1 Unit per Tile Rule

I think there are quite a few people on here who need to calm down just a bit. Also I don't understand how anyone could answer this poll at this point in time with any legitimate reason. I say this many because of the following:

1) would I like the one unit per tile move if it meant that wars became more than simply moving an indestructable pile from one tile to another, that it required some thought and planning and made each war seem different and unique? Yes I would and I can't understand how any one wouldn't like that.

2) would I hate the one unit per tile idea if it was build on the old CivIV combat system and every war became execrutiating and endless? Yes I would hate it and probably wouldn't play the game

Do we know anything about the new combat system other than one-unit-per-tile, hex tiles, and ranged bombardment? No. So stop having panic attacks after reading one sentence in an article and making sweeping assumptions. One would assume that the clearly obvious problems you guys are pointing out with One unit per tile have been delt with in some way as they are...well...obvious problems

For now I'm not going to freak out, Firaxis has been at this for a while and with quite a bit of success so I think its okay if we start by believing they aren't going to do anything brazenly stupid.

I'm going to reserve judgment until I play the game but for now I'm thinking it's a good idea. Stacks of Doom were never my cup of tea.

First, I'll say that "one unit per stack" isn't an impossible system. Those of us who've played Panzer General and its progeny have seen the subtle elegance of the system, which has been applied not just to land warfare games, but naval, fantasy and science fiction as well. The combat system is very enjoyable, and if Civ V is based anything like that, I'm sure combat will be very fun.

Second, even in PG you could stack some units, like air and land, out of necessity so I'm sure that some unit types will be able to stack. You'll just have one basic land unit type per hex, so that will only limit the nature of combat over terrain. You could also move through other units, you just couldn't stop in the same hex. So you don't have to worry about micromanaging units. PG had a lot of units and was simplicity itself to play. These are non-issues that I'm sure Firaxis has well in hand.

Third, for those who have problems of scale, on the surface there is a problem and were this a warfare simulation it would concern me too. However, Civ has always used grand abstractions in its mechanics. A single tile will undoubtedly represent much more surface than that required by a single unit. But, accept the abstraction that once units fight, the terrain they're on is more reflective of a tactical battle board, without actually using a separate battle map. In other words, the game is simply abstracting the nature of the terrain during combat, making it relative to the opposing units rather than to the actual geography (I hope I phrased that clearly). It's a stretch, but then so were movement rates in Civ games abstracted quite a bit (e.g., you could only move one square on the map in a many, many years' turn). Civ is no stranger to gross abstraction for the sake of gameplay and for this reason I'm not averse to a technical abstraction in scale for battles. When an archer fires 2 hexes on the map during combat, I'm thinking of it like it's on the tactical "battle board", not on the strategic continental map.

That may or may not be how it's viewed by the developers, but I can wrap my mind around the concept easily enough for Civ, especially if the gameplay is enhanced.

I'm for it. I hate the Stack of Doom.

Yes I would and I can't understand how any one wouldn't like that.

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Well I don't. I for one like the CIV4 system best.

What I liked about civ is that war was a means to an end, not the point of the game.
Wars were a secondary part, like an alternative to settling.

The main part of every war was to have a large industry capable of churning out units to outSOD the other guy. And that worked.

I can't understand how anyone would want to have anything but that.

If the only thing they changed in army build-up and the battle mechanism is 1 unit per tile then this will suck definetly. But after playing Sid's games from Civ I onwards I don't believe they will neglect the effect it has on gameplay.

Remember the drastic changes that Civ4 brought us and how we all fall back on Civ as the 'standard'.

Man, I can't wait till this game comes out so people can stop complaining about mechanics that nobody understands.

Seriously. 1 unit per tile. That's all we know. Sure, it'll change things, but since we know absolutely nothing what so ever about how it will actually work, and whether there will be exceptions to the rule, and whether or not it will be possible to pseudo stack units some other way.... threads like this are ridiculous.

If you consider yourself qualified to rant about mechanics that you cannot possibly understand, then your opinions mean nothing since it is based on nothing beyond your own imagination.

If they do decide to implement the one unit per tile rule I will certainly not be buying this game since I think it is too much of a drastic and unrealistic change to the gameplay compared to the other civ games. I feel as though they are going in the wrong direction with Civ 5, since I think they are trying to make the game more similar to Civ:Revolution rather than other Civ games in the past. In my opinion this would be a disaster because they are trying to cater more and more to dumbed down audiences rather than producing games similar to which they built their success on.

Viper1812 said:

If they do decide to implement the one unit per tile rule I will certainly not be buying this game since I think it is too much of a drastic and unrealistic change to the gameplay compared to the other civ games. I feel as though they are going in the wrong direction with Civ 5, since I think they are trying to make the game more similar to Civ:Revolution rather than other Civ games in the past. In my opinion this would be a disaster because they are trying to cater more and more to dumbed down audiences rather than producing games similar to which they built their success on.

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How is one unit per tile dumbed down? I didn't realize that Stack of Dooming was a particularly taxing mental activity.

PPQ_Purple said:

Well I don't. I for one like the CIV4 system best.

What I liked about civ is that war was a means to an end, not the point of the game.
Wars were a secondary part, like an alternative to settling.

The main part of every war was to have a large industry capable of churning out units to outSOD the other guy. And that worked.

I can't understand how anyone would want to have anything but that.

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Some people like war games.

AlpsStranger said:

How is one unit per tile dumbed down? I didn't realize that Stack of Dooming was a particularly taxing mental activity.

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Well considering a tile is representative of large area in-game, to imply that there are restrictions of one unit per tile is ludicrous. Also, apparently there are rumours that archers and catapults have ranged attacks which means either that they are able to shoot hundreds of kilometres or that the maps are smaller to accommodate this change (more likely to be the latter imho). If this is the case (hopefully not) this indicates to me that smaller maps = games take shorter to play = more casual gamers = a gradual decrease of the complexity of this game.

NB: This is my opinion on the information I have at present. I know discussing about changes which may or may not have made it into the game is pointless but I hope I am proven wrong

I think having only one unit per tile would ruing gameplay and be very unrealistic. A much better option, in my opinion, would be to have the military come from your population. Therefore, this would naturally limit SOD's, since any military unit is a unit that is not producing something for your empire. I liked this feature of Colonization very much.

Chalks said:

Man, I can't wait till this game comes out so people can stop complaining about mechanics that nobody understands.

Seriously. 1 unit per tile. That's all we know. Sure, it'll change things, but since we know absolutely nothing what so ever about how it will actually work, and whether there will be exceptions to the rule, and whether or not it will be possible to pseudo stack units some other way.... threads like this are ridiculous.

If you consider yourself qualified to rant about mechanics that you cannot possibly understand, then your opinions mean nothing since it is based on nothing beyond your own imagination.

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Get used to it. The game is nowhere near ready for release and there is alot of people who have not played Civ 5 (apart from the dev's, who has?) but already know what they like and don't like about it.

Since everyone is mentioning Panzer General, it got me thinking maybe if we have one unit per tile we may also have moment rates similar to PG, with fast units moving many squares and infantry even moving multiple squares per turn. This would also help cancel out the "scale" issue of it taking units hundreds of years in the ancient era to move a few miles. This also would make much more sense with hexes than square tiles, as hexes make moving multiple squares with single units MUCH easier than trying to maneuver around units in a square based grid.

If units move several tiles per turn, that effectively makes the maps much smaller - you explore faster, your armies move up to your neighbour's cities faster, oceans are crossed faster, etc.

That would have a huge impact on gameplay (unless you made the maps several times larger than they currently are), and for what? To accommodate some people who can't can't get their heads around the fact that Civilization is an abstract game, rather than a reality-simulator?

Viper1812 said:

Well considering a tile is representative of large area in-game, to imply that there are restrictions of one unit per tile is ludicrous. Also, apparently there are rumours that archers and catapults have ranged attacks which means either that they are able to shoot hundreds of kilometres or that the maps are smaller to accommodate this change (more likely to be the latter imho). If this is the case (hopefully not) this indicates to me that smaller maps = games take shorter to play = more casual gamers = a gradual decrease of the complexity of this game.

NB: This is my opinion on the information I have at present. I know discussing about changes which may or may not have made it into the game is pointless but I hope I am proven wrong

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All of these are arguments based on game length or realism. None of them equate to dumbing down. Archers being able to shoot hundreds of kilometers is offensive to your taste in concrete realism and has nothing to do with "dumbing" anything down. Smaller maps is an assumption based on your unwillingness to imagine that they would allow archers to shoot for such a distance.

I am still not clear how any of these changes would require less mental effort to produce the same victory. That is the essence of dumbing down, and I fear I don't see it as intrinsic to anything you mention. Clicking a buttload of things does not make a game deep or complex. It means it has a buttload of things to click.

I don't believe in the so-called "casual-hardcore" divide. I am simply unmoved by appeals in this direction.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Do you guys honestly think one unit per tile will make the game fun~er? ... Nothing changes strategy wise, you will still need stronger/more units then your opponent but it would take exponentially longer to capture a city. Imagine you have a civ surrounded but all their tiles are filled with units... There are other ways to make combat and war more interesting then # > # ... and the developers are showing signs of that with ranged attacks. Hopefully more cool ideas come to play. But seriously... one tile per unit will NEVER happen.

Aeiouv said:

Do you guys honestly think one unit per tile will make the game fun~er? ... Nothing changes strategy wise, you will still need stronger/more units then your opponent but it would take exponentially longer to capture a city. Imagine you have a civ surrounded but all their tiles are filled with units... There are other ways to make combat and war more interesting then # > # ... and the developers are showing signs of that with ranged attacks. Hopefully more cool ideas come to play. But seriously... one tile per unit will NEVER happen.

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That's assuming they allow the defender to simply spam units at a rate similar to that found in Civ4. If each unit is individually more dear it may not take *any* longer to overrun a city. I strongly suspect that a single unit system would result in *far* fewer units actually existing in a given game.

AlpsStranger said:

That's assuming they allow the defender to simply spam units at a rate similar to that found in Civ4. If each unit is individually more dear it may not take *any* longer to overrun a city. I strongly suspect that a single unit system would result in *far* fewer units actually existing in a given game.

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And that's assuming it's going to be different...

Just imagine how the game would be with a one unit per tile rule. It wouldn't be a civ game anymore but rather a combat/war tbs. Also a more quality, less quantity unit philosophy goes against the civ way. It will ruin the game... I can't wrap my head around these arguments because none of them make any sense. However I'm definitely opposed to doom stacks and from the very limited information we have about the game, we were given the idea of more tactical combat rather then mathematical which is what we all want. The one unit idea never happened for a reason...

Just give it a try. Play a game of civ4 and limit yourself to one unit per tile as best you can, you will imminently find mobility to be a HUGE issue. Lets say you even managed to get to an enemy city with single units... that unit will be so badly wounded capturing a city with a single defender is next to impossible and sending a fresh unit to capture is again next to impossible because your wounded unit is in the way. Going around and mobility in general would be worse then a civ game with a one unit per tile rule.

Aeiouv said:

And that's assuming it's going to be different...

Just imagine how the game would be with a one unit per tile rule. It wouldn't be a civ game anymore but rather a combat/war tbs. Also a more quality, less quantity unit philosophy goes against the civ way. It will ruin the game... I can't wrap my head around these arguments because none of them make any sense. However I'm definitely opposed to doom stacks and from the very limited information we have about the game, we were given the idea of more tactical combat rather then mathematical which is what we all want. The one unit idea never happened for a reason...

Just give it a try. Play a game of civ4 and limit yourself to one unit per tile as best you can, you will imminently find mobility to be a HUGE issue. Lets say you even managed to get to an enemy city with single units... that unit will be so badly wounded capturing a city with a single defender is next to impossible and sending a fresh unit to capture is again next to impossible because your wounded unit is in the way. Going around and mobility in general would be worse then a civ game with a one unit per tile rule.

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Trying it in Civ4 wouldn't make any sense. It would be an incredibly bunk test of the system.