Civilization V - Units: Disappointment

Grishnash said:

In Civilization 1 to Civilization III, units have been represented by one image, one unit. And no unit has had the ability to shoot across tile lines, except for siege weapons against cities or with modifications by players.

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You are wrong. In Civ3 siege weapons could bombard adjacent or further distant tiles (from artillery), regardless if it was against cities or not. And in Civ and Civ2 there was no such thing, IIRC.

Crezth said:

Ah. I see. Here's the problem:

People are worried about change (let alone balance) at this stage because they're applying what (little) we know about Civ V dynamics and applying it to Civ IV.

This is an error because Civ V will have different mechanics from Civ IV, that make sense for that game and only that game.

People complained about the military system and fewer cities in Civ IV because they thought of it in terms of Civ III. Then IV turned out to be the best in the series.

Ho hum. I say we reserve judgment until we play it or get a better understanding of how the game works.

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There's definitely some truth in this, but the one-unit-per-tile change signals something of the dynamics of Civ5 ... a move from a realism model to a board game model. There would always have to be a balance, a some people will like purer board game, but most people who comment either way are probably experienced enough with gaming and with the civ format to gauge accurately whether or not the like such a shift.

I promise this will be my only post on the subject. I mostly lurk anyways.

I share the trepidation regarding one unit per tile. Artillery shooting over tiles I have no problem with (although not sure about archers..)

It strikes me that there are a myriad of more obvious solutions to the stack of doom problem.

Flanking is the really blindingly obvious one.

The one I quite like the idea of I will describe below. It's not polished, it's just an idea, but I quite like it. That way no one can accuse me of just moaning

The situation reminds me of Dragon Age. Complete speculation, but when you have long running companies, people grow old, people move on, new people come in. Dragon Age, with it's click-to-do-more-damage mechanics, probably seemed like a great idea to someone who grew up with Diablo and World of Warcraft. It was anaethma to me, who grew up with P&P rpgs. These changes seem like a similar thing. It happens. I don't like it, but it happens.

Anyway, the solution I would have liked to see is to allow stacks of doom, but restrict the numbers of units that can actually fight. That's how historically small armies beat large armies; by fighting only a bit of them at a time. That's how Napoleon almost won Waterloo. Also, I'd make it so units didn't die so easily, they could take much more punishment, and at the end of combat you'd have damaged units but they wouldn't die; but you would take the tile. Defender would get choice of unit to fight when it came to damage, but attacker would get choice of unit when it came to taking the tile. And if you take the tile, and there's a whole bunch of other units that didn't fight, they take a sort of collatoral damage through being forced to retreat. Or maybe not, I dunno, it's not my job to figure out the details

But really, there's all sorts of clever things you could do with combat. It seems a really strange choice to restrict it to one unit per tile. I wonder what there rationale was? I wonder did they consider any alternatives? I also feel a sort of told you so. I don't like the suicide catapults in Civ 4. It was lame. Sure, it did the job of providing a way to deal with stacks, but there are so many better ways. At the time, it seemed like everyone was saying it would be great. Does anyone still think that it was a good solution? I think it was a lazy solution. This seems lazy too. People keep saying "But it's Sid Meier! It'll be fine!". Half of me thinks "Yeah! Pirates! Covert Action! Civilisation!" Half of me thinks "Suicide catapults & pointless fortress improvements".

I'll wait and see and maybe I'll be surprised. Otherwise, I'm sure Paradox will be coming out with EU4 sometime.

Crezth said:

Ah. I see. Here's the problem:

People are worried about change (let alone balance) at this stage because they're applying what (little) we know about Civ V dynamics and applying it to Civ IV.

This is an error because Civ V will have different mechanics from Civ IV, that make sense for that game and only that game.

People complained about the military system and fewer cities in Civ IV because they thought of it in terms of Civ III. Then IV turned out to be the best in the series.

Ho hum. I say we reserve judgment until we play it or get a better understanding of how the game works.

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The thing is, if it the mechanics of Civ V are so far away from Civ IV, then it is essentially pulling away from the core of Civilization, that is where I have a problem and it scares me. I have seen it many times in the past where a company has a hit game, then they decide to change all of the rules of the game and "take it in a new direction". Too many of those games ultimately fail. When the core game works, even if it has some flaws in various features (whether due to development limits or lack of technology or whatever else), the game should be evolved with each iteration instead of changed altogether.

Ever heard the phrase "reinventing the wheel"? ...

Thorburne said:

The thing is, if it the mechanics of Civ V are so far away from Civ IV, then it is essentially pulling away from the core of Civilization, that is where I have a problem and it scares me. I have seen it many times in the past where a company has a hit game, then they decide to change all of the rules of the game and "take it in a new direction". Too many of those games ultimately fail. When the core game works, even if it has some flaws in various features (whether due to development limits or lack of technology or whatever else), the game should be evolved with each iteration instead of changed altogether.

Ever heard the phrase "reinventing the wheel"? ...

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Sure I have. I have also heard:

"Every really new idea looks crazy at first." Alfred North Whitehead

"Often times the only change people like is when the change makes a noise in their pocket." Author Unknown

"The absurd man is he who never changes." Augeste Barthélemy

"We are restless because of incessant change, but we would be frightened if change were stopped." Lyman Lloyd Bryson

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." Harold Wilson

"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Weep not that the world changes -- did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were a cause indeed to weep." William Cullen Bryant

what Thormodr said. Why, it seems like only yesterday that we were wailing and moaning at the rumored changes from the soon to be delivered Civ IV. . .

But I do understand Thorburne's reservations. . . Master of Orion 3 still haunts me...

That said, I think that with 4 versions under behind us, the Civ series has earned a certain measure of my trust.

I think that instead of making it limited 1 unit per tile, they should make it at 3 per tile. (or slightly higher)

And Sid Meier's judgement has recently proven sadly faulty with the so called Colonization II sequel. So I really do hope we are not going to find he is losing his touch on his audience as seems to be the case at the moment...

Thorburne said:

The thing is, if it the mechanics of Civ V are so far away from Civ IV, then it is essentially pulling away from the core of Civilization, that is where I have a problem and it scares me. I have seen it many times in the past where a company has a hit game, then they decide to change all of the rules of the game and "take it in a new direction". Too many of those games ultimately fail. When the core game works, even if it has some flaws in various features (whether due to development limits or lack of technology or whatever else), the game should be evolved with each iteration instead of changed altogether.

Ever heard the phrase "reinventing the wheel"? ...

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If they weren't making changes other than graphics you would be here to complain about it all the same. These threads aren't worth two cents, if you don't want a new Civ (which inevitably will have new features and be significantly different from the predecessors like ANY other civ game), keep playing the previous ones, if you want a new one, well you have to wait, judgding things before having tried them is typical of spoiled kids.

But I do understand Thorburne's reservations. . . Master of Orion 3 still haunts me...

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Oh, the pain, it still burns.

What is worse is, I was hanging about on their forums before release, and IIRC only a couple of months before release the game was massively scaled down and had half the features dropped, and the fans in the forum were all crying with rage ("how dare every tile on each planet not have its own ethos and political interest groups in conflict"). And they also dropped the whole "you can do anything, but you can't do everything" concept, where the player had a limited number of "command point" actions they could make each turn (and the AI did the rest for you).

So, it could have been even *worse*.

Epic fail on the game design.

onedreamer said:

If they weren't making changes other than graphics you would be here to complain about it all the same. These threads aren't worth two cents, if you don't want a new Civ (which inevitably will have new features and be significantly different from the predecessors like ANY other civ game), keep playing the previous ones, if you want a new one, well you have to wait, judgding things before having tried them is typical of spoiled kids.

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Yet again, an argument ruined by name-calling. Can we actually talk about things without having to call each other names?
The entire point of this quote is that we can't talk about anything ahead of time, until we try it. Curiously, if I learn that the car I wanted because it was a turbo and AWD will be revamped and i learn AHEAD OF TIME that it's being changed to a nonturbo and FWD, I am, like every other rational, thinking human being, capable of figuring out that I will no longer be interested in that car. It may be a great car -- but it is no longer the car I was interested in.
Saying we can't think/reason without having to try is the antithesis of the human experience. It is unfortunate that some people think that calling people names when they're just trying to talk reasonably and politely about the ups/downs of something is acceptable behavior.

We know that the mechanics allow archers to shoot over a hex that can hold New York City. Again, read prior posts for the realism/gameplay balance arguments, but for some of us this is a violation of that balance -- it is so patently absurd even in its visual that it ruins the "feel" of the game. We know that a hex can hold a city the size of New York, which is to say, one hex can hold literally tens of millions of people -- but it can't hold more than one military unit. We know that they're dropping the Alpha-centauri-inspired customizeable civics -- something i praised Civ4 for adopting and find tragic that it's going out in favor of fixed definitions (retro, back to the pre-Civ4 era of "well, I'm a monarchy" and that's it for government). Don't need to experience the game to know that pre-Civ4 I wanted to see the Alpha-Centauri-styled customizeable civics put into that game and was thrilled to see it -- and equally dismayed to see that out.

Much as I found the evolution of the Elder Scrolls game depressing. The # of factions you could work for/against in Daggerfall was massive; the # of skills was just as huge. Morrowind pared that down some, but the magic was still virtually unlimited and the # of factions was still dozens. Then we get Oblivion -- a number of factions less than 8; magic gimped horribly because they wanted to eliminate your ability to choose to levitate/fly/anything-else-they-wanted-to-pigeonhole. Pre-Oblivion games were gigantic -- Oblivion was this microscopic area which measured less distance across than the small town I live in. Oblivion was a total betrayal to the maps of the land before, which defined the capital-city-area as something akin to the size of Morrowind. I don't need to play Oblivion to know that the changes they made have removed literally every aspect of the prior Elder Scrolls games that I liked (giant world, tons of skills, freedom in customizing magic, a giant # of factions defining the lore/quests/etc). Don't need to experience it to know that, with the things I liked removed, and the changes that were made were changes I don't like, I won't like it.

I don't know at this stage whether I'll buy Civ5 or not. I went into this in much more detail before, including an alternative to the implementation of the one-unit-per-hex rule that would "make sense" to me. However, none of that sets aside the fact that people who are interested can have discussions about the ins/outs, preferably without calling each other names (stupid kids, nazis, etc.).

Grishnash said:

Civilization V, so far, is nothing more then a Disappointment for me

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I haven't played it yet, so I can't really say.

Combat (and just about everything else in Civ) is highly abstracted. It's not a pure combat game. They come up with a system that works and allows combat to integrate with the other things going on the game for an overall fun package.

I've played some hex-based, turn-based games with 1 unit per tile and found them to be very enjoyable and considerably better for strategy and tactics than the stack of doom model.

Having some resource limitations on quantity of troops created along with the 1 unit per tile will hopefully force more intelligent use of troops and offer far better tacticial choices.

One city hex would not be the size of New York City. It would be the size of a village starting out. New York City would be equal to 14 or more hexes. The biggest complaint should be if the maps were not large enough to handle the scale of modern cities and the surrounding water and land topologies.

Some people just can't get over the archer ranged attack thing can they? It seems to be

a huge stumbling block for some.

I don't mind a bit of abstraction if it makes for good game play. There are going to be

many things in the game that fly in the face of reality.

I suppose if someone had OCD it might bother them.

Doesn't bother me. On the whole the game looks great.

Finally, these things can be modded out so these complaints really mean jack.

Thormodr said:

Sure I have. I have also heard:

"Every really new idea looks crazy at first." Alfred North Whitehead

"Often times the only change people like is when the change makes a noise in their pocket." Author Unknown

"The absurd man is he who never changes." Augeste Barthélemy

"We are restless because of incessant change, but we would be frightened if change were stopped." Lyman Lloyd Bryson

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." Harold Wilson

"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Weep not that the world changes -- did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were a cause indeed to weep." William Cullen Bryant

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And where are they all now... DEAD!!!

onedreamer said:

If they weren't making changes other than graphics you would be here to complain about it all the same. These threads aren't worth two cents, if you don't want a new Civ (which inevitably will have new features and be significantly different from the predecessors like ANY other civ game), keep playing the previous ones, if you want a new one, well you have to wait, judgding things before having tried them is typical of spoiled kids.

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Who said anything about graphics. In fact, I would be fine if the graphics stayed the same as civ IV allowing the extra horsepower to be used for creating bigger maps with more civs and still run smoothly. As I have said over-and-over again in so many ways, I am fine with change, as long as it is evolution and not revolution. I want the core game to stay (basically) the same with tweaks and additions that further the game along. When you change the core game mechanics, that is dangerous territory that can lead to the 50/50 chance of great success or ultimate doom! So far, with what info that I have seen released about the game, I seen it leaning slightly toward the latter!

Zhahz said:

I've played some hex-based, turn-based games with 1 unit per tile and found them to be very enjoyable and considerably better for strategy and tactics than the stack of doom model.

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So have I, the thing is, those games did not have the scope of the Civilization series. They were focused on specific eras, regions, battles, etc... not on a global, history-spanning, epic reach such as in Civilization.

timtofly said:

One city hex would not be the size of New York City. It would be the size of a village starting out. New York City would be equal to 14 or more hexes. The biggest complaint should be if the maps were not large enough to handle the scale of modern cities and the surrounding water and land topologies.

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1st - Where was it said that cities would be equal to 14 or more hexes? Personally, I really don't see them doing that, especially given the screenshots released. When the cities would fully expand, then their would be nothing in between the cities. That would stretch the "suspension of disbelief" well beyond the limits.

2nd - We still have not heard anything regarding map size, and I really doubt they would be large enough to accomodate what you mentioned.

Thormodr said:

Some people just can't get over the archer ranged attack thing can they? It seems to be

a huge stumbling block for some.

I don't mind a bit of abstraction if it makes for good game play. There are going to be

many things in the game that fly in the face of reality.

I suppose if someone had OCD it might bother them.

Doesn't bother me. On the whole the game looks great.

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As I stated above, there are limits to the "suspension of disbelief" and, so far, Civ V is really stretching those limits. Maybe, after we have heard much more details, the limits would be settled, but, all I am saying is that they are playing with fire with this one!

Finally, these things can be modded out so these complaints really mean jack.

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Oh, and only if the modding tools are accessable to everybody like they seem to be claiming.

1st - Where was it said that cities would be equal to 14 or more hexes? Personally, I really don't see them doing that, especially given the screenshots released. When the cities would fully expand, then their would be nothing in between the cities. That would stretch the "suspension of disbelief" well beyond the limits.

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I think the idea is that cottage tiles and workshops for example are part of the metropolitan area of a city, not that a city itself will spread over multiple tiles. So "New York" is really a "Manhattan" city with Towns on tiles all around (and some Workshops in Jersey). Or that's the closest thing we have in Civ.

They've also told us that a city will be able to work tiles up to 3 hexes in any direction.

What we do know is that cities spread 3 tiles out instead of two. So the average distance between cities will expand.

So the idea of cities consisting of let's say 7 hexes is not far fetched. But it's neither confirmed nor mentioned by firaxis.


@ Spyder1: Dont get mad, but I still think the majority is with me (I can be wrong - it's just my opinion and it wasnt meant as an argument). I just wanted to emphasize that I really couldnt share ur point of view. Nevertheless it's more a question of flavor. So hopefully firaxis will find a way to satisfy the majority

By the way I could also live with a 5 Units-per-hex-limit (UPHL) or something like that. But I'd rather like to have a 1UPHL then no UPHL at all.

I don't know why anyone would say that "Stacks of Doom" have to go. In playing many Civ4 games, that was about the only threat I encountered from the AI in terms of military offense or defense. Most of the time, the AI defend their cities with very litte at worst and several decent units at best. And when they go an offensive, they usually come after me piecemeal. I would love to have seen more SoD from the AI because they are tough to beat (whether attacking on my cities, in the open or fortified in a city).

But getting back to Civ5, I think with "one" unit, you can abstract a small army or a large army or a SoD without having to show or "build" that many units. You just have to have the population, resources, armaments and supply chain to support a powerful force in a tile.

I disagree with you op on pretty much everything you had to say. Its a welcome change and a good fix for the horrible terrible pathetic stacks of doom. If you can't see how and why they were bad for the game then I don't know what to tell you.

I've not seen a single person on these forums I know to have a solid knowledge of Civilization and other strategy and tactical games that thinks the one-unit-per-tile limit will ultimately result in greater depth of gameplay, and that's even if they give enough credit that it wouldn't become a terrible micromanagement timesink in the first place.