Carpet of Doom vs Stack of Doom

Realism is never a good argument in a Civ discussion. In fact, I treat the opinion with less value if the argument is based on realism.

Yes, there are elements of the games based on realism, inspired by reality and parts of it may even simulate reality. But Stacking units was also never realistic. In fact, no Civ game's unit management can be considered realistic. It's a series of abstractions on how to move and place units on a map.


For me, 1UPT is fine. I'm also fine with stacks, but I've been playing with stacking for ages and ages. Both have their advantages. And whereas we've had 2 major games refined stacked unit rules (note all the conversation against 1UPT eventally lead back to some BtS example about how brilliant stacking in that game is -- ignoring that it took years of patching and expansions and two Civ games to arrive at it) I'm willing to let Firaxis experiment with 1UPT and variants of UPT limits in this game and Civ VI. I have no doubt we'll arrive at something acceptable to even critics of 1UPT with refined rules from the current system.

Personally I like the idea of a soft cap, though I don't remember which games use it and which don't, I only heard it on one of the threads discussing 1upt vs stacking, and thought that this would probably be the best option: make the strongest being one unit by itself, but you can still stack units for a percent reduction in each units strength while they are stacked (10% for each with minimum of 10%? This would have to be balanced). Though I don't know if this works well in practice, in theory it would reduce the logistical nightmare while still allowing for complicated tactical movement, and allow the best of both IMHO.

SRG said:

Just watching people play is not the same as throwing out your preconceived notions and giving it the 'ole college try yourself... just saying.

But I respect your opinion, and your right to denounce a game you've never played before.

Just curious though... do you think Civ VI is going to go back to stacked armies? I have a feeling that 1 UPT is here to stay in regards to the Civ world.

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In my case... I love 1upt. I don't care about the realism. I enjoy the fact that I can build and maintain a small specialized army, and with some basic tactics I can use them very effectively. But more than that... The reason I am embracing 1upt is because now TERRAIN MATTERS!

In ciV, the tactical values of terrain matters when you are placing cities, building forts (and citadels), and generally moving around. This, in my opinion, brings the terrain to life in a way that transcends tile yield. It is in this way, very refreshing.

Realism suffers with "scale" but benefits with "strategic terrain". The AI needs some help, sure, but I honestly believe 6 months or a year from now someone (the developers or modders once the DLL is released) will have tweaked the AI and worked out the few crazy logic flaws it has.

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First and foremost I wasn't denouncing Civ V; I just don't want it. I wasn't trying to come off overly harsh, and if circumstances where different (I had more free time, namely) I would probably pick it up. Please don't feel like this is an attack against Civ V or anyone who likes it.

You are right that playing a game and watching are two different things. I did play, but only for maybe half an hour. Maybe if I spent $60-100 and actually bought it and played it for a bit then I might appreciate it more. I played Civ 1 for an hour before I bought it and loved it. Played Civ II for half an hour, bought it and loved it. Played Civ III for 1 hour, loved it and bought it. I bought Civ IV outright without playing it and I mostly like it. I played Civ V for an hour and had mixed emotions. I'm sorry for the lack of clarification, but the amount of time I spent watching (maybe 3 hrs) versus playing was drastically different.

My main reason for not buying Civ V is just the fact that I didn't get the 'gotta have it' feeling when playing it that I got when I played Civ III. That and the fact that when Civ III came out I could play 5-10 hrs per week on games, where as now I can only get in maybe 1-2 hrs per week and I've got 4 games I'm trying to play at the same time (GT5, Civ IV Star Trek Mod, STO, and Dragon Age) and I might only play each game twice in one month. Adding another game to the mix would end up just being a waste of money.

I'm all for evolution of a game series, but I personally liked being able to lump my units together and making runs into enemy territory.

And did you notice I never said I hated 1UPT, I just said that I would personally prefer something in between the two. I did mis-speak though, I did have a problem with ultra large stacks, but would prefer the alternative I mentioned.

As for the realism post I was mostly pointing out that there is no historical evidence against having a multitude of people in a realitively confined area. I would really like if the game had a more realistic movement system where your units range is bound by a supply chain more so than a set number of moves it can make in a time frame. In the early game you would need to build outposts and cities to expand your range, but within your 'control limits' you could just pool your armies at bases and they could meet invading armies within their movement range. This would be complex, but cool I think.

I think 1UPT with limited stacking abilities could work for combined arms.

ie: infantry + mechanized units can stack and form a temporary combined unit and attack together. They can receive a bonus against cities, but incur a defensive penalty for the infantry unit when stack is attacked. The penalty should be noticable, like +100% extra damage to simulate infantry breaking ranks and fleeing formation.

Things like that. right now, 1UPT has 2 combinations defender + worker unit, defender + bombard unit.

That can be expanded to include combinations of units to simulate some historical usage of combined arms. This would be superior to the classic SOD system.

dexters said:

Realism is never a good argument in a Civ discussion. In fact, I treat the opinion with less value if the argument is based on realism.

Yes, there are elements of the games based on realism, inspired by reality and parts of it may even simulate reality. But Stacking units was also never realistic. In fact, no Civ game's unit management can be considered realistic. It's a series of abstractions on how to move and place units on a map.


For me, 1UPT is fine. I'm also fine with stacks, but I've been playing with stacking for ages and ages. Both have their advantages. And whereas we've had 2 major games refined stacked unit rules (note all the conversation against 1UPT eventally lead back to some BtS example about how brilliant stacking in that game is -- ignoring that it took years of patching and expansions and two Civ games to arrive at it) I'm willing to let Firaxis experiment with 1UPT and variants of UPT limits in this game and Civ VI. I have no doubt we'll arrive at something acceptable to even critics of 1UPT with refined rules from the current system.

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You value my opinion less because I brought up realism? I was just saying that going to 1UPT shouldn't based on realism, that's all. And to emphasize my point I put them in 'quotes'.

You are right about Civ IV. I bought it when it first came out and couldn't play for the various issues, but bought the expansions in 2008, so it was vastly different then.

And for Civ VI I would like to see a limit set for a terrain type.

^ Wasn't referring to your post, but responding to Louis' post, and making a general statement about why realism shouldn't factor into any discussion on 1UPT vs stacking.

I moved on to say a lot of other relevant things too. Not sure why you want to knit pick that, obviously hit a nerve or something.

Anyways, not really relevant, I much rather discuss ideas on how to improve 1UPT .

Bibor said:

"Carpet of doom" is a myth. That screenshot was made using a production mod in vanilla Civ5.

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This... Welcome to CivFanatics.
I think it is really stupid (no offense to anyone) to first modify a game, and then complain and complain that the (modified) game gave a bad result. Yes, the "Carpet of Doom" is the second big thing that anti 1UPTists complain about. The only real, rationale and intelligent argument people have against 1UPT is it's effect on tile yields.

I wasn't trying to knit pick, I apologize. Since my Civ V experience is woefully inadequate to be helpful, I'll shutup and read.

And you are right that you made relevant points.

dexters said:

I think 1UPT with limited stacking abilities could work for combined arms.

ie: infantry + mechanized units can stack and form a temporary combined unit and attack together. They can receive a bonus against cities, but incur a defensive penalty for the infantry unit when stack is attacked. The penalty should be noticable, like +100% extra damage to simulate infantry breaking ranks and fleeing formation.

Things like that. right now, 1UPT has 2 combinations defender + worker unit, defender + bombard unit.

That can be expanded to include combinations of units to simulate some historical usage of combined arms. This would be superior to the classic SOD system.

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The problem with limited stacking is this. Cavalry is vulnerable to spears, archers are vulnerable to cavalry. Ideally you want to be able to use the superiority of cavalry against archers to your advantage in a battle. But you can't do this if there is a spear with the archer. Then your combined arms approach becomes useless.

With two units per tile (or whatever), there is always a set arrangement. You must have each tile with an offensive unit and a defensive unit to protect it. It'll kill the strategy of using the better unit against the weaker unit since you'll still have to overcome the stronger unit first. It also doesn't solve the problem of a blanket of doom or moving units to the front, since there will still be units spread all over the place, they'll just be units of 2 instead of units of 1. In my mind, limited stacks are the worst of both worlds.

Louis, you bring up a good point. My example is a kernel of limited stacking taken to its extremes, ie: two units combining temproraily to become a hybrid unit that is specialized.

I think we can keep this train of thought and avoid the 'always stack a defensive unit' type playstyle by simply allowing set combos.

ie: nothing stacks with certain units but itself ie: 2 cavalry can stack, 2 archers can stack but not a defender + cavalry or defender plus archer.

But we can also encourage allowing two units of differing capabilities to stack.
As I provided in my example infantry + tanks to provide a combined unit with enhanced city attack abilities, but if that stack is attacked, infantry takes +100% damage, and both units also take damage together.

Alternatively, stacked units with complementary abilities do not 'combine' into a unit, but rather provided set bonuses, similar to how flanking bonus is currently applied, but then you have these 2 unit stacks that can attack twice (once per each unit) and we're veering back to what made me dislike SOD.

Also worth consider is the idea of collateral damage from civ4, but applied to these adhoc stacks, so that any stack that is attacked takes damage together, to make them about as vulnerable as individual units.

So one can even stack cavalry with a defending unit, but if it is attacked by pikes, cavalry still takes normal damage, plus pikes take some damage too.

The carpet of doom just looks so awesome and powerful. With a stack the units are covered by other units, but here, they are all showing there heads.

The Carpet of Doom is why you Never Fight a Land War in Asia.

aatami said:

This... Welcome to CivFanatics.
I think it is really stupid (no offense to anyone) to first modify a game, and then complain and complain that the (modified) game gave a bad result. Yes, the "Carpet of Doom" is the second big thing that anti 1UPTists complain about. The only real, rationale and intelligent argument people have against 1UPT is it's effect on tile yields.

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How about that the AI combat programming was ripped straight out of cIV and is woefully inadequate to deal with 1UPT?

Traffic jams with workers?

Not being able to have two great people in the same city and yet allowing unlimited airplanes? Any reason for that exactly? Does that seriously make sense?

There is plenty wrong with 1UPT beyond simple tile yields.

Thormodr said:

How about that the AI combat programming was ripped straight out of cIV and is woefully inadequate to deal with 1UPT?

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That is an AI issue, not a 1UPT issue.

Traffic jams with workers?

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I agree that workers should be able to stack, but traffic jams? You would have to have abou 20 workers for that to happen... At least in my experience.

Not being able to have two great people in the same city and yet allowing unlimited airplanes? Any reason for that exactly? Does that seriously make sense?

There is plenty wrong with 1UPT beyond simple tile yields.

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Seems to me now the rational complaint is with civilians and tile yields.
Still, in my oppinion the civilian issue isn't anything, and the tile yield issue doesn't worry me at all, but I see where you are going.

Not sure how traffic jams can occur with worker. Only time there's a jam of any kind is if I'm building a road and the 2nd worker had to 'go around' the worker infront to the next tile, because the road infront of it isn't built yet.

dexters said:

Not sure how traffic jams can occur with worker. Only time there's a jam of any kind is if I'm building a road and the 2nd worker had to 'go around' the worker infront to the next tile, because the road infront of it isn't built yet.

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Try building a railroad over the same route. The conga line isn't very much fun with 1UPT.

I usally have workers working on both ends of a rail line and meeting somewhere near the capital starting with my high production cities first.

I can see how it could be a jam if you line up all your workers in a single road. But given they now cost gold to maintain, I don't spam rr in my empire.

aatami said:

That is an AI issue, not a 1UPT issue.

I agree that workers should be able to stack, but traffic jams? You would have to have abou 20 workers for that to happen... At least in my experience.

Seems to me now the rational complaint is with civilians and tile yields.
Still, in my oppinion the civilian issue isn't anything, and the tile yield issue doesn't worry me at all, but I see where you are going.

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Until they can produce an AI that isn't hopelessly incompetent with 1UPT that is a huge problem. If the system precludes having at least a passable AI then you shouldn't do it, period.

Try building railroads over top of your roads. It isn't pretty.

The civilian issue is plain stupid. They wanted to adhere to the 1UPT so badly they threw logic and common sense out the window. Not being able to have a great artist and a spaceship part in the same city is moronic. That's like saying both emeralds and cucumbers are edible because they are both green. Makes about as much sense.

Stacking workers should be allowed. Workers should be able to stack with great people. Spaceship parts should be able to stack with any civilian unit.

The tile yield issue won't go away any time soon.

Let's see if Firaxis and their greatly reduced staff can untangle this Gordian knot.

How many units are you people building where you run into constant problems with it? I can't remember the last time I had a problem with non-combat units blocking each other. Sure once in a very great while I will have a worker building a road on a 1 hex pass with no way around which blocks a settler or something, but it just doesn't happen enough to even worry about for me.

Not sure how many games I have played, but all of my games have been marathon, and never not even once have I or the AI had that many units! Not even in my game when it came down to me with 6 cities and France with 48. Your carpet of doom is a lie.