Just made the jump to Civ 5: Impressions

Since the "Halloween Patch", and its warmonger nerf, early war is easier; I took out a 1-city Babylon, digested it, and am now polishing off Rome, whose capital, Cuzco, is Rome's last city of note (5 pop); then I'll eat up Ravenna (1 pop),to put Rome out of his misery; in Middle Age .

With 7 cities to reboot, the soon former Roman provinces will take time to bring up to economic speed, yet these conquests give me a secure swath of the map, for needed internal TR's .

This gives me time to build the Happy/Cultural buildings to set up for my next target, while putting defenses into place .
 
Anyway, do people think the problem is 1UPT itself, or that the AI isn't smart enough to handle 1UPT? (compared to stacking) That's an important distinction.

From my experiments, it's neither.

The fail in Shafer's design was not the decision of 1UPT itself. It is surprising how he even fails to understand his own fail in the infamous article he wrote when trying to promote his new "self" for his new game. The core problem is that when implementing 1UPT, he failed to complement the decision with its fundamental companion:

Maneuver room! :rolleyes:

THAT is what is lacking in Civ5's daring experiment. If you do not believe me, just modify one variable, ONE (MIN_CITY_RANGE), to make more "inter-city" room; increase it to 5 (default is 3), and you will see that even this AI that we so harshly criticize (with justification) starts to shine. Try it.

What 1UPT needs to work (and not only for the AI, even for us humans) is lots of space. The 1UPT decision should have been strictly tied to a drastic change of the old city-centric model of the franchise. 1UPT cannot, and will not, work when the center of everything in the map is the city (and worse, tightly spaced cities). Granted, we cannot part with cities in Civ, they still have a role to play as local centers of power, but production, resource gathering and even population should be dispersed in "province-like" areas, where one city is the "concentrator" and defines control of the area.

To make it graphic, think the strategy map of Napoleon: Total War. I am not talking about real time, detailed battles here: I am talking about the main map. The city was the center of power, and defined control of the local area (the province in that game), but resources, production and even some buildings were scattered around the province. This provided with two huge benefits: 1) Maneuver room, and 2) an important strategic layer of gameplay.

1) is obviously needed both for human enjoyment and for AI's performance. 2) adds a layer of strategy not seen yet in Civ: you can use warfare not necessarily to take control of the entire province, but also to disrupt the enemy's economy, production and even progress (scientific buildings were also outside the city, as academies are in civ5).

I can only hope that FXS learns the lessons from Shafer's biggest mistake, and from other good examples to emulate, and applies them to Civ 6. To be honest, I don't want 1UPT gone, as it can add much more enjoyment if correctly implemented. I want a 1UPT model that is complete, and includes its main, biggest complement:

Maneuver room!
 
From my experiments, it's neither.

The fail in Shafer's design was not the decision of 1UPT itself. It is surprising how he even fails to understand his own fail in the infamous article he wrote when trying to promote his new "self" for his new game. The core problem is that when implementing 1UPT, he failed to complement the decision with its fundamental companion:

Maneuver room! :rolleyes:

THAT is what is lacking in Civ5's daring experiment. If you do not believe me, just modify one variable, ONE (MIN_CITY_RANGE), to make more "inter-city" room; increase it to 5 (default is 3), and you will see that even this AI that we so harshly criticize (with justification) starts to shine. Try it.

What 1UPT needs to work (and not only for the AI, even for us humans) is lots of space. The 1UPT decision should have been strictly tied to a drastic change of the old city-centric model of the franchise. 1UPT cannot, and will not, work when the center of everything in the map is the city (and worse, tightly spaced cities). Granted, we cannot part with cities in Civ, they still have a role to play as local centers of power, but production, resource gathering and even population should be dispersed in "province-like" areas, where one city is the "concentrator" and defines control of the area.

To make it graphic, think the strategy map of Napoleon: Total War. I am not talking about real time, detailed battles here: I am talking about the main map. The city was the center of power, and defined control of the local area (the province in that game), but resources, production and even some buildings were scattered around the province. This provided with two huge benefits: 1) Maneuver room, and 2) an important strategic layer of gameplay.

1) is obviously needed both for human enjoyment and for AI's performance. 2) adds a layer of strategy not seen yet in Civ: you can use warfare not necessarily to take control of the entire province, but also to disrupt the enemy's economy, production and even progress (scientific buildings were also outside the city, as academies are in civ5).

I can only hope that FXS learns the lessons from Shafer's biggest mistake, and from other good examples to emulate, and applies them to Civ 6. To be honest, I don't want 1UPT gone, as it can add much more enjoyment if correctly implemented. I want a 1UPT model that is complete, and includes its main, biggest complement:

Maneuver room!

I believe Jon Shafer addressed that, didn't he?

Speaking of scale, another significant issue with 1UPT was that the maps wasn't really suited for it. The joy of Panzer General was pulling off clever maneuvers and secretly encircling your helpless enemies. Unfortunately, in Civ 5 nasty bottlenecks aren't uncommon and this tempers much of the natural value added by 1UPT. Ultimately, there just wasn't enough room to do the fun part.

Anyway, 1UPT has far reaching implications for the game that affects tile yield, production, science, pacing, etc. It isn't just the combat that is highly inadequate with an AI that can't use it properly. It isn't about range to maneuver as much as a totally failed game design that should be binned before they make Civ VI.
 
I believe Jon Shafer addressed that, didn't he?



Anyway, 1UPT has far reaching implications for the game that affects tile yield, production, science, pacing, etc. It isn't just the combat that is highly inadequate with an AI that can't use it properly. It isn't about range to maneuver as much as a totally failed game design that should be binned before they make Civ VI.

Nope. Some of us "addressed" it here in these very forums much earlier... he then repeated it, in a very short way (as shown by your quote), much later and exactly when it was convenient to do so...

As for the implications you mention, more room == more units == lesser need to nerf production to avoid carpet of doom.

You were advocating for x64 Civ6 in other threads... well, if we had to choose only one reason, and only one, to justify x64, it's this one right here. 64 bits will allow for Immense maps, effectively rendering the limitations for size void. Think something like 15-20 tiles between cities, or more, and land covered with resources, farms, production centers, research centers, spread out within the region controlled by the central city, even suburbs holding some of the population, all that "destroyable" or "pillageable"... now THAT would be 1UPT in its full glory!

Shafer did not address anything; he just repeated, in a very summarized and opportunistic way, what some were already pointing out right here.

The Civ6 team, now they have a real opportunity to address the issue... we shall see.
 
This has been discussed a lot, I really don't think it's room to maneuver as much as the AI's inability to use mass range. Indeed, at least with close city clusters, the AI can group range together.

Other than using 6 bombers at once, the AI can't do anything good with range. The Human can build kill zones, in any direction, and use as many range units as he/she can muster. That's the inequality.
 
Nope. Some of us "addressed" it here in these very forums much earlier... he then repeated it, in a very short way (as shown by your quote), much later and exactly when it was convenient to do so...

As for the implications you mention, more room == more units == lesser need to nerf production to avoid carpet of doom.

You were advocating for x64 Civ6 in other threads... well, if we had to choose only one reason, and only one, to justify x64, it's this one right here. 64 bits will allow for Immense maps, effectively rendering the limitations for size void. Think something like 15-20 tiles between cities, or more, and land covered with resources, farms, production centers, research centers, spread out within the region controlled by the central city, even suburbs holding some of the population, all that "destroyable" or "pillageable"... now THAT would be 1UPT in its full glory!

Shafer did not address anything; he just repeated, in a very summarized and opportunistic way, what some were already pointing out right here.

The Civ6 team, now they have a real opportunity to address the issue... we shall see.

I definitely believe that a 64 bit Civ VI is the way to go. Humungous maps would be a possibility, then. Perhaps that would mitigate some of the problems with 1UPT but I still think it wouldn't work that well. For me personally, I'd rather see 1APT. (1 army per tile)

I do like your passion and enthusiasm, though and hope that the designers of Civ VI share your passion and enthusiasm. :)
 
I think that to solve the 1UPT problem is to go huge maps, and dial down (somewhat) the number of AI's, and/or CS's, for maneuvering room; and disable the Time-VC .

I've only been playing since February, but, to me, it gives the swath needed for the sweep of events desired .
 
Again, people mention the effects 1UPT has on production as being a bad side-effect... why ?

They're a side-effect, a direct consequence of1UPT, but why are they bad ? Is a game inherently better because you can produce more units, what ?
 
Again, people mention the effects 1UPT has on production as being a bad side-effect... why ?

They're a side-effect, a direct consequence of1UPT, but why are they bad ? Is a game inherently better because you can produce more units, what ?

It's boring taking forever to improve a tile with a worker, for one thing. You can't even stack workers to hurry it up, either. :sad:

You can check out Sullla's critique of 1UPT and its many tentacles here:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html
 
In this link she also explains that tall cities can't be too good because of 1UPT... yeah right. Maybe that was true of vanilla, but it certainly doesn't apply now. Here's a quote :

You can't give an incentive to make large, developed cities better because that will just make that late game even faster and more unit-clogged than it is now. You can't make small, undeveloped cities weaker because than the early game will just be excruciatingly slow and boring.

Again, maybe true in vanilla, but obviously completely wrong now.

The way I see it, those changes are a consequence of 1UPT that people don't like because they're a change, if you're used to CIV. But I don't see them as a negative change, I see them as a difference.

You say that it's boring to have a worker take a lot of time to do stuff early on. I'm not sure what I can respond to that except that it's completely subjective. I honestly have a hard time comprehending why it's more boring to have your worker build one plantation in 8 turns that having to build roads on every tile. I guess in one of them you get the feeling of doing stuff because you're clicking ? I don't know, I just see them as none of them being better or worse, just being different.

Yet I see that aspect of 1UPT being brought to this high level of "Oh you don't even realize what horrible things 1UPT is doing to the game" when they're really just bothering you because it's not the same as CIV (or that's what it seems to me anyway).

Basically I understand why people don't like that the AI sucks at combat in CiV. Fine. I can maybe understand that people find 1UPT tedious (though I found stacks tedious too). But this ? This is just complaining that CiV isn't CIV.
 
Basically I understand why people don't like that the AI sucks at combat in CiV. Fine. I can maybe understand that people find 1UPT tedious (though I found stacks tedious too). But this ? This is just complaining that CiV isn't CIV.

You fail to realize that we are far past that now. We are analyzing WHY the AI fails at combat, and how it could be improved. As I said, instead of criticizing the critics, do some experiment (change that one variable, and start a Huge map), and you will see what I mean. Even the current "sucking" AI has a better face with just that change. Imagine what they could do with a map that has cities spaced more in accordance with the 1UPT concept...
 
In this link she also explains that tall cities can't be too good because of 1UPT... yeah right. Maybe that was true of vanilla, but it certainly doesn't apply now. Here's a quote :



Again, maybe true in vanilla, but obviously completely wrong now.

The way I see it, those changes are a consequence of 1UPT that people don't like because they're a change, if you're used to CIV. But I don't see them as a negative change, I see them as a difference.

You say that it's boring to have a worker take a lot of time to do stuff early on. I'm not sure what I can respond to that except that it's completely subjective. I honestly have a hard time comprehending why it's more boring to have your worker build one plantation in 8 turns that having to build roads on every tile. I guess in one of them you get the feeling of doing stuff because you're clicking ? I don't know, I just see them as none of them being better or worse, just being different.

Yet I see that aspect of 1UPT being brought to this high level of "Oh you don't even realize what horrible things 1UPT is doing to the game" when they're really just bothering you because it's not the same as CIV (or that's what it seems to me anyway).

Basically I understand why people don't like that the AI sucks at combat in CiV. Fine. I can maybe understand that people find 1UPT tedious (though I found stacks tedious too). But this ? This is just complaining that CiV isn't CIV.

Nothing has really effectively changed since Vanilla. They've tried to cover up the inherent problems with "freebies" to keep a decent game pace. Most of the stuff introduced is just fluff and busy work. So, IMHO, Sullla's critique does stand the test of time. :)
 
Wow... why are people talking about changing the entire game so that 1 UPT works? Oh, it didn't work, so let's drastically change the tile yields, oh it still didn't work, so let's change the city-focused nature of civ, oh it's still not working, so let's make 64 bit enormous maps where it takes a month or two to finish a game...

No thank you. There are many kinds of games out there. To me, Civ was never about tactical battle management... I play the Total War series when I want that. But guess what, I've clocked in far more hours in Civ than I have in Total War. If you have to change everything else about the game to make some sort of combat simulation fun, please go ahead and do so and make an entirely different game. I'd like the developers to go back to making Civ games, thanks.

Now I've played several games on Civ 5 I think I can comment on the the combat. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, or as Sulla makes it out to be, but basically Civ 5's combat boils down to this:

-the AI doesn't handle it nearly as well as the AI did in Civ 4, which makes the game easier, which I don't like

-I don't like micromanagement in Civ. When I want to micromanage a battle, again, there's Total War, or even Starcraft. I don't like spending my turns moving around dozens and dozens of units.

-As for flavour, I had no problem with my army being represented by stacks. Therefore 1 upt doesn't really offer me anything positive, and comes with some negatives.
 
Wow... why are people talking about changing the entire game so that 1 UPT works? Oh, it didn't work, so let's drastically change the tile yields, oh it still didn't work, so let's change the city-focused nature of civ, oh it's still not working, so let's make 64 bit enormous maps where it takes a month or two to finish a game...

No thank you. There are many kinds of games out there. To me, Civ was never about tactical battle management... I play the Total War series when I want that. But guess what, I've clocked in far more hours in Civ than I have in Total War. If you have to change everything else about the game to make some sort of combat simulation fun, please go ahead and do so and make an entirely different game. I'd like the developers to go back to making Civ games, thanks.

Now I've played several games on Civ 5 I think I can comment on the the combat. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, or as Sulla makes it out to be, but basically Civ 5's combat boils down to this:

-the AI doesn't handle it nearly as well as the AI did in Civ 4, which makes the game easier, which I don't like

-I don't like micromanagement in Civ. When I want to micromanage a battle, again, there's Total War, or even Starcraft. I don't like spending my turns moving around dozens and dozens of units.

-As for flavour, I had no problem with my army being represented by stacks. Therefore 1 upt doesn't really offer me anything positive, and comes with some negatives.

I have been advocating for a 64 bit Civ for many reasons. Chief among those is that you take the shackles off of the designers and allow their creativity to be fully expressed. Not to mention the modding potential is vastly increased. 32 bit is very, very limiting. I personally like to play all kinds of maps from tiny to humongous. I like to have the option of occasionally playing on humungous maps. However, I would never advocate for humongous maps to try to resuscitate the stale, lifeless 1UPT. More hammering of that square peg into that round hole won't accomplish anything. ;)

Anyway, I am not a big fan of micromanagement, either. I hated cleaning up pollution, for example. I see moving all the units one at a time with 1UPT as being tedious micromanagement, as well. It's just busywork that should go the way of pollution and corruption and be relegated to the trash bins of history. :)
 
You fail to realize that we are far past that now. We are analyzing WHY the AI fails at combat, and how it could be improved. As I said, instead of criticizing the critics, do some experiment (change that one variable, and start a Huge map), and you will see what I mean. Even the current "sucking" AI has a better face with just that change. Imagine what they could do with a map that has cities spaced more in accordance with the 1UPT concept...

Sure, your argument on maneuvering room is good and you kinda convinced me that they should do those things for CiVI. I was talking about the production/science side of things.

@Thormodr : Really nothing has changed since CiV Vanilla ? What ?

I mean really, I have no idea how you can read that article and not find it completely outdated. CiV is all about going tall, yet her whole argument is that 1UPT is preventing tall cities to be good (or part of her argument anyway)...
 
In the past I've tried several civ5 games with a minimum city distance of 4.
It gave a good feeling, but it only works for large and huge maps because there will be a lot of illegal spots to settle.
And the problem with bigger maps is turn times. 0-10 seconds is acceptable, 10-20 seconds occasionally,
but 30 seconds or close to 1 minute is a waste of your precious time.
 
In the past I've tried several civ5 games with a minimum city distance of 4.

My early GnK experience made me feel that setting was required. I hated how the AIs cluttered up the maps. A patch did away with that setting, but I did not notice for several many games because the AIs are more restrained now.

It gave a good feeling, but it only works for large and huge maps because there will be a lot of illegal spots to settle.

I disagree, as the minimum spacing requirement worked quite well for me on standard size maps. I can't say that I think it helped the AI fight, but I might try it again just for that.

And the problem with bigger maps is turn times. 0-10 seconds is acceptable, 10-20 seconds occasionally, but 30 seconds or close to 1 minute is a waste of your precious time.

Agreed, I don't find larger than standard maps to be playable.
 
so let's make 64 bit enormous maps where it takes a month or two to finish a game...

No thank you. There are many kinds of games out there. To me, Civ was never about tactical battle management...

Well, a trademark of the franchise used to be the epic feeling that comes with longer, harder to develop games. A month or two to finish a good game of Civ (1-4) used to be the norm, and truly defined the series. A short game of civ is, well, anything but civ... this type of expressions is what generated the whole "casual/dumbed" insult wave. Civ is, by standard, a long and elaborated game, or should be, in any case. If you still want/need to make it faster, they provide faster speeds for that.

You also seem to confuse tactical with operational. Civ has always been an empire builder, with a strategic warfare component. 1UPT made the warfare component operational, not tactical. You still have to imagine each infantry unit as 1 regiment, even more if you like; there is no tactics per se at this level. Total War may be closer to tactical with its per-man representation of units.

There are many ways to reduce micromanagement in 1UPT. Nobody needs to re-invent the wheel here; almost everything in the industry has been invented already. The secret to good design nowadays is to be able to adopt the best elements of other proven games, and combine them successfully so that the result is more than the sum of the parts.

Example: nobody wants to move each unit to the front, one at a time. That we have to do that in Civ5 is not 1UPT's fault, it's the implementation. Say we have Civ6 now with 64 bits and immense maps, ok? Gedankenexperiment... a good design will allow you to move units to the front quickly and easily, as in real life. You will have to have the infrastructure for that (roads, railroad, airbases, etc.), but the system will let you use those assets to do a strategic transfer (ala Advanced Tactics, check that one for good implementation) in order to reduce micro movements of armies... but to engage, as in reality, the units will have to deploy in the front, and then engage. This is just one example of reduced micromanagement that still keeps 1UPT as a possibility.

Don't take me wrong here. I was one of the fiercest critics of Shafer's original design... to the point of almost being banned from here :lol:... but then came Ed Beach & Co and somewhat rescued Shafer's disaster, and I found myself enjoying Civ5 post-vanilla more and more. Even with its flaws, I cannot bring myself to stay at Civ4 anymore, and man I try... and try. I cannot stand the stacks anymore, I cannot stand tech whoring but when I disable Tech Trading the AI is crippled, and on and on... I am a veteran of 1991, so I doubt it's just me. I don't know.

So, what do I do? Keep resisting? Or embrace change and try to propose things that make it better? Perhaps 1UPT deserves a better chance, hopefully from the hand of a designer that knows what he/she is doing. We can only try and propose. Hopefully with good arguments.
 
Well, a trademark of the franchise used to be the epic feeling that comes with longer, harder to develop games. A month or two to finish a good game of Civ (1-4) used to be the norm, and truly defined the series. A short game of civ is, well, anything but civ...
Rise of Nations, a good game, never had that epic feeling, because those games only took 1-2 hours to finish.
 
Nope. Some of us "addressed" it here in these very forums much earlier... he then repeated it, in a very short way (as shown by your quote), much later and exactly when it was convenient to do so...

As for the implications you mention, more room == more units == lesser need to nerf production to avoid carpet of doom.

You were advocating for x64 Civ6 in other threads... well, if we had to choose only one reason, and only one, to justify x64, it's this one right here. 64 bits will allow for Immense maps, effectively rendering the limitations for size void. Think something like 15-20 tiles between cities, or more, and land covered with resources, farms, production centers, research centers, spread out within the region controlled by the central city, even suburbs holding some of the population, all that "destroyable" or "pillageable"... now THAT would be 1UPT in its full glory!

Shafer did not address anything; he just repeated, in a very summarized and opportunistic way, what some were already pointing out right here.

The Civ6 team, now they have a real opportunity to address the issue... we shall see.

I agree with you that one of the biggest problem of 1UPT is room. A way to adress that is to increase the number of tiles like you suggest.

However my preffered way of dealing with it wouldn't to simply increase the number of tiles of the map because like the other poster said it seems to just increase the weight of micromanagement and overall length of the game.

Instead a good solution would be to have economic tiles and units on 2 different scale. Improvements and cities could keep their big scale (macro-tiles) but each tile could be devided in sub tiles (micro-tiles) for military units to move in. This way you increase the room armies can maneuver. You can even add the option to move a whole macro-tile section of units to reduce player hassle to move armies around.

It's also a solution pretty close to the 1 army per tile solution which I also like.
 
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