At the Gates: New turn based strategy game by Jon Shafer at Kickstarter

If you make the hexes much smaller, then what's the point of 1upt? If you're going to have many smaller hexes with one unit in each, why not simplify by just having bigger hexes and putting all of those units in that one hex?
 
If you make the hexes much smaller, then what's the point of 1upt? If you're going to have many smaller hexes with one unit in each, why not simplify by just having bigger hexes and putting all of those units in that one hex?

Because stacks are bad mmmkay

Seriously though, if you want 1upt, which I prefer, then think of each tile both the city area and what a "unit" will physically take up. Try and get some idea of scale. I don't feel that scale in CiV. Cities take up additional tiles than we're used to, they've scaled down the cities on the map to take up an additional ~50% of tiles, but the units don't to me anyway feel the same applies. If you've played HOI2 for instance you may understand my POV. While it's a RTS game, it breaks up a map into regions and to me the scale of each region, while being a map of the entire world, feels right as far as scale. Some "tiles" such as shown in Australia are overly simplified, but I assume that due to lack of historic significance in the WW2 theme which I'm fine with. In the Rome series, you'll see the focus of the European and Nth African theatre, which again is scaled to that particular map and doesn't really have that Australia or small nation part of the map. CiV seems to try and recreate the world map ala HoI2 scale where you have unimportant larger hexes there but it doesn't matter, the focus of the map i.e Europe has been split into really tiny regions, yet feels like by the hex size focuses on the more limited theatre Rome map where every hex is important. I hope that makes sense.

Sure you may want stacks and thus your comment, but I don't. At the moment it feels in-between due to the scaling. 50% isn't really in my mind "much smaller", it's just plain old smaller. If they reduce the hex size (and by that it's a matter of increasing the amount of hexes on a map, thus increasing the scale) all of a sudden Central America is 10 hexes wide instead of 6 or 7 (just an example). This gives more maneuvering for units which will reduce the stacking arguments, allows more cities on the map that don't feel encroaching on neighbouring cities etc etc. Basically the scale of the world feels off to me and I think the hex sizing, compared to the size of the world, is really to blame for that feeling.
 
Seriously though, if you want 1upt, which I prefer

But why do you prefer 1upt with lots of tiny hexes if that just gives the same results as moving stacks around? Is combat with six units all in tiny hexes going to be any different than combat with 6 units in a stack in one larger hex?
 
But why do you prefer 1upt with lots of tiny hexes if that just gives the same results as moving stacks around? Is combat with six units all in tiny hexes going to be any different than combat with 6 units in a stack in one larger hex?

I did edit my post to hopefully explain my position before even noticing your reply, but if that doesn't help, to answer this question, it's about scale. CiV feels like they tried to make each hex worth more by 1upt (equalized with 2 movement points minimum) and by increasing city tile footprint. Almost as if they took the Civ 4 map and broke up each square into 2 or 3. Unfortunately, to me anyway, a single unit taking a whole hex works totally against the scale they made with the city hexes. Part of the issue with 1upt is the sea of units as opposed to the problem of the stack of units. I think the sea of units can be negated with a smaller scale of the war theatre.

Again, it's a comparison with the Paradox games where you can stack 8 or 9 units before supply (since this game uses supply) becomes such a huge negative effect that you don't want to stack that many units due to effectiveness. However when comparing Paradox games, the scale is what really makes the difference. CiV doesn't replicate that scale where you can justify 1upt due to the regions vs city hex sizing. Thus making the map bigger by including more hexes, and stacking vs 1upt becomes less of an issue as you can firstly field a larger army on that part of the map, instead of 3 or 4 hex bottlenecks it's 6 or 7, and thus you can play the battles more tactically with your 1upt units spread across more of a battle line and movements made to counter the enemies movements (archers/arty/cav etc). It's more an impression of scale rather than making some massive change to the dynamics you suggest by going back to stacks.

Edit: The Paradox games seems to be a fair comparison after reading more about the ideas at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts, seems like supply and organization (morale) play a larger part. And I like that.

Edit 2: Jon even mentions what I was going on about anyway here:http://forums.conifergames.com/index.php?topic=13.0.
The reason why this wasn't an issue in Panzer General was that their AI didn't actually need to do anything. It was always on the defensive, and a large part of that game was simply solving the "puzzle" of how to best crack open enemy strongholds. It was plenty sufficient if your opponents simply ordered a single tank to stir up some trouble every so often.

What made Panzer General fun was you blitzkrieg-ing through Europe while your enemies quickly and dramatically fell before your might. However, in a Civ game, the AI has to be capable of launching full-scale invasions, sometimes on different landmasses. Needless to say, we're talking about a challenge on completely different scale.

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.

To address this, I could have done something crazy like added sub-tiles to the existing grid. I really don't think this would have been a good idea though, as the whole point in having a tiles is that everything happens on the same playing field, which makes it very easy to tell what's going on. Once you start muddying the waters of what goes where, you lose that clarity and mechanical chunkiness tiles offer. And at that point, you might as well just get rid of them entirely.
Changing the tile scale to me would have helped, but at least I'm not the only one thinking along these lines.

Edit 3: Remind me next time to actually read up on links before commenting. From the horses mouth, as per the prev link.
So is there a way to make 1UPT really work in a Civ game? Perhaps. The key is the map. Is there enough of room to stash units freely and slide them around each other? If so, then yes, you can do it. For this to be possible, I'd think you would have to increase the maximum map size by at least four times. You'd probably also want to alter the map generation logic to make bottlenecks larger and less common. Of course, making the world that much bigger would introduce a whole new set of challenges!

Edit 3: There was mention of Stability, another reference (imo) to the Paradox games. Not that I mind, I think a meld of the Civ & Paradox styles would be great.
Edit 4: Getting kind of silly with the edits, but I came across this: http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/7681-a-new-strategy-game-for-you-what-is-it/
Kinda agrees with my Paradox feelings of this game (not that I'm complaining). Perhaps disappointing about this thread is the lack of OP's posting since April last year. Jon, don't forget your roots!
 
Presumably Jon can answer this, but was it ever considered to reduce the actual size of each hex given the 1upt and the larger city radius?
I, in fact, already did in the 6th paragraph of the "Combat" section of my article: ;)

To address this, I could have done something crazy like added sub-tiles to the existing grid. I really don't think this would have been a good idea though, as the whole point in having a tiles is that everything happens on the same playing field, which makes it very easy to tell what's going on. Once you start muddying the waters of what goes where, you lose that clarity and mechanical chunkiness tiles offer. And at that point, you might as well just get rid of them entirely.

- Jon
 
I, in fact, already did in the 6th paragraph of the "Combat" section of my article: ;)



- Jon

Thanks for your reply. Yes I did come across that, as my second Edit in the previous post quoted.

Could have had the same effect perhaps by zooming out further and increasing the amount of hexes each size map had. I assume system performance would have been an issue.
 
Honestly, having your armies covering such a ridiculous amount of land was one of the reasons why I have zero interest in buying Civ5. I can see why it was done that way and I don't blame anyone for it, and its still better than the terrible stacks of doom in Civ4, but its just too ridiculous.
 
Thanks for the support everyone! Civ Fanatics has been one of the biggest contributors to our campaign. :) Speaking of which, the Kickstarter ends tomorrow and we're getting close to 100k. If we keep up the current pace we have a real shot at the 125k stretch goal, which adds more map/game setup options and an Earth map.

If you haven't checked out the updates lately, here are the last few I've posted:

Tomorrow morning I'll be putting up a final update outlining what's in store for AtG over the next year and a half. It should be a fun ride!

- Jon
 
Thanks for the update, Jon. Sounds interesting. If you ever need playtesters, let me know!

Testing was available in some of the tiers. Since that is the case, it would be a bad idea to piss of backers who put cold hard cash at those higher tiers to get the testing options, if people were let in for free.
 
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