One Unit per Tile Debate

I really want to find out who here like the one unit per turn over the stacking mechanic. I'm asking in the Civ V forum because the people in Civ V are going to less biased than the Civ IV since most 1upt hate is here. I personally think the 1upt is the best thing since sliced bread. It just lets you have an enormous army span over a huge area. They also redid the fighting and resource mechanic amazingly. That's just my opinion though. Please place your own opinions. Thank you and vote safely

Yeah 1upt is a big improvement.

1 unit per tile is better in literally every way for me, except with the obvious exception of the AI. AI shouldn't hold back good game development, however, and the way it is now those who want to stack can mod the SP game to stack, which is good. SP game is focused on the AI, so 1upt could be better/worse for different people, but forcing MP to be 1upt is great

Don't get me wrong i adore civ 4 but when you have 20 cavalry all on one square it kind of loses a certain little something. Also, i love hexagons. It seems so futuristic. Imagine if things had hexagonal windows, they would look spacy!


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The Civ5 forum isn't less biased, it's just biased in a different direction. The people browsing the Civ5 forum will by and large like Civ5, and thus by and large like 1 UPT. People who don't like 1 UPT tend to not browse the Civ5 forum (myself included).

The most neutral place would probably be Off Topic, or perhaps All Other Games. Unfortunately, we don't really have a "comparisons between Civ versions" forum, perhaps because it might lead to a lot of flamewars.

And even in a neutral forum, there tends to be a problem of the more recent versions having an inherent advantage simply due to having more active players (both overall, and among the forum). Although Civ4 vs Civ5 is often the exception to that - since last July, the Civ4 forum has almost as many posts as Civ5, indicating nearly equal interest and activity. But in general, if you ask, "Is Civ4 or Civ2 better?", Civ4 is going to win simply because there are a lot more Civ4 players, and you'll have people voting who have never played Civ2 nor read much about it.

Arcaian said:

1 unit per tile is better in literally every way for me, except with the obvious exception of the AI. AI shouldn't hold back good game development, however, and the way it is now those who want to stack can mod the SP game to stack, which is good. SP game is focused on the AI, so 1upt could be better/worse for different people, but forcing MP to be 1upt is great

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Is there a good mod with unit stacking that you can recommend? 1 UPT (and the associated AI weaknesses) is my #1 complaint with Civ5, so I would legitimately be interested in trying out a mod that does away with that. It may even be enough to sway me from not liking Civ5 to enjoying it.

IMO, single player should be the priority in Civ, not multiplayer. I have played some Civ3 and Civ4 multiplayer, and it can be fun. But the really epic, fun games are nearly all single player.

CaterpillarKing said:

Don't get me wrong i adore civ 4 but when you have 20 cavalry all on one square it kind of loses a certain little something. Also, i love hexagons. It seems so futuristic. Imagine if things had hexagonal windows, they would look spacy!


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Hexagons have been in board game war games for decades, though. They're so old they're new again.

Personally, I prefer something like in Paradox games where if you have too many units in one province, you suffer an attrition penalty. You can still combine troops to avoid a micromanagement and traffic jam nightmare, the AI tends to do pretty well, and if you're only using stacks of doom for short periods of time, it's not a problem. But if you try to do a Napoleonic invasion of Russia stack of doom, you're going to suffer huge casualties, and at more modest scales, large countries are usually better off with several mid-sized groups than one stack of doom.

The Realism Invictus mod in Civ4 also has an interesting alternative, where the more troops you have in one tile, the more of a combat penalty all the units get ("disorganization"). Two or three units gives no penalty, but as you add more, you get 5%, 10%, up to around 35% penalty. I haven't played it enough to say if I really prefer it to the regular Civ4 system without the penalties, but it's a palatable alternative to me that 1 UPT isn't.

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I don't love 1upt. While I generally prefer the combat in V to IV, I think it's mostly due to hex tiles and cities having native defenses. Instead of infinite units that somehow occupy a single tile now we have 10-12 unit armies that are the size of a city state, embarking an army looks ridiculous. I get that something needed to be done about the stacks of doom, it just seems to me that typical Civ map doesn't scale well with the concept of 1upt. Also I think it's devalued production to a certain extent, although I (mostly) like how choke points have been implemented.

My preference would be some sort of hybrid where a tile could hold 3 melee units, 2 mounted units, and 1 siege unit for example, or create a "can occupy the same tile" promotion. Either that or units with a medic promotion could occupy the same tile as another and I like the idea of being able to build a field hospital or M.A.S.H. unit where you could stack multiple units for healing.

I'm missing a third option. Given the alternatives 1UPT vs. simple stacking, I obviously vote for 1UPT, because stacking lacks tactic depth. But I would prefer an attrition and supply system that would allow stacking but it would come with penalties...

On balance I prefer 1upt. Battles are much more interesting.

I DO miss all the business of microing transport ships, I used to love those little guys. Archers and tanks swimming across vast oceans just isn't right...

1upt is great but maybe the tiles are too big

The poll question is a bit tricky to answer. On the one hand, I prefer Civ5's implementation of 1upt to Civ4's implementation of stacking, but I think I would prefer a different form of stacking to 1upt.

Personally, while I indeed like 1UPT, I believe it has its drawbacks.

1) As Schaffer himself said, the maps in CiV aren't exactly designed for 1UPT, because they're too small. You see bottlenecks, narrow passages and rough terrain everywhere, making it very tedious to maneuver a big army.

2) The AI cannot fight that well with this system. It was a lot easier for it to handle the stacks which were present in previous Civ games, plus with each iteration, the stack system was becoming better and better, reaching its pinnacle in Civ4.

I'd absolutely love to see armies returning in Civ6. Like the ones we had in Civ3. But only armies. No stacks of doom. Just armies consisting of a "general" kind of unit and another limited number of units. Some wonders (again, like in Civ3) would make that number grow by 1-2 units maximum.

So, by the end of the game, you'd have a maximum of 4-5 units per tile. Pretty much one of each type. That would help solving the above issues.

Maps are too small for 1UPT. It is impossible to hide an army because they take up so much room. Frankly, Civ5 is embarrassing because of this oversight. A whole strategy of planning observation posts to spot incoming armies is absent in this game. There is no real suspense.

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)

JamesCivFan said:

Personally, while I indeed like 1UPT, I believe it has its drawbacks.

1) As Schaffer himself said, the maps in CiV aren't exactly designed for 1UPT, because they're too small. You see bottlenecks, narrow passages and rough terrain everywhere, making it very tedious to maneuver a big army.

2) The AI cannot fight that well with this system. It was a lot easier for it to handle the stacks which were present in previous Civ games, plus with each iteration, the stack system was becoming better and better, reaching its pinnacle in Civ4.

I'd absolutely love to see armies returning in Civ6. Like the ones we had in Civ3. But only armies. No stacks of doom. Just armies consisting of a "general" kind of unit and another limited number of units. Some wonders (again, like in Civ3) would make that number grow by 1-2 units maximum.

So, by the end of the game, you'd have a maximum of 4-5 units per tile. Pretty much one of each type. That would help solving the above issues.

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1) Bottlenecks and rough terrain are part of what strategy is all about and a large part of what makes civ 1upt system more interesting than the old stacking regime.i.e. you actually have to think about what your doing. The only real floor still is the civilian and general/admiral rules where they can't pass through other civs units even if your friendly with them or they are in your open borders?
As for the size, for a standard map i tend to agree and i find 1upt shines much more on large maps which is why i only tend to play huge.

2) There is reason to the argument that because the AI is less effective with 1upt that it is worse than stacking but on the flip side if you don't utilize 1upt then the AI for it will never be written or improved. Civ 5 can be seen as a good first try that they need to build on and if they build on it and improve it then 1upt can easily become a vastly superior model all around.

This question/debate has been crawling back out the closet of late and the only justification i can give for any form of stacking is for behind the lines movement.e.g you can stack an army up and move it to the front line as a group but it would be completely defenseless while stacked and would take x amount of turns to unstack.
In the worst case you could assign a guard unit that will defend for the stack which would be a single designated unit so no more of "the best unit will always attack/defend" and if that single unit is killed the whole stack is wiped out.
So you can simplify moving vast armies while still fighting on a 1upt basis.

Quintillus said:

Is there a good mod with unit stacking that you can recommend? 1 UPT (and the associated AI weaknesses) is my #1 complaint with Civ5, so I would legitimately be interested in trying out a mod that does away with that. It may even be enough to sway me from not liking Civ5 to enjoying it.

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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.

Yeah, but compared to the civ IV forum this seemed LESS biased.



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I hate stacks o' doom. I seriously can't put into words how much I hate them.

CaterpillarKing said:

Yeah, but compared to the civ IV forum this seemed LESS biased.

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You might find it less biased because it aligns with your own bias ("1UPT is the best thing since sliced bread")!

Personally, I like the concept, but feel it ended up lacking in implementation. Personally, I'd probably gone with some "toggleable soft stacking":

Units can be "folded up". While folded up, they stack, gain one extra movement, but they're at 1/3 strength (and losing a battle in a tile destroys all units in that tile). That would preserve the tactical gameplay I quite like, but would solve the pile-up problem.

It also means there's an interesting factor to guerilla combat: if you can cut the supply lines, you can hamper war efforts - or force the enemy to run their units "on guard" all the time, slowing down reinforcements.

The AI would make a huge mess out of this, though - it would either lose a lot of undeployed units or just crawl over the map with fully deployed units all the time (see naval combat...).

1UPT is probably the greatest feature in Civilization yet. I dislike the InfiniteUPT. But the only thing that sucks about the 1UPT is that the AI isn't good at it.

I like the 1upt mechanic.

That said, I think it would be nice to be able to stack Workers, to enable them to complete improvements faster (as in CivIII; I never played CivIV).