Thanks for replying to 1upt in particular, I definately wanted a reply on this because it is by far the most polarising factor.
I've said in previous threads that I don't really like stacks'o'doom. They do work for CivIV, but they often turned wars into dick waving contests on who has the biggest stack. You were rarely encouraged to split up your units and relied on a critical mass to blitzkrieg through cities before you took too many losses, especially when you got to rifling and steel.
Now a hard cap on tiles up to about 4 would be nice. I have seen this idea multiple times and I am starting to verge on agreeing with it. It would definately stop the carpet of doom nonsense that a lot of higher level players are getting.
NO. xUPT tile limits are not the answer. People need to get away from this idea. There should be no limit to the number of units that may be stacked on a tile. Simply for the purpose of easing logistics and not needing the nerf economic production this is important. Civ does not have enough room for tile limits.
Instead, the cap per tile needs to be on combat-effective units. i.e. the number of units that may attack from a given tile on a given turn. Combat-effectiveness needs to be balanced on offence and defence (e.g. through a suitable system of collateral damage, escalating combat penalties due to crowding, or some other acceptable means).
This kind of approach eliminates the chore of managing logistics for 1UPT, eliminates the offensive and defensive dominance of the SOD approach, AND opens the door to new combat mechanics - for example ambushing a stack in transit using guerilla tactics.
Lol limitting the number of attacks would totaly lower the attackers chances, because the defender can stack 50 units in his city and the attacker can only attack like idk 10 times per turn from a tile... Even if the attacker had 100 units it would still take him 5 turns + you couldn't reduce you enemys hp to 25% with siege because it would usually take 5 attacks with catas to do so leaving you with only 5 normal attacks = 10 turns for capping a city... just makes me wanna cry + i dont even wanna mention the price of the onslaught in artilery since the enemy would heal every turn and your artillery would have to go in an die again
I think we should just set a limit to stacks to 6 units (2 melee 1 siege 2 archers 1 mounted would be like the optimal set up) and make archers able to shot at the enemys in all adject tiles, same with artillery, but i would make then need a setup and have a much more dmg, also horseman should get some flanking bonus even vs archers to make them a little stronger and a little more realistic that is unless they are behind walls because i have yet to see a horse that can jump 10 meters into the air (this would probably improve the usefulness of walls aswell)
PS: the economy would not need to be nerfed in this case because i think people would soon give up on the 1 big army tactics and would engage more targets at the same time (i know some people do this alrdy, but most rely on their SoD's to do the job)
My understanding is that the AI was originally designed to "play to challenge the player, but not too much because the player should win." "Play to win" was added later. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I think this isn't actually the case, I think RA's aren't really any faster than being able to trade techs, it's just that the tech tree is streamlined to very few techs which aren't all that expensive. RA's are an improvement in many respects because they remove all sorts of exploits like getting a bunch of techs from someone and then declaring war.
After playing a few games now I don't agree that research agreements are an improvement, even though the tech trading system had its flaws.
When I first saw research agreements I was intrigued. I also thought that they might rein in a little the AI's incredible research rate at deity level and mitigate the tendency of all the AIs to trade every tech with each other, but not with the human player. It would mean that, even if the human player were very behind in tech (eg on a peaceful deity game), it would still be possible to get a "trade" with the AI.
In practice, though, I was disappointed with research agreements. I quickly fell into the habit of researching the cheapest techs, whether I wanted them or not, to try to get free expensive techs - and that was before I realised that I could actually steer the outcome by part-researching.
The game became endless juggling, partially or fully researching the filler techs I don't want and using the RAs to get the techs I do want. Saving up cash and even loaning funds to the AI occasionally so they have enough money to pay for a new agreement on the turn the old one ended. Selling absolutely everything - open borders, resources, bits of old stick, in order to raise the cash. Constantly, constantly looking for ways to get more money because, in addition to buying techs, I have to buy food and sometimes culture from city states. All this feels incredibly relentless and unrewarding and is really, after a while, very boring even if I'm not trying to steer the research outcome particularly (I got to the point in my last few games where I just couldn't be bothered after a while. In fact, in my very last game on immortal I stopped entering into RAs about two-thirds of the way through and just let the spare cash pile up).
Give me a game where I either research the tech I want OR I research a tech hoping to trade it for the tech I want. Either feels much more satisfying!
The in-game screens in V for looking at current deals are so clunky that I have to keep my own paper record of RAs - who with and when they come to term - so that I don't mess up researching the techs I don't want in the right order and so that I ensure that I always have an RA in progress with every civ I have met.
As an aside, I've occasionally formed a late-game permanent alliance on deity level in Civ IV. It makes for a different and quite good fun game (plus shows you how the AI works, which is pretty interesting and informative). As permanent allies, you can jointly research the same tech which makes sense and feels right while producing very warm and cherishing feelings towards my pixelated ally. Research agreements, on the other hand, are about as immersing as popping a tech from an ancient ruin (much less exciting though - at least there's that woohoo factor with the pop )
I think this isn't actually the case, I think RA's aren't really any faster than being able to trade techs, it's just that the tech tree is streamlined to very few techs which aren't all that expensive. RA's are an improvement in many respects because they remove all sorts of exploits like getting a bunch of techs from someone and then declaring war. Of course they are poorly implemented and introduce a bunch of other exploits as well (1 turn micro to guarantee the tech you get, etc.). In reality at any reasonable difficulty level the AI's had all sorts of techs for you to get (filling in) as long as you were researching beelines.
I think RA's are designed to represent agreements to share data and cooperate between the best and brightest researchers in the country, so yes they give new techs. I also think there was an attempt made to reintroduce the unpredictability of research through the RA, although the concept is flawed (game fun issues) and the implementation is suspect (1 turn exploit removes randomness).
Lastly, I think RA's are badly balanced relative to game speed, they are certainly far more interesting and well balanced on the epic/marathon timescale than they are on quick. They are designed to be a positive for staying at peace rather than going to war, and when you have to maintain peace for 60 turns (even if its the same number of years, the AI has more opportunities to DoW, get angry, etc..) then its a much more tenuous balance. Of course at these slower game speeds the 1 turn exploits are much more unfair!
You definitely have a point there. I remember games of Civ4 with Isikien (who was very good at manipulating the AI diplomacy!) where we would aim to grab what we could in tech trades before stomping a civ. But although it was a deeply cynical move, I always felt that it was more down to the unwitting nature of the AI more than a bona-fide exploit: turkeys voting for Christmas rather than hacking beakers out of the game, if you like.
I have to say the 'new tech' aspect of RAs is one that bothers me: although tech trades in Civ4 did accelerate tech development, that was usually factored into the game speed. Isolated starts would always lag in tech without trading partners. And of course trading was really for backfilling tech that you had a use for, not for making great scientific leaps and bounds.
But yes, the 'collaborative' thing is interesting. Perhaps RAs should be broken into 'Research Agreements', where you share beaker progress to some degree, and 'Research Projects' where you put in high stakes for the chance of new tech, but can easily lose out if international relations aren't what they should be. And yes, I think you're almost certainly right about the game-speed scaling of current RAs - though maintaining peace with the AI in its present moods of 'angry' through to 'schizophrenic' is perhaps more of a challenge than the designers intended.
Also, apologies to Isikien for sidetracking his thread a bit too much! I will post about diplomacy, 1UPT, and other issues near to your heart soon. Honestly.
I think that the global happiness takes the tedium out of managing cities. Before, like in Civ4, I didn't like how cities that I want to focus on research, I had to build happy buildings so that I could do research, or production, or anything. Global values for happiness allows more city specialization, and this is fun for me.
Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow build cities that completely specialized in either one of the main resources: Gold, Production, Research, Food, or Culture?
Don't you think?
So that we could only focus on city improvements for that particular resource more that we want that city to focus on. It would just be more fun, I think.
To a certain extent you could do that in CivIV. The examples I gave above were the more abstract versions of city specialisation. For example:
Take one city with a lot of food in its nearby plots. Locations with multiple corn by riverside with lots of grassland were usually the best.
Early game, have the city focus on building cities that had specialist slots. The first that were usually unlocked were libraries. Then markets. The food surplus would usually keep the city growing AND producing Great People, making it scale well through the eras.
At some point you hit the Nationalism tech. Now here's where the clever bit comes in. If you get Drama, you unlock Theatres, and if you build enough theatres (not in every city but most of your cities) you could get the Globe Theatre. The Globe Theatre makes it so the city will never be unhappy under any circumstance. So build it in the 'food' city that you have.
When you hit nationalism and gunpowder, switch to nationhood if you wanted to plan a war, and use the Draft feature of the civic in your Globe Theatre city
See? There's a lot of thought that's been put into the people who create these sorts of strategies. Experimentation was encouraged because of the amount of buildings with modifiers and various special effects you could build in cities.
As for your resource specialisation idea, yeah, that one is great. AFAIK the only building that does something close to that is the Monastery, which gives +2 culture or something for each wine source (not sure on that). Outside of vanilla CiV, a lot of modders have been playing around with buildings that have an effect on resources that are in the plot radius of the city. Valkrionn notably made a couple that you can get from the very start that allow a little bit of customisation.
To the research agreement discussion, I am very aware of this. While the modding forums have been looking at the larger aspects of CiV, the Strategy forums similarly have been hard at work in bending the vanilla game over its knee and spanking its backside. Two common strategies that are used is the aforementioned Research exploit (and yes, it is an exploit, since the UI nor the manual gives no indication of being able to rig the dice in order to aquire more expensive techs) and the National College rush strat, which involves keeping your first city, rushing to Writing, building a library then a NC to get a science boost. I would really recommend anyone to regularly check there to see what the flavour of the month is in terms of strategies.
Constantly, constantly looking for ways to get more money because, in addition to buying techs, I have to buy food and sometimes culture from city states
This I am in complete agreement with. The minigame missions are banal, tedious and insulting (or buggy) at worst and require very little thought on the player's part. In the end, as you stated, the player ends up chucking money into city states, basically creating a pointless money sink. It becomes a chore, like spoon-feeding children.
Again, another mod is looking to improve this, and its use of units in order to sway city states onto your side is great. Again, this seems to be a common pattern in what the users want, that essentially they want a variety of choices that differ enough from each other to warrant doing.
NO. xUPT tile limits are not the answer. People need to get away from this idea. There should be no limit to the number of units that may be stacked on a tile. Simply for the purpose of easing logistics and not needing the nerf economic production this is important. Civ does not have enough room for tile limits.
Instead, the cap per tile needs to be on combat-effective units. i.e. the number of units that may attack from a given tile on a given turn. Combat-effectiveness needs to be balanced on offence and defence (e.g. through a suitable system of collateral damage, escalating combat penalties due to crowding, or some other acceptable means).
This kind of approach eliminates the chore of managing logistics for 1UPT, eliminates the offensive and defensive dominance of the SOD approach, AND opens the door to new combat mechanics - for example ambushing a stack in transit using guerilla tactics.
That's actually a really good idea IMO. Allowing big stacks which can still only have x active combat units on a given turn would put a damper on SOD and allow for some clever tactics. Perhaps it would work if units that were somehow 'non-active' would still be able to defend but with severe penalties, up to and including collateral damage - making an SOD useful for a breakthrough attempt, but very vulnerable to counterattacks. It would also forestall the unit logjams and sprawls that can make the Civ5 military quite tedious.
My only caveat would be that it would change the game so utterly that it would hardly feel like Civ5 any more. Although I'm beginning to wonder if that would be, er, a good thing.
-4 is obviously the lowest and 4 being positive stability. Remember what I said in my second post about stability levels having different effects on your empire. If not I'll briefly drop the quote here:
Spoiler:
What should the rewards be? Let's just say for now increased production, just for the hell of it.
What should the penalties be? Let's go with decreased overall income and production from cities. And for the biggest extreme, lets go for increased chance of organised riots happening in cities furthest away from the capital's sphere of influence (I wouldn't want to to be too much of a dick with that) as well as revolts.
How should it be increased? Policies, passage of time, golden ages, a threshold of luxuries recieved etc, things that denote good circumstances in your empire, peace treaties when at war
How should it be decreased? Adoption of certain policies, over-expansion and distance to capital (reminicient of corruption yes I know) and most importantly, war, specifically who you are warring with, how strong you are in comparison to him or her and how many troops you've lost or have commited on the front lines, how many cities you have occupied.
Let's expand on that. Lets say when you start a game from Turn 0, you start at 0 stability when you settle and you should always get a basic rate of increasing stability, say 0.20 per turn. So by Turn 5 you'd be on 1, by turn 10 on 2 and so forth.
If we're imagining stability to be on the top bar of the UI, you should be able to hover over this and see the increases and decreases you are recieving in a pop-up.
Now lets say that you're playing England and you settle another city immediately, assuming that you have not gotten any policies. You see a really good site but its a bit far away from your capital, London, you're wondering if you can expand that far early. So you get out a settler and move out to the spot and settle it. You immediately check the city and look for the 'stability' counter. The hex distance from the capital should determine how much stability costs you incur.
So in this circumstance, this city you chose to settle (York) is cutting it a bit fine and is subtracting -0.18 stability per turn. You still have a net gain of stability but it's so nominal it might take you a couple of centuries to get back up.
So stability is produced individually by cities within empires. Let's say that doing certain things can increase stability. By default of course, the capital should produce a flat rate of stability as soon as its set up.
So York and London are kind of seperated from each other. I figure I need to link them up with roads. I do so and then I discover that it increases the stability in both cities by 0.10. Great. So linking up cities make them more stable.
York also has some great luxury resources in its borders, 3 wine and 1 silk. I get calander and link them all up, and I discover that I get 0.10 stability for York for each unique resource it has in its borders, plus a further 0.05 stability for each duplicate of this, effectively giving me 0.30 stability output for the luxuries in York. Also, each unique resource gives a further 0.05 in any city connected to the city that has access to it, so London now produces 0.10 stability extra.
Hope you're following so far. God knows I'm having trouble with spawning decimal numbers out of thin air.
So despite initially being in the red, York is mathematically speaking producing 0.22 stability per turn. To prevent the numbers from getting too complicated, let's just say the game rounds them down or up depending on the amount in the number furthest from the decimal point. So York would produce 0.2 stability total and London would be producing 0.4 total.
Hopefully that was a rather simple idea to follow, but I'm about to make it much more complicated with policies.
Policies - Switching between them and how they effect stability
This one is a difficult one. Essentially how the current game works in vanilla is that only some policies are incompatable with each other, ridding the need for educated choices. They work like one shot boosters to your empire, to be forever forgotten.
Now this is a difficult call to make. I'm no history expert, so I don't know what government or cultural values clash with each other, so I'm gonna try and do some 'sensible layman' pairings. I want people to contradict me if they don't feel these are correct.
My idea was that like the civics in 4, we are forced to pick between certain policy branches, to the point where there can only be 5 active (if you've unlocked them) at once. The choices you have to make are as follows:
Tradition vs Liberty Honour vs Autocracy Freedom vs Order Piety vs Rationalism Patronage vs Commerce
Now Autocracy, Freedom, Order and Liberty are ones I'm really not sure about, because historically speaking these ideals clash a lot. A LOT. So please, I want people to definately contradict me and come up with suggestions on how things should be.
But the idea is that certain policy trees should offer not only the bonuses they're offering now, but changes to stability and how it is affect by the decisions you make within your empire. These changes happen as soon as you adopt the policy. My ideas towards this (and they won't be balanced) are as follows:
Tradition
- Favours the capital (like before)
- Cities that AREN'T the capital get a stability penalty, perhaps a increased modifier based on distance or fixed rate
- The bonus in this tree make your capital much more powerful
Liberty
- Favours sprawling empires (like before)
- Cities get a reduced 'distance from capital' stability penalty
Honour
- Favours warlike empires
- Cities with military infrastructure (Barracks, Heroic epic) get stability bonuses and get an additional bonus for having stationed military.
-You also get TWO casus belli on a civ if you are insulted diplomatically or if you respond to a civ's request with a threat or if the civ demands something in Tribute when you are not friends.
Autocracy
- Again favours warlike empires
- The stability penalties for losing soldiers and cities are drastically reduced (so long as the capital stands).
- War weariness for your people is drastically reduced as well, enabling you to war for longer and with multiple civs.
Freedom
- Favours specialist and culture based empires
- Adoption of new policies in this branch yield fixed stability bonuses. Specialists generate a small amount of stability as well as culture buildings such as the opera house providing stability bonuses.
Order
- For civs who want production as well as the ability to defend those lands.
- You gain a CB with everyone, meaning you suffer no stability penalties when war is declared on you.
- Wonders built in eras past produce stability and national wonders increase bonuses in cities which they are built.
Piety
- A difficult one, since piety to a certain extent is meant to represent religion which isn't even in the game. For militaristic civs who need culture perhaps early game?
- Occupied cities don't need a courthouse in them to reduce stability, and are soon placated in a minimal amount of turns
- Branch offers a lot in culture bonuses, more than the vanilla game would offer.
- Rival culture bordering your territory causes stability penalties (requiring you to eliminate your enemies more often than not if it is really causing you trouble).
Rationalism
- For civs geared towards scientific advancement.
- You get stability bonuses for scientific buildings and improvements (if worked, the academy would yield stability)
Patronage
- For civs who like creating massive block alliances with city states.
- Cities close to neighbouring allied or friendly city states get additional stability bonuses as well as trade bonuses if they are connected by roads.
- The capital earns more and more stability production the more city states the civ is allied with.
Commerce
- Encourages trade relations etc with civs.
- Open borders with opposing civs garner better stability for all your cities, as well as better trade yield from foreign cities.
- War with neighbouring civs has an increased stability penaltiy
To further elaborate, to stop players from abusing the system and switching endlessly between the policies without penalty, a 1 turn anarchy which doesn't effect stability but does affect production would be good enough. If the person switches another policy branch in the next couple of turns, anarchy would occur again and this time, stability would drop as well.
Ok, so that's it for the moment, tell me what everyone thinks.
I agree with the original post.
Here I will solely try to comment on casus belli and Diplomacy.
I have posted another thread on Diplomacy in general.
The idea is interesting, but I am worried about trying to import into Civilization something that works in another game.
There is much more to the Diplomacy system than war or peace.
Also, having only three levels of something, such as in your example, usually leads to problems. I think just the usual adjustment to diplomatic relations is fine, with a much larger scale to accommodate more different sizes of effects.
The AI would have to get very good at distinguishing exactly what constituted a casus belli.
For example, I am at war with France. Does it matter to England who declared war? Does it matter to England the circumstances under which war was declared? For example, did I respond to a defensive treaty? Does it matter to England what his diplomatic relations were with me and France prior to the start of the war?
Eventually France is wiped out. Does it matter to England whether I took the last French city or Russia did? Does it matter to England if Russia took all of the French cities but one, and I took the last one?
Under a casus belli system the answer is yes/no or zero/one.
Under the overall diplomatic system, the negative to relations can be a range of numbers depending on the circumstances. Presumably, the effect can fade gradually over time.
The other aspect of what you are proposing is that if a country declares war then the diplomatic status with the other country can affect the "stability" of the country declaring war and maybe the defender as well.
For example, France declares war on Germany. If prior to war France was friendly with Germany, then France takes a hit to its stability with negative consequences.
If prior to war France was furious with Germany, then France gets a bonus to its stability with positive consequences. If prior to the war, Germany was furious with France, then perhaps Germany gets a bonus to its stability with positive consequences.
It is unclear how the player fits into this, as the player does not have an official feeling towards Germany. What you seem to be suggesting is that the computer keep track of good reasons for the player to attack one of its neighbors, in a separate casus belli system. I have discussed some potential problems with a casus belli system.
I have grave doubts about this being able to be implemented this successfully in Civilization in a manner that makes sense and adds to the enjoyment of a majority of players.
Lol limitting the number of attacks would totaly lower the attackers chances, because the defender can stack 50 units in his city and the attacker can only attack like idk 10 times per turn from a tile... Even if the attacker had 100 units it would still take him 5 turns + you couldn't reduce you enemys hp to 25% with siege because it would usually take 5 attacks with catas to do so leaving you with only 5 normal attacks = 10 turns for capping a city... just makes me wanna cry + i dont even wanna mention the price of the onslaught in artilery since the enemy would heal every turn and your artillery would have to go in an die again
That's actually a really good idea IMO. Allowing big stacks which can still only have x active combat units on a given turn would put a damper on SOD and allow for some clever tactics. Perhaps it would work if units that were somehow 'non-active' would still be able to defend but with severe penalties, up to and including collateral damage - making an SOD useful for a breakthrough attempt, but very vulnerable to counterattacks. It would also forestall the unit logjams and sprawls that can make the Civ5 military quite tedious.
So here's a proposal for how to make it work. It's actually a mechanic that we're all already familiar with from previous games.
Tiles have no limit with respect to number of units
Combat effective (defined as units capable of attacking/defending at full strength) are limited to 1 per tile
All other units on a tile are considered to be part of a convoy
Since there is only one combat effective unit on any given tile, no more than 1 attack may be carried out from any given tile. This is similar to 1UPT.
For the purposes of offence, any unit in a stack may be designated as the combat effective unit.
For the purposes of defence, whichever unit is deemed to be the combat effective unit (effectively, the convoy's escort) defends until it is killed. That is, no switching defenders between attacks. If the escort is killed, then convoy is treated for that turn as a single unit with a nominal defensive value. If the convoy dies, then everyone in the stack dies. If the convoy survives the turn, a new convoy escort is determined.
Re: choosing the escort. Default would be defender with best defense value at start of turn unless otherwise designated.
If you think back to the use of transports in earlier Civ games you'll realize that this is basically the mechanic from those games transposed to land combat. Transports were typically protected by a battleship (or whatever) which handled the defensive load until killed. Subsequent attacks against the transports would kill everyone on board. Difference here is that I would propose not to have convoy vehicles since that would be too complex. Creation of a convoy would be automatic upon the entry of multiple units into a tile.
I like the stability ideas. However maybe cities should produce stability points by building buildings, such as governors mansions, in addition to what you suggested.
In reference to the larger scale, I don't advocate losing the ol' 100 to 0 scale of attitude that AI's currently have.
Rather, the premise behind the CB system is to give the human players a 'clue' of sorts that war is 'coming' and care should be taken. The CB system is also intended to reward players who declare war on their opponents at the right time. That's the simple premise of it. Balance issues as you can imagine would be rife with this one, but honestly, it's a system I feel would be more fun.
To think of it in a different abstract, imagine the CB system is like a refereeing system essentially, rewarding players for clever play and punishing them if they went around declaring war on everybody willy nilly.
In relation to how the AI should factor in CBs, this is where the flavours of each leader would factor in, again another good 'research' thread authored by Mr_burns that expose the workings of a lot of the individual AI leaders.
How I believe it should work is, since 'boldness' is the value that determines war and relations between players exacerbate the chance of war, the occurance of a CB should:
1: Sour the AI's relations between a civ slightly.
2: Up the AI's chances of preparing war against that target by adding points to boldness per CB.
The difficult thing is that boldness looks to be the trigger happy trait, so increasing boldness during the game would only serve to make the AI more eager to declare war on someone else rather than a target that he/she has a CB with. This is the problem.
Again I'm no coding expert. I agree with your sentiment that it would be very very difficult to impliment.]
I'm glad someone agrees this idea has potential.
So here's a proposal for how to make it work. It's actually a mechanic that we're all already familiar with from previous games.
1. Tiles have no limit with respect to number of units
2. Combat effective (defined as units capable of attacking/defending at full strength) are limited to 1 per tile
3. All other units on a tile are considered to be part of a convoy
Since there is only one combat effective unit on any given tile, no more than 1 attack may be carried out from any given tile. This is similar to 1UPT.
For the purposes of offence, any unit in a stack may be designated as the combat effective unit.
For the purposes of defence, whichever unit is deemed to be the combat effective unit (effectively, the convoy's escort) defends until it is killed. That is, no switching defenders between attacks. If the escort is killed, then convoy is treated for that turn as a single unit with a nominal defensive value. If the convoy dies, then everyone in the stack dies. If the convoy survives the turn, a new convoy escort is determined.
Re: choosing the escort. Default would be defender with best defense value at start of turn unless otherwise designated.
If you think back to the use of transports in earlier Civ games you'll realize that this is basically the mechanic from those games transposed to land combat. Transports were typically protected by a battleship (or whatever) which handled the defensive load until killed. Subsequent attacks against the transports would kill everyone on board. Difference here is that I would propose not to have convoy vehicles since that would be too complex. Creation of a convoy would be automatic upon the entry of multiple units into a tile.
I'm very tempted to edit my first post and add all the ideas discussed so far, including this one.
My understanding is that the AI was originally designed to "play to challenge the player, but not too much because the player should win." "Play to win" was added later. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It is a common collection of words that are thrown around these forums, and is the source of much frustration from people who just want to have fun and roleplay in their game. The fact is, AI currently presents a challenge that assumes you like one route and one route alone, mass war declarations or dogpiling due to chain denouncements.
So here's a proposal for how to make it work. It's actually a mechanic that we're all already familiar with from previous games.
Tiles have no limit with respect to number of units
Combat effective (defined as units capable of attacking/defending at full strength) are limited to 1 per tile
All other units on a tile are considered to be part of a convoy
Since there is only one combat effective unit on any given tile, no more than 1 attack may be carried out from any given tile. This is similar to 1UPT.
For the purposes of offence, any unit in a stack may be designated as the combat effective unit.
For the purposes of defence, whichever unit is deemed to be the combat effective unit (effectively, the convoy's escort) defends until it is killed. That is, no switching defenders between attacks. If the escort is killed, then convoy is treated for that turn as a single unit with a nominal defensive value. If the convoy dies, then everyone in the stack dies. If the convoy survives the turn, a new convoy escort is determined.
Re: choosing the escort. Default would be defender with best defense value at start of turn unless otherwise designated.
If you think back to the use of transports in earlier Civ games you'll realize that this is basically the mechanic from those games transposed to land combat. Transports were typically protected by a battleship (or whatever) which handled the defensive load until killed. Subsequent attacks against the transports would kill everyone on board. Difference here is that I would propose not to have convoy vehicles since that would be too complex. Creation of a convoy would be automatic upon the entry of multiple units into a tile.
Although this would work, my mind is on a slightly different style of implementation. My gut feeling is that the 'convoy' idea doesn't really capture the way that armies work - you don't have 15 regiments marching to the front completely unarmed, with only one fully equipped regiment guarding the naked, defenceless soldiers of the other regiments.
My counter-proposal is to make each stack divisible into two sorts of units, which we might as well call 'vanguard' and 'reserves' for the sake of argument. The vanguard units are combat ready: they can attack and defend as normal. The reserve units are units that are not yet ready for battle: they're perhaps still in transit, in marching column, not fully armed, haven't broken all their equipment out of stores, still asleep, whatever. The reserve troops can still fight on the defence, but with lower combat effectiveness. Again, for the sake of argument, let's take a stab at what those penalties might be, say:
tile defence bonuses capped at 25%
combat strength reduced by 50%
take collateral damage from attacks on other reserve troops
Though that's just a wild guess; game balance will ultimately dictate all these values.
This opens up two further questions, the first being: how do you determine what's a 'vanguard' unit and what's a 'reserve' in a combat situation?
Clearly the user will pick when it comes to the attack; but likewise any units who have become 'vanguard' to attack for a turn will still be vanguard when it comes to defence. In defence, likewise, the computer will pick the strongest defenders in a similar manner to, say, stack defence in Civ4. If all the 'vanguard' units of an attacking stack all die in combat, however, should any of the reserves be available to fight at full readiness in response to a counterattack? Again, this will be a balance issue but for argument's sake I'd say no; an all out attack would then be a risky, potentially lethal gamble.
The second question is: should you be able to determine which units are 'vanguard' and which are 'reserves' yourself? My initial guess should actually be to keep it simple and say no; If you have a stack of units on the defensive, if there are any 'vanguard' units unassigned, the computer will automatically pick the best defenders to the first incoming attacks from the remaining non-attacking units until all the vanguard slots are filled.
That's perhaps an overly complex explanation, but I think it will create combat that is adequately scaled for the terrain. I'll finish by giving a short example of the sorts of combat you could get:
Let's say that Alexander is attacking a narrow pass in the mountains three hexes wide. Darius is defending with relatively modern army of shiny, deadly swordsmen. And for argument's sake let's say (to keep things small and simple) that the 'vanguard' limits are 2 units per tile, with each of the 3 hexes of the pass defended by 2 swordsmen. By contrast, Alexander has a far more promising army: against those 6 swordsmen he has 2 companion cavalry and 8 hoplites. Obviously in vanilla that would be a long battle, with everyone queueing up to whale on one another in succession.
But suppose Alex puts all his eggs in one basket, stacks up everything in one tile and leads the attack with his cavalry. Let's say he wins: his elite cavalry plough through the centre of the persian defences, throwing hoplites to surround the beleaguered swordsmen through the central gap. His gamble successful, he mops up and the road to Persia is clear.
And if he fails? His cavalry are repulsed and killed by the dug-in swordsmen, leaving his stack with no 'vanguard' units to protect the marching hoplites. The swordsmen pile into his stack, cutting apart the unprepared hoplites with ease, killing 4 and leaving the remaining units at well below half health from the collateral damage caused by the rout. Alexander wept indeed.
And then of course the 'vanguard/reserves' thing could be modified by tech; certain techs could unlock new vanguard slots, or reduce the collateral penalties for reserve units caught in a counterattack. Stacks become gambles, and highly situational. More fun than either Civ4 or Civ5? Only the modders know the answer!
That was in Civ 1. And it was explicitly removed for Civ 2 at "people's claiming" (in those days) that was "unrealistic" and "boring". Also, in Civ 1, units had no hitpoints... they were introduced on Civ 2, where surviving units had to rest to recover.
I guess walking in circles is pretty common this time.
I think we need to jump back to the Civ2 way of stacking.
You can stack your units all you like but if a unit is defeated in a stack then the whole stack dies. This will limit stacking to logistics only, so you can create an army and not have to fuss around with moving it but once you get into enemy territory you have to deploy them across the field. That or risk losing everything.
And if he fails? His cavalry are repulsed and killed by the dug-in swordsmen, leaving his stack with no 'vanguard' units to protect the marching hoplites. The swordsmen pile into his stack, cutting apart the unprepared hoplites with ease, killing 4 and leaving the remaining units at well below half health from the collateral damage caused by the rout. Alexander wept indeed.
I like all your ideas, but I dont understand where you got the "easy killing of 4 and leving the rest at below half health;" could you explain this please?
However, with the vanguard dying then turning into a convoy Idea, maybe when your vanguard dies, the convoy, when military units, takes damage equal to the attack of the attacking units (spreadout over them all) in addition to the attack damage to the convoy that would actually be there from a normal attack? So they dont all die at once and are helpless, but they dont all just turn into normal units when the vanguard is destroyed, either. Or something along these lines.
I'm reading these ideas and like them, but please add if the units will be killed in one turn like Civ4 or take multiple turns to die like Civ5. That makes a HUGE difference in your proposals.
Although this would work, my mind is on a slightly different style of implementation. My gut feeling is that the 'convoy' idea doesn't really capture the way that armies work - you don't have 15 regiments marching to the front completely unarmed, with only one fully equipped regiment guarding the naked, defenceless soldiers of the other regiments.
My counter-proposal is to make each stack divisible into two sorts of units, which we might as well call 'vanguard' and 'reserves' for the sake of argument. The vanguard units are combat ready: they can attack and defend as normal. The reserve units are units that are not yet ready for battle: they're perhaps still in transit, in marching column, not fully armed, haven't broken all their equipment out of stores, still asleep, whatever. The reserve troops can still fight on the defence, but with lower combat effectiveness. Again, for the sake of argument, let's take a stab at what those penalties might be, say:
tile defence bonuses capped at 25%
combat strength reduced by 50%
take collateral damage from attacks on other reserve troops
The trouble, as I see it, with allowing the reserve units (i.e. those in the convoy) to fight as individual units is that it could become very tedious to kill large stacks. Consider that allowing 1 attack per tile, you'd be able to attack a given tile a maximum of six times. Given the CiV combat mechanic that allows survival (which I think is great) you'd have a heck of a time wittling a stack of any size down, even if you had it surrounded on all sides.
That's why I'm suggesting that there effectively be two units on any given tile - the fully combat effective vanguard (or escort) unit and the convoy unit containing the rest of the units stacked on that tile. I don't suggest that the convoy be defenseless - just as transports had a defence value, so would the convoy. Proportionally stronger than than the transport (and maybe with increased hitpoints), if you like. But for playability's sake, I think this would be an important abstraction.
@Isikien - Please go ahead and add this idea to your OP. It would get the idea more attention, which increases the likelihood of someone in the modding community taking it on.
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Saving up cash and even loaning funds to the AI occasionally so they have enough money to pay for a new agreement on the turn the old one ended. Selling absolutely everything - open borders, resources, bits of old stick, in order to raise the cash. Constantly, constantly looking for ways to get more money because, in addition to buying techs, I have to buy food and sometimes culture from city states. All this feels incredibly relentless and unrewarding and is really, after a while, very boring even if I'm not trying to steer the research outcome particularly (I got to the point in my last few games where I just couldn't be bothered after a while. In fact, in my very last game on immortal I stopped entering into RAs about two-thirds of the way through and just let the spare cash pile up). 
in the right order and so that I ensure that I always have an RA in progress with every civ I have met. 
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