1 Unit per Tile Rule

Kaleidoscope said:

Here's some food for thought: perhaps Civ 5 will finally introduce true multi-tile cities. Like big huge sprawling metropoli. Combine that with the one unit per tile mechanic and you could see some really interesting combat centred around cities.

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That would be pretty sweet actually.

cephalo said:

Historically, it isn't feasable to pack large armies into a single city and wait.

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Well aren't Stalingrad and Tobruk during WW2 historical examples of this? If I recall correctly it worked.......

Viper1812 said:

Well aren't Stalingrad and Tobruk during WW2 historical examples of this? If I recall correctly it worked.......

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I think he means by A LOT of armies, like SoD style.

I voted yes. Besides, if it was allowed to have more than 1 unit, it would ruin combat.

Suppose knights get a bonus in offense vs every unit other than spears/pikes in their era. It would defeat the purpose of having them if all the sudden if each heavy infantry (maces) had pikes stacked into them. Once you get that, its not even tactical anymore, as the knights can either go into the back of the enemy wasting time, and most likely have the opponent move the pikes in 1 turn to where the knights might now attack (ie: the archers), or they can attack pikes head on (terrible move).

i voted no, but what i really think is that it should be a pre-game option, like the map type. that would make it so that if you wanted to make it more realistic, you could, but you don't have to.

U235master said:

i voted no, but what i really think is that it should be a pre-game option, like the map type. that would make it so that if you wanted to make it more realistic, you could, but you don't have to.

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I think it's harder than that. If the game is centered around this one unit per tile rule, then turning it off would ruin other things. It's not like disabling barbarians or something simple.

U235master said:

i voted no, but what i really think is that it should be a pre-game option, like the map type. that would make it so that if you wanted to make it more realistic, you could, but you don't have to.

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I've said this at least once already. Sadly, this will not be some toggle option. You could no more design the entire game around one unit per hex and turn it off than you could turn it on in Civ4. It will probably be 100% feast or famine. The feast or famine part depends on your perspective

One good point about 1 unit per tile is that you'll immediately see what your opponent (or yourself in fact) has in one tile. Whereas in Civ IV, you had to look up a sometimes huge list and try to find out how many units were stacked there.

1 unit per tile is to harsh. 9 units per tile would be fine.

I like the idea of one unit per tile. Much more depth. Allows for more specialist units (Cav vs Inf, Spear vs Cav, etc). It also makes forts more useful. Making a maginotline of forts sounds very cool to me.
And the units have multiple figures in it. One tile of spearmen consists of about 9 dudes. Maybe you can replenish a unit from behind the frontlines. Spearunit A is in the front and takes a beating. Spearunit B can send reinforcements after an attack, so there are 9 dudes again.

And promotions are much more important. Amphibious landings require more planning, and so on.

I love the idea of 1 unit per tile!

And maybe they'll add detachments.

Viper1812 said:

Well aren't Stalingrad and Tobruk during WW2 historical examples of this? If I recall correctly it worked.......

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At Stalingrad the Germans were surrounded by Soviet forces. Once it became a battle for the city, it was probably what you would call a mop up operation. The Germans were trapped and had no hope.

cephalo said:

At Stalingrad the Germans were surrounded by Soviet forces. Once it became a battle for the city, it was probably what you would call a mop up operation. The Germans were trapped and had no hope.

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You are only describing the end of it. How do you think the Soviets pinned the germans there? You guessed it right: by fierce urban combat with hundreds of thousand troops of both sides inside the city. Otherwise it would had not be possible to surround a whole german army there ...

But anyway , that was a very rare military situation. No point of making school out of it.

I like the extra strategy from 1 unit per tile, and I'm OK with the unrealistic range of missile units like archers. However, 2 or 3 units per tile would mean that archers could be allowed to fire safely into the next tile, but not over it, and still benefit from a defensive line of infantrymen (as attackers face the best defender). Longer range artillery could still fire over a tile at longer range. I'm not sure there'll be enough tiles for 1 per tile to work.

I do have faith in the development team and the playtesting to say I'd like to see one per tile, and for it to work. Looking forward to more details over the coming months.

r_rolo1 said:

You are only describing the end of it. How do you think the Soviets pinned the germans there? You guessed it right: by fierce urban combat with hundreds of thousand troops of both sides inside the city. Otherwise it would had not be possible to surround a whole german army there ...

But anyway , that was a very rare military situation. No point of making school out of it.

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In terms of 'map hexes' though, what ultimately decided the battle was what happened on the tiles surrounding the city. In Civ terms, assuming a one unit per tile rule, maybe with stacking but only using the best defender(like civ1 and civ2) here's how I see it playing out.

The Germans approach the city on two faces, while the Soviets occupy the other 4 faces on the other side of rivers and canals. The Germans then attack the city repeatedly from the two tiles taking heavy losses due to the defense bonuses of Stalingrad. Each turn new German units are moved into attack position, and the Soviets move a new defender into the city. The Germans eventually take the city with some good dice rolls but have many less units in the area than they started with, while the Soviets have some reinforcements ariving. The Germans can no longer defend the area around the city and the Soviets surround the city. Now that the Germans cannot reinforce, the Soviets can attack accross the river and eventually retake the city.

So here you have a city battle, but the surrounding tiles are also a big part of it. I think it works!

In Civ4 I felt that artilery units had too much power, they were critical for any kind of serious battle, because AI's would send stacks dozens of units deep at you. Unless you built a crazy number of units the only way to take them down was some kind of suicide attack with cheap bombardment units. Otherwise when counterattacking, your troops would always face off against the unit designed to defeat them and your chances of success would be miniscule. If you chose to sit in your city and wait for them to attack you, good luck, then their dozen or so catapults would make short work of you. More than anything victory came down to who had the most bombardment units.

I think there are a lot of good possibilities with a one unit per tile system. It's not clear what the details of such a system would be, to assume it's going to be exactly like Civ4 but you're limited to one unit per tile would be silly. If they use a one unit per tile system they're going to make some serious changes to how units function.

Right now I'm remembering a game I played years and years ago called Civil War Generals. It was also a one unit system with hexagonal tiles. In that game units could gain advantages though being well supplied, allowing two similar units to have very different strengths. By manuvering your forces you could outflank, or surround enemy units and gain an attack bonus from doing so. In addition it took more than one fight to defeat a unit, unless you'd completely outflanked, and demoralized it.

These, and other ideas we've seen on the forums all have a reasonable chance of being included in the new Civ. Until they tell us what their plans are in detail it's too early to condem a one unit per tile system, because it has been done well in other games, and certainly can be done well in Civ.

So...no one remembers that Civ the original (1991) effectively had one unit per tile? Sure, you could stack more on, but if a unit was defeated, the whole stack was lost.

No one remembers? No, you probably weren't born yet, were you...

It's an interesting point some are making about it allowing the strengths/weaknesses of certain units to be used more, but that's not how it works with real armies - cavalry isn't is able to go out and face just infantry (for example), they'll have to deal with an army made up of combined infantry, pikemen, archers, etc... the whole point of combined forces is the units support each other

so I vote no...

it would be interesting to limit the number of units that can be on one tile, but a single unit per tile is a bad idea. What would be even more interesting is working in some way to figure out supply lines, so you can have as big an army as you want as long as you can supply it, and of course protect those supply lines against the enemy. Would make invasions much more interesting on both sides

maybe that's all been said before, I didn't read the whole thread

Willowmound said:

So...no one remembers that Civ the original (1991) effectively had one unit per tile? Sure, you could stack more on, but if a unit was defeated, the whole stack was lost.

No one remembers? No, you probably weren't born yet, were you...

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I had forgotten that! Yes, I do remember the original... does that show my age?

Of course