1 unit/tile overkill

Just look how different games solved troop stacking:
Hearts of Iron 3: it depends on troops type, tecnology and above all Supply
Europa Universalis 3 (Magna Mundi) - Troop stacking depends on many factors: terrain type, upgrades, tecnology, National Ideas.

As many said before 1upt it's a deal or broke...

To me the only solution is going Full Panzer General: retain the 1Upt but with more smaller hexes, more movement for troops and multi-hexed cities. Given the "lightness" of Civ V it would ruin even a Norad computer but could turn out a very great game: immagine the fight to control a 7 hexed city with swordsmen advancing inside against pikemen while cannon barrages land from both sides.

Civilization General

Zelig said:

Unlimited stacking, best defender defends, but if the defender loses, every unit on the tile is killed.

Because civ2 always had either the attacker or defender killed in combat, for an equivalent system in civ5, you'd need to do like I mentioned in my previous post - when a defending unit in a stack takes damage, every unit in the stack takes equal damage.

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I remember this... And I believe it's the best choice if you want to eliminate use of stacks in battlefield without incurring in gross micromanagement when moving your army across the map.

I think one should be able to have two units end up on the same tile at the end of a turn if they are moving toward different destinations and are on a road or railroad. That would simulate two way travel on a road and at least prevent some of the back ups that are experienced now. I have no idea how or even if that can be programmed but it might be a solution.

The Leviathan said:

a 1uph system simply works better than having to build 5 units per hexe to have a complete unit. Also I hardly consider that choice making, you're simply playing rock paper scissors while smashing stacks into each other like toy cars.

the new system actually requires you to think about placement, formations, choke points, flanking, etc things that have decided the fates of battles since the dawn of warfare.

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Or just build horsemen and mop up the AI. Seriously, you can talk about theoretical combine armed tactics being effective but until just spamming horsemen isn't more effective, then it doesn't really matter.

Another problem with 1upt:

You need less units. It is stupid to have 40 units when only 6 can attack.
You have to make each unit more resistant to death otherwise if you lose one battle you lost 1/6 of your force vs the 1/40th before.

This means that a human player almost never loses a unit during a war. Even the AI vs AI wars mean little loss. This in effect leads to snowballing. Typically there are only super powers left after the middle ages.

Iberian said:

Another problem with 1upt:

You need less units. It is stupid to have 40 units when only 6 can attack.
You have to make each unit more resistant to death otherwise if you lose one battle you lost 1/6 of your force vs the 1/40th before.

This means that a human player almost never loses a unit during a war. Even the AI vs AI wars mean little loss. This in effect leads to snowballing. Typically there are only super powers left after the middle ages.

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More units just creates tedium of moving units though. This is a design enigma through and through.

What if you could stack a limited number of units of the same type only on one hex, say 2 or 3, and create an "army." Perhaps it could suffer a movement loss but a strength bonus, or marginally increase upkeep or something else that would still discourage just making every unit a 2 or 3 stacked army. Plus if you couldn't combine arms on one hex you remove the problem I think they were getting around in Civ4 which was an impossible to attack stack countering everything which you would have to hit with siege units (or suicide a bunch of units) before having a chance.

And unlimited stacking of workers or settlers. I see no point in not stacking workers. Prevent them from combining their work, if that's the issue they have. (Although: why was that an issue?)

Also perhaps allow units to simply move through another unit but not end their turn on the unit. (Is that how it is now? Haven't played more than a few hours so far.)

I think it's an interesting start, and like anything new (new to civ, at least) it is going to take some tweaking.

mrt144 said:

More units just creates tedium of moving units though. This is a design enigma through and through.

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I agree. I don't like building 100 units late game either. I hated finishing Civ games. Though the movement in 4 wasn't too bad because of the stack.

Not sure what the lesser of two evils is.

The Snug said:

Why not allow 2 or 3? Why go from infinite to 1; there was no suitable number between those two extremes?

Why not permit army groups ala civ3? An army group that could permit 1 mounted unit, 1 ranged unit and 2 infantry units. That would seem reasonable to me.

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1 is the least arbitrary hard cap they could've set. Now I was never in favour of hard caps to begin with, but if they had to set one, then setting it at 1 was probably the best they could do.

Exponential penalties FTW.

To anyone advocating for 2upt, 3upt and similar: try it.
"A New Dawn" mod for Civ4 allows you to play with Xupt and to define x as you like.

I played a lot AND with 2upt and 3upt; it seemed better that unlimited stack but I certainly prefer 1upt by far.

I suggest to try them. Play a lot with them, keep playing Civ5 too and compare your practical experiences.

1 upt is just craaazzzyyy when you (or the AI) have a lot of units. Definitely doesn't fit the strategical map of ciV.

Civ 1 had an incredible way (though not very realistic) of dealing with stacks. Now units can't one shot so it can't be done the same way, but if you made the units in a stack take 50% (or any number which seems best) of the damage the unit who defends the stack take, it would be the end of super size stacks, while you keep the same mobility. And it would be a real strategical decision : do I take the risk of stacking or not ?

That's so easy to do, and so much more relevant for this type of game that I really don't understand why it's not been done. Maybe I missed something ?

No you haven't missed anything. That is the best and only solution. For some unknown reason they decided to use 1upt, which resulted in the documented issues and annoyances. It seems to me that all the people supporting the design choice of 1upt are ignoring the benefits of said obvious solution, as if it doesn't exist. For God's sake it was used in Civ 1 and 2. I just don't understand why they decided to go down the route of 1upt, when it so obviously doesn't work. Surely the a stack with only one defender would have worked a lot, lot better.

Conspirator said:

No you haven't missed anything. That is the best and only solution. For some unknown reason they decided to use 1upt, which resulted in the documented issues and annoyances. It seems to me that all the people supporting the design choice of 1upt are ignoring the benefits of said obvious solution, as if it doesn't exist. For God's sake it was used in Civ 1 and 2. I just don't understand why they decided to go down the route of 1upt, when it so obviously doesn't work. Surely the a stack with only one defender would have worked a lot, lot better.

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The problem with stacks, even with one defender, is that they make counters useless.
There's no point to build anti-tank guns if you can stack a tank with an infantry.
That would bring back the main SoD issue, i.e. you can't use counters nor manouvering nor flanking, the only way to win is with superior numbers.

I don't agree.

Why wouldn't you need to build anti-tank guns if the enemy has tanks? If you stack a tank with an infantry, then both units would be liable to be destroyed by a tank, or a superior promoted infantry unit. Not to mention the whole bombardment from artillery/cities effectively making stacking a very stupid thing to do in the heat of battle. Stacking a tank with an Infantry, Anti-Tank gun and/or whatever else wouldn't make any difference, because the unit is still effectively one unit. Just like it is now, i.e. an infantry is vulnerable to a tank. This wouldn't change. So with all due respect I don't understand your reasoning?

Flanking.. Why not? Flanking bonus could work exactly the same as it works now.

Manoeuvring. Again, why not? The game would work pretty much the same as it does now, i.e. in battles there would be minimal or no stacking of units because obviously if all your units were stacked in a single group (or a few groups) they would be a lot more vulnerable than if they were spread out over the battlefield. The only real change to gameplay would be ease of multiple unit movement across the map. Little else would change.

Is it a good thing that whenever I want to move a lot of units to a different front I inadvertently sigh with frustration? Heck even one unit can be a head-ache. I find myself micro-managing units turn by turn instead of sending them off on a pre-determined path. In my opinion this is a step back in game design.

Another point to make is that instead of giving units the promotion of insta-heal (which completely sucks) units that are weak would simply stack with a unit in full health, enabling you to protect these weakened units from being picked off and actually heal properly (whilst still being vulnerable to bombardment).

I remember before the game was released some people expressed concern on this very point, i.e. that moving units will be tedious and annoying. But these concerns were allayed by people suggesting there would be a simple click and drag solution, where you could move a whole army in tandem across the map, and said units would re-deploy pretty much identically as when you click and dragged them! Well quite clearly this wasn't possible! And even if it did exist or is going to be implemented at a later date, imagine the disruption this would cause not only in your own territory and to your own units but to other Civ units moving around the map. God forbid the disruption and mayhem should you move across someone else's territory or someone doing that in your territory!

Conspirator said:

If you stack a tank with an infantry, then both units would be liable to be destroyed by a tank, or a superior promoted infantry unit.

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This is the heart of the problem.
With stacks you need to be stronger in order to win, much stronger indeed because the defender could be located in better terrain and/or could be fortified.

With 1upt instead I don't need a superior promoted unit, my unit could be less experienced actually. BUT if I can manouver properly I can overcome the odds: I have to be smart enough in order to engage the enemy tank with my anti-tank gun and the enemy infantry with my tank.
i.e. with 1upt scouting, flanking and ambushing reward you. Tactics are the key.
With stacks they don't matter: superior strength wins.

No still don't understand. Let's say I'm playing Civ 5 now, and I have an Infantry with loads of bonuses for hills. So I fortify on a hill... How would someone kill this unit? They would bombard it a few times, send a unit around it for the flanking bonus, and attack it with a couple of units until it died.

Let's say I'm playing Civ 5 with stacking and the 1 defender rule. I have an infantry with loads of bonunses on hills. I fortify on the hill. I also send in two tanks, two more infantry and an artillery into the same tile as the original fortified infantry. How would someone kill all those units?? They would bombard it a few times, send a unit around it for the flanking bonus, and attack it with a couple of units until it died.

The key here is, I think, that there can only be 1 defender. If it gets weakened the next best defender wouldn't take its place.

This whole point of contention would go away if they changed the relative scale between the various entities.

The fact is that units/armies/whatever should not take up the same space as a city, or even a farm.

My proposal then is simple:

The objects sitting on the hex grid should be scaled according to desired game mechanics relative to each other.

the key being "relative to each other."

For example:
A city and a mountain could be a 7 hex size.
A unit could be one hex.
Rivers might span 2... So bigger rivers mean longer bridges / traversals


I think this would work well... Plus it's scalable throughout the eras...

I don't wanna see CIV go into tactical map and strat map (like Total War). I want the board game feel for CIV, and the tactics for TW.

Abremms said:

because if you have any limit on it at all, then it essentialy because 1upt anyways, where one unit = one full stack. if you have a 3upt limit, then no one is going to field less than 3 units on a tile.

its simper to just do 1upt. have you actually played the game? it works fantastically. easily the best change they made, combat is fun now.

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In my opinion a higher limit to UPT will allow production to play a greater role in wars and the game as a whole. As it stands now, production had to be nerfed in order to keep a proper balance of units on the field. During prolonged wars, the productivity does not factor in as much as it should.

Abremms said:

none of the things you say here are true. there certainly are combined arms, just not on the same tile.

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Combined arms would be archers surrounded on all four sides by a box formation of spearmen, to make attack of the archers impossible without attacking the spearmen. People in threads here have complained that simulating that real life unit formation would make the combat system horrible.

After all, it would make horsemen pointless. Horsemen weren't pointless in real life, though, even with spearmen always defending archers.

I don't see the point in having something between the two opposing radicals. Why only allow two or three? Having a random number like that leaves the player saying, "Why?" which is a no-no, at least for me, when it comes to game mechanics.