Stack of Doom"(calculated example)

I'd assume that civzombie made a valid statement in posting #13.

We already know about the emphasis on combined arms. THIS already makes for stacks, that hardly can be disputed anymore.
Under the assumption that an artillery type unit might damage 6 units (just to make the example easier to understand), ANY stack size below 6 units would be counterproductive, as just one unit could damage the whole stack. As soon as you have a stack of 7, at least one unit will be left unharmed. This seems to be a clear argument to have bigger stacks.

Now, to all those who are currently thinking of having more, smaller stacks: here you will face the problem of coordination in matters of time and space. Look at this example, where we take into consideration that we need a certain combination of arms to provide the best defense for any possible kind of attack (this is due to the R/P/S concept):

. . . . .
. . D . .
1 2 3 4 5
x x x x x

with:

. = just an unoccupied tile
D = a given defense position
1-5 = "mini" stacks
x = tiles needed to be accessable as otherwise you wouldn't have been able to deploy 1-5 to the given positions. (If one would say that 1 - 5 could have been using just one of the x's before, this at first would mean that you would have had a SoD at that time and secondly, that you would have exposed that SoD to enemy artillery fire, which was called to be a bad thing for the SoD-concept)

Now, if D doesn't mark a town (which we assume to have to be hold), the defender might easily jump on stacks 2 or 4 with a high probability of killing them. He then would be exposed only to the fire of the two adjacent mini stacks 1 and 3 or 3 and 5.
The bigger the stack of D is, the more likely it is not only to kill stacks 2 or 4, but to survive the counter attack of (1,3) or (3,5).
Again, size matters.

Even under the assumption that D marks a town to be hold (thus no preventive attack of D to 2 or 4), it will be clearly advantageous for D to have a big stack (with many arties), as this will allow to "redline" any single mini stack and to take it out with just a few fast moving counter attackers. This would lead to the complete loss of one of those mini stacks, without reducing the strength of the defender at position D too much.

The attacker on the other side will only be able to protect his units in the best way if he has them combined into a big stack - SoD.

After that, all comes down to a WW1 like artillery duel. The bigger gun will survive.

@frekk:
Sorry, I don't agree on your assumption.
As it seems to be the case that lower cities will be needed (maybe even "used") in Civ4, there will be more concentration on those fewer cities.
Why roam the whole landscape with small groups of units (aka stacks), if it will serve you better to go and catch one of those fewer cities?

Ah, but you're only looking at it in one town. For the moment we must assume that both powers possess equal amounts of force, because no one can dispute that numerical superiority is an advantage.

So Nation A advances a "big stack" against a single town. What happens? Obviously, Nation B takes massive advantage of this fact and counters by advancing across a wide front with small stacks of variable units. Garrisons will have been stripped of both quantity and variety to make the big stack. So the attacker takes one town, and the erstwhile defender is penetrating his heartland in the meantime, taking perhaps dozens of towns. The big stack will be forced to disperse simple to provide the variety of units in garrisons that would be necessary to protect against this advance ... if it can make it back in time. In no way will it be able to keep up with the pace of the dispersed force in taking ground.

Stacks are certainly in, I don't imagine you'll be able to hold any position without at least 3 or 4 different units, but if you each have 10 cities on your border and 100 units available, assembling 60 units for a big stack simply means he will advance on 5 of your cities with 10 stacks of 6, easily enough to overpower your garrisons. You'll get one, he'll get 5 and then he'll be in behind your border defences. The nature of needing variety in your units has powerful strategic consequences, chiefly that fewer numbers will be needed to make a succesful drive against an already weak area. The big stack depends, for its existance, on the strength of defence elsewhere, that the enemy cannot make a broad retaliation, but in Civ4, it will be easily possible to do just that.

Why roam the whole landscape with small groups of units (aka stacks), if it will serve you better to go and catch one of those fewer cities?

Whether there are fewer cities or not doesn't matter ... if you're taking 5 to his 1, it will be even more devastating with fewer cities. The big stack won't be necessary to take a town because the attacker can converge on any given location (including a town), wear down the amount of variety in that location, and then attack with a unit against which the defender no longer has any countering unit. It won't be possible to have a big stack everywhere.

The essential thing here is that the nature of units being specialized against other units means that it will no longer be possible to render cities as well-protected as they can be currently. That forces you to spread your forces around more, and it also means that there's no need for the big stack. The key will be being able to have superior variety in multiple locations.

warpstorm said:

But for warmongers like myself, war is necessary shortly after meeting someone weaker than me.

Click to expand...

I think that they're trying hard to make civ IV possible to play and be victorios in many different ways. So it will most likely be possible to be a warmonger! I hope atleast.

@Frekk:
Unfortunately, I am about to leave for an abroad assignment, so there is too less time to reply in detail. Please read the statements concerning the stacks of doom in the other threads to see that small stacks might become an easy prey for a defender, well positioned.

From reading some of these posts, I am still left with an impression that people are stuck in the mindset of Civ3 bombardment units. Yet from what we are hearing, siege weapons won't stand off bombarding their enemies, they actually have to get into the fray-which puts them at risk of getting trashed. Also, they say up to 6 units will be potentially hurt by collateral damage, so it doesn't follow that you will always need vast stacks of units to beat a stack with artillery in it. However, it is true that mixed groups of 8-10 units will be the go (probably not much larger-or smaller-due to the risk of getting lots of your units damaged by a concerted artillery attack). Note, though, that I do not define this as a 'Stack of Doom'. I consider stacks of doom to be 20-30 of primarily offensive units, with some siege and defensive units for good measure. It is this tactic which I think is well and truly 'dead and buried' in civ 4.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

"Yet from what we are hearing, siege weapons won't stand off bombarding their enemies, they actually have to get into the fray-which puts them at risk of getting trashed."

Hi Aussi,

We did read somewhere that artillery will be treated as "normal" units but I still believe they will be able to "stand off bombarding their enemies" most of the time. I don't think they will normally get trashed attacking, but perhaps only if there is an artillery in the defending stack.

I come to that conclusion b/c of this quote from the information page:
"Units will only be able to attack other units they can reach. An example is that a Pikeman cannot attack a fighter, such as the F-15."
I think the only thing that would possibly be able to "reach" an artillery attacking a stack is another artillery.

I have an easier solution to the "stack of doom" problem: each tile can only accomodate 8 units

Whereagles,

That is a much more elegant solution than the collatoral damage rules

Seriously, I like it.

Stacking limits is one of the things that wargames have been doing for decades to prevent the SOD.

Good point Warpstorm. In Warlords, stacks were limited to 8. I imagine that had they not been limited, that game would have been terrible. I can just imagine the terror a stack of 500 peasants boosted by some good heros would have caused

whereagles said:

I have an easier solution to the "stack of doom" problem: each tile can only accomodate 8 units

Click to expand...

What about cities? And workers?

warpstorm said:

But for warmongers like myself, war is necessary shortly after meeting someone weaker than me.

Click to expand...

Hopefully the game makes it better for a balance of building and warmongering.

warpstorm said:

Stacking limits is one of the things that wargames have been doing for decades to prevent the SOD.

Click to expand...

As a programmer, I would expect a mechanism like that to bother you. It certainly bothers me. I would prefer something that's more of a nudge than a shove.

Maybe having more units on a tile increases the odds that a random unit will get hit. i.e., if you have 1 unit on a tile, an artillery unit has a 1/3 chance of hitting it. If you have 2, the chance of the artillery hitting one unit increases to 5/9. If you have 3, the chance goes up to 19/27, 4 -> 65/81, etc. The chance of any particular unit getting it is 1/3 = 0.3333, 5/18 = ~0.27777, 19/81 = ~0.23, and 65/324 = ~0.2 respectively, so each individual unit is less likely to get hit, but the overall stack is more likely to suffer damage. Numbers are, as always, arbitrary, but hopefully serve to illustrate the point.

Another option would be to make it cost some fraction of a move point to move onto a tile holding another unit, as keeping the formations separate becomes harder as the area becomes more crowded. The more crowded it is, the harder it is to move onto the tile. I like that one less.

warpstorm said:

Stacking limits is one of the things that wargames have been doing for decades to prevent the SOD.

Click to expand...

Yeah. People thought the earth was flat for a while, too. (It's possible that the established beliefs and methods are not up to snuff, even if they have been in place for a long time.)

I've played wargames with stack limits. You get nonsense such as a single city IMPOSSIBLE to defend, because that city is limited to 8 units, while EACH tile surrounding it can hold 8 attackers. If you then let cities hold 24 units, then on terrain where there are fewer tiles -- perhaps say two tiles open on approach, the rest cut off by water -- then you get a city that cannot ever be beaten before reinforcements arrive. Either way, it's nothing but a complicated and leaky mess.


The last empire-genre game to try the ill-fated stack limits concept was Master of Orion III. Result? THE PLAYER CANNOT BE DEFEATED. Simply employ the strongest "stack-limit-oriented" strategies and the MOO3 AI cannot -ever- take you down, because it can never amass a force that can beat your best stack. You can make your individual ship designs stronger than the AI default designs, and then your uber stacks are unbeatable! Park them in the chokes and the AI cannot ever penetrate. (A game that you cannot lose ceases to be a game at all.)

Yet if the stack limit rules are in there, you HAVE TO exploit them. Otherwise they will be exploited against you.

Please note the commercial fate of MOO3. I doubt Firaxis wants to follow that example.


Here's hoping they can come up with something considerably better than stack limits for Civ4.


- Sirian

Yet if the stack limit rules are in there, you HAVE TO exploit them. Otherwise they will be exploited against you.

Click to expand...

Very true, very true.

Commander Bello said:

I'd assume that civzombie made a valid statement in posting #13.

We already know about the emphasis on combined arms. THIS already makes for stacks, that hardly can be disputed anymore.
Under the assumption that an artillery type unit might damage 6 units (just to make the example easier to understand), ANY stack size below 6 units would be counterproductive, as just one unit could damage the whole stack. As soon as you have a stack of 7, at least one unit will be left unharmed. This seems to be a clear argument to have bigger stacks.

Now, to all those who are currently thinking of having more, smaller stacks: here you will face the problem of coordination in matters of time and space. Look at this example, where we take into consideration that we need a certain combination of arms to provide the best defense for any possible kind of attack (this is due to the R/P/S concept):

. . . . .
. . D . .
1 2 3 4 5
x x x x x

with:

. = just an unoccupied tile
D = a given defense position
1-5 = "mini" stacks
x = tiles needed to be accessable as otherwise you wouldn't have been able to deploy 1-5 to the given positions. (If one would say that 1 - 5 could have been using just one of the x's before, this at first would mean that you would have had a SoD at that time and secondly, that you would have exposed that SoD to enemy artillery fire, which was called to be a bad thing for the SoD-concept)

Now, if D doesn't mark a town (which we assume to have to be hold), the defender might easily jump on stacks 2 or 4 with a high probability of killing them. He then would be exposed only to the fire of the two adjacent mini stacks 1 and 3 or 3 and 5.
The bigger the stack of D is, the more likely it is not only to kill stacks 2 or 4, but to survive the counter attack of (1,3) or (3,5).
Again, size matters.

Even under the assumption that D marks a town to be hold (thus no preventive attack of D to 2 or 4), it will be clearly advantageous for D to have a big stack (with many arties), as this will allow to "redline" any single mini stack and to take it out with just a few fast moving counter attackers. This would lead to the complete loss of one of those mini stacks, without reducing the strength of the defender at position D too much.

The attacker on the other side will only be able to protect his units in the best way if he has them combined into a big stack - SoD.

After that, all comes down to a WW1 like artillery duel. The bigger gun will survive.

Click to expand...

If you have more than 6 units in a tile, up to 6 units will be damaged with each strike.

If you have less than six units in a tile, up to only that number of units will be damaged per strike, which would be less than 6, and preferable.

With a stack of 30, you do not have 24 units that are more safe, you have some smaller number of units that are LESS safe with each strike.

"If you have more than 6 units in a tile, up to 6 units will be damaged with each strike.

If you have less than six units in a tile, up to only that number of units will be damaged per strike, which would be less than 6, and preferable."


You have to look at the big picture - one that Commander Bello clearly understands judging by his post. Combined arms and troop specialization will present NEW advantages to big stacks that will generally offset any new disadvantages. Maybe Commander Bello will explain it again to you in a more simple example. Try reading my post 13 too.

There are a few issues people just aren't comprehending here with the big stack. First, you see the big stack coming. Thus, it is only a matter of noting its composition and assembling the appropriate units to defeat it. This is made SO much simpler by the fact its in one location and necessarily moves slowly - as slow as the slowest unit, if it's to be kept together. Not to mention the ability to converge artillery on it, hit the whole thing with multiple bombardments in a single round, and then wipe it out.

Stacks will be the key to success, but stacks of limited size, made up of good combinations. In a sense the SoD will still be around because the most dangerous force will be one comprising a group of medium sized stacks packed closely together. The problem with the stack that people just aren't seeing is that it gives away initiative, once you've put it forward it's there and the enemy can tailor his response to suit its composition, and maneuver so that he can converge on it with appropriate units and wipe it out all in one round. Smaller stacks will also be vulnerable to enemy response, of course, but the problem is it will be very difficult to get them all in a single round without brilliant maneuvering. People just aren't seeing this aspect of the r/p/s, that once you advance into enemy territory you've played your cards and the enemy can adjust his hand to suit making possible a single, one-round attack geared against the specific composition of your big stack. It doesn't matter how you try to rationalize things here - once the defender sees the stack coming, the ball is in his court as to how to respond. The stack is essentially a defensive arrangement whose composition is static which is fine if you have a single kind of uber-defence unit, but with an r/p/s system the defender sees your stack, arranges his forces (possibly losing a city to buy time), and in just a single round hits it first with artillery, notes which class of unit is weakened the most, and strikes with an appropriate combination of units, and given numerical equality, he's likely to wipe it out with very few losses. The same number of units spread over 5 or 6 squares and he won't be able to hit it all simply because of movement limitations .... you'll lose some of the force, but then be able to respond in kind with the same advantage of initiative.

Look like fairly reasonable remarks, frekk. Plus, if I remember correctly, one new possible strategy to take a city would be to (partially) surround it, so that citizens become unhappy, and money-wise pressuring the defender to surrender it. This looks like another, perhaps small argument, that finding an intellingent balance between stacking and spreading the forces may be the happy medium.

I don't know, and lets' just wait until we effectively see and have played that combat system. It does feel much, much more dynamic to me though than what is mirrored in most previous posts here.

Kind regards,
Jaca