Stacks of Doom are great!

poncratias

Prince
Joined
Feb 9, 2010
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I wonder why everyone here talks about stacks of doom as something bad?


I totally love the clash of big sized armies!

of course there are big armies of men going to war against an other country! of course they don't attack with like 5 buddies and take down the enemies cities!


and NO, SoD doesn't mean automatic victory!

How often did I lose a big deadly stack to just 2-3 well placed units and some bad luck?

how often did I engage an enemie's big doomstack n the way to my cities and managed to win in an glorious battle?


I even sometimes marked landmarks for places where some epic battles I where fought!


Well at least SoD has never been so annoying to me that it justifies the complete revamp fail that Civ V has undergone to and that made all other parts of Civ V fail too.


Why don't you like SoD?
 
1. They were boring.
2. They were unrealistic.
3. They were unbalanced.
5. They required almost no strategy.
5. They made battles feel incomplete, and simplistic.

You said that you liked the idea of a big army vs a big army, to me SoD made it seems like small vs small, now that they sprawl out it makes it seem larger and more dramatic to me.

Thats what I feel about them. They were one of the things that I felt were broken in Civ 4, *remove*allong with wonders being too powerful.*remove* I have been corrected I was thinking of the wrong version. The other problem I had was civ 4 was Elizambeth and Haya Capac. I thought that *Finantial + Philisophical* was too powerful, and industrial could also replace philisophical by using wonders for great people.

I'm glad both of those things have been changed. There are otherthings I wish weren't changed, but SoD are not one of them.

The Civ 2 Great Library which gave you the techs owned by any other 2 countries...that was a good one, and the Howitzers that ignored city defense.
 
wonders were not too powerful, they were just right (now civ2 wonders were too powerful).

I won't say SOD's were great, but they are better than 1 upt. I actually would have liked to see an army system similar to CTP2. It's the best of both worlds. No more stacking 50 tanks into a stack. Armies should be diversified to counter threats from flanking units etc. You would still have lone units, they would hopefully slow down the army in time for your army to get there in time to save your cities. I think this would represent both classical warfare, and modern warfare really well.
 
lots of luck

there were too many situations where outcomes were determined by who managed to click fastest with their catapults
 
I love the feel of the new 1UPT. Lining up your army along the borders with the artillery behind. SoD was boring.

Admittedly the AI handling of 1UPT isn't so good, but I enjoy the tactical feel of 1UPT better than the old SoD.
 
Shamelessly copypasta'ing from another thread I posted in

I don't like your example though. I hated megastacks. They felt unweildy to me. This is possibly because I favour the tactical flavour that civ offers, rather than the beancounting strategic side of the previous ones, especially the beancounting of war.

It always felt like 'Do I have enough raw crap to throw at him/her in order to win?'. Especially with siege. Siege early on had ******ed survival rates, to the point where you either invested withdrawl chance promotions and had a weaker collateral damage, or you spammed collateral and suicided it en-masse on every city you marched up to. Yes, this did mean your footsoldiers survived and became better promoted but honestly, it just felt like I wasn't being rewarded for preserving some of my units.

Late game became a little better, your units could perform a better variety of war tactics (especially with the advent of air units). Mid-game was defined by massive megastacks of cannons and rifles, which would result in you spamming your way through empires connected to yours, making it stupidly easy to win.

The only thing I begrudge CiV for not having is a group select button.
 
I agree. SOD worked fine for the scale in civ and a big plus for mobility. SODs were able to be used by the AI in a meaningful way that provided a challenge to the player. 1upt would be great is the AI could handle it equally as well as stacks.
I felt some degree of accomplishment when winning or even stalemating in wars against leaders like Montezuma and Julius, that meant my city defense and offensive SOD were well configured.

As far as no strategy. The same general rules of battle apply for the SOD that apply to 1upt; cities with siege/range, when cities are low defense/HP slap them with everything else, and don't leave siege/range units undefended. The AI in CiV has problems with the first and last bits of strategy.

Now about Wonders. There were 50+ Wonders in CivIV many went obsolete depending on tech, were only buildable in a certain era, and only effected the city they were built in. The CivIV wonders have smaller values than the wonders in civV and there are more of them spread around the Tech Tree meaning more accessibility for all of the civs in a game.
 
I personally like the Stacks of Doom. If a civ that had a production advantage was able to build a bigger, stronger army, so what? I liked how strong economy-building had an effect on the effectiveness of your military. That meant that good strategy could have a bearing on your military tactics.

Personally, I have played up through Emperor, and I usually haven't encountered SoDs bigger than maybe 15 units or so. I have found that there's actually a lot of tactical thinking to do, for example how to transport troops safely when the enemy's cavalry is inside your back lines, or adjusting which units you build depending on what strategic resources your enemy has (or does not have) access to, or figuring out whether to sacrifice catapults or to save them (weighing the advantages of a short blitz versus a longer, sustained attack that gives your enemy more time to strengthen their defenses), etc., etc.

I'm not expressing any opinion on Civ 5, because I haven't played it yet. I'm just saying that I don't think SoD made combat SO 'broken' that it was absolutely essential to scrap it.
 
SoDs might've been okay for EARLY wars, but after a while you'd get just massive SoDs and it'd get ridiculous. I hate shuffling through 30-50 units to get to my catapults, then to my swordsmen, then to my knights, etc. And I'd always be looking for a particular one of each unit and it was a huge pain to find it. I'm not sad at all to see the SoDs gone.
 
I'm still trying to finish my first game of this. Tedious is all I can say. I'm trying to shuffle around enough units to take Rome. I'm playing earth map, but Rome is where Vietnam would be for some reason. It's a large map though, but it's still hard trying to maneuver my units in such a way they don't get slaughtered.

At this point, I can't see how I can finish one game. Whose idea of fun is this? SOD's aren't nearly as much of a pain to find your catapults or whatever.

There has to be a better way to move around units in 1 upt. At this point, I'm just going to give up on taking cities and go for cultural, space victory or whatever. War just isn't fun in civ5.
 
1. They were boring.
2. They were unrealistic.
3. They were unbalanced.
5. They required almost no strategy.
5. They made battles feel incomplete, and simplistic.

You said that you liked the idea of a big army vs a big army, to me SoD made it seems like small vs small, now that they sprawl out it makes it seem larger and more dramatic to me.

Thats what I feel about them. They were one of the things that I felt were broken in Civ 4, *remove*allong with wonders being too powerful.*remove* I have been corrected I was thinking of the wrong version. The other problem I had was civ 4 was Elizambeth and Haya Capac. I thought that *Finantial + Philisophical* was too powerful, and industrial could also replace philisophical by using wonders for great people.

I'm glad both of those things have been changed. There are otherthings I wish weren't changed, but SoD are not one of them.

The Civ 2 Great Library which gave you the techs owned by any other 2 countries...that was a good one, and the Howitzers that ignored city defense.

Unrealistic? I dunno....They weren't great and coulda been VASTLY improved....but most armies for most of human history moved about in "stacks".
 
Yup, armies did move around that way. You don't see Hannibal have his armies scattered all about the Roman country side back in those days did you? He would have really struggled with 1upt as the Italian peninsula isn't that wide. :)
 
Yeah SOD's are just boring in every sense. In civ 3 and 4 no matter what difficulty you played on you could always win with simply one stack; no tatics. 1 upt sucks but its far better then sod. Civ 3 and 4 was simple get iron or horses, and build one big stack of swordsmen or horse archers. have all cities keep building the same unit and one city build archers (or spearmen in civ 3) then just crush one civ after another. No need for siege or any mixed units as even if they shoved 12 cannons at your stack it didn't matter cause you'd just keep pumpin out more troops to send to that one stack and just keep rolling over cities.
 
Bobafett0610, what difficulty level would you play? I find that perhaps what you're saying was true in my games at a lower difficulty level, but at a higher one I wouldn't want to just "have all cities building the same unit" because that would mean busting my economy on army maintenance and falling behind in the tech race.
 
@Capttight

I think it was called "Sid" or something in civ 4 for highest difficulty. But yes it would strain the economy thats for sure but after you wiped out 4 other civs with just swordsmen or horse archers it didn't really matter, cause with your few workers that would be built at the start, they're improving things the whole time ofcourse and then after you take a small break to build some other buildings in your cities you'd just save up your cash for a few turns, upgrade your horse archers or swordsmen and repeat. civ 5 pisses me off in a lot of ways, 1 upt including, but at least its somewhat requires me to pondor my moves instead of shoving one stack around the map on every hill/forest tile i can find going city to city.
 
SoDs might've been okay for EARLY wars, but after a while you'd get just massive SoDs and it'd get ridiculous. I hate shuffling through 30-50 units to get to my catapults, then to my swordsmen, then to my knights, etc. And I'd always be looking for a particular one of each unit and it was a huge pain to find it. I'm not sad at all to see the SoDs gone.

Those are UI problems. The mechanic worked nonetheless.
 
Spoiler :
1. They were boring.
2. They were unrealistic.
3. They were unbalanced.
5. They required almost no strategy.
5. They made battles feel incomplete, and simplistic.

You said that you liked the idea of a big army vs a big army, to me SoD made it seems like small vs small, now that they sprawl out it makes it seem larger and more dramatic to me.

Thats what I feel about them. They were one of the things that I felt were broken in Civ 4, *remove*allong with wonders being too powerful.*remove* I have been corrected I was thinking of the wrong version. The other problem I had was civ 4 was Elizambeth and Haya Capac. I thought that *Finantial + Philisophical* was too powerful, and industrial could also replace philisophical by using wonders for great people.

I'm glad both of those things have been changed. There are otherthings I wish weren't changed, but SoD are not one of them.

The Civ 2 Great Library which gave you the techs owned by any other 2 countries...that was a good one, and the Howitzers that ignored city defense.



1. Boring
If SoDs were boring, 1UPT doesn't exactly make my blood run any faster either. Both still allowed me to left-click and right-click at my leisure. Failure to click quickly enough didn't result in a 'Game Over' screen for both instances.

Maybe there's delight to be had by surrounding that horseman with 12 spearmen, but that's a very rare occasion, doesn't really offset 1UPT's flaws.


2. Unrealistic
1UPT is actually more unrealistic than SoDs. Because of 1UPT, they had to make Archers shoot two tiles away to be worthwhile, same range as a Catapult. To distinguish the Longbowmen of the English, they had to shoot up to 3 tiles, same as a Modern Era Artillery!

A balance would probably be like a limit of 5-6 units per stack, RoM: RAND allowed that, but sadly the AI can't really handle it, a fantastic job by RAND modders nonetheless.

3. Unbalanced
A stack of pure Axemen wouldn't do well against a smaller stack Horse Archers in Civ IV. The thing is Combined Arms is not needed if and only, if the opponent doesn't employ Combined Arms. The AI of Civ IV does utilize Combined Arms, so making a pure stack wouldn't do much for your war effort.

1UPT doesn't break the balance further though.

4. No strategy
Siege Engines in Civ V are only good for one-tile bombardment. Siege Engines in Civ IV would wreak havoc on a stack. You have to choose; multiple smaller stacks, or a large combined stack.

1UPT doesn't actually add strategy either, just tactics. If you faced a line of Horsemen, send Pikemen against them, if they swapped their frontline with Swords, you'd just swap accordingly too. SoD does this tactical-level swapping automatically within a stack. 1UPT just adds more clicking.

5. Incomplete, and simplistic.
Without Withdrawal, units would die after a battle. A bit of a downer, agreed, but it sure sped things up.

Just my 2 cents!
 
Stacks of Doom seem to be the thing some people love to trash, even though 1upt turned out to be worthlessly hopeless. I like them, and a few of us said that Civ 5 should use limited stacks instead of 1upt before 5 was released. The reasons being that AI would not be good with 1upt, among other things. We were jumped then, and it's plain as day 1upt is far worse in every aspect than stacks.

Stacks have proven to be better than 1upt, because these companies just don't have the money to pour into making AI good enough in this type of setup for 1upt to work as well as we would like.

I suppose for those that absolutely see stacks as just 'horrible', also feel games like Alpha Centauri are horrible because of stacks? Didn't think so.

Hopefully in C6, they will use limited stacks and get back to Civ's foundation. Or maybe they (2K) will make it a real-time FPS like we all know they want to.
 
I for one, is glad to see stacks of doom gone, coz I have a tendency to go overboard with them, SoDs everywhere! Even have em protect a city everywhere too.

Homeland defense could easily consist of 100 units with like 10 per metropolis depending on the lay of map that is. And that's the minimum.

Oh I had invading sods Vassalizing enemy countries which in turn produces even more sods protecting me invading my enemies And I proceeded to vassalize even more countries in turn gives me further superior view of world looking for invading sods intend on decapitating me, but I can see them coming far far away already thanks to my vassals protecting me and vice versa.

I prefer 1upt allows far more interesting battles to occur.

With SoDs, its a production number battle.

While with 1upt, eh dunno.

Interesting fights does happen with sods but for me, they're unfortunately too far and few while I've been having alot of interesting fights on civ 5
 
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