1 Unit per Tile Rule

The danger with a one unit per tile is to create trenches wars in the antiquity...

Aeiouv said:

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.

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Please play civ or civ 2. In these games, there IS a one unit per tile limit. It's not a hard limit, it's a limit that comes into play because when one defender is killed, the whole stack is killed. This wasn't true in cities nor forts, but remained true on most of the map, and bringing a stack to take a city was risky because a single defender (or bomber) would take out your whole stack.
So to me, 1 unit per tile would make the game much more like civ and civ 2.

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.

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Give it a try in civ or civ2, and you'll see there's no such issue.

I think a 1 unit per hex rule could be a good idea if the combat mechanics are created around that. Noone says that 1 unit stacks would be much fun in Civ 4 this is Civ 5 we are talking about and we basicly don't have enough information to say how it's going to work in the game. Perhaps 1 unit actually is one army that has several different units that's parts of it? And when you create a unit it would be much like designing a ship in Galactic Civilization 2? I can think of many many ways to have this one unit per hex working great.

AlpsStranger said:

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

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Now, come on. You're interjecting rationality into a perfectly good straw man.

Let me tell you what I like most about 1 per tile. Because the area you can place your armies are so limited, you quickly run into diminishing returns if you build too many units. This means that thoughout the game, wars will be decided with a small number of units when compared to Civ4.

I love this! In the early Civ4 game you can conquer vast lands with 10 or so units, and it's fun! Late game in Civ4, you can't do anything without multiple stacks of 20+ units. There are some tools in place to help manage the logistics, but I find this exhausting. Late game wars make the turns last for hours, and putting together an effective army takes more turns as well. The result is that late game wars are an exercise in unproductive drudgery! You slog away for hours just to capture one city!

I think that 1 per tile will be a huge improvement for the late game.

cephalo said:

Let me tell you what I like most about 1 per tile. Because the area you can place your armies are so limited, you quickly run into diminishing returns if you build too many units. This means that thoughout the game, wars will be decided with a small number of units when compared to Civ4.

I love this! In the early Civ4 game you can conquer vast lands with 10 or so units, and it's fun! Late game in Civ4, you can't do anything without multiple stacks of 20+ units. There are some tools in place to help manage the logistics, but I find this exhausting. Late game wars make the turns last for hours, and putting together an effective army takes more turns as well. The result is that late game wars are an exercise in unproductive drudgery! You slog away for hours just to capture one city!

I think that 1 per tile will be a huge improvement for the late game.

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Also, with fewer units they can reintroduce the possibility to watch other civs slugging it out, for those who are interested. I loved doing that in Civ III. I still fondly remember an epic invasion of trumpeting Indian jumbos into German lands. They had been marching forever from one end of a horseshoe-shaped continent to another, passing through the lands of four other civilizations on the way. Gandhis must have spent a thousand years building nothing but jumbos and a few swordsmen. Some of them made it through the jungle north of German lands; none of them survived the desert.

The sound effects increased the fun. When an elephant attacked, it trumpeted shrilly, and if it was killed, you heard a heavy thud. The average battle sounded like this:

TRUMPETING - fightfightfight - THUD.

Over and over again. Since the elephants were so numerous, they did manage to kill off many German pikemen and the like, but in the end, the invasion came to nothing.

I like it

If such a change would be incorporated into the game, it would just mean just another thing that changes since Civ 4. I love Civ 4, but that doesn't mean I want them to release the same game once more. I think 1 unit pr tile opens up lots of possibilities for how the combat system could work, and we even get rid of SoD!

Having said that, looking at the screenshots, it might seem like every unit have very varying size. Which would mean that "one unit" doesn't need to be restricted to a single build either.

I do believe we'll see another game with stacks though. There just isn't too much point in showing off stacks in early screenshots...

The point in all of this is not the possibility of stacking or not, but the possibility or not of huge ( in relative sense ) armies in early days. If you can do it, you will stack the units if you can and will outflank the enemy by having a bigger line if you can't ( forcing the enemy units in the flanks to a relative number disavantage ). Putting one unit per tile does not solve much, if it solves anything at all...

I'm just wondering, what is the source for this 1 unit per tile thing? Is this official word?

QwertyKey said:

I'm just wondering, what is the source for this 1 unit per tile thing? Is this official word?

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Interview in a Danish magazine article.

Shaefer said it to a danish magazine:

Jon Shaefer said:

"one of the first changes we made was to remove the possability to 'stack' units. Now that you can only place one Military unit at each tile, there would be created large fronts between the players that battle each other"

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I'm taking this from here ...

Not exactly official, but it beats well with the official statement on the Civ V site that battles will span through big areas.

i like it. i think this could bring more strategically depth to wars. i am looking forward how it will really work.

NOOOOO!!! I think that the lowest limit they can justifiably put is 20-30. And different units take up more or less room, so some units should take up more slots than others.

nzk13 said:

NOOOOO!!! I think that the lowest limit they can justifiably put is 20-30. And different units take up more or less room, so some units should take up more slots than others.

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Right. They can get rid of my stack of doom as long as they don't really get rid of my stack of doom. DOWN WITH THE STACK!

The only thing I don't like about one unit per tile is the possible traffic jams when I do want to invade someone. So let's say for instance that I've got a city surrounded by Swordsmen in the close circle, then the outer circle is all archers and catapults. I bombard with my archers/cats in the outer circle, then attack with my swordsmen in the inner circle, but let's say there are more than 6 defenders in the city (I can't imagine they would disallow unit stacking in cities, because if they did that, taking cities would be ridiculously easy) That means I would have to shuffle all my archers and cats out of the way so that more swordsmen could get ot the front line to replace any that fell in battle.

Or supposing they disallowed unit sticking inside city walls, then I would want to surround my cities with units to keep them properly protected, and of course to free up room to build more units. then my units built in the city would be stuck inside the city unless I shuffled my other units out of the way, which would be annoying.

So, I'm mostly for disallowing units stacks, but it must be implemented properly in order for the game to be enjoyable.

On a slightly related note, I'm all for the hex tiles because that combined with one unit per tile means you can more easily blockade a certain area that you want to use for a later city site, because theoretically, if you can't stack your own units, then friendly/neutral civs shouldn't be allowed to place their units where your units are.

I don't think you necessarily need to allow stacking in cities. The reason you had that in previous civ titles I think is because you really couldn't effectively prevent people from moving into your city. Historically, it isn't feasable to pack large armies into a single city and wait. It's more common to the bulk of your defensive forces into the field, and if they die the city becomes vulnerable.

For examples, the French couldn't stick all their forces inside Paris during WWI. They had to defend Paris on a broad front. Scipio Africanus defeated Carthage at Zara, allowing them access to the city of Carthage itself. City sieges are usually relatively small actions. Rarely do they decide the outcome of wars, but rather more like a mop up operation.

cephalo said:

I don't think you necessarily need to allow stacking in cities. The reason you had that in previous civ titles I think is because you really couldn't effectively prevent people from moving into your city. Historically, it isn't feasable to pack large armies into a single city and wait. It's more common to the bulk of your defensive forces into the field, and if they die the city becomes vulnerable.

For examples, the French couldn't stick all their forces inside Paris during WWI. They had to defend Paris on a broad front. Scipio Africanus defeated Carthage at Zara, allowing them access to the city of Carthage itself. City sieges are usually relatively small actions. Rarely do they decide the outcome of wars, but rather more like a mop up operation.

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True. Actually, one of the more bizarre features in Civ I and II was that every military unit outside the city created unhappiness. Each unit had a "home city", which might have made use for antiquity, but not later on. I suppose we have all got used to the idea that most military units should normally reside in cities, thought that is actually a very strange way of doing things.

Even *naval units* which were outside their home cities created unhappiness.

So will the 'stack of doom' be replaced by the 'carpet of doom' where the whole area inside each civ's territory is covered by units, 1 on each tile, and if you want to invade, you have to plow through them one at a time, taking extra time and micromanagement to get the best unit in place to attack the next enemy unit?

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.

Culture Bomb said:

So will the 'stack of doom' be replaced by the 'carpet of doom' where the whole area inside each civ's territory is covered by units, 1 on each tile, and if you want to invade, you have to plow through them one at a time, taking extra time and micromanagement to get the best unit in place to attack the next enemy unit?

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That is a little bit weird, basically the biggest army you can support depends completely on how many spots on the map you have left.

I think that to prevent this you might increase the maintenance based on how many squares your units cover, and allow them to stack where if the best unit dies the whole stack dies(like civI and II). So to use them you need them to fan out, but you can still store them without making the map look ugly.