Does anyone else miss stacking wars

Not one bit.

I wouldn't even say the AI handled stacking better, it was pretty awful at it as well. Humans could concentrate a SoD in the right place and march across the AI who tended to spread their troops out more. It didn't even use siege equipment very effectively to hinder the players' creation of SoDs. Not sure what game you guys were playing where stacks improved AI performance but I found wars in earlier civs to be just a matter of filling buckets then throwing those buckets in the right direction and saying "Yay, I win!" Before CiV I played totally peaceful most of the time because war in the earlier civs was boring as hell amounting to repeatedly commanding the same stack to attack the same city repeatedly. I don't even remember having to put much thought into stack composition. Just made sure to have some defensive units, offensive units and siege equipment. If I wanted good war I had to play Total War.

I'll admit the current 1upt has some drawbacks. Mainly unit balance. The units really need more specific strengths and weaknesses to prevent any one unit from dominating. Then the "stupid AI" would just need to build a variety of units to overcome its poor tactics since each different unit would force the player to attack in a different way. I'm hoping they stick to 1upt and improve it rather than going back to derping around with stacks in VI.

Maybe limited stacks based on unit class like Gedemon mentioned might work but I'd worry that all stacks would quickly become uniform and therefore kind of boring again.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

Not one bit.

I wouldn't even say the AI handled stacking better, it was pretty awful at it as well. Humans could concentrate a SoD in the right place and march across the AI who tended to spread their troops out more. It didn't even use siege equipment very effectively to hinder the players' creation of SoDs. Not sure what game you guys were playing where stacks improved AI performance but I found wars in earlier civs to be just a matter of filling buckets then throwing those buckets in the right direction and saying "Yay, I win!" Before CiV I played totally peaceful because war in the earlier civs was boring as hell amounting to repeatedly commanding the same stack to attack the same city repeatedly. I don't even remember having to put much thought into stack composition. Just made sure to have some defensive units, offensive units and siege equipment. If I wanted good war I had to play Total War.

I'll admit the current 1upt has some drawbacks. Mainly unit balance. The units really need more specific strengths and weaknesses to prevent any one unit from dominating. Then the "stupid AI" would just need to build a variety of units to overcome its poor tactics since each different unit would force the player to attack in a different way. I'm hoping they stick to 1upt and improve it rather than going back to derping around with stacks in VI.

Maybe limited stacks based on unit class like Gedemon mentioned might work but I'd worry that all stacks would quickly become uniform and therefore kind of boring again.

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Wars are won by sheer numbers of unit and how advanced, experienced(promotions) are and how some units have advantage over others. So exactly like Civ4, the only problem was SoD.

How about having siege units the only unit that can stack but change them so they have no combat strength. Limit the stacking to only one siege unit so you can have a siege and a melee unit. Siege units would be destroyed when being attacked by a melee unit. This would make mobile units like horseman more desirable as you can get to siege units and destroy them in one move. You would have to destroy the melee stacking unit until you can damage the siege. This would nerf range units a little bit and make siege units a little bit stronger.

j51 said:

If I missed stacking wars I'd still play Civ 4. IMO, even with both expansions, Civ 4 is still better than 5 in every gameplay feature except the combat. That said, as soon as I heard 5 wasn't going to have stacking, I was unable to play 4. That's how maddeningly tedious stacking becomes. It's the sole gameplay reason 5 is better than 4.

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You are objectively wrong unless you think CivIV's espionage, trade, and religion mechanics were better.

The only reason IV is better is because the mods are better.

Sonereal said:

You are objectively wrong unless you think CivIV's espionage, trade, and religion mechanics were better.

The only reason IV is better is because the mods are better.

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Either way, I think the espionage in both is bad, with an advantage to 5 for at least trying. The religion in both are meh, but with a slight advantage to 4, as at least non-founder civs are more likely to adopt and promote other religions. Trade in 5 is vastly superior to four. I'll give you that. Also, culture, so yeah, 5 is better than 4 in more ways than war. Oops. I resorted to hyperbole online. That never happens.

LoneRebel said:

I really don't see how stacking "required more skill and thought" than 1upt. The one with the larger stack would win, that's all.

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You hear this so often in this forum, as if it were the great knockdown argument against stacking, it just baffles me. Yes, the nation with the larger army should be more likely to win. Duh. That's not to say that with a good tactical understanding, like when to attack with which units and using terrain advantages etc, you can't beat your opponent with a smaller army. But numbers certainly matter, as they should. Your argument is like saying that the space race doesn't require any skill, since the one with the biggest tech lead will win.

The crucial point is, how do you get an army that is larger than your enemy's? How do you get to the techs fast enough to produce advanced units? How do you get the production in your cities? How do you manage your economy so that it is able to support your army? These are difficult, strategical decisions in Civ 4, decisions which Civ has and should be about. Rather than "how can I arrange my infantry and artillery so that I can defeat the AI with a much smaller force". If you think this is the core of an empire building game, you haven't really understood the genre.

Alexey86 said:

Wars are won by sheer numbers of unit and how advanced, experienced(promotions) are and how some units have advantage over others. So exactly like Civ4, the only problem was SoD.

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Not even close to being true. If it were true, deity would be impossible. I've won wars with older troops and I've seen wars won with older troops in LPs. 1upt allows you to use terrain and beat larger forces. Still wondering if we're playing the same game...

VicRatlhead5199 said:

I've won wars with older troops and I've seen wars won with older troops in LPs. 1upt allows you to use terrain and beat larger forces.

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And you think being able to do this consistently is a good thing?? No further questions...

VicRatlhead5199 said:

Not even close to being true. If it were true, deity would be impossible. I've won wars with older troops and I've seen wars won with older troops in LPs. 1upt allows you to use terrain and beat larger forces. Still wondering if we're playing the same game...

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I was talking about real wars. IMO civ4 simulated better real wars(except for spearman beats tank, etc), I dont know! when going war in Civ3 or 4 I felt like conducting and playing a war, now because you loose units way more rare its different. Also terrain counted in previous civ, like archers having bonus from hills, etc.

Funky said:

And you think being able to do this consistently is a good thing?? No further questions...

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Oh I wouldn't say consistently. Not at all. We've all been overwhelmed in the past too. Anyone who says they haven't is a bold faced liar. I say being able to do it at all is a good thing. Better than it being a total numbers game.

Alexey86 said:

I was talking about real wars. IMO civ4 simulated better real wars(except for spearman beats tank, etc), I dont know! when going war in Civ3 or 4 I felt like conducting and playing a war, now because you loose units way more rare its different. Also terrain counted in previous civ, like archers having bonus from hills, etc.

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Real wars aren't two monster armies smashing together on one big field. The only role terrain played in decisions in earlier civs was what tile placing your stack on gave you the best advantage. The AI stunk at that too. In fact placing all their troops on one bad tile was worse than all of the blunders they make now put together.

Being able to position troops to your advantage and dealing with the logistics of moving them makes you feel more like a general than just moving and repeatedly attacking with some homogenous blob army.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

Oh I wouldn't say consistently. Not at all. We've all been overwhelmed in the past too. Anyone who says they haven't is a bold faced liar. I say being able to do it at all is a good thing. Better than it being a total numbers game.

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Certainly. Yet from my experience, basically every war you fight in Civ5 (beyond the easiest levels) you start out with a smaller army. You then usually go on to win anyway, thanks to the superior tactical prowess of humans compared to the AI. So the game is not so much about elements of a grand strategy game, such as building and maintaining a superior army than your opponent to be successful, like in Civ4. Rather the focus lies on tactical skills. As you said yourself, it's not crucial that your army is as large or as advanced as your enemy's, since you can compensate poor strategic play by use of tactics.

The point I have made several times before is that 1UPT therefore effectively leads to a genre-shift. The strategical aspects of a game are almost per definition less important when higher emphasis is placed on tactics. I become increasingly frustrated when I read things like "in Civ4 you just had to build a larger stack than your enemy". Yes, this is exactly what grand strategy games are about! The challenge is how to successfully accomplish it. Which tracks back to decisions about economy, research, diplomacy etc, i.e. strategic decisions. These decisions exist in Civ5 too, of course, they have just been made less meaningful in favor of the tactical aspects.

The reason I am emphasizing this so much is that I view it as the main divide between Civ4 and Civ5 and their players. There is nothing wrong with having a game like Civ5, but it seems watered down to so many Civ4 guys because of the comparatively meaningless strategy. Whereas I assume that the Civ5 guys actually enjoy the tactical side of the game more. Both paths are fine in general, I would just argue that Civ, as the classical empire building game, should fall mainly into the "strategy first"-category.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

Oh I wouldn't say consistently. Not at all. We've all been overwhelmed in the past too. Anyone who says they haven't is a bold faced liar. I say being able to do it at all is a good thing. Better than it being a total numbers game.

Real wars aren't two monster armies smashing together on one big field. The only role terrain played in decisions in earlier civs was what tile placing your stack on gave you the best advantage. The AI stunk at that too. In fact placing all their troops on one bad tile was worse than all of the blunders they make now put together.

Being able to position troops to your advantage and dealing with the logistics of moving them makes you feel more like a general than just moving and repeatedly attacking with some homogenous blob army.

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In the past(medieval, ancient) there were 2 giant armies facing each other aheem. But lets not talk about that, doesnt matter.

First the fact that this style of combat, gives maybe way to much of an advantage to you against AI in wars. Thats the biggest problem. For example archers are ludicrouse and I dont like at all the way they behave with firing range attack from behind, to much advantage, they are to powerfull strategic speaking. I liked better in civ4 where they faced the melee oponenet and had 50% more attack, but they could still die if unlucky.

The problem with civ4 combat was the SOD wich the developers can find solutions of if they wanted to. What you said cuz AI putted all units in wrong tiles it was just a small advantage you got, unlike here when you can fek him good especially after many games and gaining experience.

Its impossible or really really hard to make AI better in this style. In civ4 style where he can move anywhere more free it was better for him thus making him smarter or more to say having almost the same chances as you. Thats what I am saying, having the same chances as the AI with you gaining small advantages if you play well and use artilery well, or having some promoted units at the perfect place, etc. There were small advantages you got in stacking style(not counting SOD) but they were not game-breaker. If unlucky you could still loose a lot of units and falling behind other civilizations not at war.

When I played Civ3 or 4 I used a forced fair play stacking limit with either no more then 6 or 7 in a tile and trying to play that way. Way way better.

The point in past civ wars was loosing a lot of units and becoming weeker after one(because the AI could do damage to you). You gain some citys, lost lots of units, if another AI declares war your pretty much doomed. You being smarter then the AI didnt help much, it was still forces versus forces with luck involved.

In Civ 4 when someone declared war, I was so upset, feck this I didnt wanted because I was scared of a powerfull AI, especially when you saw him storming and storming with units. Now I dont care you can handle it much better, no scare factor. thats the difference.

I still think a combination of 1UPT and stacking is possible by going with an army system, and each army can have 2-4 units.

So, if you move a warrior onto a hex with another warrior, you would be asked "Do you want to create an army?" You say yes, and now you have an army with the strength of two warriors, and their combined promotions (but still 100/100 health for balance).

The army, when it attacks, attacks as a single unit, instead of going with singles combat.

I think this opens up a lot of creative possibilities on the devs' end because of the potential for new kinds of units meant for the system, and gives players more freedom on the battlefield.

An army would move as slow as its slowest unit, and its ranged strength would be dependent on the type of ranged units making up the unit. If your army has one cannon, and one artillery, it has one level of ranged strength with bombarding two hexes away (where both the cannon and artillery can hit), and a lower strength when targeting a hex three hexes away.

Finally, the army as a whole gains experience. When an army levels up, you should be able to level up each individual unit, because you can always break-up an army and transfer those units to new armies. The system would be more flexible than the current system, but more restrictive than unlimited stacking.

In Civilization V, fighting the First World War meant trenches on both the Western and Eastern front.

In Civilization IV, fighting the First World War meant no trenches on either the Western and Eastern front.

System above means trenches on the Western Front (that's what, eight hexes? 32 units?), but mobile and fluid fighting on the eastern front.

After all, it isn't like armies didn't exist in a previous Civilization (though in a very different from).

Heck, you could apply the same system to the navy, and make it so you can attach a Great General to an army, turning it into a New Dawn-ish Great Commander, which opens up for commander promotions.

Funky said:

The point I have made several times before is that 1UPT therefore effectively leads to a genre-shift. The strategical aspects of a game are almost per definition less important when higher emphasis is placed on tactics. I become increasingly frustrated when I read things like "in Civ4 you just had to build a larger stack than your enemy". Yes, this is exactly what grand strategy games are about! The challenge is how to successfully accomplish it. Which tracks back to decisions about economy, research, diplomacy etc, i.e. strategic decisions. These decisions exist in Civ5 too, of course, they have just been made less meaningful in favor of the tactical aspects.

The reason I am emphasizing this so much is that I view it as the main divide between Civ4 and Civ5 and their players. There is nothing wrong with having a game like Civ5, but it seems watered down to so many Civ4 guys because of the comparatively meaningless strategy. Whereas I assume that the Civ5 guys actually enjoy the tactical side of the game more. Both paths are fine in general, I would just argue that Civ, as the classical empire building game, should fall mainly into the "strategy first"-category.

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I'm one of those who have often thrown the arguments against Civ4 that you mention, but I'd like to acknowledge that you are 100 % correct in what you write here. Personally, with one of my other favored games being Heroes of Might and Magic, which is also big on the tactical aspect, it is no surprise that I favor the Civ5 approach, but I can appreciate why you say you prefer the Civ4 style better.

Funky said:

Certainly. Yet from my experience, basically every war you fight in Civ5 (beyond the easiest levels) you start out with a smaller army. You then usually go on to win anyway, thanks to the superior tactical prowess of humans compared to the AI. So the game is not so much about elements of a grand strategy game, such as building and maintaining a superior army than your opponent to be successful, like in Civ4. Rather the focus lies on tactical skills. As you said yourself, it's not crucial that your army is as large or as advanced as your enemy's, since you can compensate poor strategic play by use of tactics.

The point I have made several times before is that 1UPT therefore effectively leads to a genre-shift. The strategical aspects of a game are almost per definition less important when higher emphasis is placed on tactics. I become increasingly frustrated when I read things like "in Civ4 you just had to build a larger stack than your enemy". Yes, this is exactly what grand strategy games are about! The challenge is how to successfully accomplish it. Which tracks back to decisions about economy, research, diplomacy etc, i.e. strategic decisions. These decisions exist in Civ5 too, of course, they have just been made less meaningful in favor of the tactical aspects.

The reason I am emphasizing this so much is that I view it as the main divide between Civ4 and Civ5 and their players. There is nothing wrong with having a game like Civ5, but it seems watered down to so many Civ4 guys because of the comparatively meaningless strategy. Whereas I assume that the Civ5 guys actually enjoy the tactical side of the game more. Both paths are fine in general, I would just argue that Civ, as the classical empire building game, should fall mainly into the "strategy first"-category.

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Now that makes sense. Why was your first post such a small snarky thing when you had this inside you?

I get what you're saying about the difference between tactics and grand strategy. I'm like Kasper, I'd rather play a game where the emphasis is on what you build and where you put them rather than just how many you build. I can see how some people would like that though.

I just don't like the way unit types and UUs get lost in stacks and war never really changes. It just takes away from the replayability of the game. There's a lot of civs in IV I never even tried because the UUs became uninteresting when they were lost in stacks. Leader traits and UBs really were the main difference and even those were somewhat bland. I think I played FDR nine times out of ten. In V there's quite a few UUs that encourage you to do something different. I've played all the civs in V. 1upt is the main reason I've sunk more hours many times over into V than I did into IV.

The only thing I really miss about Civ IV's wars was the ability to quickly create loads of drafted troops by sacrificing happiness/population and gold. I also miss the events in the late era that created troops around the city/capital. It really gave wars a sense of mobilization and reinforcement that is drastically missing in Civ V, where wars usually come down to an all or nothing battle that will usually decide the course of the rest of the war.

The Leviathan said:

The only thing I really miss about Civ IV's wars was the ability to quickly create loads of drafted troops by sacrificing happiness/population and gold. I also miss the events in the late era that created troops around the city/capital. It really gave wars a sense of mobilization and reinforcement that is drastically missing in Civ V, where wars usually come down to an all or nothing battle that will usually decide the course of the rest of the war.

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I know what you mean. I started using a mod that makes units produce at quick speed on any speed but doesn't affect buildings or settlers. I think it was meant to improve marathon and epic but it's even nice on normal. Harder to wipe out AIs and harder for them to overwhelm you. Wars tend to be a little more fun. Not quite what you're describing but definitely an improvement in the same direction.

Civ 5 is the first civ game I've played. I got a free civ 4 gift at some point and decided to try it out. I couldn't play for more than a few hours with the unit stacking and defenceless cities. Can't imagine myself missing it if I had enjoyed it.

Snipes said:

Civ 5 is the first civ game I've played. I got a free civ 4 gift at some point and decided to try it out. I couldn't play for more than a few hours with the unit stacking and defenceless cities. Can't imagine myself missing it if I had enjoyed it.

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That's correct.
A barbarian warrior with wooden clubs can walk in the metropolis of 40+ pop and raze it to the ground even when population is in the millions. xD

Even when the said population outnumber the barbarian army by millions and have access to kitchen knives....

And is part of reason why I have oppressively large garrisons I don't want to lose a 0.1% chance roll to a barbarian unit and watch my city get razed xD

Callonia said:

That's correct.
A barbarian warrior with wooden clubs can walk in the metropolis of 40+ pop and raze it to the ground even when population is in the millions. xD

Even when the said population outnumber the barbarian army by millions and have access to kitchen knives....

And is part of reason why I have oppressively large garrisons I don't want to lose a 0.1% chance roll to a barbarian unit and watch my city get razed xD

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If you were having size 40 cities being razed by barbarian warriors, you were clearly doing something wrong!