Improving 1UPT

[Muzzway]

Here's an idea - mobilization:
When not at war, you can demobilize troops - they can stack up to three, cost less maintenance, and gain extra movement. However, they get a significant (on the order of 50-60%) malus in combat.
When war breaks out, you can pay something like 3-5 gold apiece to mobilize individual units, or all at once (though the cost must still be paid). You can also demobilize individually.

That sounds like a good idea, though I'd rather have a more significant combat penalty (including no attacking and no pillaging) and a higher stack limit (maybe six, for the number of adjacent tiles?). With only a 50-60% combat strength reduction, you may be encouraged to take your demobilized units into combat since you could fill your front lines with 3 times as many units — and the increased movement speed and lowered maintenance costs would be an extra bonus.

You want the penalty to be high enough to discourage that, since the real reason for the feature is just to prevent frustration and lost time.

 

[HaloCapella]

I do sometimes get annoyed when I try to make roads to city states and all their units surrounding their city. so I had to wait and suddenly the AI moves one of their units away and let open a spot. then I was like, "wow".

I would be nice to have civilians going through neighboring military units, but... i'd be asking too much. It's not like I'd have to pile so much great people and missionaries anyways. imagine having to browse on one tile for your unit, thats just asking to have stacking on military. Yea, I know its limited, but its a limit you'd have to deal with. I'm sure you can guard all civilians equal to the military units you own.

 

[Ajuga]

I really want the ability to stack siege or ranged units with melee units.
It's ridiculous now how most siege gets destroyed in 1 shot by cities, even when I build 3 or 4 I usually don't get much use out of them. Especially in rough terrain.
In fact, I barely use siege until I get to Artillery. Siege with only 2 range is extremely situational.

 

[Muzzway]

I do sometimes get annoyed when I try to make roads to city states and all their units surrounding their city. so I had to wait and suddenly the AI moves one of their units away and let open a spot. then I was like, "wow".

I would be nice to have civilians going through neighboring military units, but... i'd be asking too much. It's not like I'd have to pile so much great people and missionaries anyways. imagine having to browse on one tile for your unit, thats just asking to have stacking on military. Yea, I know its limited, but its a limit you'd have to deal with. I'm sure you can guard all civilians equal to the military units you own.

Like Greizer85 said above, though, why prevent civilian stacking in the first place? The game design motivation for 1UPT is to create interesting tactical combat, but that doesn't apply to civilian units. Allowing civilian units to stack should only make managing them easier, since you don't have to deal with dancing units around to avoid stacking.

 

[micbucci]

While the original method was never broken the 1UPT method seems to work for the most part until you have to move prophets, missionaries or space race parts to the capitol. What I do like about the 1UPT option is the strategic formation you must take into consideration. It adds a whole new level of challenge. Still, I really like the idea of having unlimited units per tile and it would be cool if it was at least optional. It seems like this game was completely designed from the ground up with 1UPT in mind so it's probably not just a simple cut and dry change on unit limits per tile but I could be wrong. I'm curious how this would then change the game. Could unlimited units per tile work successfully on Civ V?

 

[Zet]

1upt is the most brilliant thing about civ5 and it's fine like it is. I can understand about a civilian unit passing through another but just say no to more stacking beyond what we have now.

Funny, I think one unit per tile is the worst thing about Civ V

With unlimited unit stacking, turn times wouldn't become unbearably long in the late game because the AI wouldn't have to process each unit individually (including pathfinding which only gets more complicated the more units there are). Players would benefit for the same reason.

The AI would also be more competent with unlimited unit stacking. The AI is broken only because it has such difficulties getting all its units where they need to be. I constantly see messages from my spies about AIs marching to attack one of my cities but the AI simply doesn't get there in time before something else gets its attention.

On higher difficulty levels, getting that great merchant or missionary to a city state can take extremely long because there will be so many units that they simply cannot pass. A city state where every single tile of its territory is occupied by a unit is also not uncommon.

Likewise, thanks to one unit per tile, chokepoints can become impenetrable and cities unconquerable until aircraft. Maps with lots of mountains and hills make effective warfare nearly impossible until the late game.

One unit per tile also makes ranged units overpowered in numbers.

The downsides of 1upt aren't worth the upsides. I hope in Civ VI they go back to unlimited unit stacking and find some better way to make battles more tactical.

Ahem, so we were discussing how to improve 1upt? Unlimited civilian stacking would eliminate some headaches for sure!

 

[Buccaneer]

I forget that whenever a new civ5 expansion or update is announced, we get all of the haters chiming in wanting to fundamentally change the game back to a RTS-like mess.

 

[Matthew.]

1UPT discussions always go to extremes. There is likely some middle ground. People like 1UPT for the chess-like play. Others like stacks for the easy management and other indirect benefits (AI can handle it better, etc.).

One of the ideas mentioned in the huge 1UPT thread in the Civ 5 section mentions of limited stacking per era. So in ancient and classical era, no stacks. In medieval and Renaissance, stacks of two. Industrial and modern, three. Atomic and information, four.

The chess-like play would still be there throughout the game, but it cuts down the number of units in the carpet of doom by four, which is fairly significant.

 

[Greizer85]

1UPT discussions always go to extremes. There is likely some middle ground. People like 1UPT for the chess-like play. Others like stacks for the easy management and other indirect benefits (AI can handle it better, etc.).

One of the ideas mentioned in the huge 1UPT thread in the Civ 5 section mentions of limited stacking per era. So in ancient and classical era, no stacks. In medieval and Renaissance, stacks of two. Industrial and modern, three. Atomic and information, four.

The chess-like play would still be there throughout the game, but it cuts down the number of units in the carpet of doom by four, which is fairly significant.

The trouble with limited stacking is that you'd simply stack one good defender and as many ranged units as you can every time. It'd essentially remove the tactical element in protecting your ranged units. For military units I'd welcome peace-time stacking and/or the whole 'deployment' idea (stacked units cannot attack and are destroyed easily; leaving or entering a stack costs all movement points) for easy movement, but that's about it. For civilians, unlimited, as there is no downside.

 

[Enonwnn]

Wow, I can't believe so many people who hate 1UPT are playing Civ5!

1UPT is what separates Civ5 from the rest. If you want unlimited stacking of any unit type, you need to go back to an earlier version (I recommend 2 and 3).

The only sensible update to 1UPT would be to allow a single siege unit (catapult, trebuchet, cannon, artillery, h'wacha, ballista) to stack with a single mellee unit. However, if this were to be allowed, the siege units should have zero defence (destroyed instantly if standing alone, much alike Great Generals). If the siege unit were to attack, the mellee unit would lose all its moves for that turn as they would be the operator of the machine. This is a mere idea of mine which may or may not improve gameplay, but IMO is not needed.

I see no reason for non-military units to be unlimitedly stacked. I have never had a problem with workers getting in each others way, or great generals blocking the path for workers to heal units. Careful planning, and careful use of non-military units means you should never have enough of these units to get in each others way!

As for Missionaries... you should be getting rid of those as soon as you get them. Hoarding them will not help. Target the cities without a religion to make the most out of them. You should never have two missionaries heading for the same target and the same time!

 

[Matthew.]

Not if there were certain rules. For example, ranged can only stack with ranged, etc. My point is these conversations are always so polarized when the elements that people say they like about each system are not mutually exclusive.

 

[GenjiKhan]

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until it's there: limitless. civilian. stacking. Would solve a billion problems + 1. The ONLY downside that I can think of is the AI stacking 30 workers for you to capture... But I think I could live with that.

I'm with you .

 

[AriochIV]

I like 1UPT, but I agree that restrictions on civilians units become problematic and unnecessary. The chief problem with allowing civilians units to stack is that the UI isn't built for it; there isn't any cue to tell you there's more than one of a certain class of unit in a hex. They would have to find an elegant way around that hurdle before allowing any kind of stacking.

One way to do it is to have an interface similar to that of the Air Units, but currently I think that's one of the clumsiest, most unsatisfactory interfaces in the game.

 

[Sid Simelia]

And cue the outdated sullasaurs in 3...2...1... oh wait they are already here.

"1upt is the best idea in the civ series since religion and is single handily creating immersion, a surge in multiplayer interest, and offering countless options within the future of civ."

Now its truly fixed

This is a little off topic (1UPT got me back into playing Civ BTW), but what is a sullasaur? Me and Google can't figure it out..

 

[Greizer85]

Sullla is a legendary Civ player who bashed Civ V at its inception - with good reason, as vanilla Civ V was more of an insult than a game. I do wish he'd re-evaluate Civ V after G&K, or at least after BNW, as so much has changed.The AI remains the chief issue due to 1upt though, but tbh the earlier Civ AIs were easy to decimate, too, once you got the hang of it. Enough catapults or their equivalent properly promoted made short work of huge AI stacks if you waited with the attack and struck at the right spot.

 

[Bad Wolf]

Unlimited civilian stacking, and stacking on foreign units during peacetime, would rectify a major currently existing issue (who hasn't been annoyed by foriegn workers/scouts/missionaries in your lands preventing you from improving your tiles/moving your army?) without breaking the game in any way. It just makes sense.

 

[AriochIV]

I don't think AI is a good argument against stacking; 1UPT is much harder to manage than stacks. The Civ IV AI did a much better job managing stacks than the Civ V AI does with 1UPT.

 

[Sid Simelia]

Ahh, thanks for that.
I would have defended vanilla, I was never a big Civ4 player.. I loved CivRev though and Civ5 (any version) is like my favorite game ever.

 

[kamex]

I always chuckle when people say 1upt kills immersion. Funny saying that about a game where you have the same leaders for thousands of years, random maps, having China right next Songhai, and dropping nuclear weapons on the English as Polynesia.

Its clear that you don't understand that the immersion issue is simply a matter of scale. All those 'issues' you have mentioned are a fundamental part of civ, we are playing a sandbox empire building game, not a history simulator.

What is is stupid about the scale in Civ V is that if you were playing a 'real' Earth map, then an Longbowman garrisoned in London could easily 'bombard' the city of Paris. I mean yep, that's just great isn't it!?

The only current solution is to simply play bigger 'real world' maps to compensate this. In Civ IV this isn't really an issue because the army (stack) would have to march at least two tiles to get to the other city, and the size of each tile isn't as important, because your not saying that the distance an army can move in 50 years and the distance an archer can fire are the same thing...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

For me the scale issue is a little awkward in the renaissance when transitioning between iron and gunpowder, but otherwise it matters not even a little. I gladly sacrifice that little aspect in favor of getting real tactical combat.

Tactical > scale