1UPT vs UPT - yet another suggestion

I've always been a supporter of the ∞UPT.
Yes, I'd like 1UPT, it's quite fun, but it ends up to be a total mess when the "carpet of doom" appears, and the AI is totally ineffective to handle it.
On the other side, ∞UPT is very odd and unlikely, and tends to form unstoppable armies.
Hence, the search for an alternative solution, a half-way. Something that recalls the old Civ1 mechanics (when a losing
defending stack is totally destroyed if the defending unit loses), but not that extreme. And also adding a bit of Civ5's.

This is my "vision". I'm going to implement it in a Civ4 mod, and then I'll see how it actually works.

Basically, the ∞UPT rule is still alive.
However, when a defending unit loses a battle, the ENTIRE stack suffers damage (similar to collateral damage for the entire stack),
and, after some battles, it might end with the units in the stack (or even the entire stack) being destroyed (similar to CIV1, but just extends to
several battles instead of a single one, and not necessarily for the entire stack).
This does NOT apply to cities/fortresses (see below: city garrison).

Also:
Defending stacks: a fully prepared (fortified) stack is able to deploy its best defender to counter an attack (as it happens now).

This would cause invading stacks to be smaller, more spreaded, and easier to counter.
And so, also city attacks risk to become quite harder.
Therefore, let's take a little bit of Civ5 rules: the concept of "city garrison", but not just 1 unit, let's widen it up a bit.

City garrisons: city defense works the same as Civ4 (so, no extra collateral damage for every unit, and always the best defender fights).

Rebalancement: with this new rule, it's also needed to rebalance existing collateral damage from siege, and flank attacks, that otherwise would risk to become too weak.

ViterboKnight said:

an unprepared (non-fortified or partially fortified) stack might need to send a random defender to counter an attack (there's a % to send the best defender or a random one).
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That'd make the actual gameplay confusing - allowing the best defender to fight all the time would provide a lot more clarity (and would be less of a pain to teach the AI on fortifying all/some units in stack in different situations).

I'm trying to implement and test one solution after the other!!

My starting point is still Civ4: I want to see if there is any way that Stack of Dooms can be made playable and manageable.

I tried with the solution described in the original post, it was working for the human player, but I stucked with the AI: write code to make AI handle "city garrisons" and split city attack armies into substacks revealed to be way more difficult than I expected, so I quitted (for the moment).

Now I'm trying to a simpler and faster solution. Here it is.
The main concept is: stacks are still there, but now combats between stacks are quicker. I'm searching a way to allow massive damage to a stack, without making siege and collateral too powerful. I want that huge stacks can quickly damage theirselves.

1st step: siege units can inflict collateral damage to a larger number of units (eg. 20 or 30), ideally most all the units in the attacked stack.

2nd step: siege units can easily be countered by flank attacks. Here too, the number of units affected by flank attacks is increased (20 or 30).

3rd step: to make flank attacks even more effective: "Flanking" promotions allow mounted units to perform flank attacks even if they don't survive a fight, so chance to damage siege units is greatly increased.

4th step: to avoid to make mounted units too powerful: flank attacks can be blocked by some defending units (spears, pikes, rifles) (20% chance to block), and the Formation promotion increases the chance to 30% (for those units only).


So, this is the goal I want to reach: stacks can be easily massively damaged by sieges, so siege units are more powerful, but also more easy to counter with flank attacks. Mounted units can easily massively damage siege units with flank attacks, but they also have a chance to be blocked by countering units (eg. spears).


AI is easy to manage: apart of some flavor to manage the new promotion effects, the main change is that, if a mounted unit can attack a stack with flankable siege units, it is more likely to attack, even if the battle chances are low.

Now I'll see how this new change works.

Your concept with flanking promotion, counter flanking promotion, etc. sounds to complicated to me ... There are several active threads discussing 1upt vs. SoD at the moment, e.g. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=542893

I posted my ideas recently :

To avoid SoD, apply a Stacking Penalty, e.g. Stacks with 1-10 units have no penalty, 11-20 units get an increasing combat-penalty up to 50% and stacks with 20 or more units stay at 50% Combat Efficiency. (In peacetime you might have unlimited stacking or a higher absolute limit.)

The usefullness of stacks in combat can be reduced even more by applying a flanking bonus, e.g. :
- Give the attacker +20% combat-strength for every tile adjacent to the target tile which is occupied by own units (max +100% for full encirclement).
- Give the defender +20% combat-strength for every tile adjacent to the attacker's tile which is occupied by own units (max +100% for full encirclement).

To optimize the combat bonus, the stacks will have to split to form realistic working frontlines, otherwise they are soon encircled and defeated.

If you want more realism, allow strong attacks to push back the defending stack ... by this way you can concentrate enemy units in a small encircled area with negative combat modifier (stacking penalty, encirclement) and annihilate them ...

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Another idea :
If you want the stacks to die faster, you can do the following : If a defender is killed and there is some Attacker-Damage left over (Overkill-Damage), apply it to the stack. (Example : Attacker deals 100 damage but defender is already killed by 50 damage, apply the left over 50 damage to the defending stack.)

What about one unit per edge? That would greatly increase the total capacity of the map, while still putting a logical limit on how many units are on one tile. It would also give fast/mounted units the ability to actually flank and target a specific unit in a "stack" instead of arbitrarily damaging them like in Civ4. Add in the ability to garrison more than one unit in a city, and you've pretty much solved the capacity problem while still keeping the tactical nature of 1UPT.