Stacks of Doom are great!

Collateral Damage is the keyword for counter-stack strategy.

Also often enough everything is just terrain-based: lead those big enemy stack into a valley of death, with the hills around suddenly fortified with good counter units and some collateral damage-givers; the stack is history.

And finally stack-breaking through damaged units: a stack can't move on in full size if some units fought and got damaged, they cause a slow down of at least 1 turn or they are left behind.
this leads to effective guerilla tactics against big stacks.


so this are just some short examples of numerous tactics possible with stacking enabled.
It's complete Bullcrap to say Stacks only need to be build up with best unit and then thrown at the enemy and everything is in butter.


1UPT completely destroys civ in terms of creating uncountable UNLOGIC gamemechanics.
 
I'll try to keep my response shorter to avoid tl;dr

Maktaka said:
1) A stack of powerful units is moving in. Do you try to match their powerful units with your own heavy hitters, or build harassment units that can at least do some damage and take out a couple enemy units piece by piece? You can't do the latter in Civ 4, the damage gets spread out across the defenders as they each rotate in, then they heal up for a turn or two and it's all for naught.
This is all very theoretical. It's not like you can do this in Civ 5 either, owing to long build-times. Sending harassment units in Civ 5 would also be for naught given that you're basically giving away free experience to opponent units which buffs them up and makes them even stronger + chance for insta-heal promotion found in Civ 5. And similarly, waiting and healing for 2 or more turns with defensive buffer units around the injured unit would result in full health. This is no different from halting a stack to heal. (As expressed by poncratias and tylor in the two posts above mine! :goodjob: )

2) Your enemy is keeping his attackers mixed in with their escorts. You can attack with your planetary defenders, but assuming these are defenders, they won't be very effective (note that this applies better to GalCiv1's combat system, where if def>att for a unit, it gets 1/2 def added to att when defending, so counter-attacking with dedicated defenders carries a significant penalty). Will you try to attack with defenders anyway to take advantage now, or wait until you can build/buy/move over your own attacker units that can hit the fragile attackers better? In Civ 4 you should always wait, as unless you have enough units to force sub-par defenders to rotate in and get killed, a spot of healing and the attacker's back to normal from your attack.
I'm not too clear on GalCiv's combat system so I can't comment on that. But this scenario doesn't exist in Civ 5 either. One city can only garrison one unit. And if Garrisoned, City Defense Power simply increases. With a City in Civ 5 effectively acting as a stationary super-artillery, it now becomes always better to attack, since City Health recovers so quickly and bombardment of units so deadly. You must already have a swarm of units waiting to rotate into the siege for it to be viable, there isn't even a choice present to camp outside the enemy's city.

3) Your enemy is keeping his glass cannon units back from the front lines. Will you take advantage of the weaker total stack strength of the front lines now and attack there, or try to maneuver fast units past the front lines to hit the glass cannons? With everything in a stack in Civ 4, you can't hit attack units until all defenders are dealt with, so there's never a reason to keep them back.
If maneuvering Cavalry to hit Siege Engines in Civ 5 was possible, then that person/AI isn't defending his Siege Engines very well. With 3-4 Melee Units in Civ 5 to a pair of Siege Engines is pretty much enough to make the Siege Engines invincible for a turn or two for you to respond.

In Civ 4, Cavalry units had a Flanking Ability which would damage adjacent Siege Engines every turn no matter how large the stack is. This is why I said earlier that Soren Johnson and his team made excellent subtle balances to the SoD system.

1UPT is not inherently bad, but in Civ 5, it is implemented rather poorly IMO.
 
That poll was not comparing SOD to 1UPT nor was it factoring in the AIs ability to handle 1UPT. Your conclusion that most people enjoy 1UPT more and SOD is not supported by that poll.

I for one am not against 1UPT but because of the limited AI, mobility issues, and scale of civ I enjoy stacking more.

The strategy between stacks and 1upt are the nearly the same; Pikeman > mounted unit, swords > pikeman, melee > siege(range). Taking up more than 1 tile does not increase the strategy of civ. It does increase tactics if you were a civIV player that only used a single stack but I usually have more than one offensive stack at the ready.
What about this one. ;)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=405888
 
After playing 1upt, I would welcome stacking back. One of the common complaints I see with stacking is that, in general, it appears that the guy with the largest stack wins. 1upt promises that if you are a better tactical thinker, you can simply outmaneuver an opponent. I too hoped to flex my tactical muscle and pull my own Marathon or Thermopylae(except without all my men dying in the end :) ). But if you think about it, isn't it more realistic, as a rule, that the guy with the bigger stack wins in open combat? I know that throughout history, there have been many, many instances where a smaller army routed a much larger one, but these seem to be the exception to the rule. At the strategic level, If your army is caught vastly outnumbered, the best you can hope to do is to do enough damage to slow/stop the other army and/or get your men out alive. Those famous historical upsets were usually determined by a combination of tactical genius(which is hard to model in a Civ game,) tactical/strategic blunders by the enemy, and superior soldiers.

In terms of the strategic value of stacking, well, expect losses if you bring a knife to a gunfight. You have to pick the right units for whatever eventuality and keep your stack well supplied with fresh troops. You have to make the decision of how many units to cram into a tile. Do you take a calculated risk of collateral damage by moving all of your units together? Do you need to have some loose troops available to cover a retreat of the main body?

With 1upt you have a lot less options. You move your troops one by one and that's that. It's one thing to position your men to rout another army. It's another thing to position your troops to be effective on the world stage. Civ V makes no distinction between the two, and once you get past the novelty of drawing up your own battle lines, stacking doesn't look all that bad in comparison.

P.S. Happy New Year everyone! :)
 

Camikaze and aziantuntija offer reasons why that poll is off. All of the random_numberUPT could have been summed up as an xUPT option. Where x is any number greater then 1. "Stacks of DOOM!" and "1 UPT is perfect" are worded in a polarizing ways that could effect how a person votes.

I am curious on how you view the results. Do you view it has 60% of the people wanting stacking of some sort, 40% pro-1UPT against 15% SOD, or 85% not wanting Stacks of DOOM!.

Regardless of how you perceive that poll there is only 60 votes the point goes back to you trying to say most people agree. That poll is of poor sampling size, questions, and quality. It does not represent what most people think.
 
i am all for SoDs with some overcrowding penalty and battle resolution as in CtP :goodjob:


In terms of the strategic value of stacking, well, expect losses if you bring a knife to a gunfight. You have to pick the right units for whatever eventuality and keep your stack well supplied with fresh troops. You have to make the decision of how many units to cram into a tile. Do you take a calculated risk of collateral damage by moving all of your units together? Do you need to have some loose troops available to cover a retreat of the main body?
determining optimal stack composition is imho a perfect example of tedious MM :thumbsdown:

besides the cons of a SoD would have been magnified if the ai did build more enough siege
 
Camikaze and aziantuntija offer reasons why that poll is off. All of the random_numberUPT could have been summed up as an xUPT option. Where x is any number greater then 1. "Stacks of DOOM!" and "1 UPT is perfect" are worded in a polarizing ways that could effect how a person votes.

I am curious on how you view the results. Do you view it has 60% of the people wanting stacking of some sort, 40% pro-1UPT against 15% SOD, or 85% not wanting Stacks of DOOM!.

Regardless of how you perceive that poll there is only 60 votes the point goes back to you trying to say most people agree. That poll is of poor sampling size, questions, and quality. It does not represent what most people think.
Simply you are not to be convinced (and there is no need for that either). Maybe you assume that you represent the majority of the fans or something. :crazyeye:
It is very clear from several polls that most people prefer 1UPT over SODs though some think that Firaxis could have chosen a middle path.
 
Those in this thread who hate SoD and love 1upt must not have attempted multiplayer yet. Because civ 5 multiplayer is a really bad joke, and 1upt is responsible for at least half of the problems (the other half being bugs, crashes, freezes, no lobby, etc.) Civ 5 multiplayer (when it works) is a deranged clickfest.

So I can see how some would enjoy rolling a braindead AI over and over again, but if you should try to play a game against another actual person you will realize how awful these choices were for a game like civ. Say what you like about SoD but at least it made for a remotely functional game experience.

And if you think that in a game that does allow stacks (i.e. civ IV), the SoD is the consummate, surefire strategy that always wins, you probably weren't that great at that game. Try reading this page: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/RBPB2-5.html
 
3) Throw stack at enemy stack. Game will automatically pick the best unit for you to attack with and the best unit for the defender.

Yeah, go ahead and do that on Immortal or Deity. I guess you'll be very successful...
 
Simply you are not to be convinced (and there is no need for that either). Maybe you assume that you represent the majority of the fans or something. :crazyeye:
It is very clear from several polls that most people prefer 1UPT over SODs though some think that Firaxis could have chosen a middle path.

I would thank you for not trying to tell me whether or not I can be convinced or infer that I think my opinions are representative of the majority from just a few posts.
When I post my opinions I do so without needing or wanting some sort of validation that the majority agree with what I say.

Since the majority is an important aspect to your posts then how about this for a funky thought.
What if the majority, you believe in so, are wrong?
 
Yeah, go ahead and do that on Immortal or Deity. I guess you'll be very successful...
I did that all the time on Immortal and won. Stop cutting and pasting, and notice that he also mentioned using bombardments. Stack warfare requires almost no thought.

The goal of 1upt was to make players think during wartime. The problem is the AI sucks at thinking, so it can't keep up. We're suffering either way, through our choice of no thinking (stacks), or bad AI (1upt). At least the AI can be improved.
 
Stack warfare requires almost no thought.

You didn't read the link I posted above. Sullla defeated attacking stacks from 5 different enemy (human) players at once because all of them thought like you do, just walk a big stack in a straight line and win. Just because you can beat the AI with a boneheaded strategy like that doesn't mean give you the authority to say that it's all there is because it's not. In fact you are showing no more intelligence in your strategy then the AI itself!
 
You didn't read the link I posted above. Sullla defeated attacking stacks from 5 different enemy (human) players at once because all of them thought like you do, just walk a big stack in a straight line and win. Just because you can beat the AI with a boneheaded strategy like that doesn't mean give you the authority to say that it's all there is because it's not. In fact you are showing no more intelligence in your strategy then the AI itself!
I read the article months ago. The keyword is "human". I would wager over 98% of the games played in Civ4 and Civ5 are against AI. When discussing if stacks are good or bad for the game, we have to take that into account. I shouldn't have to prep my post with "by the way I'm talking about the AI" when it's the vast majority of games.

Secondly I also play my fair share of multiplayer. Moving a stack towards a key city to raze is still one of the best strategies. One counterexample of better play that worked out for Sulla shouldn't mean we stick with a broken mechanic.

Honestly I don't see why there is any defense of Civ4's warfare at all. Stacks turns a huge war with a couple 10s of turns of unit building into a 1-turn army defeat and a burned city. It takes away flavour from individual units as what matters in big armies is collateral damage and a lot of soakers. The *only* redeeming quality is that the AI handles it better, but by your post you're completely skirting around that and instead talking about multiplayer.

OH! There's also these gems in your link:
Now it was time to watch and wait for the enemy moves. Dantski split up his stack in the south, presumably to pillage two different tiles, and that would have been a disastrous tactical mistake if we had had the units to exploit it. (Do not split up your stacks in this game unless you have a REALLY good reason for doing so!)
Dantski foolishly split up his stack again, I guess for pillaging reasons
I'll repeat my point, unconvinced by that link: 1upt allows a lot more thinking on the part of the human player, so we should stick with it. It will take time for the developers to make the AI better.


Finally, you can get your point across without the insult at the end.
 
I did that all the time on Immortal and won. Stop cutting and pasting, and notice that he also mentioned using bombardments. Stack warfare requires almost no thought.

The goal of 1upt was to make players think during wartime. The problem is the AI sucks at thinking, so it can't keep up. We're suffering either way, through our choice of no thinking (stacks), or bad AI (1upt). At least the AI can be improved.

The strategy is assembling your army and knowing when to use it. Players are usually cautious and start wars when they feel certain that they'll win, so it's not surprising that they'll think stack warfare requires "no thought".

But even if you dislike the combat in prior versions, you do have to compare it to what we have now. The knock on the Civ 5 alternative is that it fails as a tactical challenge (e.g. it's far, far easier than prior combat models at the same difficulty level), is clunky, and messes up other game mechanics in a feeble attempt to solve its shortcomings. Those are all severe.

My hope is that we end up with mini-battles on tactical maps (with an auto-resolve option) and return to having actual armies, perhaps with size related to empire properties (a la EU3) and a much more engaging empire-building model.
 
But even if you dislike the combat in prior versions, you do have to compare it to what we have now. The knock on the Civ 5 alternative is that it fails as a tactical challenge (e.g. it's far, far easier than prior combat models at the same difficulty level), is clunky, and messes up other game mechanics in a feeble attempt to solve its shortcomings. Those are all severe.
Yeah, I agree that Civ5's 1upt needs a lot of work. I think we'd be better off with more pieces on the board, and a higher production rate. I don't think we'd be overcrowding at all, in fact the only times I see severe overcrowding is due to bad AI design. Make units cheaper, consider increasing maintenance, then adjust the AI so it follows more of a "wartime / peacetime production and unit count". The current system is bad, because losing even a couple units hurts way too much. Even if it doesn't solve the balance or bad AI, we should still feel an improvement. When a game is too slow in its pacing, its flaws stick out a lot more.

I'm hating on stacks because that's what this thread's about right down to the title. Really on this forum we should be discussing more about how to improve the current system *while sticking to the designer's intentions*. For combat, we should stick to the confines of a 1upt system and figure out what we could do to make it better rather than discussing a complete reversal that the game designers would never implement.
ohioastronomy said:
My hope is that we end up with mini-battles on tactical maps (with an auto-resolve option) and return to having actual armies, perhaps with size related to empire properties (a la EU3) and a much more engaging empire-building model.
I dunno, I don't fault 1upt for taking away from empire-building. I fault bad empire-building from taking away from empire-building. I can easily imagine a 1upt game with a strong empire component. I fear if there was a tactical map that it would make Civ5 feel like 2 separate games rather than 1 whole picture. There needs to be a focus, with one of the maps (strategy or tactical) taking the back burner. In Total War, strategy takes the back burner. I don't know if you could do the same in Civ.

(I've actually never played EU3... I might have to!)
 
When are we going to understand that Civ is not a war game, therefor combat strategies are unneeded. Stacks fitted perfectly with a game like Civ and could still be improved upon. Tactical war is something that should have been improved upon, not tactical combat.
 
First, any stacking limit creates movement problems - and the lower the stacking limit the more severe they get. That alone explains the sluggish performance of Civ 5, as well as many of the odd AI tactics - and that is a severe cost to the mechanism. For this reason alone I want stacks - I can trust the computer to move pieces from A to B, but not to solve an elaborate shuffling problem - especially when moving to the wrong spot can kill pieces in war.

Second, I think there are semantic issues here. I can certainly see the tedium in the Civ 4 unlimited pile of stuff model. But would two units per hex really create a litany of horrors? Do tactics vanish when you can put more than one unit in a hex? You could abstract "archers protected by foot soldiers" in a stack, even create your own formations and order in which battle is resolved - and do it with whatever stacking limits you wanted. You could limit troops by having the maximum army size tied to total population, or have a soft stack cap (attrition when too many units are in the same place). Naval convoys could be much more realistic if they moved and fought as a unit and you could actually protect the transports. In short, there are many creative solutions and improvements to the Civ 4 model.

In my view the lack of stacking is a basic design error, and until it is abandoned at the strategic level the game will suffer.
 
Without even going back and reading any post in this thread, I realize by the thread title I was going to have to put the OP on my constantly growing list of people who give me aneurysms with their posts.

Stacks of doom are trash. There is nothing fun about stacks of doom. They're incredibly stupid and unusable and are so easy to take down with a few simple units. People complain about the AI's inability to handle armies in CiV but like to ignore that in CivIV, the AI isn't smart enough to divide up stacks and avoid getting smash to death with five catapults or something ridiculous like that.

Stacks of doom are not great. That's why xUPT was implemented into RAND as a bonus, at first unsupported option. So many users started using it that it became supported. I'm not sure, but I think RiFE uses xUPT as well now. Why?

Because giant stacks of doom are stupid. Plain and simple. There's nothing awe-inspiring about them. There's nothing hard about taking one down. Stack busting in CivIV was as easy as sending 5+ catapults at something and then mopping up. It was that bad and simple to handle. Anyone who is impressed by a SoD in a game is easily impressed.

What else? Oh yeah, it made terrain pointless because siege units dominated period. If you had more siege units than your enemy, there's a good chance you won the battle. It doesn't help that if you smash the big stack, the war is over.

Seriously, the only challenge of the war when it comes to CivIV is the first few turns of the war. It was something you could expand on. It was something that no longer worked.
 
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