Civ 5 Confirmed Features

[Peng Qi]

That would still not be perfect but when combined with the fewer units that will be allowed, it would amount to a compromise that could be understood and accepted without severe cognitive dissonance. I know that others have suggested something like that already but this bears repeating over and over until the brain trust finally understands how important this is to a significant portion of their clients.

All of this talk of realism is ridiculous. Whatever is the most fun is what should be used, and the majority of Firaxis's clients seem to be very excited by the change. Civ has never been even remotely realistic, and demanding that it start now is silly.

 

[Johnny Be]

Master of Magic was great fun!

I heard Stardock is making a spiritual successor! Elemental War of Magic ... keep an eye on it!

 

[Öjevind Lång]

All of this talk of realism is ridiculous. Whatever is the most fun is what should be used, and the majority of Firaxis's clients seem to be very excited by the change. Civ has never been even remotely realistic, and demanding that it start now is silly.

I agree. Down with the Stack of Doom!

 

[taylor_cu]

Sam Ro's criticism of one-unit-per-tile is essentially valid. This brings us again to a basic problem in Civilization that has never been solved, i.e. the different dynamics between concentrated armies fighting "battles" in previous eras versus the continuous fronts of the recent past (as far as conventional major wars are concerned). The developers have always compromised in order to streamline play and allow players to allow the game to emphasize non military dimensions of the game.
This new compromise will again be inadequate as it trades one set of unrealistic absurdities for another. Siege weapons in ancient/medieval times that you are not even allowed to escort is beyond silly, in fact, it is downright insulting in its absurdity, but likewise, a modern infantry line that cannot be dug-in directly with anti-tank weapons is equally bizarre. We can all think of more examples. The obvious solution that would quickly resolve a large percentage of the problem would be to allow limited stacking. 3 units would seem adequate.
That would still not be perfect but when combined with the fewer units that will be allowed, it would amount to a compromise that could be understood and accepted without severe cognitive dissonance. I know that others have suggested something like that already but this bears repeating over and over until the brain trust finally understands how important this is to a significant portion of their clients.

I agree with you at all

 

[Myth5]

How can we at all criticize the new combat system without having seen any real information on the subject besides pictures? All we know is that 1 strength type is still in and all units have 1 more base movement point. Who knows how real combat will work out yet?

 

[bonch]

WHY?!
Given that effective armies are built around combined arms and a concentration of force [and it is possible to have 1.8 million people attending a single event in one location (eg. the US President's inauguration)], having this restriction will change the feel of the game from an epic, world-spanning conflict to a tiny backyard battle with the same idiotic combat restriction as 'LotR-Third Age' where combatants have to swap in and out of battle.

I'm not getting how stacking 30 units in one giant stack of doom is an epic, world-spanning conflict compared to having an actual geographic frontline. Civ 5 is doing everything right, in my opinion. It's going to be the best of the series yet.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

I'm not getting how stacking 30 units in one giant stack of doom is an epic, world-spanning conflict compared to having an actual geographic frontline. Civ 5 is doing everything right, in my opinion. It's going to be the best of the series yet.

An excellent point.

Army A:
9units


Army B:
1u 1u 1u

1u 1u 1u

1u 1u 1u

Which army represents more troops? Neither.
Which is more strategically valuable? Indeterminate considering all the possible variables of war, so arguments could be made for either side.

Solution? The argument has to take a step away from realism and focus on game mechanics, which the developers are addressing and handling it the way feel will provide the most fun and most balanced result.

It's fine to have concerns when a series is moving away from a long-term practice (or anything you're particularly used to or fond of), but considering we've only brief explanations and little in the way of physical evidence regarding how the new system works (in practice, not just in theory), I'd say it's only fair to hope they know what they're doing and that it'll work out.

I, for one, think these changes are exciting and can't wait to see the new system.

 

[Calouste]

An excellent point.

Army A:
9units


Army B:
1u 1u 1u

1u 1u 1u

1u 1u 1u

Which army represents more troops? Neither.
Which is more strategically valuable? Indeterminate considering all the possible variables of war, so arguments could be made for either side.

Solution? The argument has to take a step away from realism and focus on game mechanics, which the developers are addressing and handling it the way feel will provide the most fun and most balanced result.

It's fine to have concerns when a series is moving away from a long-term practice (or anything you're particularly used to or fond of), but considering we've only brief explanations and little in the way of physical evidence regarding how the new system works (in practice, not just in theory), I'd say it's only fair to hope they know what they're doing and that it'll work out.

I, for one, think these changes are exciting and can't wait to see the new system.

"New' only means new in the context of the Civ franchise. 1upt/hex based combat has been around in computer games since at least the early 90s. You might hope Firaxis played a few of them and talk to some of the developers to learn from their experiences.

 

[timtofly]

How can we at all criticize the new combat system without having seen any real information on the subject besides pictures? All we know is that 1 strength type is still in and all units have 1 more base movement point. Who knows how real combat will work out yet?

Have you watched the video?

 

[PinkHammurabi]

"New' only means new in the context of the Civ franchise. 1upt/hex based combat has been around in computer games since at least the early 90s. You might hope Firaxis played a few of them and talk to some of the developers to learn from their experiences.

I certainly wasn't implying 1upt/hex was a brand new concept to the world. And this system will likely have different balance results compared to other games with that system due to different game synergies and such.

 

[Calouste]

I certainly wasn't implying 1upt/hex was a brand new concept to the world. And this system will likely have different balance results compared to other games with that system due to different game synergies and such.

Definitely. Most games that have used 1upt/hex have been pitched battle wargames, not a more open-ended game like Civ. Balancing will be different and more difficult.

I'm pretty sure there will be balancing issues in the original release. I just don't think it is possible pay people to do all the playtesting necessary to balance a game of the complexity of Civ5, sell it for the $50 or $60 that is the current market price for a video game, and still turn a profit. But as long as there will be patches later to address the exploits and unbalances found by players, I'm fine with that.

 

[Myth5]

Have you watched the video?

Yeah...I have. It's a teaser. What is shown there that we don't already know? I'm just saying that we have no real idea about how combat will play out, based on units or time periods of the game. We'll just have to wait and see if it's better than Civ 4.

 

[revengeofmakno]

Did anyone here play 'Master of Magic'? Personally, i liked the 8-9 unit stack limit - not to mention the zoomable-battle. (Am i being old-fashioned? )

Zoomable battle wherein one could actually set up and play out a battle of stack A vs. stack B would be ideal (!!!) for realism especially up to the Napoleanic era of battles but is asking too much of Civilization. It would also greatly increase the RAM load for the game not to mention the time required to play. I'll take a moderate stacking limit as a fair compromise.

 

[Dunkah]

Listen,

If you look at history, Top Commanders generally move armies. Go one step down from that and they are moving divisions. Each division is based on either artillery, armor or infantry. It's not a stretch to portray units on a board like Civ as Divisions.

In history, you couldn't put that many divisions into an area because they couldn't be fed or resupplied or move along the local road system without major traffic jams...

To me Stacks of doom represented much smaller sized units like Battallions. It would take many battallions to equal a division. It's all about scale. Based on the size of a hex... Battalions are too small. Divisions seem to be the right size.

The only way IMHO to make SOD's viable is to zoom in to a separate battlefield for each attack where SOD's would have room to move around.

Without that I would say that the scale is moved upwards to the division level and should only be allowed 1 UPT.

I do feel that each unit should be allowed to attach other units to it to increase it's attack/defense vs. certain units. Like adding Panzerfausts to an infantry unit to make it stronger vs. armor. etc.

 

[Sam Ro]

To me Stacks of doom represented much smaller sized units like Battallions. It would take many battallions to equal a division. It's all about scale. Based on the size of a hex... Battalions are too small. Divisions seem to be the right size.

How does more units on the same tile make the unit size smaller?

1UPT implies that the unit takes up that space. This works in RTS games exactly because the scale is smaller, but even those allow certain kinds of units to stack.

Besides, as military units increase in size, they can also increase in diversity of capability.

You raise an interesting point about top commanders though. Two of the largest geographical empires were the Mongolian Empire and the Macedonian Empire. Does anyone know how many separate military units their great generals used to conquer these huge tracts of land?

Granted, zoomable battles would make the game too epic. Just a pipe-dream.
Still, 'Star Wars - Rebellion' and 'Star Wars - Empire at War' were galaxy wide strategy games and they still had the option of zooming battles if you wanted to.

If the answer to my original question is that people didn't like the stacks of doom, why not put an option in the game set-up to limit the number of units per tile to 1, 3, 9 or whatever?

 

[LaRate]

Zoomable battle wherein one could actually set up and play out a battle of stack A vs. stack B would be ideal (!!!) for realism especially up to the Napoleanic era of battles but is asking too much of Civilization. It would also greatly increase the RAM load for the game not to mention the time required to play. I'll take a moderate stacking limit as a fair compromise.

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.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Heres the best solution IMO, Stacking should be based on era, Vast numbers of ancient and classical troops would be able to stack together, fewer mediaeval troops, and still fewer Renaissance units, until you get down to modern units which would be 1upt.

Of course the strength of the units would have to scale appropriately.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Zoomed out battles need not be in Total War style where each battle takes up 15 minutes. That would of course not work for a civ game.

However, you can easily make a battle model for civ where a limited number of units could be placed in a single tile and fight together against another similar stack of units in another tile. The tactics would be in assembling the right combination of units in a tile in comparison with the combination of enemy units in an adjacent tile. The zoomed out battle would just show the results of the battle between both stacks and would be over in a matter of seconds.

It would basically be the civ5 model but you could assemble your single army per tile in various different ways.

 

[Decimatus]

All this talk of stacks and no stacks.

1UpT, Panzer General Style. It works, get used to it.

 

[Calouste]

All this talk of stacks and no stacks.

1UpT, Panzer General Style. It works, get used to it.

I played PG1 a few years after Civ1 and thought then that the combat system in PG was so much better, more tactical, than Civ's.