One Unit per Tile Debate

danaphanous said:

I'm happy with 1 UPT for military. Any smaller hexes, or any concessions on stacking would really break the idea and I have enjoyed the tactical side and the look of armies quite a bit more since 1 UPT.

However, I think civilian units should stack. There is no reason for them not to stack and it is super annoying when I can't even buy a missionary in my city because a general is there or vice versa. Also, automated workers are forever less efficient because they can now get in each other's way as they're plotting their courses. I also miss being able to double production speed by doubling workers. I do not think this is OP because it requires you to sacrifice building elsewhere, it just allows you to rush hooking up certain tiles in particular which is a realistic thing for a civ game. Soviets did it all the time in real history. this 1 UPT for workers is like watching government road crews. Takes 'em 3 years to finish the simplest things.

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Can't vote, neither option is good.

1upt is bad at the scale involved and terrible for the AI. Both of these are fatal.

Limited stacking would have been much better. Unlike earlier claims, I think general limits based on the army's ability to *feed itself* would be appropriate. So you could support more stacked units on a wheat farm than you could on a mined hill.

For limited durations, there should be limits on deployable units per tile to fight, but that number should *increase* over time/tech.

Of course, I would also have liked to see strategic resources handled in an input-output fashion than a 'having this mine means you have X always on units'. Ie, the iron mine produces 2 iron per turn, and a swordsman consumes n iron from your accumulated total. Then more recent units should require a combination of resources - like the tank requires so much iron to build, and 1 unit of oil per turn it is moved, or something.

IMHO 1UPT is the best for the battle field. I mean when units are out of an enemy city, it's very realistic that you have to put your ranged units behind enemy lines, then infantry units on the front etc and naval units support etc..AS a tactic system it's as close it can get to reality.

BUT it sucks big time when it comes to moving the units and workers.

If I were the developer, I would implement 1 UPT when attacking or defending, but would implement stacking when moving.

It's the least I can say annoying to have to tell each and every single unit out of eg 20 units where to go..it takes time and energy out of the fun stuff...also if I were the developer, I wouldnt cancel unit route automation before they reach 1 turn from destination. It's seriously disturbing to get the route cancelled message just because an "enemy" worker stood on your destination tile for 1 turn while you're 20 turns away!!!

As it is, my vote is on "stacking". If I could, I'd vote for "limited stacking".
I don't want doomstacks, but things like one civil unit per civ per tile instead of one civil unit per tile or one military unit per civ during peace time could make sense.

1UPT is a decent idea, but it doesn't work well on the current scope of the game.
If the maps where bigger and there was more space between cities with more room to maneuver (like in the ACW scenario, for example), it would be fine.

As it is, it is an awkward mechanic that turns war into a big boring no-no for me. But that isn't terrible, because I am a peaceful player anyway.

Howitzer said:

IMHO 1UPT is the best ... it's very realistic that you have to put your ranged units behind enemy lines, then infantry units on the front ... it's as close it can get to reality.

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I disagree. Squares/hexes in Civ games represent a huge amount of space. IRL you don't have an army of all archers situated 5 or 10 miles behind your army of spearmen; both groups form up together. Yes the archers are behind the spears, but they're both on the same battlefield. Civ4 was extremely elegant in portraying this. Each square was a battlefield. You want to try to ride down my army with your horsemen? The archers are going to get in a first strike, then the spears will do the bulk of defending. Where Civ4 went wrong was allowing that combined force to turn into an infinite stack of doom.

Limited stacking, like 1 unit-type per tile, or the creation of armies a la Civ3, would really be the best of both worlds, and most realistic and tactically interesting.

Although the more I think about it, the more I realize this only really applies to the combination of archery/machine gun/bazooka units with melee/infantry units. Cavalry are more for scouting and flanking, and wouldn't normally have such archery support; and artillery are geared toward ranged (I should say truly ranged) attacks. So, maybe just eliminate archery units altogether, and instead have special unlock able promotions for melee and infantry units...?

1UPT was an interesting design experiment gone horribly wrong as it unbalanced a whole range of other game mechanics, making civ losing nearly half its fan base in the process. Limited UPT would have been a much better choice.

I don't care about the unrealistic portrayal of the battlefield with regards to distance. I kinda just think of the whole region as the battlefield and each match as a microcosm of that larger battle. however, yes, in a real battle you often have a mix of units in one particular area and Civ V has lost this. I'd love to see armies come back for this reason, as the exception to 1 UPT for military.

Another way: I think one unit of each type is a nice compromise limiting stacking drastically. Maybe divide units into classes and only 1 of each class is in a hex. I still think civilian units should stack infinitely though as there are many different classes and they just get in each other's way with the current rules. ******ed automated workers anyone?

for military, just keep the current classifications:

1. melee
2. ranged
3. support (like general, or in water any land unit)

allow 1 UPT for each class, but this would result in armies being tighter as you could have 1 archer with 1 melee. There is a horse class but this is begging for trouble seperating it from melee. Then what do you do with tanks? I think seperating them based on ranged/not is fine and would be a huge improvement. If you attack the hex, instead of the stupid rule about only attacking the top unit, it could instead view the whole hex's defense/attack and damage all units at the same time. Sort of like a pseudo-army. If ppl don't like this just damaging the melee is fine too, just trying to be realistic so ranged don't get off scott-free but still have some protection. Then you could finally protect your cannons and such. I think allowing some units to shoot 2 tiles should still be in-game but only advanced units such as: cannon+. Forget letting archers shoot 2 hexes...they should be like gatling and machine guns. It's awful to upgrade to a machine-gun and lose half your range...never made sense and is only necessary because of 1 UPT and archers not having defense otherwise.

AI may still not be as good tactically as the human, but it shouldn't be hard to teach them to protect their ranged units with this setup and should make them a bit more formidable at war.

I like one unit per tile - multiple units just seems so unstrategic. just brute force.

However, maybe something like 3 units per tile is workable also, with a bonus if they are combined arms - one air, one ground, one ranged.

Howitzer said:

IMHO 1UPT is the best for the battle field. I mean when units are out of an enemy city, it's very realistic that you have to put your ranged units behind enemy lines, then infantry units on the front etc and naval units support etc..AS a tactic system it's as close it can get to reality.

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It's not realistic if you think how big one tile in reality is.There is an army of infantry without any ranged soldiers and then behind them, far away there is an army with only ranged soldiers that can throw arrows hundreds or thousands of kilometre.Armies are not that homogen.The point that Infantry is infront of ranged units can be realized on one single tile.When attacked the Infantry gets damaged and the ranged unit can make first strikes before the enemy infantry arrives infront of your infantry.Maybe it seems realistic to you because it looks better...

I agree that, if you think about the scale, 1UPT is not particularly realistic. OTOH in terms of game play, 1UPT is fantastic. I feel like 1UPT makes the game more immersive, not less.

Many board games have 1UPT, and some acknowledge the arbitrary (and provide some rationalization), and some ignore it. I don’t find Civ5 particularly exceptional in this regard. The units and combat are an abstraction in any case. I do know that I am enjoying V much more than I did IV or III, and I attribute much of that to the hexes and 1UPT.

What I used to like abou the stacks instead of the 1UPT is the flank attack that cavalry or other mounted units were able to make on stacks of seige units. Victorious cavalries would play the sound of victory many times during a flank attack when many seige units in a stack received damage. As for the 1UPT, seige units become more powerful during the later ages since cities no longer reach them. Seige units are known to cause major damage to cities.

Bad Wolf said:

I way prefer 1UPT, but I wish it were implemented better. They've certainly made improvements, like allowing a civilian and a military unit to occupy the same tile

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I've not experienced this and I have both expansion packs - how do you turn this on?

I don't want to go back to SOD's......but I think limited stacking is preferable to 1UPT.

nocho said:

1UPT was an interesting design experiment gone horribly wrong as it unbalanced a whole range of other game mechanics, making civ losing nearly half its fan base in the process. Limited UPT would have been a much better choice.

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This, and stacks are actually great, but I think this forum has had more than enough of discussion on that topic - 1UPT is the chief driver in breaking most of the rest of the game as well

It is, what it is, the game is still interesting enough to have more than enough appeal to newbies, and perhaps appeal to roleplayers (ie people who do not dig into the mechanics too much), which there are a lot out there, given the millions that the game sold again.

However, the game could in theory be made to appeal to both groups of players... but meh, chances for this are super low, and the new space civ does not look to be it either.

nocho said:

1UPT ... making civ losing nearly half its fan base in the process.

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Citation needed.

Gedemon said:

I've nothing against 1UPT by itself, but I really don't like how it's implemented in civ5, with a gameplay both tactical and strategic on a map with a relative small scale...

Thanks Firaxis we have modding, for those interested in trying limited stacking with adzpted rules look for my "Combat & Stacking Overhaul" mod in CFC database or the Mods Components subforum (sorry I can't C/P links from my phone)

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Browd said:

Besides the mod that Gedemon mentions, WHoward has a couple of mods -- 2 units per tile and 5 units per tile:
http://www.picknmixmods.com/main/home/home.html IIRC, they allow units to be on the same tile, but there is no multi-unit command (that is, each unit on a tile still needs to get its own movement and attack orders).

There may be other similar mods in the Steam Workshop.

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Thanks for the links. I'm going to try WHoward's first since it works with vanilla. But knowing that Gedemon's works with BNW is definitely good for the chances that I'll eventually pick BNW up in the future, so I've bookmarked it, too.

CaterpillarKing said:

Well considering most people here have played civ IV but not necessarily vice versa. I will admit civ IV is superior in its homeliness and how many more choices I had as an empire. Pardon me for saying this but civ v almost feels TOO refined. I loved the tiny little bug that made an aqueduct go all the way across Asia for a an oasis. I'm going to stop rambling now. Sorry.

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That aqueduct bug was pretty hilarious at times. I think they eventually patched it, though. Or at least, it's not as common as it used to be.

killmeplease said:

there are much more places for civ5 activity now besides this forum, while for civ4 its quite exclusive

e.g. most civ5 modders ignore civfanatic's mod db

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That's interesting. Is it going towards Steam Workshop? I've tracked the CFC traffic by forum over time, as well as intermittently the 2K Forums Civ5 traffic. CFC still greatly outnumbers 2K, so I'd figured that most mod activity (at least among English speakers) was still CFC, and possibly also Steam Workshop, rather than Steam Workshop and possibly also CFC.

I'm going to post Trip's analysis of how he originally designed Civ5, and his own autopsy of its flaws:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts/404789

Quintillus said:

That's interesting. Is it going towards Steam Workshop? I've tracked the CFC traffic by forum over time, as well as intermittently the 2K Forums Civ5 traffic. CFC still greatly outnumbers 2K, so I'd figured that most mod activity (at least among English speakers) was still CFC, and possibly also Steam Workshop, rather than Steam Workshop and possibly also CFC.

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you can simply compare CFC mod db and steam workshop. there are ~1200 mods in CFC MDB and ~3000 in SW, despite SW for C5 becoming available quite late (roughly a year or two after c5 release iirc).
c5 discussions go on national fansites and social networks communities, while c4 fans are concentrating here as decreasing interest for the game hollows out their 'local' communities

Nick Carpathia said:

I'm going to post Trip's analysis of how he originally designed Civ5, and his own autopsy of its flaws:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts/404789

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That's actually a very good analysis, and kudos to him for looking at it from a pretty objective standpoint. It's definitely promising for At the Gates that he sees both the benefits and the flaws of the design of Civ5. There isn't a single major issue I have with Civ5 that isn't addressed there, including the two major ones of the tactical instead of strategic focus (which includes 1 UPT), and the "insurmountable wall to be frustrated by" of the expansion penalties. So, I do plan to check out At the Gates when it becomes available, since it sounds like it really will be a new game.

killmeplease said:

you can simply compare CFC mod db and steam workshop. there are ~1200 mods in CFC MDB and ~3000 in SW, despite SW for C5 becoming available quite late (roughly a year or two after c5 release iirc).
c5 discussions go on national fansites and social networks communities, while c4 fans are concentrating here as decreasing interest for the game hollows out their 'local' communities

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Huh. It kind of makes you wonder what the future holds for third-party fansites. I had noticed that Civ4 and Civ5 are neck-and-neck in terms of traffic at CFC in the past year or so, but it sounds like a Civ5 exodus to Steam may be more responsible for that than I'd realized.

I'm sorry, but in all the games I've played wiht multi units per stack, the human player ALWAYS can sneak in the stack of doom to cut of the head of the AI.

1UPT forces the human player to maneuver more and get advantage.


Maybe 3 per stack, or even two to allieviate the problems of moving units around. But returning to more than 3 would only bring the disadvantages of the stack of death again.