible but that is equally absurd as those macemen should not have to also be left so vulnerable. :confused: Not looking forward to that kind of illogical frustration!
Here is another absurdity, in order to properly escort a siege/artillery weapon against marauding cavalry or other units, it must be surrounded on all sides, thus requiring 6 units to do the job of 1 or 2. More than one siege weapon multiplies the problem further. That is absurd in terms of logic and highly problematic in game terms with units now being more difficult to produce. Effective campaigns will be much more difficult except on narrow, restricted fronts.


Wrong in so many ways. Clearly you did not even bother reading the firts page of this thread, as most of your complaints have been answered already. ie limit units per tile to "n". As far as escorting your siege units, You are stuck in a civ4 mindset with unit quantites. Its not like the AI will have a ton of units waiting to attack your siege. The fact is, if you don't have an established front line, you have already lost. Furthermore, maybe you just found a reason to use scouts? For when moving across open nuetral terrain, you will need to know whats out there.

I swear some people just want to hate this game, and its not even out yet.

I think you have to appreciate the combat system as a whole in order to find out if this is indeed a problem. Certainly, the ranged nature of some units is a factor (which is why Pikes and Crossbows can still go together).

Wrong in so many ways. Clearly you did not even bother reading the firts page of this thread, as most of your complaints have been answered already. ie limit units per tile to "n". As far as escorting your siege units, You are stuck in a civ4 mindset with unit quantites. Its not like the AI will have a ton of units waiting to attack your siege. The fact is, if you don't have an established front line, you have already lost. Furthermore, maybe you just found a reason to use scouts? For when moving across open nuetral terrain, you will need to know whats out there.

Excuse me but I read all of that and not one of my observations has been addressed and in fact, they cannot be as they are created by 1UPT itself.
Trading one set of problems in return for another set of absurdities is not logical when a reasonable compromise was available that would retain good features of both approaches while eliminating many problems. A stacking limit of 2 or 3 would allow for tactics while retaining logical unit mixes while still being very compatible with a lower number of units and more use of frontages. There is enough collective experience in computer gaming to see the logic in that without waiting for this particular game to be released.

If you understand it then why are you complaining? What is the so called "more logical approach" of yours to this "problem"? Id really like to hear it.

I think it would make more sense to add in an attrition feature.

For instance, a grass tile can support 4 units, plains 2, desert/tundra 1 etc. Including the need for supply lines and the possibility to mix units of one tile into militia regiments.

That is my idea, but since you didn't really take the nice "I'll leave it alone gesture" of my previous post, I doubt you'll agree with me here.

I think it would make more sense to add in an attrition feature.

For instance, a grass tile can support 4 units, plains 2, desert/tundra 1 etc. Including the need for supply lines and the possibility to mix units of one tile into militia regiments.

That is my idea, but since you didn't really take the nice "I'll leave it alone gesture" of my previous post, I doubt you'll agree with me here.

I think a unit cap based on terrian is a bit to complex for civ. Civ isn't supposed to be a war game. The combat system has a good balance the way it is.

seeing as the red and white horse icon represents the evil japanese empire that the just french are battling i think you are wrong there.

Yep. you're right.

Still wonder what those other ships do there that don't have an icon next to them.

Your artillery should not have to worry about enemy attacks because of ZOC, I agree that stacks should scale by era, with 1upt at the start of the industrial/modern era.

Still wonder what those other ships do there that don't have an icon next to them. The horse icon is for the lower group of ships. The icon for the upper group of ships is offscreen. The icons for sea-embarked units appear to sit higher in the hex than the military icons (almost in the next hex), perhaps so they can stack without conflicting with each other.

Limited Stacks are worse than both 1UpT and unlimited Stacks, it is not a compromise between the 2 very different systems each with thier own benefits, it is simply bad. It defies logic to choose limited stacks when 1UpT or Unlimited Stacking do not share the same problems.
Your just swapping some disadvantages for no extra advantages and more disadvantages.

Its easy to explain why but I won't go into detail its been said before, probably in this thread, having a limit of say 4 units per tile, actually means that anything less than 4 units per tile is simply not a "full" unit, and the only strategy in limited stacking will be to maximise each stack to its limit or be destroyed in combat. So what your doing is taking away 1UpT's every unit is a full unit advantage and taking away the who can build the biggest SOD advantage, and just replace them with disadvantages,
Yay go! Limited SOD! such an awesome idea /sarcasm.

Its easy to explain why but I won't go into detail its been said before, probably in this thread, having a limit of say 4 units per tile, actually means that anything less than 4 units per tile is simply not a "full" unit, and the only strategy in limited stacking will be to maximise each stack to its limit or be destroyed in combat. So what your doing is taking away 1UpT's every unit is a full unit advantage and taking away the who can build the biggest SOD advantage, and just replace them with disadvantages,
Yay go! Limited SOD! such an awesome idea /sarcasm.

It all depends on how it would be implemented. If implemented in a horrible manner, then you are correct.

But you wouldn't want to allow any unit to stack in a limited stack, you would have it so only units of different 'types' can stack together. So you could stack cavalry, archers and spearman together; which e.g. would be a full army.

But this would always be best if the game dev's ignored everything else and made the game like Civ 3. If they included what they already have talked about for 5, such as cavalry get flank bonus, archers can shoot 2 hexes; you won't necessarily want your archers up front where a successful attack would leave them vulnerable in the front line; and your cavalry would be better used flanking then being up front.

All of the tactics are still there; in my mind it would open up more possibilities. It definitely wouldn't lose any.

They're not going to do it, so I don't see the point of arguing about it.

Limited stacking equals anything less than the maximum is not a full unit, so if you want to win battles you will have to stack to the maximum to make a "full unit" this is not good strategy, it will take so much away from the game.

And Arioch is right, they arent going to do it, if someone wants to try and mod limited stacking in, go for it, I for one won't even bother looking at it.

Excuse me but I read all of that and not one of my observations has been addressed and in fact, they cannot be as they are created by 1UPT itself.
Trading one set of problems in return for another set of absurdities is not logical when a reasonable compromise was available that would retain good features of both approaches while eliminating many problems. A stacking limit of 2 or 3 would allow for tactics while retaining logical unit mixes while still being very compatible with a lower number of units and more use of frontages. There is enough collective experience in computer gaming to see the logic in that without waiting for this particular game to be released.


All it does is mean unit has three custom parts. As stated, this means anything < 3 us an inferioir situation.

It all depends on how it would be implemented. If implemented in a horrible manner, then you are correct.

But you wouldn't want to allow any unit to stack in a limited stack, you would have it so only units of different 'types' can stack together. So you could stack cavalry, archers and spearman together; which e.g. would be a full army.


Well i suppose couple of people would love the must to build custom armies (limited stacks), but what about those who would just want to build one unit and fully occupy a hex with it and not to first build one unit and then try and repair it with some other units to make it stay alive and fully occupy a hex. Limited stacking would be absolutely ridiculous, even more ridiculous than unlimited stacking because now you MUST think what kind of stackS you are building so that they stay alive instead of just one big stack where you would have ALL of your units that are going to war.


But first of all i must say that i dont even belive we are having as strong rock, paper, scissors thing in civ5 as we had in civ4 because of the 1upt rule. This means that we are basicly allready serving the people who want to stack units to patch their weaknsesses, exept that this 1upt is easier for the AI and its also WAY less frustrating for the player.


If there would going to be rock, paper, scissors thing ala civ4, then limited stacking would be horrible MM to build and manage them, and as i allready said it would propably be much worse than unlimited stacking. Also, it doesnt remove the stack combat problem where the best possible defender always defends from the attacker and i dont see any solution to that problem.

If rock, paper, scissors are NOT as strong as in civ4, then as everyone can see then there is no point whatsoever of making stacks in the first place. Unless of course we have so many units that we must stack them, but then i would say that more units really doesnt add anything to the game.

I think it would make more sense to add in an attrition feature.

For instance, a grass tile can support 4 units, plains 2, desert/tundra 1 etc. Including the need for supply lines and the possibility to mix units of one tile into militia regiments.


Nothing personal but i would say that your idea would be a somewhat disaster for a civ game.

If you think it for a moment yourself, you should propably realize that it would most likely be even worse than pure limited stacking, and as i said in my previous post that limited stacking is MM hell, pointless or both (well it does encourage unit spam though) depending on the power of rock, paper, scissors effect.

Limited stacking equals anything less than the maximum is not a full unit, so if you want to win battles you will have to stack to the maximum to make a "full unit" this is not good strategy, it will take so much away from the game.

And Arioch is right, they arent going to do it, if someone wants to try and mod limited stacking in, go for it, I for one won't even bother looking at it.

You are thinking in too simple of terms. It is easy to make it so the thought of 'not having 3 units is bad, because it's not a full army'. If someone does this against another player that doesn't always do this, but uses their pieces according to their strengths, the 'stacking all stacks to the fullest' player loses.

You could at least in these circumstances defend a castle with swordsmen and archers. You could keep an AA gun with your tanks, etc.

No one expects them to change anything, but it sounds to me like you just go along with anything the company does as the absolute and only way to do it, and therefore it must be the absolute best way; and everything else is a bad way.

Right now, as Civ 5 is, there will be pretty much 1 Single best strategy for moving your troops around to defend or attack; depending on the troops you have. The best strategy will change as time progresses and you have different units; but this is how it has to be.

You are thinking in too simple of terms. It is easy to make it so the thought of 'not having 3 units is bad, because it's not a full army'. If someone does this against another player that doesn't always do this, but uses their pieces according to their strengths, the 'stacking all stacks to the fullest' player loses.

You could at least in these circumstances defend a castle with swordsmen and archers. You could keep an AA gun with your tanks, etc.

No one expects them to change anything, but it sounds to me like you just go along with anything the company does as the absolute and only way to do it, and therefore it must be the absolute best way; and everything else is a bad way.

Right now, as Civ 5 is, there will be pretty much 1 Single best strategy for moving your troops around to defend or attack; depending on the troops you have. The best strategy will change as time progresses and you have different units; but this is how it has to be.

Just because people do not agree with you does not mean they just take what the company says as gospel. I think 1upt will work better because in my personal analysis thats how I see it.

Warning for inappropriate language

You are an ***. Just because people do not agree with you does not mean they just take what the company says as gospel. I think 1upt will work better because in my personal analysis thats how I see it. Don't be an elitist ****.

What kind words. :eek:

The point is, if Firaxis made it with limited stacks, then there would be those saying limited stacks are terrific, great and the only best way to do it. Then instead of this thread, there would be a "Downside of Limited Stacks" and some would be saying: "I think 1 unit per tile is better".. but others would reply "1upt is dumb because the strategy just isn't there".

The point of this thread is to discuss thoughts on the subject; and that's what I'm doing.

Limited stacks would work only as an anti-SoD measure. It doesn't dramatically change things like one unit per tile. And I don't think there will always be a consistent strategy to use with the new set-up because terrain changes things dramatically.

tom2050 i understand what you are saying that some people will just "go along the company" with almost if not on everything.

BUT!

Limited stacking in civ game would still be a awful idea, i have allready told in many threads how limited stacking in civ would just simply suck, i have told it in so many ways and so many times, it would be stupid if i once again must copy paste my old posts to a new thread. Nobody, i mean NOBODY hasnt REALLY answered to my posts and showed me how limited stacking would be better in a civ game than 1upt.


Couple have argued, but there has been nothing to prove limited stacking better overall than 1upt.


I did have conversation with RickInVA and he really tried hard to prove me wrong but in the end he admitted that he just didnt have enough imagination for 1upt system in a world map scale and that he didnt want ANY tactical warfare whatsoever in civ game.


He also said: "I honestly don't know why people didn't like SOD." So he didnt even see a problem with SODs in the first place.


So tom2050, are you saying that as a good civ fans we should all be yelling for limited stacking with RickInVA now? Even though it would most likely make the game suck?

What kind words. :eek:

The point is, if Firaxis made it with limited stacks, then there would be those saying limited stacks are terrific, great and the only best way to do it. Then instead of this thread, there would be a "Downside of Limited Stacks" and some would be saying: "I think 1 unit per tile is better".. but others would reply "1upt is dumb because the strategy just isn't there".

The point of this thread is to discuss thoughts on the subject; and that's what I'm doing.

You are asserting that people would say mini stacks are good because firaxas alone says so, but of course some people would think it was a good idea, based on their belief about how the strategy would work. And I stand by what I said about you. Don't make stupid assertions about people you don't even know simply because they disagree with you. Its rude, and if you want to be rude, I will return the favor in kind. You don't get to imply people can't think for themselves and just regurgitate what a company says, and then get all butt hurt because somebody disparages you. You know what they call that? Being an ignorant hypocrit. Dispense with the personal attacks, and we can stay on topic.

We have no tolerance for flaming here!

Limited stacking equals anything less than the maximum is not a full unit, so if you want to win battles you will have to stack to the maximum to make a "full unit" this is not good strategy, it will take so much away from the game.

And Arioch is right, they arent going to do it, if someone wants to try and mod limited stacking in, go for it, I for one won't even bother looking at it.

All it does is mean unit has three custom parts. As stated, this means anything < 3 us an inferioir situation.

Not necessarily correct in both cases.

First of all, stacking (whether it may be limited or not) is a good thing at least for unit movement.
Second, under the assumption of a stack limit of say 4upt, anything less is just not different to a wounded unit under the rules of 1upt.
Third, a stack of proper compositon, yet not at full strength equals something like a today's division not being at full strength. Yet, put in the right terrain, it may still serve it's purpose.
Fourth, if you lose one unit under the rules of 1upt, you lose that hex. If you lose one unit under the rule of 4upt, you may still hold that hex.

Not necessarily correct in both cases.

First of all, stacking (whether it may be limited or not) is a good thing at least for unit movement.
Second, under the assumption of a stack limit of say 4upt, anything less is just not different to a wounded unit under the rules of 1upt.
Third, a stack of proper compositon, yet not at full strength equals something like a today's division not being at full strength. Yet, put in the right terrain, it may still serve it's purpose.
Fourth, if you lose one unit under the rules of 1upt, you lose that hex. If you lose one unit under the rule of 4upt, you may still hold that hex.

First, that is true only when the number of the units are on the same level in the two systems. Let's say we have 16 units in the 1upt system, will there only be 16 units so 4 stacks of troops for your entire empire in the limited stacking system? I think that is really unlikely. If we also have 16 stacks, will movement be simpler or more convenient in the latter system? Will you feel more efficient simply because you move four units at a time?
Second and third, how do these make limited stacking better than 1upt? If the two systems are more or less the same from such perspectives, then what's the point of limited stacking with its micromanagement hell?
Fourth, in the new 1upt system, it is no longer "one attack, one kill". So in 1upt, after your unit lose a combat, it probably still holds the hex, just the same as in limited stacking. So again, this is not something make limited stacking better.

First, that is true only when the number of the units are on the same level in the two systems. Let's say we have 16 units in the 1upt system, will there only be 16 units so 4 stacks of troops for your entire empire in the limited stacking system? I think that is really unlikely. If we also have 16 stacks, will movement be simpler or more convenient in the latter system? Will you feel more efficient simply because you move four units at a time?
Yes, since in an (assumed) 4upt-system I woiuld move 64 units with just 16 commands.

Second and third, how do these make limited stacking better than 1upt? If the two systems are more or less the same from such perspectives, then what's the point of limited stacking with its micromanagement hell?
The point is that small stacks still allow for "combined arms", whereas 1upt means single unit > single "weapon system"

Fourth, in the new 1upt system, it is no longer "one attack, one kill". So in 1upt, after your unit lose a combat, it probably still holds the hex, just the same as in limited stacking. So again, this is not something make limited stacking better.
Therefore, I wrote "if you lose one unit". And in the case of losing one unit, in terms of keeping control over the formerly occupied hex a limited stack is "better" - since you will still occupy that hex.

1upt is very meaningful for low-scale military operations as in Panzer General (and even there, organizing the march and deployment of your troops easily takes half an hour per turn). Whether it will be meaningful at the scale of Civ5 is questionable.

... having a limit of say 4 units per tile, actually means that anything less than 4 units per tile is simply not a "full" unit, and the only strategy in limited stacking will be to maximise each stack to its limit or be destroyed in combat. ...

I know this will be difficult to digest by some of you who were already convinced. But the above statement is necessarily and absolutely untrue.

One situation in which the statement is functional would be if a battle is defined primarily, if not solely, between two opposing/rival stacks. This is the case with CIV IV, thus the bigger SoD generally prevails (numerous considerations apart.. keeping it simple).

Combat in CIV V is so different because of limited Units Per Tile & Zones of Control. So a better deployed army of incomplete stacks can perfectly prevail over a more bulked rival. I will even assume that most of the times this should be the case. The bigger the limit of the stack the more combat will resemble to that of CIV IV.

I personally would like to handle stacks of a couple of units, swapping the front line with reinforcements after loosing a division of rifles for instance and defending my very strong/strategical position would be nice, instead of having to attack to regain that Hex. I believe a stack limit of 2 adds combined arms to the Hex (which is great actually, in so many ways), and keeps the tactical deployment of troops in the battlefield almost intact.

Depending on how much complain or acceptance there is regarding 1UPT after the game releases I can see 2 UPT implemented with the first expansion.

Did anyone read this? :confused:

But first of all i must say that i dont even belive we are having as strong rock, paper, scissors thing in civ5 as we had in civ4 because of the 1upt rule. This means that we are basicly allready serving the people who want to stack units to patch their weaknsesses, exept that this 1upt is easier for the AI and its also WAY less frustrating for the player.

Did anyone who is asking for limited stacking so that they could patch units weaknesses read this? Or do they even care? Or is your goal only achieved when you can dumb 2, 3 or 4 units inside one tile to get somewhat same result as you get in 1upt by building just one unit? I just cant belive some of you guys! It is starting to look like stacking units is like somekind of religion and the ultimate nirvana can only be reached by stacking units!?

Can anyone answer me? :confused:

I think what most people are failing to recognize when it comes to the 1upt argument is that land, itself, is a resource. It's limited, and you can only do so much with it.

What is sorely lacking in Civilization 4 is the idea that terrain matters at all. Yes there are some conflicts that happen outside cities, but, by and large, combat in Civ 4 involves bringing a huge stack of units up to a city and attacking it. Forget forts, enemies walk right on by them. Forget the natural choke points that land can provide, infinite units on a single tile render that pointless.

The only way that you can ignore that 1upt is going to be a vast improvement is if you simply hate the idea of positioning your troops in a superior way, on superior terrain. The example I love to give is forts. Forts in civ4 are largely pointless. Oh sure, everyone has one story of when they built a fort in a great spot, but largely, pointless. Now, change nothing about the fort, and just put it into the combat system of civ5, and they become amazing. A fort, on a hill, with a ranged attacker on it becomes DEVASTATING if you attempt to attack it, doubly so if you can't surround it because of mountain ranges and such.

My guess is that combat is going to become what combat actually is; a fight for land. When you win a tile, you won't want to give it back. The city is the end goal, certainly, but the land is what's far more important. That's never actually been reflected in the civilization franchise in the military game.

Oh, and to the people who're terrified that the game will always devolve into a bunch of units mashing into each other. Imagine a few well-entrenched forts with archer-style units inside of them creating a series of kill zones. Enemy unit moves into the tile directly in front of a fort, cannot keep moving because of the Zone of Control, next turn, gets obliterated by ranged units. Repeat ad nausium. You can add in some mounted units in there just to clean up any kind of mess that might occur. They can't run past your stuff because of the zone of control, and they can't safely assault your stuff because it's suicide. Glad they have a ton of units behind the line to replace the ones that just got slaughtered. ;)

I think what most people are failing to recognize when it comes to the 1upt argument is that land, itself, is a resource. It's limited, and you can only do so much with it.

What is sorely lacking in Civilization 4 is the idea that terrain matters at all. Yes there are some conflicts that happen outside cities, but, by and large, combat in Civ 4 involves bringing a huge stack of units up to a city and attacking it. Forget forts, enemies walk right on by them. Forget the natural choke points that land can provide, infinite units on a single tile render that pointless.

The only way that you can ignore that 1upt is going to be a vast improvement is if you simply hate the idea of positioning your troops in a superior way, on superior terrain. The example I love to give is forts. Forts in civ4 are largely pointless. Oh sure, everyone has one story of when they built a fort in a great spot, but largely, pointless. Now, change nothing about the fort, and just put it into the combat system of civ5, and they become amazing. A fort, on a hill, with a ranged attacker on it becomes DEVASTATING if you attempt to attack it, doubly so if you can't surround it because of mountain ranges and such.

My guess is that combat is going to become what combat actually is; a fight for land. When you win a tile, you won't want to give it back. The city is the end goal, certainly, but the land is what's far more important. That's never actually been reflected in the civilization franchise in the military game.

Oh, and to the people who're terrified that the game will always devolve into a bunch of units mashing into each other. Imagine a few well-entrenched forts with archer-style units inside of them creating a series of kill zones. Enemy unit moves into the tile directly in front of a fort, cannot keep moving because of the Zone of Control, next turn, gets obliterated by ranged units. Repeat ad nausium. You can add in some mounted units in there just to clean up any kind of mess that might occur. They can't run past your stuff because of the zone of control, and they can't safely assault your stuff because it's suicide. Glad they have a ton of units behind the line to replace the ones that just got slaughtered. ;)

+1 for this post.

Why is there so much discussion over the difference between the two systems? The only difference between 1upt and limited stacks is that with limited stacks you can have more than one type of weaponry in a tile. In every other way they're the same -- since units in 1upt are already composed of more than one company (represented as damage).

If we were going for realism, you would have to go for limited stacks, since, realistically, mixed units have existed. Sacrificing historical realism for some sense of superior tactical gameplay is strange. Its forcing everyone to be the type of general you would be because you think its more fun. The biggest potential downside is the micromanagement of limited stacks would be a pain. But that all depends on implementation.

Your killzone is flawed sir. Some good trebs and thins get interesting for those guys in the forts fast.

This is not real. This is a game.

Besides, is Civ 4 supposed to be real? 2 huge stacks of doom. Then, they each send out 1 unit at a time, the attacker choosing first and then the defender choosing his best unit to counterattack. Is that 'real' ? No, its an abstraction which has positives and negatives.

So instead of thinking of your swordsman as one unit, think of it as its own SOD, or army, or whatever. Perhaps the rock-paper-scissors element will be reduced or nonexistant. In that case, a fully healed (another abstraction) swordsman unit basically represents the largest possible "army", or "SOD" that can exist on that square (oops, sorry, "hex") at a time.

Maybe instead of the civ 4 model where swordsman were good at taking cities, axeman vs swordsman, and chariots vs axeman, we will now have the case where the one unit army/SOD represented by a swordsman, which requires iron, will be stronger than the spearman, which requires copper, simply by virtue of the better equipment. Is this feasible or likely? I'd like to think so. That swordsman unit represents an army full of various units, all using superior iron weapons, not just entirely composed of civ 4 "swordsmen". In that case, why even call it a swordsman, lets just call it an "iron army".

Obviously that last paragraph is some speculation on my point.


In Civ 4, the squares had a finite amount of land area, but could support an infinite number of troops? Is that 'real' ?

Now, with 1 upt, we have a finite amount of land, and a finite amount of troops. Much more 'real'.

What 1upt basically brings to the table is a reduction of micromanagement in the construction of the unit itself, while increasing micromanagement elsewhere.

Civ 4 MM involved creating large stacks composed of relative numbers of units, and didn't require much tactical MM on the battlefield itself. Now, the MM isn't so much in creating the unit, but rather in using it effectively. In other words, you are basically creating the SOD all at once, and are allowed, or rather, required to have more than one if you wish to survive.

I truly believe this is good, because creating the SOD in Civ 4 was largely trivial and formulaic. Once you knew what a good composition was, you just replicated that game after game after game ... etc. Get x swordsman and y spearman and z axeman together, suicide some catapults and the city is yours. If a CPU foolishly left its city to counter attack your stack, you didn't even have to bother because you had the right counter units in case he attacked you. In other words, you could totally ignore the military presence outside the city, because it posed zero threat to you if your SOD was properly composed. I fail to see how that is more 'real' or 'tactical' or 'strategic' in any possible way.


One other thing I'd like to say in this post, JonoLith hit it right on the head. It's not even a +1 for his post, its a +100.

It is a large price to pay for a possible small improvement in gameplay.

It would be more realistic to have archers only able to fire into adjacent hexes, but in the new combat model this would make archers all but useless, since realistically archers can't stand up to a melee charge. So we have the small conceit of archers being able to shoot as far as trebuchets or cannon, so that we can stick a melee unit between them and the enemy. It's a small price to pay in terms of abstraction for a big improvement in gameplay.

It is a large price to pay for a possible small improvement in gameplay.
Please explain yourself. Civilization has *always* gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay, and this allows archer's to function properly in warfare (otherwise they'd be useless under the current system). It just sounds like you're being contrary for the sake of it.

My main concert with 1upt is that if the military AI sucks (which it might, but maybe it won't), the AI will send a conga line of units to pointlessly get picked off one at a time by a fortified unit on a fort on a hill, thus decimating his entire army trying to kill one unit. :goodjob: However I am not against the 1upt system nor the SoD system. (Therefore I am unit placement Switzerland:)).

@Commander Bello: My point is that one unit in 1upt is different from one unit in limited stacking. Obviously we will have fewer (if not much fewer) units in the 1upt system. Capable of moving multiple units together doesn't mean that movement is just easier in limited stacking system. And losing one unit in 1upt is definitely not the same as it is in limited stacking. Because in limited stacking, you lose one unit whenever you lose a fight, while this is not true with 1upt in CiV. Why can't you get the idea that one unit in 1upt is just (more or less) one stack in limited stacking but much easier to manage and more fun because there's no more best-defender-automatically-chosen problem. Users like aziantuntija has talked about this a lot. Have you ever read their posts?

Once you knew what a good composition was, you just replicated that game after game after game ... etc. Get x swordsman and y spearman and z axeman together, suicide some catapults and the city is yours. If a CPU foolishly left its city to counter attack your stack, you didn't even have to bother because you had the right counter units in case he attacked you. In other words, you could totally ignore the military presence outside the city, because it posed zero threat to you if your SOD was properly composed. I fail to see how that is more 'real' or 'tactical' or 'strategic' in any possible way.
Wrong example.

First, if it would have been that easy, why was the AI never told about it?
Second, I have fought most of my defensive battles outside of cities. Why? Because this disallows the opponent to make use of all the modifiers for Trebuchets, Swordsmen and so on. Furthermore, that way the city's fat cross was protected.
In turn, I tried always to get my opponents while they were sitting in the cities, because that way I could make best use of the city attack modifiers by myself.
The fact that AI's counterattacks typically fail utterly is not because of stacks, it is because Civ4's AI was literally unable to fight.

Please explain yourself. Civilization has *always* gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay, and this allows archer's to function properly in warfare (otherwise they'd be useless under the current system). It just sounds like you're being contrary for the sake of it.
There would be other options to make Bowmen helpful, like delivering support to adjacent units.
And yes, one the "abstractions" of Civ4 has lead to "suicide siege weapons" (:rolleyes:), but that is bad design and not a consequence of stacks.

@Commander Bello: My point is that one unit in 1upt is different from one unit in limited stacking.
Exactly.

Obviously we will have fewer (if not much fewer) units in the 1upt system.
Agreed.
The point is that fewer units may very well mean that the loss of one of those fewer units may make a very big difference, both in terms of frontline composition and replacement.

Capable of moving multiple units together doesn't mean that movement is just easier in limited stacking system.
Of course it does.
First, it is less manual work to move a "stack" of n (with n being a number somewhere <= 10) units and second, whoever once tried to move his army through mountainous regions in games like Panzer General knows, how much time this costs - not moving every single unit by itself, but to find the right sequence.
And the last point is, where I expect the AI to fail.

And losing one unit in 1upt is definitely not the same as it is in limited stacking. Because in limited stacking, you lose one unit whenever you lose a fight, while this is not true with 1upt in CiV.
Wrong again.
The fact that in Civ4 losing a fight means losing a unit is not due to stacks, it is due to design. The same design could be used for 1upt, too and vice versa.

Why can't you get the idea that one unit in 1upt is just (more or less) one stack in limited stacking but much easier to manage and more fun because there's no more best-defender-automatically-chosen problem. Users like aziantuntija has talked about this a lot. Have you ever read their posts?
Once again, the problem of picking the defending units is not a problem of stacks per se, but of the design and logic which has been made use of.

I completely agree that Civ4's combat design was heavily flawed and I would be the last one to defend it for it's "perfectness", but this was not because of stacks, it was because of poor design.

We may face similar poor design in Civ5, too (I hope not, but there is not guarantee for it).
And if poor design comes into play, then your frontline will easily crush under the attack of a skilled opponent - just because there is no "backup".
And typically, it will be the human who is regarded as being the "skilled opponent". Actually, I expect that after a month, after people have explored strenghts and weaknesses of the combat system, the AI will suffer and lose. Or - like in Civ4 - it will need modifiers to make up for it's weaknesses.

The example I love to give is forts. Forts in civ4 are largely pointless. Oh sure, everyone has one story of when they built a fort in a great spot, but largely, pointless.

This actually has nothing to do with a one-unit-per-tile system. Just because forts in civ 4 are not very interesting or useful, doesn't mean they couldn't be - it's a problem with forts and not anything special about one-unit-per-tile. Having hex instead of square tiles improves control over chokes and zones of control. But ranged attack, zone of control, etc... could also be added in civ 4 and the purpose would be served just fine. There's no reason, if forts granted ZoC and especially if ranged attacks exist, that in civ 4 someone could not also put a few longbowmen on a fort in a hill to ward off enemy attacks. In fact, this is already possible in various mods, nothing necessary about 1upt, and leads to exactly the results you would want - it's possible to make strong defensive positions entirely apart from cities (and also destroy the AI who can never get close to your ranged attackers/forts)

My guess is that combat is going to become what combat actually is; a fight for land. When you win a tile, you won't want to give it back. The city is the end goal, certainly, but the land is what's far more important. That's never actually been reflected in the civilization franchise in the military game.

That's actually not what combat should be either, from a tactical and strategic perspective. The most important part of combat, by far, is destroying your opponent's army, and there isn't any heightened focus on that.
Now, this wasn't always true historically, (obviously the player trying to win the game can have a better focus) but what you suggest doesn't really fly there either. The ultimate goal of sacking an opponent's cities, if a mere victory over their army isn't the aim, is represented by, well, going after the cities. And I would not be surprised in the least if it quickly becomes apparent that the best strategy in civ5 is still going to involve blitzing after cities.

Oh, and to the people who're terrified that the game will always devolve into a bunch of units mashing into each other. Imagine a few well-entrenched forts with archer-style units inside of them creating a series of kill zones. Enemy unit moves into the tile directly in front of a fort, cannot keep moving because of the Zone of Control, next turn, gets obliterated by ranged units. Repeat ad nausium. You can add in some mounted units in there just to clean up any kind of mess that might occur.

I don't know who is worried about the first thing you suggested, because the scenario you described is EXACTLY what I would say is the crucial problem with the system. The AI will be devastated, warfare will not reflect the strategy and macroscopic aspects of gameplay and instead devolve into highly abusable tactics. For all those complaining and complaining about civ4 and civ3 and previous versions, I expect you to be sorely disappointed to see this in action in civ5, as it will most likely be worse than ever. On the scale of a civilization game warfare should clearly reflect a lot of the preparedness and strength of the civilizations involved, and the more it depends on tactics, the less this matters. If you complain that previous systems allowed the player to defeat AI civilizations who were economically stronger and had far larger militaries, by abusing tactics, it will only be worse here, that's almost guaranteed.

Your killzone is flawed sir. Some good trebs and thins get interesting for those guys in the forts fast.

Siege units take a turn (or maybe one of their two movement points) to "set up" before they can attack. So you can't move a treb within range of a fort and attack on the same turn. Which means that the fort gets a turn to shoot at the treb and reduce the effectiveness it will have when it is allowed to attack. If the defender just doesn't shoot away the melee unit that is in front of the treb with the fort and another ranged attacker or two and then charges the treb with a knight. It's not that simple.

Siege units take a turn (or maybe one of their two movement points) to "set up" before they can attack. So you can't move a treb within range of a fort and attack on the same turn. Which means that the fort gets a turn to shoot at the treb and reduce the effectiveness it will have when it is allowed to attack. If the defender just doesn't shoot away the melee unit that is in front of the treb with the fort and another ranged attacker or two and then charges the treb with a knight. It's not that simple.

All of this may lead to the fact that we may face some kind of "trenchline warfare" from the very beginning:
frontline units will entrench where ever they can, long-range units will be placed behind them and both sides don't dare to move forward, since this could result in losses which are hard to replace.

Since in such a scenario you would almost only have a chance against an opponent whose production is considerably below your own, it may lead to the "necessity" to steamroll weak opponents early, since by that you will get their lands, too.
And that means that in the early ages it might be mandatory to boost your military as much as you ever can, just to avoid such fate.

This would make for quite some limited general strategy.

On the scale of a civilization game warfare should clearly reflect a lot of the preparedness and strength of the civilizations involved, and the more it depends on tactics, the less this matters. If you complain that previous systems allowed the player to defeat AI civilizations who were economically stronger and had far larger militaries, by abusing tactics, it will only be worse here, that's almost guaranteed.

Alexander the Great created his empire because he used tactics in a world where armies would normally just crash headlong into each other. The Roman Army managed to succeed so often mainly because of tactics.
And most importantly, field battles are more fun than ramming a stack of units into a city. (The one reason I avoid war in civ 4 is because it is boring, ramming stacks into cities.)

I have also seen AI operate well with 1upt combat systems. No reason Firaxis can't emulate this.

Also people complainging about how the loss of one unit will be far more devastating in 1upt than in SoD. Of course it will, because you have less units. The main thing is though, your units are far harder to kill. They only lose health now, there isn't always an eliminated unit in a fight. Also, combat has always been about breaking the enemies lines

Siege units take a turn (or maybe one of their two movement points) to "set up" before they can attack. So you can't move a treb within range of a fort and attack on the same turn. Which means that the fort gets a turn to shoot at the treb and reduce the effectiveness it will have when it is allowed to attack. If the defender just doesn't shoot away the melee unit that is in front of the treb with the fort and another ranged attacker or two and then charges the treb with a knight. It's not that simple.

Good point... It is 100% for sure human players will play better than the AI with everything even; it's just how it is. I'll tell a tactic right now with 1upt for stopping siege.

You see AI bring a siege unit towards you. The unit is surrounded by other swordsman for defense in all tiles. Since the siege can't be protected in it's tile; the defender only needs to destroy 2 or 3 of the outside defenders to kill the siege engine (and if roads give move bonus, defender has mobility advantage). And defender has tons of time to do it also, since it has to deploy then set up.

Chances are there won't be enough units in the game to have each siege surrounded by 5 swordsman.

If roads give no mobility advantage (which is the sole purpose of a road), then this is stretching the gameplay > realism argument to la-la fantasy land.

Having 2 or 3 upt is about using Combined Arms properly. 1upt there is no combined arms at all. It is every unit on it's own... and you have to coordinate them together that is important (the Coordination strategy). Civ 5 is a coordination game, not combined arms.

Having the ability to use certain units in the same stack as others gives combined arms use a reality. The coordination game still exists.

If badly implemented, then having max units in each square wins.

If properly implemented, then using certain mix of units at best times wins. The mix would vary depending if on a certain type of attack (to breakthrough), or might be single unit (to flank), or might be other types of defenders (to defend), border AA defense (AA and dug-in defenders), etc...

It's just that I like combined arms and coordinating them. Civ 5 is coordination Only (combined arms doesn't exist) which is good; but could be better. Some may hate combined arms, but I have always found it to be fascinating, and it was one of the biggest things that wins battles.

This would make for quite some limited general strategy.

I will point out that there are overall flaws to over-expansion that have to be considered. Steamrolling your opponents early could lead to a civilization that is incapable of competing against all remaining opponents. Fighting entrenched opponents might be a better idea instead.

BTW, I'm going to disagree with the thought that combined arms don't exist. The basic combined arms model is the offensive unit and the support unit. In Civ4, that meant you'd have a unit in the same stack to protect against an opposing counterattack. In Civ5, it means that the protecting units would be in front, while the archers are behind them.

I set up my trebs farther away then your archers can fire, unless you have your own trebs, in which case I'll just move back and hit the forts. Unless of course your trebs are in the forts in which case you have a dilemma, attack my trebs so they can't attack you, or attack my troops before they reach the forts.

So is 1upt going to be perfect ? Probably not.

But there's certainly nothing perfect about the system in Civ 4.

You'd think that most people here, obviously avid Civilization fans, would give Sid Meier and Firaxis a little credit. That just maybe they'd know a little bit about making a game both fun, challenging, and new.

I mean, if everybody is afraid that Civ 5 won't live up to their expectations, that's understandable too. But if you go in with that mindset, it almost certainly won't live up to your expectations.

I'll trust Sid's and Firaxis' track record here. I've not played all of their games, but I have enjoyed those I have played.

I set up my trebs farther away then your archers can fire, unless you have your own trebs, in which case I'll just move back and hit the forts. Unless of course your trebs are in the forts in which case you have a dilemma, attack my trebs so they can't attack you, or attack my troops before they reach the forts.

So, I'm not sure if I sense any sarcasm here.

But this is exactly what we want, right ? A dilemma, a problem that needs to be solved. We can attack, but it leaves something open. Doesn't this encourage creative thinking, not just SOD warfare ??

I'll trust Sid's and Firaxis' track record here. I've not played all of their games, but I have enjoyed those I have played.

This is the point, trusting their track record. Most everyone on the forums absolutely hates SoD's and trashes them whenever they can, and everyone applauds them for doing it. This is their combat track record in what we are referring to.

So this track record is what you trust for the new combat mechanics? You should be hoping that they throw their track record in the toilet and flush. ;)

I quoted a statement which included no explanation at all, which although the author did not say so, was a matter of opinion. I turned it around and gave my opinion with an equal amount of explanation. There seems to be a double standard; only one side of the discussion needs to explain itself.

As has been explained repeatedly, different people have different items which ruin their suspension of disbelief. For example, having archers fire across the English Channel makes the game silly, in my opinion. Silly enough that my enjoyment of the game will be significantly diminished. (If it displeases you sufficiently, do not buy the game.)

"Civilization has always gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay", is your opinion, shared by others. But it is just an opinion, provided with no explanation. It is not even clear that the changes in the military system simplify game play.

What helps game play for one person may hurt game play for another person.
As has been said repeatedly, the current changes will appeal to some people and not to others. To some extent how it will appeal to different people can be predicted, but only to some extent. We will find out soon enough when people start playing the new CIV V.

If I want to play a World War II strategic level simulation, I can already do so. Some of us do not want to be playing a wargame in which we have to spend a lot of time micromanaging our military units. It appears we will have to spend a lot of time very carefully positioning our military units and in case of war very carefully maneuvering them. Kind of like a game a chess. I can already play chess if I want to.

Many decisions are being taken away from players, and others added. Whether that is a good thing or bad thing depends on what a particular player enjoys.
For example, one will no longer have to make a decision as to how many transports (galleys, etc.) to build, when to build them, and where to move them or position them. In CIV IV and previous editions, on relevant maps, this was one of many tradeoff decisions one had to make. Those who just found this annoying will enjoy the change. On the other hand, some of us found that interesting and a good simulation of history in which ship transport in the appropriate situations was an important issue. (See Spanish Armada, Mongol failed invasion of Japan, etc.)

Here is a possible simplification. Just have generic land units, all the same except for strength (which would depend on tech level when built, veteran status, effects of enemy attacks, etc.) I do not think I would enjoy this, but it would greatly simplify game play.

Please explain yourself. Civilization has *always* gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay, and this allows archer's to function properly in warfare (otherwise they'd be useless under the current system). It just sounds like you're being contrary for the sake of it.

Good point... It is 100% for sure human players will play better than the AI with everything even; it's just how it is. I'll tell a tactic right now with 1upt for stopping siege.

You see AI bring a siege unit towards you. The unit is surrounded by other swordsman for defense in all tiles. Since the siege can't be protected in it's tile; the defender only needs to destroy 2 or 3 of the outside defenders to kill the siege engine (and if roads give move bonus, defender has mobility advantage). And defender has tons of time to do it also, since it has to deploy then set up.

Chances are there won't be enough units in the game to have each siege surrounded by 5 swordsman.

If roads give no mobility advantage (which is the sole purpose of a road), then this is stretching the gameplay > realism argument to la-la fantasy land.

Having 2 or 3 upt is about using Combined Arms properly. 1upt there is no combined arms at all. It is every unit on it's own... and you have to coordinate them together that is important (the Coordination strategy). Civ 5 is a coordination game, not combined arms.

Having the ability to use certain units in the same stack as others gives combined arms use a reality. The coordination game still exists.

If badly implemented, then having max units in each square wins.

If properly implemented, then using certain mix of units at best times wins. The mix would vary depending if on a certain type of attack (to breakthrough), or might be single unit (to flank), or might be other types of defenders (to defend), border AA defense (AA and dug-in defenders), etc...

It's just that I like combined arms and coordinating them. Civ 5 is coordination Only (combined arms doesn't exist) which is good; but could be better. Some may hate combined arms, but I have always found it to be fascinating, and it was one of the biggest things that wins battles.

Why are you surrounding the treb? Why not build a line in front of them, makes a much longer area to go around. You will have to pick teh right route to attack with of course. And also if the computer moves its army to your rear they have just left you an open lane to the cities. Also this is fixe dby making all roads useable to all civs even in enemy territory. With SoDs that was a bad idea, now however, a good idea. It will encourage defenders to set up roads in a way that is defensive minded, but would also eliminate road spam, since it would let enemies move so fast in their territory also. Without road spam your fears go away. :)

Can you people tell me and everyone else here in your own words what means combined arms?


If you guys think it means some kind of "stacking" where all the different "units" are in the exact same position, then then as a soldier myself i must say that you guys are so wrong.


If army uses combined arms like somekind of stacking or limited stacking then it would propably look something like this:


General says: Oh heres finally our artillery, lets just take these guys and put them in the exact same place as the infantry goes. Hey look everyone! We got helicopters! Lets put them also in the exact same place were we have allready our infantry and artillery. Damn im good general! :king:


Liutenant: Sir, now that we are having all of our units in this same area defending each other to form (as you call it) combined arms, then what if the enemy just goes around us and charges our nearest city?


General: I dunno. Perhaps we should just back it up to the nearest city ourselfs and wait there?


Liutenant: So we will just abandon our nations border and back up to the nearest city and just wait?


That example doesnt sound like it is going to be happening in modern days. If you think that ancient battles were fought in stacks then i must say that IMO you are wrong again.

Once again this is what i wrote in Unit Stacking thread:

Fact is that Firaxis wanted to make the battles more realistic AND more tactical for ALL the different eras, thats why we have 1upt to look for. Everybody has seen some historical films where some ancient armies have been battling it out. The question is, do you see all the units archers, cavalry, swordsmen, spearmen and catapults stacked up in making a one messy bunch? No we dont see that. We dont even see just cavalry, catapults and archers stacked up as messy bunch (limited stacking). What we DO see is archers being in place A, and spearmen in place B, catapults in place C, and so on. They might be standing close to one another, but they are NOT BUNCHED TOGETHER.

I have never seen a film where there would be a ancient well organized army appearing in the battlefield and it would just start mixing their units, like mixing archers, spearmen and catapults all together making a one disordered bunch of people. What kind of commands would you give to this bunch that would contain all these different weapon classes? What is their job in the battlefield? I really doubt that they done that in the ancient times.. ..And as far as i know, they didnt. Also, if chess was invented to teach soldiers the art of war, why is it 1upt if they used only stacks back then? :confused:


So once again, can you people please tell me and everyone else here in your own words what means combined arms? IMO it doesnt mean that helicopters, infantry, and artillery are all standing in the exact same place "supporting" each other.

So "units" are NOT bunched together in modern times and they were NOT bunched together in ancient times. Your vision of limited stacking brings my mind to some old western film where indians attacked some cowboys. Some of the indians were riding with horses, some of them were on foot, some had axes, some had rifles, some had bows etc etc.. To me that looks more like your vision of combined arms :)

This is the point, trusting their track record. Most everyone on the forums absolutely hates SoD's and trashes them whenever they can, and everyone applauds them for doing it. This is their combat track record in what we are referring to.

So this track record is what you trust for the new combat mechanics? You should be hoping that they throw their track record in the toilet and flush. ;)

Well, that's one way to take my point, I guess.

What I really meant, however, was that regardless of the game mechanic, the game is likely going to be fun and enjoyable, challenging and fair, and hopefully just complex enough to create plenty of replayability without becoming too bogged down with MM.

That's not too much to ask is it ?? :D

I'd guess that if this whole 1 upt mechanic wasn't fun, or challenging, or fair they would have scrapped the idea after some testing. That's what I meant when I say I trust their track record of making good games.

In my opinion, one unit per hex was a radical "solution" to a perceived problem.
I do not see any reason to "arbitrarily" limit the number of units per hex for a game like Civ.

One can reduce the number of military units a country will have by tweaking other features.
Think about CIV IV, but double the cost of building every military unit and maintaining every military unit.
Optimal strategy will involve on average fewer military units.
Think about CIV IV, but tripling the cost of building every military unit and maintaining every military unit, etc.

Assuming you believe CIV IV has on average too many military units. At some point, you will reach the happy medium which in your opinion has the right average number of military units.

Throughout history, quantity has a quality of its own. Better weapons, technology, tactics, generals, etc, can make up for more. But sometimes more wins the day.

Having cities having an inherent defense makes some sense, and could be added to the current game if one thinks it an improvement.

Having the number of units that depend on a resource limited is an example of complicating gameplay in order for more realism. I have my doubts that this change will make the game more enjoyable for me, but I am not sure. It seems like it will further reward the luck of starting position or having an iron mine suddenly appear as can currently happen.

o this track record is what you trust for the new combat mechanics? You should be hoping that they throw their track record in the toilet and flush. ;)By eliminating stacks altogether, isn't this exactly what they've done?

If the majority "hate" SoD's, then wouldn't the best way to go be to eliminate them? Even the "little SoD's" (e.g. 4 upt)? No combat system in any game will ever be perfect - there are just too many variables and considerations - but personally, I've been playing since Civ I, and I'm ready for stack-less combat. Because SoD-based combat is merely a numbers game once you figure out how to build an effective stack. With 1upt, and resource-capped units, you're going to be much more focused on how you use your units, rather than building more units and beating a city over the head with the stack.

I don't think limiting units via resources was done because there were too many units. I think it was implemented because using Civ 4 rules of unlimited units alongside 1 upt could likely create a situation where there was a unit on every single hex.

Of course it does.
First, it is less manual work to move a "stack" of n (with n being a number somewhere <= 10) units and second, whoever once tried to move his army through mountainous regions in games like Panzer General knows, how much time this costs - not moving every single unit by itself, but to find the right sequence.
And the last point is, where I expect the AI to fail.

So let's assume that moving a stack needs same or similar amount of manual work as moving a unit in 1upt. If we have 20 stacks to move in limited stacking and 20 units in 1upt, will it be less manual work to move all the units in limited stacking? I was just saying that it isn't necessarily true that movement in a limited stacking system is less manual work. We need to consider other factors in the system, such as typical numbers of stacks/troops for an empire.

As for the AI issue, do you really want a stupid and boring system only in order to ensure that the AI could be good at it? I don't. Also, there has been tons of hex strategy games out there over the decades, why worry so much? It's rather possible that CiV's AI will be rather good, right?

Wrong again.
The fact that in Civ4 losing a fight means losing a unit is not due to stacks, it is due to design. The same design could be used for 1upt, too and vice versa.

I don't think we are talking about 1upt and stacking in general, but their implementations in Civ4 and Civ5, aren't we?

That example doesnt sound like it is going to be happening in modern days. If you think that ancient battles were fought in stacks then i must say that IMO you are wrong again.

So once again, can you people please tell me and everyone else here in your own words what means combined arms? IMO it doesnt mean that helicopters, infantry, and artillery are all standing in the exact same place "supporting" each other.

So "units" are NOT bunched together in modern times and they were NOT bunched together in ancient times. Your vision of limited stacking brings my mind to some old western film where indians attacked some cowboys. Some of the indians were riding with horses, some of them were on foot, some had axes, some had rifles, some had bows etc etc.. To me that looks more like your vision of combined arms :)

I remember there were cases in which units were interspersed, though I can't remember any examples. However even if we're talking about unit formation, it isn't covered by the 1upt system in Civ5.

For instance, in the middle ages a unit of musketeers would be surrounded by pikemen in a square formation. In order to achieve the same thing in 1upt, you would need 1 musketeer unit and 4 pikemen units, which doesn't make sense to do. The point is just that the way the unit is formed, the musketeers are always guarded by pikemen, and that formation is never broken up.

Another example of combined armed formations is the Spanish tercio. Pikemen formed squares with sword-and-javelin men inside, and arquebusiers and field artillery assumed positions between the squares.

For the game, another example where this is important is stationing units in cities. With 1upt you can't have for instance, both archers and swordsmen in cities.. which isn't realistic either.

Are people forgetting about ZOC ??

You don't need to have a unit totally surrounded by units to have it protected !! The opponent cannot simply waltz through ZOC to attack the ranged/siege units in back (if they're properly positioned of course).

That is perhaps one of the largest downsides to SOD warfare. Since there is no real reason to spread your troops out (since there's no ZOC), there was no reason to have your troops anywhere but the absolute best tiles (hills/forest tiles, across a river, or the most obvious choice, IN A CITY!!!).

Are people forgetting about ZOC ??

You don't need to have a unit totally surrounded by units to have it protected !! The opponent cannot simply waltz through ZOC to attack the ranged/siege units in back (if they're properly positioned of course).

That is perhaps one of the largest downsides to SOD warfare. Since there is no real reason to spread your troops out (since there's no ZOC), there was no reason to have your troops anywhere but the absolute best tiles (hills/forest tiles, across a river, or the most obvious choice, IN A CITY!!!).

ZOC just slows units down to 1 hex per move in Civilization V. Combined formations just makes sense to me, which is all limited stacks would allow. Are you worried there'll be too much micromanagement?

It would be cool, even, if with limited stacks the game would automatically arrange the unit graphics in the right way so they mirror practical formations, like a group of pikemen and musketeers would have the pikemen on the outside.

ZOC just slows units down to 1 hex per move in Civilization V. Combined formations just makes sense to me, which is all limited stacks would allow. Are you worried there'll be too much micromanagement?

It would be cool, even, if with limited stacks the game would automatically arrange the unit graphics in the right way so they mirror practical formations, like a group of pikemen and musketeers would have the pikemen on the outside.

Right, it slows units down. So just having ZOC isn't an impenetrable defense. But having units in position to take out opposition which has walked into the ZOC will play a role I believe.

No, I'm not worried about MM on the battlefield side. I believe the combat aspect will be more fun with a little more thought and creativity involved. IMHO its a very cool change.

It would be cool, even, if with limited stacks the game would automatically arrange the unit graphics in the right way so they mirror practical formations, like a group of pikemen and musketeers would have the pikemen on the outside.
This is what 1upt does. You put your pikemen in front of your musketeers. You don't need to make a square around your musketeers, you just make a line. With ZOC and proper positioning, the enemy cant get to your musketeers, eliminating the need for the stack in the first place.

This is what 1upt does. You put your pikemen in front of your musketeers. You don't need to make a square around your musketeers, you just make a line. With ZOC and proper positioning, the enemy cant get to your musketeers, eliminating the need for the stack in the first place.

Well what do you say about that brianshapiro? :)

For instance, in the middle ages a unit of musketeers would be surrounded by pikemen in a square formation. In order to achieve the same thing in 1upt, you would need 1 musketeer unit and 4 pikemen units, which doesn't make sense to do. The point is just that the way the unit is formed, the musketeers are always guarded by pikemen, and that formation is never broken up.

Another example of combined armed formations is the Spanish tercio. Pikemen formed squares with sword-and-javelin men inside, and arquebusiers and field artillery assumed positions between the squares.


To me those sounds like chess manouvers, not stacking. Btw, chess is 1upt :)


After you throw some catapults somewhere in the middle and maybe some cavalry to trample on toes of friendly foot soldiers in the same tight formation, maybe then i can say that: "OMG! They really used stacks back then!" :lol:


If you really want to use something that comes even close to those kinds of strategies in that detail, then in this case, 1upt is the best possible answer.


Btw, those examples are the reason why chess was teched to soldiers.

This is what 1upt does. You put your pikemen in front of your musketeers. You don't need to make a square around your musketeers, you just make a line. With ZOC and proper positioning, the enemy cant get to your musketeers, eliminating the need for the stack in the first place.

Well what do you say about that brianshapiro? :)

I have a couple words :)

This is exactly what a trench warfare style game is; huge lines with another line of ranged units behind it. And it will go on for most of the game until you get 3 range bombard units and flank units.

Then it becomes calvary either trying to break through the line, or flank it's sides with big lines still there.

I think there won't be enough units in the game to make huge lines anyways, so that probably blows that idea out of the water.

Since it's likely you won't be able to have 20 units in some huge blob of a trench line... instead you'll have small little circles of maybe 4 or 5 units doing this to attack.

I'd guess that if this whole 1 upt mechanic wasn't fun, or challenging, or fair they would have scrapped the idea after some testing. That's what I meant when I say I trust their track record of making good games.
As they did with the 'suicide siege weapons'? :mischief:

When that concept was presented here in this very forum, it took people just a couple of hours to find out that the intended result, making SoDs useless, would be completely missed.
There were many heated debates about this topic, which almost always resulted in the final mantra: "I guess, if this wouldn't work, they would not have introduced it. I will trust the designers, they know what they're doing!"

So let's assume that moving a stack needs same or similar amount of manual work as moving a unit in 1upt. If we have 20 stacks to move in limited stacking and 20 units in 1upt, will it be less manual work to move all the units in limited stacking? I was just saying that it isn't necessarily true that movement in a limited stacking system is less manual work. We need to consider other factors in the system, such as typical numbers of stacks/troops for an empire.
Once again, you try to mix things and go away with it.
Yet, I won't let you go. :)

Even, if we would agree to your assumption that in a stacked system the number of stacks would equal the number of single units in a 1upt-system (for which there isn't any natural law), then still the stack system would give you some advantages, as the chance to redeploy your units, recombine them after the inital battles and even having some single units taken out of the stacks to pursuit wounded enemies.

As for the AI issue, do you really want a stupid and boring system only in order to ensure that the AI could be good at it? I don't. Also, there has been tons of hex strategy games out there over the decades, why worry so much? It's rather possible that CiV's AI will be rather good, right?
I think, here we may have touched the real issue.

You don't want the AI to be good, which is all fine.
For me as a single player it is important to have a system with which the AI can cope.

Any assumption about the quality of AI decisions we will have to leave for the future, as at the moment we don't know anything about it's strengths and weaknesses.
Therefore, debating it's strengths in Civ5 at the moment is completely moot.


That is perhaps one of the largest downsides to SOD warfare. Since there is no real reason to spread your troops out (since there's no ZOC), there was no reason to have your troops anywhere but the absolute best tiles (hills/forest tiles, across a river, or the most obvious choice, IN A CITY!!!).

First, a city was never the best place for defense.
By hidnig your troops inside city walls, you allowed the opponent to pillage your territory, at least to block you from access of the city's fat cross.

The best defense positions always were somewhere near the borders, behind a river, on top of a forested hill and so on. Not in a city.
There, the enemy was not able to make use of attack modifiers and trebuchets and swordsmen out of a sudden only were worth half.

But apart from that:
I perfectly know about frontlines and 1upt, since I am playing Panzer General since years.

And for Panzer General, the 1upt is fine. It is fun, too.
Nevertheless, a single turn easily takes 30 minutes and more, since you have to be very careful about in which sequence you're attacking, where to move which unit and so on.
And last, the scale of Panzer General maps is completely different from the scale of Civ5 maps.

In the current screenshots and movies we have seen cities as near to each other as just three, sometimes even only 2 hexes.
This will drastically reduce your "operational area".

And given the general assumption that having entrenched frontline units with long-range units hidden behind them will be the superior tactics, this will only lead to WW1 style of frozen trench warfare.

It is not the 1upt per se, it is 1upt at the scale of Civ, what does concern me.
Civ does not provide the right scale of maps for a tactical combat system like 1upt, where you have to "outmanouvre" your enemy.

Well what do you say about that brianshapiro? :)

I say its not exactly true.

The enemy still can come from behind with a different unit, and like I mentioned, in Civ5, ZOC doesn't stop movement it only slows it down to one hex per turn. So it doesn't really replicate that kind of combat. You have no situation in which your musketmen are always protected by your pikemen.

And you still can't hole up more than one arm type in a city behind walls.

If you like 1upt, fine, but it still doesn't achieve realistic unit formation better than limited stacks.

...
What is sorely lacking in Civilization 4 is the idea that terrain matters at all. Yes there are some conflicts that happen outside cities, but, by and large, combat in Civ 4 involves bringing a huge stack of units up to a city and attacking it. Forget forts, enemies walk right on by them. Forget the natural choke points that land can provide, infinite units on a single tile render that pointless.


Why? If I have 10 fortified units and it costs 20 units of a major attacking stack to gain control of my fort (even before they get next to my city). It is a strong point to have those 10 choking units.


The only way that you can ignore that 1upt is going to be a vast improvement is if you simply hate the idea of positioning your troops in a superior way, on superior terrain. The example I love to give is forts. Forts in civ4 are largely pointless.
...


Ok, I can see now what the problem is. You are putting all together 1UPT, ZoC and ranged attack. Three completely different concepts that happen to appear fresh in Civ V and weren't there in IV at all. So one player can ignore 1upt advantages and support either of the other two concepts, or both; which allow very much field troop deployment.

I don't know how game combat will turn out, it might be awesome or disastrous. The feature I sincerely have a problem with is range attack though. It was very poorly implemented in CIV III I remember. Nahh, surely this won't be the case now!

EDIT: Ohhhh, I notice you have been already obviously addressed Jojo, by Earthling!

Stacks are broken, you can't have meaningfuldefensive position except for a one tile choke points and cities, so most of the combat in civ 4 was either seiging a city or being sieged, and nothing else.

I say its not exactly true.

The enemy still can come from behind with a different unit, and like I mentioned, in Civ5, ZOC doesn't stop movement it only slows it down to one hex per turn. So it doesn't really replicate that kind of combat. You have no situation in which your musketmen are always protected by your pikemen.

And you still can't hole up more than one arm type in a city behind walls.

If you like 1upt, fine, but it still doesn't achieve realistic unit formation better than limited stacks.

Well now you said it yourself and it looks like you still didnt get it :lol:


Yes it is very true that the enemy might just come from behind your lines and this time it actually matters if they do just that. In fact if the enemy can do it then so can you. And that my little friend is a good thing :)


You want to see somekind of perfect shelter for your units (stacks) but in the real world there isnt one. Like this musketman/pikeman formation, it has its weak point like how are the musketman supposed to fire their guns if the musketmen are always surrounded by pikemen?

the musketeers are always guarded by pikemen, and that formation is never broken up.

If this is absolutely true what you are saying, then to me it looks like there is no point of keeping those musketman inside this pikemen ring because they just cant shoot trough those pikemen now cant they. Also what does the pikemen do? Just stand there or are they planning on engaging a battle? If so then wouldnt it be better for the musketmen to be someplace else than in the middle of the melee fight?


if i were to deside i would release both of them to let actually do something instead of just standing in there and looking important.


Btw, could you post some facts about this musketman/pikeman formation?

Not that I'm taking sides, but I did find some info on "pike and shot" formations:

Pike and shot

In the sixteenth century, the Spanish sought to develop a balance between the close-combat power of the pike and the shooting power of the firearm. They developed the Tercio formation, in which arquebusier or musketeer formations (or even longbowmen, in an English variation) fought on the flanks of the pikemen, in formations sometimes resembling a checkerboard.

These formations, eventually referred to as "pike and shot", used a mixture of men, each with a different tactical role – the shooters dealt out casualties to the enemy, while the pikemen protected the shooters from enemy cavalry and fought if the Tercio closed in hand-to-hand combat. As a result, the tercio deployed smaller numbers of pikemen than the huge Swiss and Landsknecht columns.

The Tercio proved more flexible and eventually prevailed over the grand pike block, its mixed formation became the norm for European infantrymen, and the percentage of men who were armed with firearms in Tercio-like formations steadily increased as firearms advanced in technology. In the late sixteenth into the seventeenth century, smaller pike formations were used, invariably defending attached musketeers, often as a central block with two sub-units of shooters, called "sleeves of shot", on either side of the pikes.

During this period the pike was typically 4.5 to 5.5 metres (15 to 18 feet) in length.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_%28weapon%29

Yes it is very true that the enemy might just come from behind your lines and this time it actually matters if they do just that. In fact if the enemy can do it then so can you. And that my little friend is a good thing :)


Except its inaccurate, because in reality you can flank your musketmen on all sides, and its been done in history. The British, Spanish, etc. apparently disagree with you.

Good job k-a-bob, this looks like combined arms to me :goodjob:


Still it does not justify stacking for the sake of gameplay


Except its inaccurate, because in reality you can flank your musketmen on all sides, and its been done in history. The British, Spanish, etc. apparently disagree with you.

What? Is my english really this bad?! Or are you misunderstand something? What i understand is that you are saying almost the exact same thing that im saying and stating that im wrong?!

:lol:

Someone responding recently on the old main thread said the following:


Stacks that fight out zoomed battles are what the Total War series is about (although the battles there are real-time). It results in playing hours just to (partly) complete a turn. While this is fun for militaristic games like Total War, is would overemphasize warfare in Civ - where it is one of many game mechanics.

Now 1UPT is a new way to approach this part. It is in no way more realistic, as many have pointed out. It, however, might be more fun - although no one can really tell as yet. I would suspect there will be some glitches in vanilla Civ5 warfare, just because the system is quite new to Civ and the hardcore players will find things in their long hour sessions that beta testers have missed.
I'm a big fan of the Total War games (haven't played Empire, but loved Medieval, Rome and Medieval II) and I disagree with the idea that zoomed battles would overemphasize warfare Civ. 2 reasons why I say not:
-- Zoomed battles in Total War are OPTIONAL. If you don't want to watch the battle with all of your intricately diverse troops and detailed terrain, then the AI will calculate the result. At least through Med2, I found that the AI did a lousy job in this calculation, similarly to the unintelligent tactics the AI employees anyway. Basically if you let the AI calculate the result, it's playing itself using stupid tactics. However, sometimes if there's a technique that you've haven't mastered (like wall-taking), this can be a good way to handle a battle. Anyway, there's no reason the AI tactical system couldn't be much more intelligent to offer a better challenge and a reasonable facsimile of a how a moderately skilled player might fare if you skip the battle round. By skipping battle rounds in Total War, you do force yourself to really focus on the Strategic, Economic and Diplomatic aspects of the game, which precisely the things that have always been stronger in Civ.
-- If we are comparing the idea of zoomed battles to the ideas of vast armies spread out over the map in a 1-unit-per-hex formation, then I would suggest that the latter scenario is the one that would overemphasize warfare in Civ, with armies and not harnessed terrain coming to dominate the map.

The thing is, Civ is not a Tactical game. It does have military strategy on a large scale but has never really gotten down to the most basic tactical level. Civ 5 sounds like it will change this balance, and some Civ players will love it, others won't. I think zoomed battles are probably not going to happen in Civ 5. My prediction is that Civ 5 will not see the success that Civs 1,2 and 4 saw, and will instead be a mediocre game like many of us feel Civ 3 was. (And I know some disagree with that statement.) If I'm right, maybe they'll remember this discussion and consider zoomed battles for Civ 6. Alternatively, they'll bring out Civ 5 "BTB" (Back to Basics) and introduce zoomed battles and/or stacks, as well as other items that Civ fans will be missing.

It is Un-combined arms to be more precise. Civ 5 is a coordination game only, you must coordinate your units together better than the other guy.

The scale to use 1upt is way out of whack, of course everyone will say 'gameplay > realism' which becomes a cliched argument after a while.

Since Civ 5 has become pretty much a combat game it seems, might as well speculate on how to improve it.

My take of real combined arms is to let units work together that are in hexes that represent hundreds of square kilometres. Like said above, PG does not represent huge portions of the planet, not to mention the whole earth.

It is more realistic from gameplay and from realism aspect to allow combined arms in same tile of different unit types.

You can still let them do the Transformers thing and turn into boats ("Transform and Roll Out!"); but I don't see the disadvantages, because most of the time, you won't stack units just to stack them; because Civ 5 won't have massive amounts of units anyways; no change here.

Well in the end we can only say that for now the stacks are gone. Its better for gameplay and its more realistic than mongrel stacks with their "best defender always defends" problems.


If you dont like it dont buy it. :king:

you should play empires demo, like the ship combat in that, but personally i only liked shogan enough to play seriously.

It is Un-combined arms to be more precise. Civ 5 is a coordination game only, you must coordinate your units together better than the other guy.

The scale to use 1upt is way out of whack, of course everyone will say 'gameplay > realism' which becomes a cliched argument after a while.

Since Civ 5 has become pretty much a combat game it seems, might as well speculate on how to improve it.

My take of real combined arms is to let units work together that are in hexes that represent hundreds of square kilometres. Like said above, PG does not represent huge portions of the planet, not to mention the whole earth.

It is more realistic from gameplay and from realism aspect to allow combined arms in same tile of different unit types.

You can still let them do the Transformers thing and turn into boats ("Transform and Roll Out!"); but I don't see the disadvantages, because most of the time, you won't stack units just to stack them; because Civ 5 won't have massive amounts of units anyways; no change here.

1upt is far more realistic, the majority odf the time, soldiers were group by rank, archers all together there, swordsman all together there. You would occasionally get mixed unit formations or a rushed militia army, where they basically have any weapons they can find, but these could be represented in a 1upt system as well, imagine being able to build a half crossbowman half pikeman unit, with approx half the ranged attack of a usual crossbowman but with a respectable defence of a pikeman.

...
My prediction is that Civ 5 will not see the success that Civs 1,2 and 4 saw, and will instead be a mediocre game like many of us feel Civ 3 was. (And I know some disagree with that statement.) If I'm right, maybe they'll remember this discussion and consider zoomed battles for Civ 6. Alternatively, they'll bring out Civ 5 "BTB" (Back to Basics) and introduce zoomed battles and/or stacks, as well as other items that Civ fans will be missing.


It is clearly evident by now for me that this new version will be overall worse than BTS, less enjoyable and certainly more shallow (less systems, many simplifications, etc). Nevertheless, it introduces many new and good tweaks the latter needed, together with some other interesting variations that might work just fine. I am positive that all this will make for a very upgradable game, and possibly it will come to par with BTS along a couple of expansions. Features that will stay put, be arranged, introduced from scratch or cut off are a matter of the future.

Oh, my free prediction: Hexes will be allowed two unit stacks.

I have played plenty of different types of turn-based games. SOD is the worst implementation of combat. Ever. There is nothing redeeming about it except that certain people hate any type of change.

1 upt = less units the AI must consider = stronger AI by default.

How much stronger, I don't know. But, I wouldn't be surprised if people struggled a bit against the AI in such a situation.

Remember that a designer of Civ5 said way back when that the AI was divided into 4 layers. It would have a local layer for determining local combat outcomes (like frontal attacks), a somewhat regional layer to assist with the needs of each city, then an "empire" layer to negotiate diplomatic situations, and then some master layer to figure out how to win the game.

IMO, this looks like a tougher AI than in the past.

Actually, I think 1upt will be much harder for the AI to handle, since it has to carefully position units, making use of terrain, and protect vulnerable ranged units, while trying to flank the enemy and get at his vulnerable units. Whereas in Stack of Doom combat, all the AI has to do is pile units together and head off for the enemy's city.

This is not an argument against 1upt, but it's certainly not easier for the AI.

1 upt = less units the AI must consider = stronger AI by default.
Quite the opposite.

A single unit will be lost, whenever encountered by a group of different units.
Therefore, grouping still has to exist - yet not "vertically" (stacks: putting one unit on top of the other unit) but "horizontally" (in the adjacent hexes.
To find the right deployment, even worse, the right sequence of moving these units will very likely be too much for the AI.

How much stronger, I don't know. But, I wouldn't be surprised if people struggled a bit against the AI in such a situation.
On the contrary, I am pretty sure that the vast majority of players will just toast the AI (even odds assumed). Furthermore, to deal with this, I am pretty sure that we will see even more annoying AI bonuses in terms of production times, resource usage and so on, just to hide the AI's incapability to decide which unit belongs where and which unit has to move in which sequence.

Remember that a designer of Civ5 said way back when that the AI was divided into 4 layers. It would have a local layer for determining local combat outcomes (like frontal attacks), a somewhat regional layer to assist with the needs of each city, then an "empire" layer to negotiate diplomatic situations, and then some master layer to figure out how to win the game.

Which in the worst case might mean that only one quarter of computing power can be adressed to tactical combat - this would be another advantage for the human player.

IMO, this looks like a tougher AI than in the past.
Which, to be honest, doesn't mean anything as the Civ4 AI was dumb in an incredible way.

Actually, I think 1upt will be much harder for the AI to handle, since it has to carefully position units, making use of terrain, and protect vulnerable ranged units, while trying to flank the enemy and get at his vulnerable units. Whereas in Stack of Doom combat, all the AI has to do is pile units together and head off for the enemy's city.

This is not an argument against 1upt, but it's certainly not easier for the AI.


Don't worry, they'll just give the AI more obnoxious bonuses at higher difficulty levels.

I actually like Stardock's philosophy of not adding any features that they can't program a decent AI for. They said if they can't do that, feature is gone. Of course, in this case, I'd say it's worth it just to see SOD gameplay gone.

As they did with the 'suicide siege weapons'? :mischief:

When that concept was presented here in this very forum, it took people just a couple of hours to find out that the intended result, making SoDs useless, would be completely missed.
There were many heated debates about this topic, which almost always resulted in the final mantra: "I guess, if this wouldn't work, they would not have introduced it. I will trust the designers, they know what they're doing!"


First, a city was never the best place for defense.
By hidnig your troops inside city walls, you allowed the opponent to pillage your territory, at least to block you from access of the city's fat cross.

The best defense positions always were somewhere near the borders, behind a river, on top of a forested hill and so on. Not in a city.
There, the enemy was not able to make use of attack modifiers and trebuchets and swordsmen out of a sudden only were worth half.




Well, I guess I wasn't here to read discussion on your first point. But certainly that was a measure to try to eliminate the SoD, right? Because the developers saw the SoD as a problem, or at the very least not the ideal solution for the combat model.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.

My point was that regardless of where the best defensive positions were, you were almost always best served by simply placing your units in your own cities. Sure, you may try to protect certain squares from being pillaged, but that too was almost always best done by counterattacking out of your cities (i.e. not spending any time out in the open by attacking the same turn you move).

And this was an issue because if you had your own SoD out defending your territory, the other stack could almost always just ignore it and go straight to the city.

There was no imperative to attack or destroy that SoD, unless it was not on a good square/receiving no defensive bonus, or if it was in a city. How often could you get a SoD onto a good square where the enemy was forced to destroy it to move forward ?? Almost never !! Now at least you'll have to break through a line, or destroy a key defender outside of a city to move forward. Not just simply ignore the opposing force.


It is not the 1upt per se, it is 1upt at the scale of Civ, what does concern me.
Civ does not provide the right scale of maps for a tactical combat system like 1upt, where you have to "outmanouvre" your enemy.


This is a very good point.

Well, I guess I wasn't here to read discussion on your first point. But certainly that was a measure to try to eliminate the SoD, right? Because the developers saw the SoD as a problem, or at the very least not the ideal solution for the combat model.
...


Nerfing catapults and siege in general, by taking away their 25% withdrawal chance, emphasized the use of bigger stacks. With the withdrawal chance siege was better, much higher survival chance thus reuse, and more dangerous for the stacked. It was just a nerf to siege units because they were actually very powerful indeed; remember the Hwacha which could tear down city defenses, kill the defenders with a +50% against melee & 25% withdrawal plus the collateral effect. It was ridiculous.

As a side note I always thought suicidal siege could be avoided and siege nerfed with less collateral strength or less units collateralized in one attack, etc.


...
How often could you get a SoD onto a good square where the enemy was forced to destroy it to move forward ?? Almost never !! Now at least you'll have to break through a line, or destroy a key defender outside of a city to move forward. Not just simply ignore the opposing force.


I will try the interrogative approach this time because just stating the fact has proven to be very ineffective.

Why do you think with the new combat system you won't be able to walk through and just simply ignore the opposing force??

Yes, you got it. It will be primarily due to ZoC in combination, to a lesser extent, with range firing!
1UPT plays a very important role in balancing/limiting these features (because the devs happen to have chosen 1UPT), but is by no means determinant to the issue.

ZoC would be pretty useless if you can concentrate an ENTIRE ARMY into the space of a single hex-so 1upt actually does help-by forcing units to spread out, it means ZoC is going to come into effect more often, which also means that you'll be forced to take out opposing units more often rather than just sidestepping them with your entire army.

For the record, the siege weapon approach didn't KILL SoD's, but it made their use slightly less effective. Having learned from their mistakes, though, the Civ team have decided to eliminate the SoD problem altogether. What I don't get is this though-if you guys are all SO CERTAIN that you'll despise the game, and that it will be a complete commercial failure, then why do you even bother to hang out in this particular forum? Sorry, but that really doesn't make any sense to me!

Aussie.

There was no imperative to attack or destroy that SoD, unless it was not on a good square/receiving no defensive bonus, or if it was in a city. How often could you get a SoD onto a good square where the enemy was forced to destroy it to move forward ?? Almost never !!

Sorry, if this sounds harsh, but I don't find better phrases.

You seem to have missed to really think about Civ4's combat system.

Your enemy approaches you with an attacking SoD (aSoD) of say 50 units. Some of them are things like trebs and city raider promoted units.
Now, if you can move a defensive SoD of your own (dSoD) into their way, these trebs and CR units are rendered at least much less useful.
And now imagine that you place your dSoD into a forest next to their way (alternatively, behind a river, on a hill, on a forested hill, on a forested hill behind a river). Since the forest gives you 50% defense bonus (not taking any units with Woodsman promotion into account!), your dSoD can be much smaller than the aSoD.

You may attack the aSoD with some good attacking units (based on territory) to inflict some attrition on the attacker and still chances are good that you may hold your position against a counter attack.
And even, if that counter attack would be successful, then you would still have bought time for your cities to produce new units and the aSoD would be much smaller and wounded afterwards, therefore imposing less threat to your cities.
Since your first dSoD could be smaller, you could generate 2 dSoDs, to block the enemy path of approach even better. So, if the aSoD would not care about dSoD#1, it's path could still be blocked by dSoD#2, allowing dSoD#1 to redeploy into a new battle position.

Just waiting for the enemy by putting both dSoDs into a city would be harmful, as the attacker then could:
a) pillage your territory,
b) would at least block you from accessing at least one field of the city's fat cross
c) make use of all city attack modifiers

So, defend your cities as far outside as ever possible. In the long run this will save you units and time to produce even more units.

For the record, the siege weapon approach didn't KILL SoD's, but it made their use slightly less effective.

It not only didn't kill the SoD, it made it mandatory (which was obvious from the very first second, btw).
And it made it mandatory to have BIG SoD's. Size did matter in Civ4.

Against almost any unit there is the perfect counter unit, and since there are more defensive bonuses than attacking bonuses, except for pure grassland/plains environments, the defender always has better chances to survive.
This required to have stacks to attack a certain tile, since success on first attempt was not guaranteed. Up to this point, developers were thinking and introduced collateral damage.
Which - surprise, surprise - made you build even bigger stacks to have enough units to go on.

Coming back to Civ5.
After all what I've seen so far, ranged units are strong in ranged combat.
I don't know whether there will be "defensive fire" as in Panzer General, but if it will, then you may face quite some hard times if you're trying to attack (first, you have to approach the guarding frontline units, taking hits from defensive fire, then you have to finally kill the frontline units and then you still have to break through).

If there wouldn't be defensive fire, this would introduce just the same unlogic as before, where all other units are doing their laundry while the one defending units fights for death or live. Rinse and repeat.

I can't believe the game is being released in less than 2 months. Firaxis has released so little information that everyone is still forced to guess basic game mechanics from a few random screenshots? That's pathetic PR by Firaxis.

It not only didn't kill the SoD, it made it mandatory (which was obvious from the very first second, btw).
And it made it mandatory to have BIG SoD's. Size did matter in Civ4.

Against almost any unit there is the perfect counter unit, and since there are more defensive bonuses than attacking bonuses, except for pure grassland/plains environments, the defender always has better chances to survive.
This required to have stacks to attack a certain tile, since success on first attempt was not guaranteed. Up to this point, developers were thinking and introduced collateral damage.
Which - surprise, surprise - made you build even bigger stacks to have enough units to go on.

Coming back to Civ5.
After all what I've seen so far, ranged units are strong in ranged combat.
I don't know whether there will be "defensive fire" as in Panzer General, but if it will, then you may face quite some hard times if you're trying to attack (first, you have to approach the guarding frontline units, taking hits from defensive fire, then you have to finally kill the frontline units and then you still have to break through).

If there wouldn't be defensive fire, this would introduce just the same unlogic as before, where all other units are doing their laundry while the one defending units fights for death or live. Rinse and repeat.

What you forget is that siege weapons in Civ4 delivered Collateral damage, which I found encouraged me to use *smaller* stacks-so as to prevent a single siege weapon attack weakening my entire attack force. Now it wasn't perfect, but it was in some respects a better approach than the ranged unit system in Civ3-at least in making stacks less effective, but without making siege units too overpowered. It unfortunately didn't eliminate SoD's, especially in cities-where turtling was an all too effective strategy. Indeed, in spite of a number of improvements to the combat system in Civ4 over Civ3 (promotions, Rock/Paper/Scissors & collateral damage), combat victory still too often came down to "who has the biggest stack"-& usually came out in favour of the defender more often than the attacker. At least 1upt seems to be evening things out a bit by removing some of the "attacker/defender" dichotomy.

Aussie.

Wow, thats quite an impressive debate on the merits of 1upt v SoD...

Personally, i'm quite looking forward to trying 1upt, i was a reluctant warmonger in Civ4, i always preferred the Civ2(3?) version where you lost ALL units on a tile if the strongest defender died. I could never see the problem with that, it didn't bar you from stacking, but it made it risky.

i think that 2 additonal factors will have an impact on the whole combat experience, one is the fact that resources are finite and the other is that iirc it is now no longer a fight to the death, ie. both attacker/defender can take damage

i'm hoping that there will be a lot more tactical thinking in CivV, rather then just pumping out axemen/maces/infantry etc..

Here's the thing-I used to play a number of 1upt based Wargames throughout the 1990's (my favourite was People's General). My experience of the AI from those games was some of my most challenging games of all time-definitely more challenging than any combat I faced in Civ1 to Civ4. This is an even bigger deal when you consider the fact that the AI's in this game are at least 10 years old. Now I can't explain why the AI seemed to handle 1upt better than Stack Combat (you'd need to ask someone with expertise in AI programming) all I know is that it *did*.
The other thing is that I have seen significant improvements in both the combat engine & the AI in Civ since the days of Civ1. So it is my view that, if you take a system that the AI seems inherently better at comprehending, & combine it with a good underlying combat engine (diverse promotions, terrain & adjacent unit modifiers to combat, ZoC) & a far better AI (the AI in Civ5 is supposed to have different Layers, which should help how it conducts itself in combat), & I suspect that combat in Civ5 will be worlds better than anything we've seen in the Civ franchise to date. I certainly don't think it will make the game *worse*!!!

Originally Posted by Commander Bello

Up to this point, developers were thinking and introduced collateral damage.
Which - surprise, surprise - made you build even bigger stacks to have enough units to go on.
What you forget is that siege weapons in Civ4 delivered Collateral damage, which I found encouraged me to use *smaller* stacks-so as to prevent a single siege weapon attack weakening my entire attack force.

First, I have to ask you to read more carefully.
Second, if collateral damage made you make use of smaller stacks, then I am sure you are part of the minority, since otherwise this seems to render the discussion quite obsolete.

Give siege weapons even more collateral damage and the problem of SoD's will be gone. Obviously, it did not.

If collateral damage made you make use of smaller stacks, then I am sure you are part of the minority, since otherwise this seems to render the discussion quite obsolete.

Give siege weapons even more collateral damage and the problem of SoD's will be gone. Obviously, it did not.

The problem with that is that you risk making siege weapons *too* powerful (which was also part of the problem in Civ3). It's a difficult balancing act, but I'm hoping that a combination of 1upt & ranged combat is the balance we've been looking for.
Lastly, you claim to be *sure* that I was part of a minority. Well I certainly wasn't a minority in any of the MANY MP games I've played over the last 5 years. Methinks your surety is misplaced.

Aussie, please! :rolleyes:

First you praise 1upt to make SoD's obsolete, then you point out that mp experience made you to make use of smaller stacks (which assumedly would not fall under the definition of 'SoD' anymore) which are more likely to be harmed by siege weapons' collateral damage? :eek:

Ok, at this point I am out of the discussion.

1upt is more logical than stacking or limited stacking because in 1upt system you dont have to do a ton of work to properly occupy a hex AND you dont never ever have to manage what kind of mix of units it is holding.


Also the stack combat is horrifying, your always up against the best possible defender and there is NO WAY you can get your hands on the enemys weakest (perhaps ranged?) units in that hex but by ramming a ton of units against the best defender. You say its combined arms system and i say its brainless and frustrating system.


Limited stacking sounds horrible, its like SoD but with added MM and it still has the same problems that SOD have.

ZoC would be pretty useless if you can concentrate an ENTIRE ARMY into the space of a single hex...


No, it wouldn't be useless at all. I am not surprised that you stated this as valid without providing any argumentation because there simply isn't. Some examples of good usefulness have indeed been given in this same thread, though it has became large and I understand if you didn't read it much.

It will be certainly nice to see ZoC working in CIV IV, hence my certain guess is they were never in because of the AI being even more unable to handle it in battle. I hope that with the simplicity added by 1UPT (my crumbling opinion) the AI in CIV V will indeed be greatly improved, though I am learning in this same thread very experienced players (specially in other 1UPT games) don't share my faith.


For the record, the siege weapon approach didn't KILL SoD's, but it made their use slightly less effective. Having learned from their mistakes, though, the Civ team have decided to eliminate the SoD problem altogether.
Aussie.

Some people see a problem with infinite stacking and others don't. I never saw SoD as evil nor I see 1UPT as evil now, I have never tried it actually. What I do see is a group of users discussing over speculation about the new 1UPT system and/or asserting good and bad features they already know form previous experiences, and on the other hand another group of posters fervidly supporting the new combat system no matter what, confused about different issues and aspects of what little we know of the new game and many times without any argumentative value. Actually this behavior has become quite common in many threads of this forum, and frankly it started to get pretty annoying.

No, it won't be useless at all. <snip>

ZoC would have been pretty useless in Civ4, where you could put an entire army in one tile AND that army had typically the speed of the slowest unit, i.e. one tile per turn. Unless ZoC would have been that you couldn't move a stack from one ZoC tile to another ZoC tile at all.

What I do see is a group of users discussing over speculation about the new 1UPT system and/or asserting good and bad features they already know form previous experiences, and on the other hand another group of posters fervidly supporting the new combat system no matter what, confused about different issues and aspects of what little we know of the new game and many times without none argumentative value. Actually this behavior has become quite common in many threads of this forum, and frankly it started to get pretty annoying.


The way i see it that most people are just fed upp with stacking and they want a change after 20 years of stacking. So they are not saying that 1upt is flawless system, but they are defending Firaxis decision for a change against a handful of "hardcore stackers" who just want to figure out new ways how we could continue the "best defender always defends" syndrome.


1upt civ game will have its flaws but as they say "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress". We allready know the flaws of stacking, why not try something else instead for a change? I dont have any reason not to, do you?


EDIT: So because we allready know the bad things about stacking, there is plenty of argumental value against it. But what we DONT yet have is argumental value against civ game with 1upt. And yes, i know we dont have any real argumental value for the good things in civ with 1upt, but the bad things that we allready know about stacking justifies the change.

ZoC would have been pretty useless in Civ4, where you could put an entire army in one tile AND that army had typically the speed of the slowest unit, i.e. one tile per turn. Unless ZoC would have been that you couldn't move a stack from one ZoC tile to another ZoC tile at all.

Exactly as they worked in Civ. Why do you bother to post when you already know the deal?

Exactly as they worked in Civ. Why do you bother to post when you already know the deal?

You say: "No, [ZocC] wouldn't be useless at all. I am not surprised that you stated this as valid without providing any argumentation because there simply isn't" and "It will be certainly nice to see ZoC working in CIV IV," arguments which I counter by showing that with a SoD and 1 tile per turn for most units for most of the game, ZoC would have had a neglegible effect in Civ4, as it would have worked exactly the same way the game works now.

1upt civ game will have its flaws but as they say "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress". We allready know the flaws of stacking, why not try something else instead for a change? I dont have any reason not to, do you?


Amongst some things I would already don't want to see in CIV V 1UPT is not. It will be interesting to try this new thing, I agree. We do have some arguments of disadvantages about 1UPT but they are of course very speculative without the game been played and they don't worry me much.

Still, allow me to answer you these two azian:

1upt is more logical than stacking or limited stacking because in 1upt system you dont have to do a ton of work to properly occupy a hex AND you dont never ever have to manage what kind of mix of units it is holding.


This is quite true, however we will still need to arrange a series of units throughout the terrain to properly occupy it and manage all of these. Don't know if this is going to be a ton of work, more or less.


Also the stack combat is horrifying, your always up against the best possible defender and there is NO WAY you can get your hands on the enemys weakest (perhaps ranged?) units in that hex but by ramming a ton of units against the best defender. You say its combined arms system and i say its brainless and frustrating system.


I'll give you two examples in which you can access siege for instance, being the so called weak units of an enemy stack.
- Having units specially promoted so that say catapults become the strongest defenders of the stack; e.g spearmen with charge against a stack of just mounted and catapults (which happens to be quite popular with some AIs). This together with variations I have used a lot, sometimes you require to lose a couple of units to free the rival stack's main strength against your promotions and bonuses.
- Flanking damage. Having flanking II promoted HAs, Camel archers or Curassiers is very effective indeed.


All in all, I can understand and accept that many people are frustrated, tired or simply not fond of stacking units in a game. Neither is my case. Nor anything they say about stacking should be wright or be valid!!
Lets embrace 1UPT soon enough and reunite in these same forums my friend...

You say: "No, [ZocC] wouldn't be useless at all. I am not surprised that you stated this as valid without providing any argumentation because there simply isn't" and "It will be certainly nice to see ZoC working in CIV IV," arguments which I counter by showing that with a SoD and 1 tile per turn for most units for most of the game, ZoC would have had a neglegible effect in Civ4, as it would have worked exactly the same way the game works now.

But in the next sentence you provided the answer which invalidates your counter argument. And of course this was the ZoC I was thinking of. Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself completely clear when I said that ZoC worked this way in Civ (refering to Civ I the original game, where units couldn't move at all towards a "controlled" tile, though unoccupied).

But in the next sentence you provided the answer which invalidates your counter argument. And of course this was the ZoC I was thinking of. Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself completely clear when I said that ZoC worked this way in Civ (refering to Civ I the original game, where units couldn't move at all towards a "controlled" tile, though unoccupied).

Was that the case in Civ1? Too far back in the mists of time for me to remember those kind of details, even though I probably played that more than any Civ version since (life has moved on :old:). I'm not sure if that would have worked as well in Civ4, as I remember (but see above) that you typically used far less units in Civ1 than in Civ4.

exactly azian , i never really understood the logic behind always getting against the best defender...

What i miss though are the Army of Civ 3. A bit like limited stacking but you couldnt move units out or upgrade them. I think those were the most ''realistic'' combats in all civ version.

another thing i dont understand is why couldnt civ 4 just take all the attacker and simulate one big attack instead of going one attacker at the time. Let's say 5 axemen against 3 archers and 1 chariot. 3 axemen attack each an archer so even if one is super upgraded he wont defend 2 times. and 2 axemen against one single chariot. it would result in a battle with not necessary a winner even if one side has 3 times the units of the other.

Was that the case in Civ1? Too far back in the mists of time for me to remember those kind of details, even though I probably played that more than any Civ version since (life has moved on :old:). I'm not sure if that would have worked as well in Civ4, as I remember (but see above) that you typically used far less units in Civ1 than in Civ4.

Haha, I couldn't help notice that Civ I ironclad image you have in your profile. I can just assume you know it and spent hard hours with it. I recall it even had a unit limit of a short integer (128) and units simply disappear when your production exceded the limit.. hahah!! Only to reappear again randomly when your amount of units went down again.

Haha, I couldn't help notice that Civ I ironclad image you have in your profile. I can just assume you know it and spent hard hours with it. I recall it even had a unit limit of a short integer (128) and units simply disappear when your production exceded the limit.. hahah!! Only to reappear again randomly when your amount of units went down again.

The Ironclad is a tribute to my favorite Gunboat Diplomacy tactic in Civ1. They were available on the beeline to Railroad, the essential tech in Civ1. They were faster than any land units and had a far higher attack value than the defense of most land units and could fire inland while being invulnerable to counter attacks. So you could just build a few, send them around the coast and, with diplomacy basically non-existant in Civ1, have them shoot at anything that moves until you run into the naval equivalent of :spear: :lol:

The way i see it that most people are just fed upp with stacking and they want a change after 20 years of stacking. So they are not saying that 1upt is flawless system, but they are defending Firaxis decision for a change against a handful of "hardcore stackers" who just want to figure out new ways how we could continue the "best defender always defends" syndrome.

You have brought this "argument" before already, as I remember and it renders your whole "argumentation" obsolete.
"The best defender always defends" is not a consequence of stacking, it is a consequence of the design of Civ4.

There are quite some other ways to deal with stacks. Just have a look at the combat system of CtP II, which actually was quite convincing.
Or think about a system in which each single unit would contribute to the combined power of the stack, so that finally stacks would fight against each other and not the single units one after the other.

But no, for you the way it was handled in Civ4 seems to have been dictated by natural law. 'nuff said.

You have brought this "argument" before already, as I remember and it renders your whole "argumentation" obsolete.


I must say that my english could be better, but i really do not understand what are you trying to say with that. Seems like some fancy way of saying in english that i would be somehow wrong and you would have somehow proved me wrong, wich we both know that it hasnt happened.


There are quite some other ways to deal with stacks. Just have a look at the combat system of CtP II, which actually was quite convincing.


Im sorry im not really a gamer myself (exept civ) and i do not even know what is CtP II and i must say that i dont really care to study.


Or think about a system in which each single unit would contribute to the combined power of the stack, so that finally stacks would fight against each other and not the single units one after the other.

Sound better but if i understand it correctly, to me that still sounds like just a complicated 1upt and civ is much more than just a combat game. So what is wrong with 1upt + promotions? To me it sound like there is no way of pleasing you unless you see multiple units inside a hex :confused: I just dont understand how someone can be so turned on about stacking :lol:

(...) and i must say that i dont really care to study.
That actually seems to be part of the problem.

Sound better but if i understand it correctly, to me that still sounds like just a complicated 1upt and civ is much more than just a combat game. So what is wrong with 1upt + promotions? To me it sound like there is no way of pleasing you unless you see multiple units inside a hex :confused: I just dont understand how someone can be so turned on about stacking :lol:

I know about how time consuming 1upt can be, since I play Panzer General very often (and I like it very much). As I have stated before already, a single turn in PG can easily take up to more than half an hour (talking about dealing with something like 30 to 50 units).

Since PG is all about tactical combat, there it is fine and it fits the needs of the game.

For Civ, it is very different.
The scale of maps does not fit tactical combat, since you're playing on a strategic map.
You're having a lot of other things to do as well, like organizing your production, dealing with diplomacy, improving your land and whatnotever.

In the beginning I have been enthusiastic about the 1upt for Civ5, too.
The more I think about it and the more videos I've seen, the more I tend to thinking that it is just not the right scale.

1upt civ game will have its flaws but as they say "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress"Who says that?

Who says that?

Progress said that.

You have brought this "argument" before already, as I remember and it renders your whole "argumentation" obsolete.
"The best defender always defends" is not a consequence of stacking, it is a consequence of the design of Civ4.


But it is a consequence of how generals in history would create unit formations. They put pikemen in a square around musketmen, so the best defender would always defend. The only thing that would change that is if enough pikemen were killed that they could no longer flank the musketmen, which Civ didn't model, and 1upt doesn't model either.

To match the historical deployment of troops, we would have to have zoomed-in combat screens.

Actually, I would prefer such a thing, but I am fully aware of the fact that many other would not like it, as it would be time-consuming and effort.

Nevertheless, it would be fun.

To match the historical deployment of troops, we would have to have zoomed-in combat screens.

Actually, I would prefer such a thing, but I am fully aware of the fact that many other would not like it, as it would be time-consuming and effort.

Nevertheless, it would be fun.

Yea, it was in Imperialism, and it was fun there, but I still always turned that option off just because it slowed down the game too much.

But I don't understand why people in this thread are so resistant to the idea that limited stacks aren't more realistic. "Stacking" units isn't realistic, its an abstraction, but the point is they match realistically the effect of unit formations.

But I don't understand why people in this thread are so resistant to the idea that limited stacks aren't more realistic. "Stacking" units isn't realistic, its an abstraction, but the point is they match realistically the effect of unit formations.

Well, we have to admit that Civ4 in a way "burned" the idea of stacks - stacks in Civ4 were just a crap like the whole combat system there.

Therefore, I can understand that people are hoping for the best, now that a new system has been announced.
As I said, I was enthusiatic about it in the beginning, too.

To match the historical deployment of troops, we would have to have zoomed-in combat screens.

Actually, I would prefer such a thing, but I am fully aware of the fact that many other would not like it, as it would be time-consuming and effort.

Nevertheless, it would be fun.

This happens in Masters of Magic. Oh, and it also has a limited stack, which cannot goes more than 9 units. and when two stacks meet, it zooms into a "strategic battle scene". Although if ciV implement this, it will be a troublesome and interesting feature... what ciV are now trying to do is to have things perpertually in the "strategic battle scene".

I have no more of an issue with 1upt-in scale terms-than I do with units taking 200 years to get from 1 city to another. Sure it isn't "realistic", but for a game which exists on multiple levels of scale at once, some sacrifices need to be made.

As I've said before, I've seen much older AI's handle 1upt combat *better* than even the best Civ AI can handle stack combat. That is why I believe that 1upt is going to be a massive boost to the combat side of the game-a side I've usually tried to ignore before now-*because* of how lame it is!

Aussie.

I have no more of an issue with 1upt-in scale terms-than I do with units taking 200 years to get from 1 city to another.

I don't like the movement issues either and I don't think its necessary to build these scale distortions into the game.

Not enough thought has been given imo to get rid of these. While its a game and not reality, I think the game would do best by modeling reality. We enjoy the game, after all, because its based on a real thing.

I loved Masters of Magic, and Age of Wonders, and many other games with separate tactical modules. But Civilization does not use that model, and probably never will. I like to play games that take weeks to finish, but a lot of people don't, and a lot of the people who play Civilization (and have made it the most successful computer strategy game of all time) would never touch a Total War game.

That actually seems to be part of the problem.

So its a problem that i dont spend my days playing and studying games? Man youre even more hardcore gamer than i propably first realized! Werent you also against the steam because it ruins our lives or something? :lol:


Lets get to the point. There is one thing you can do about 1upt in civ5, you can ask someone to make a mod wich shows multiple units inside this one unit when you click on it, would that make you feel better? :D ..Im serious, would it make you feel better even just a little bit? Im pretty sure it would make you feel better :)


EDIT: So the main reason for Commander Bello to be up against 1upt is a lack of imagination for the scale. Thats sad. But how can the scale be that wrong if your not playing on world map? Or how do you know how big the world map is even going to be? Im not saying that it is going to be perfectly scaled for 1upt but im sure there are TON of things in a civ game that do not have the "right scale". I mean, its not like you must make a imaginary friend for yourself here.

So its a problem that i dont spend my days playing and studying games? Man youre even more hardcore gamer than i propably first realized! Werent you also against the steam because it ruins our lives or something? :lol:
No, the problem is that you're unwilling to learn, as you've stated.

EDIT: So the main reason for Commander Bello to be up against 1upt is a lack of imagination for the scale. Thats sad. But how can the scale be that wrong if your not playing on world map? Or how do you know how big the world map is even going to be? Im not saying that it is going to be perfectly scaled for 1upt but im sure there are TON of things in a civ game that do not have the "right scale". I mean, its not like you must make a imaginary friend for yourself here.

I honestly think that the one who lacks imagination is not me.
Have a look at pictures issued so far:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=258518&stc=1&d=1279707930

You're seeing the distance between cities? They are damn close to each other.
There is not much space left, and this very limited space makes for very limited options for a 1upt system.

And now you may want to compare that with a screenshot from Panzer General:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=258525&stc=1&d=1279708536

In the latter, you are having tactical options - in the first, they are limited to a degree which renders 1upt almost pointless.

1upt is all about scale, and the scale of Civ-games seems not to fit in any way.
This has very little to do with "imagination".

I would be all for 1upt in a proper scale as being delivered by zoomed-in combat screens. I would love it.

But 1upt on a map which by defniition is made for strategic, not tactical deployment of your troops is moot.

I may have the advantage over you to know both sides and being familiar with both. Therefore, I think that my estimation is based on some kind of "having studied it".

I dont think "scale" is the problem, more the fact that all the civs on the map, which arent that far from each other even on the biggest map sizes, all want to build as much cities as possible, so you have a city every few tiles across the whole map. Its no different than in other civs. I don't see it as a problem, it should be fun attacking someone elses city while your own city is close enough to provide ranged fire power against enemy defenders :P.

No, the problem is that you're unwilling to learn, as you've stated.

Ok lets try this once again, :sad: read this again and really try to understand what im saying here: "Im sorry im not really a gamer myself (exept civ) and i do not even know what is CtP II and i must say that i dont really care to study." Do you now get it?

So i said that i dont care to study or play Ctp II and i dont see a point why i should.

You just took this part: "and i must say that i dont really care to study."

Not very mature my little friend, not very mature. :blush:


I honestly think that the one who lacks imagination is not me.



Yes it is :p Because if everything has to be brought straight under your nose so that you can see/understand it, then there is no, or only little room for imagination. Just like we can all see in this scale case wich you are so annoyed about, so everything has to be clear as a cristal to you and well explained even after that (yes i have noticed this also:)), otherwise you dont like it :lol:


I may have the advantage over you to know both sides and being familiar with both.

I really dont care about what you know and what you dont know. Limited stacking is still a bad idea for civ game because it would be pointless. And as you said it yourself, pretty much the only thing bothering you in 1upt civ is the scale, so most likely the only potential problem found in 1upt civ game will be inside the players head. That said, maybe its not about imagination at all, maybe it is an attitude problem :)


I suppose it might be good thing for you that your studying games :scan:, at least if you like studying games. :lol: But i dont have any particular need to study games, i just dont, im sorry. :)


Now we have 1upt to look for, IMO its way better than SOD, but what we dont need is any complicated limited stacking system to shuffle up the gameplay wich btw only serves those few who are somehow disturbed by the scale. It would be terrible price to pay just because some are a bit disturbed by a somekind of non gameplay issue wich many "basic" users wouldnt propably even bother to think about.


EDIT: Any thoughts Bello?

Ok lets try this once again, :sad: read this again and really try to understand what im saying here: "Im sorry im not really a gamer myself (exept civ) and i do not even know what is CtP II and i must say that i dont really care to study." Do you now get it?

So i said that i dont care to study or play Ctp II and i dont see a point why i should.

You just took this part: "and i must say that i dont really care to study."

Not very mature my little friend, not very mature. :blush:
Well, talking about "maturity"... :mischief:

As you just have repeated, you don't have any interest in "studying" CtP, which is ok so far. Yet, in the context of this "discussion", the reference to CtP was made because of a special feature related to combat systems in a "stack environment". Knowledge about this feature would have allowed to continue the discussion based on some information.
Unfortunately, this seems not to be in your interest.


Yes it is :p Because if everything has to be brought straight under your nose so that you can see/understand it, then there is no, or only little room for imagination. Just like we can all see in this scale case wich you are so annoyed about, so everything has to be clear as a cristal to you and well explained even after that (yes i have noticed this also:)), otherwise you dont like it :lol:
I've read this paragraph now several times and I still don't have a clue what you want to express.
I can only assume that you are blaming me for my assumed attitude to have proper and clear explanations, examples and demonstrations of what one is talking about.
In case somebody is not giving such explanations (except for "my idea is good and your's sucks"), he has the advantage of being allowed to blame me for missing "imagination" if I cannot follow his not expressed thoughts and ideas.


I really dont care about what you know and what you dont know. Limited stacking is still a bad idea for civ game because it would be pointless.
Because of?
Ah... because for you the "best defender defends all the time" is natural law for stacks, right? Or would there be other options for stack systems?
Leads us back to something which you are not interested in to have to study.

Quite convenient for you, as I have to admit.


And as you said it yourself, pretty much the only thing bothering you in 1upt civ is the scale, so most likely the only potential problem found in 1upt civ game will be inside the players head. That said, maybe its not about imagination at all, maybe it is an attitude problem :)
I note that you are carefully avoiding any reference to the pictures in my posting, which clearly indicate less space in Civ5 for making use of units than in a tactical combat game like Panzer General.

Actually, I wonder if this may be a problem of attitude?


I suppose it might be good thing for you that your studying games :scan:, at least if you like studying games. :lol: But i dont have any particular need to study games, i just dont, im sorry. :)
At least one of us knows what he is talking about, hm?


Now we have 1upt to look for, IMO its way better than SOD, but what we dont need is any complicated limited stacking system to shuffle up the gameplay wich btw only serves those few who are somehow disturbed by the scale. It would be terrible price to pay just because some are a bit disturbed by a somekind of non gameplay issue wich many "basic" users wouldnt propably even bother to think about.
So, the available space to move your units for you seems to be a non-gameplay issue?
Then, I don't really get why you're thinking that 1upt would be better than a stack system?

Since after all what we know warfare will - at least - still be a major component in Civ5, I would not regard that as a non-gameplay issue, but if it serves your argumentation.... :rolleyes:

Whether the "basic" user will be bothered to think about this - we will learn about this after release.
Of course both of us can only speculate about this right now, but based on my experience with both systems I would expect that people won't be too happy with that limited space, because it inevitably will limit the tactical options to a minimum.

Since you seem to blame the "stack system" for exactly such limited options, I am a bit confused that other limited options seem to be quite ok for you.
Might it be that you never managed to get a good production and therefore always were steamrolled by "SoD's" and therefore are praysing the 1upt?

At the moment I hardly find any other explanation for your line of argumentation.
Praysing Civ5's 1upt for "frontlines" and whatnotever, when actual screenshots indicate that such "frontlines" will hardly exist seems to be a bit strange.

But I am pretty sure you will be mature enough to explain a bit more.

it seems to me there is enough place on a Huge Map . Even if cities are close enough. I always went to war with neighboors anyway when their cities were too close of mine and wanted my full fat cross. like someone else said here, the object of war is not to take cities but destroy the other's army

Bello, I think its you who is having the problem with *scale*. Problem #1 is that you use the absolute *smallest* possible map for Civ5 to make the point of how small the space between cities is. Check out some of those maps for the Strategic View to get a better idea of what kind of city distance we'll be looking at for most *regular* games.

Problem #2 is in regards to the unit scale we're looking at for Panzer General vs Civ (&, more specifically Civ5). In a game like PG, which deals in time units of weeks to years-at best-you're almost certainly looking at units which represent anything from a Squad (an average of 10 foot units) up to a company (an average of 150 foot units). In a game like Civ-which covers a much grander sweep of history-I'd postulate that units represent anything from a Regiment (an average of 4,000 foot units) up to a Corps (an average of 40,000 foot units). In my mind, a game like Civ3 or Civ4-where units are more common, & the majority of your units *always* die if they lose-I'd say it's closest to a Division (around 10,000 foot units). By contrast, the relative rarity of units in Civ5-coupled with their increased survivability-suggests to me that they represent a Corps (anywhere up to 50,000 foot units). Which is exactly why I have no problem accepting 1upt from a scale point of view. The unit scale seems more epic to me than in previous civ games.

Also, I did play CTP & CTP2, & I personally didn't think much of their tactical level combat screen-because left almost no room for actual *tactics*! This is coming from someone who *has* actually played all of the games, & knows their upsides & downsides.

Aussie.

. like someone else said here, the object of war is not to take cities but destroy the other's army

Well, destroying the other's army is kind of pointless, as it will be the city which gives the opponent his strength, power, influence, whatever.
The ultimate goal of civ's warfare is always to get control over the other's cities.

it seems to me there is enough place on a Huge Map . Even if cities are close enough.

I humbly disagree.
If there isn't enough room between cities, it comes down to smashing any unit into any other one.

This doesn't seem to allow for much tactics, does it?

+1 for Aussie . There are games for each level of scale.

what really catch my eye in Bello's screenshot is more that the artillery is directly on the front line. Thats what i thought he was trying to demonstrate...not that cities are close...

Progress said that.Progress doesn't say things

Well, destroying the other's army is kind of pointless, as it will be the city which gives the opponent his strength, power, influence, whatever.
The ultimate goal of civ's warfare is always to get control over the other's cities.


I humbly disagree.
If there isn't enough room between cities, it comes down to smashing any unit into any other one.

This doesn't seem to allow for much tactics, does it?

http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2937&c=36

I doubt that even this represents the largest map possible-as its really only for play-testing purposes. Yet even here we see larger gaps between cities than what there is in the map you used. What I find so hilarious, though, is this idea that a host of programmers & play-testers have failed to account for map size when coming up with the 1upt approach to combat-but that you somehow managed to picked it up. I believe that's referred to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect-where people outside of a field think they have *greater* knowledge & expertise than those inside the field.

Progress doesn't say thingsIf you really want to know, it's a bastardized Voltaire quote: "Perfection is the enemy of the good".

Edit: I don't really have an inherent preference between SoD and 1upt, except that I'm tired of the brainless SoD combat model and am looking forward to a change in that regard. Honestly, I find absolutely no strategy or tactics in building a SoD or two and them ramming them into successive cities with the same exact actions:

1) siege: destroy cultural defenses
2) siege: suicide collateral damage attacks
3) SoD: ram into city
4) Rinse and repeat

Don't get me wrong, it's been a lot of fun - and I'm STILL playing Civ4 and enjoying it, but I'm ready for a change.

Well, destroying the other's army is kind of pointless, as it will be the city which gives the opponent his strength, power, influence, whatever.
The ultimate goal of civ's warfare is always to get control over the other's cities.


I humbly disagree.
If there isn't enough room between cities, it comes down to smashing any unit into any other one.

This doesn't seem to allow for much tactics, does it?


the goal is to make them capitulate. if there is no army in a city I will take it for sure! i'm not saying to not take them and go after the other civ's army in the antartic. if 2 armies would have to go at war against an ennemy the one aiming at destroying the other's army quickly would win before the one going for the capital and important cities. Sure cities are the source of power but once there are no more army to defend them they do not hold much power. So yeah, they are like you said the ultimate goal....the first goal though is to crush the other's army.

i dont get your last point though. What does a city (or two) in the middle of a war restricts movements or strategies ? you still can form a line. just like the screenshot you showed us of PG. the city is just a background image with troops over it. take it this way with a city you can put a unit on it in Civ 5. you have funny arguments too why would i smash any units into any other one ? you're assuming i wont chose the units i want to attack with because there is a city ?

Bello, I think its you who is having the problem with *scale*. Problem #1 is that you use the absolute *smallest* possible map for Civ5 to make the point of how small the space between cities is. Check out some of those maps for the Strategic View to get a better idea of what kind of city distance we'll be looking at for most *regular* games.
Well, guys, it would have been an act of courtesy to provide proof for your statements by yourself, but that is another topic.
I will refer to this thread here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=371765), referring to official screenshots:
http://downloads.2kgames.com/civ5/site13/images/features/strategicview/Strategic_Middle.jpg
http://downloads.2kgames.com/civ5/site13/images/features/strategicview/Strategic_Late.jpg

What I can see are cities just 2 or 3 hexes apart from each other.
Once again, this does not really make for "frontlines", especially considering the fact that Civ warfare is about to gain control over cities.


Problem #2 is in regards to the unit scale we're looking at for Panzer General vs Civ (&, more specifically Civ5). (...)
1 unit is 1 unit is 1 unit, no?
And 1 hex is 1 hex is 1 hex, no?

How much "men" a unit may ever represent, if I only have that 1 unit, I can only do that many things with it.
If this 1 unit has only 1 hex to move to, it only has that many movement options. Regardless, whether this 1 options stands for 10 km², 100 km² or 1,000,000 km². It is always just 1 option.

Also, I did play CTP & CTP2, & I personally didn't think much of their tactical level combat screen-because left almost no room for actual *tactics*! This is coming from someone who *has* actually played all of the games, & knows their upsides & downsides.
I agree that even CtP's combat system did not allow for much tactical combat, yet it proves that stacks/armies do not always have to come with "the best defender always defends", as was indicated here.

Bottom line:
Even the strategic maps mentioned by you seem to indicate that typically cities will be very close to each other - actually they seem to be even closer to each other than in a typicala Civ4 game.
That limited space between the cities inevitably reduces the space for tactical combat.

And that limited space makes me wonder whether 1upt really is such a good choice for Civ5.
Now, you may stick with your impression that it will be good for Civ5. Of course there is no earthly means for me to convince you about the opposite.

But, please, don't ignore obvious facts.

oh c'mon it's the same game. you're making a point on maps we're not even sure if they were build with a world builder or a game even more not final version. in scenarios cities always have been really close to each other. they are way less crowded on games I choose the settings. Try Pangea, Huge, 8 civs + new world...

on another point how big is the fat cross in civ 5 ? because based on that screenshot it seems to me the AI is overlapping fat cross like hell. They should introduce the AI to the optimum city placement article

I doubt that even this represents the largest map possible-as its really only for play-testing purposes. Yet even here we see larger gaps between cities than what there is in the map you used.
And we see the exact same distances.


What I find so hilarious, though, is this idea that a host of programmers & play-testers have failed to account for map size when coming up with the 1upt approach to combat-but that you somehow managed to picked it up. I believe that's referred to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect-where people outside of a field think they have *greater* knowledge & expertise than those inside the field.

Allow me to come back with the example of the "stack-killing" suicide siege weapons.
We were told at those days that they would render the SoD's obsolete. They did not, although at the same time we were told about "massive play-testing".

I will provide you with an enlargened screenshot:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=258539&stc=1&d=1279719476
Now, tell me, how much space there is between Xochicalco (red city in the north) and Xalictlamuaca (white city in the south)?
And how much options for movement will you have if there are 10 units on both sides?
And I would even doubt that it makes much sense to deploy units in the assumed firing range of long-range weapons.

There isn't much left for tactics.

tom2050 i understand what you are saying that some people will just "go along the company" with almost if not on everything.

BUT!

Limited stacking in civ game would still be a awful idea, i have allready told in many threads how limited stacking in civ would just simply suck, i have told it in so many ways and so many times, it would be stupid if i once again must copy paste my old posts to a new thread. Nobody, i mean NOBODY hasnt REALLY answered to my posts and showed me how limited stacking would be better in a civ game than 1upt.


Couple have argued, but there has been nothing to prove limited stacking better overall than 1upt.


I did have conversation with RickInVA and he really tried hard to prove me wrong but in the end he admitted that he just didnt have enough imagination for 1upt system in a world map scale and that he didnt want ANY tactical warfare whatsoever in civ game.


He also said: "I honestly don't know why people didn't like SOD." So he didnt even see a problem with SODs in the first place.


So tom2050, are you saying that as a good civ fans we should all be yelling for limited stacking with RickInVA now? Even though it would most likely make the game suck?

Hey aziantuntija, don't misrepresent me so badly, please!

The "imagination" you say I admitted to not having was the "willing suspension of disbelief" that the Stategic and the Tactical maps were the same map. I don't like it. You do.

Yes, I do believe that Tactical combat is out of place with the strategic scale and scope of Civ. I believe that 1upt is turning Civ into more of a wargame, which is not the experience I look for in Civ. I play wargames, lots of wargames. I understand Strategy and Tactics. Tactical combat is not what I turn to Civ for.

As a result I believe that SODs much better represent pre-WWI combat, and I have always admitted that they do not well represent WWI or later combat. As you know I have provided numerous examples of pre-WWI battles where SOD accurately represents the combat. No one has ever even tried to prove that incorrect.

You may recall that I suggested a compromise system, where there is a "stacking limit" of say 10 "unit size" per hex. In this scheme ancient units may have a "size" of 1, Medieval units 2 or 3, etc., up to modern units which could only stack 1. This would represent many things including the evolution of "front" warfare, and the evolution of modern military units as self-contained, having elements of all arms intrinsic to them, while preserving the Ancient times reality of concentrated armies. You don't have to like it, but it is a reasonable suggestion.

Lastly, I am not sure I would characterize our discussions as me trying to "prove you wrong", but akin to some other posters, it seems to me as well that some folks are so sold on 1upt that they will not admit that there is anything ill to be said about it. One prior post said something like, "Some people are determined not to like the game, and it isn't even out yet." I would reply, "Some people are determined that everything in the game is perfect, and the game isn't even out yet."

oh c'mon it's the same game. you're making a point on maps we're not even sure if they were build with a world builder or a game even more not final version.
And you, Sir, are making a point upon the assumption that in the real game it might be different. You don't have any proof for this except your hope.

These screenshots are what we have at the moment and frankly, they don't seem to strengthen your points.

Of course we can always assume that "it will be no problem later on". If it is, the better.
But what if it is not?

To aziantuntija: RE: Rock Paper Scisors

If the R/P/S function is reduced, then what is the difference between units? If a spearman/pikeman does not have superior defense against cavalry, then why name the units at all? Just have Static Unit, Mobile Unit, and Ranged Unit. If you want the Tactical Combat that so many wish, wouldn't you want a stronger R/P/S function to make those tactical decision more meaningful?

Bello, I *did* try & post the images, but unfortunately they didn't come up-so I was forced to post the link instead. Seriously, you're attitude is bordering on petulance right about now!
As to what a unit in the game represents, I think its *very* important. Your primary assertion seems to be that 1upt works for PG, but not for Civ5, because the tiles in PG represent a much smaller area of terrain-& I'm pointing out that this argument is *irrelevant*, because the units in Civ5 probably represent a *much* larger number of men-& so a 1upt system can still work in spite of the larger terrain area represented by a single tile.

As I said before, we don't even know if the map represented in these Strategic Views are average size, because they're maps from one of 2K Greg's play-test games. The most likely thing is that even these maps are small, yet we're already seeing some cities more than 5 spaces away. You claim that 3 spaces doesn't allow for much tactics-but that is just a sign of 1-dimensional thinking. Even on these small maps, the point is that you'll spread your units out *across* as well as deep-& its here where tactics will come into it. Do you honestly expect us to believe, though, that 1upt will provide *fewer* tactical opportunities than Stacks of Doom? The only tactic there was "churn out the biggest stacks you can". Wow, how exciting!

Aussie.

If the R/P/S function is reduced, then what is the difference between units? If a spearman/pikeman does not have superior defense against cavalry, then why name the units at all? Just have Static Unit, Mobile Unit, and Ranged Unit. If you want the Tactical Combat that so many wish, wouldn't you want a stronger R/P/S function to make those tactical decision more meaningful?

Who says the R/P/S function has been reduced? From everything I've read, some units will still be superior/inferior to other units, & in-game promotions will help to enhance these superiorities/inferiorities. In Stack Combat, though, the R/P/S effect was heavily diluted-mostly for the attacker-because the strongest defender always rose to the top. This won't occur in a 1upt system because the attacker has more power over which units he/she can attack. This of course means that the defender has to seek advantage from terrain-another factor which played very little role in Stack Combat (except, to a limited degree, the defender). So already we see two areas where 1upt might actually *improve* elements of the game that were in Civ4-but which were of little benefit in a stack-based combat system!

Aussie.

As a result I believe that SODs much better represent pre-WWI combat, and I have always admitted that they do not well represent WWI or later combat. As you know I have provided numerous examples of pre-WWI battles where SOD accurately represents the combat. No one has ever even tried to prove that incorrect.

You may recall that I suggested a compromise system, where there is a "stacking limit" of say 10 "unit size" per hex. In this scheme ancient units may have a "size" of 1, Medieval units 2 or 3, etc., up to modern units which could only stack 1. This would represent many things including the evolution of "front" warfare, and the evolution of modern military units as self-contained, having elements of all arms intrinsic to them, while preserving the Ancient times reality of concentrated armies. You don't have to like it, but it is a reasonable suggestion.

Rick, even in pre-modern, units were arranged in a number of fronts-with ranged units being at the back & melee units being up the front. As to your fix for SoD, talk about adding needless complexity to the game. 1upt may not be perfect, its too early to tell, but its a much simpler fix than the one you propose, or even the suicide siege units of Civ4. Both approaches are not only complex, but inherently "Gamey" too. As I said above, Stacks dilute the importance of terrain & R/P/S. It also makes it much, much easier for an opponent to dodge combat altogether-until they choose-& makes turtling a much too effective strategy. If 1upt can solve these problems, then its already won points in my book.

Aussie.

So "units" are NOT bunched together in modern times and they were NOT bunched together in ancient times.

Are they all standing in the same 2 foot x 2 foot square? No. But for the pre-WWI battles they were all in the same 5 mile x 5 mile (generally more like 2x2 miles, Borodino was the largest I could find at about 5x5 miles) area.

So this comes down to "how big is a hex". From your posts I conclude you think a combat hex is 100 yards or so. Thats fine, that works for you. Many of us find that a "suspension of disbelief" that is too much to believe. For one reason, the smaller the scale the more units one should have. If I am to believe that my Roman Civ can only support 5 Legion units then each of those should be 10+ historical Legions and should have a frontage of miles! If they have a frontage of miles, then the hex is big enough to also include the arches and slingers and cavalry that would accompany the Legions. If my Legion unit only covers a couple of hundred yards then maybe it represents 1 Legion, in which case I should be able to build scores of them. And scores of the Archers and Slingers and Cavalry that then would occupy a separate hex.

I don't see that you can have it both ways. Fewer units means that they represent a larger number of men, which would mean that a hex is a large space, which would leave room for support units behind the line unit. If a hex is a small space then the unit only represents a small number of men, and there should be lots of them.

And you, Sir, are making a point upon the assumption that in the real game it might be different. You don't have any proof for this except your hope.

These screenshots are what we have at the moment and frankly, they don't seem to strengthen your points.

Of course we can always assume that "it will be no problem later on". If it is, the better.
But what if it is not?

ok and you are not making assumption the same way i do ? the proof i have is that using Civ 4 and can put settings in the pre game lobby to have cities close like that. I can also put settings at Huge, Marathon, 8 civs (or being 4!) and new world. You know what it will looks like ! I dont see why it wouldnt be the same in civ 5 just like i know that in Ea Sports' NHL11 releasing in september which i plan on buying there will be settings sliders so the players are more quick, shot more or less precise and hits harder or easy i will modify to my likings like each nhl game i bought because it have been the case since the last 10 versions of the game !

But really RICKINVA hit the nail right on it

As a result I believe that SODs much better represent pre-WWI combat, and I have always admitted that they do not well represent WWI or later combat. As you know I have provided numerous examples of pre-WWI battles where SOD accurately represents the combat. No one has ever even tried to prove that incorrect.

no one has tried because you're totally right on that one

You may recall that I suggested a compromise system, where there is a "stacking limit" of say 10 "unit size" per hex. In this scheme ancient units may have a "size" of 1, Medieval units 2 or 3, etc., up to modern units which could only stack 1. This would represent many things including the evolution of "front" warfare, and the evolution of modern military units as self-contained, having elements of all arms intrinsic to them, while preserving the Ancient times reality of concentrated armies. You don't have to like it, but it is a reasonable suggestion.

that's how i'd program it too...