STACKING ENABLED MOD ?? STACKING PENALTY A SOLUTION TO Stack of Death problem ??

There seems to be a divide between fans on this issue, some support the new "one unit per tile" system and others like myself would like to see stacking retained.

Firaxis head designer Jon Schafer has already made a decision about this, Civ 5 will have a one unit per tile (or hex) system like the old Strategy game classic Panzer General which has been an inspiration to Schafer when designing Civ 5.
I guess no one expects Firaxis and Schafer to go back on their already stated programs and change to a stacking system mid-development.
What we CAN however hope for is that they make the game EASILY MODDABLE at Firaxis and that stacking can be brought back into the game AS EASILY AS POSSIBLE.
I am aware of the problems this would cause, one of them being that the combat AI would have to be recoded. How much coding work this would take I don´t know, but I for one hope that there will be volunteers to do the work.


However, the new one unit per tile system is NOT without its problems:

First: How will you fit a large army onto an island like Great Britain or Japan? You can´t, there isn´t enough tiles. That´s ONE reason to enable stacking, to fit large armies into small spaces.

Second: How will you move several units at once? In Panzer General you had to move all units one by one, this could take time and lengthen the amount of time a single turn would take. At present I do not know if Civ 5 has any sort of system for moving multiple units at a time or if it will have any. If it doesn´t it will definetely be a step BACKWARD and weaken the game, making it more tedious and time consuming, especially with large armies. There´s a second reason to have stacking enabled, to move units quickly and efficiently.

Third: In Panzer General which had a one unit per tile system, there were constant problems of clogging and overcrowding, especially with roads. All road lines were clogged up with advancing truck-mounted infantry and artillery which were stuck to roads and couldn´t get to the front line. The only solution was to have your infantry mounted on cross-country capable half-tracks etc. to move them across fields outside of roads. In Civ 5 units can swap tiles making it a step forward in this respect, but for me this is another reason to have stacking enabled in a mod, to avoid traffic jams on roads.

Fourth: The one unit per tile system places an implicit limit on how much units there can be on the board. It is limited to as many units as there are hexes on the map. As a matter of principle and because I like large armies, I object to this kind of limiting. The modern machines can cope with thousands upon thousands of units, there is no upper limit to units in the coding and that´s how it should be, no upper limit to units.
Civ 2 had a maximum unit count and it was infuriating to get stuck in the later stages of the game as everyone was building units and no one could get any on the board.
There´s a fourth reason to enable stacking, to fit all the units on the board.

I am certain that each side can come up with numerous reasons to support their cause. Therefore I propose that the best way to solve this problem is to have a MODULAR approach to the problem. If you like stacking, you just install a module or mod that contains all the necessary data and you can play Civ 5 as you like it. Those that like 1 unit per tile have their needs met by the vanilla game.

However, there is a BIG problem with stacking aswell and that is the STACK OF DEATH (doom) problem, units clumping up into impossibly large stacks for fighting.

I propose a SOLUTION to this problem: It is called STACKING PENALTY. All units that are stacked would incur a sizable (-50% to -75% or more) minus to their combat strength, making combat in a stack impossible and MAKING THE STACK OF DEATH VULNERABLE.
Stacks would have to DEPLOY to battle formation to do combat, the stacks would be simple "marching formations" for moving things around quicker, maybe this would also make the coding job simpler, because the AI can move around in battle formation all the time, it doesn´t NEED stacking for that, like human players do.
Also this would make the huge stacks vulnerable to ambushes along their routes, making possible interesting tactical scenarios. What if a huge marching stack is ambushed in the middle of a forest by barbarians? The whole precious stack could be slaughtered in moments, more so if ALL units have flanking attack capability against stacks. You would need to escort your stacks with non-stacked units and scout ahead of the army to check for ambushes. Interesting tactical scenarios.
This I believe would solve the SoD problem making the huge stacks a liability rather than an asset. Stacking would simply be there as a TOOL to move things around quicker and to place more units in smaller spaces.

City defence would no longer be done by stacks of units but by the cities themselves as is the Civ 5 system. You can "merge" units into a city to give it more hitpoints to repel an attack.

Of course from Civ 4 there would have to be imported functions like COLLATERAL DAMAGE, FLANKING ATTACKS etc. to make a stacking system fully functional and to make the huge stacks even more vulnerable.

Of course, those that like SoD´s can just set the stacking penalty to 0 and play like it was Civ 4 with better graphics, although the combat AI would have to be imported from Civ 4 to make the tactics work, since Civ 5 combat AI will be built around 1 unit per tile tactics.

In essence with STACKING PENALTY we would have THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS, we would have field battles like with a 1 unit per tile system and we would have stacking to move things around quicker.

For island defence there could be special units that DON´T have stacking penalties, BUT have a maximum amount of units per stack to limit SoD building. All sorts of things could be possible.

I hope that there will be a mod that makes stacking possible and I hope it will have the necessary functions to implement STACKING PENALTY.

ALL VOLUNTEER CODERS AND MODMAKERS FOR MAKING A STACKING ENABLED MOD REPORT HERE !

CHEERS !

I say we wait and see how it works out. All the problems you mention might not be that big a deal. I've played a bunch of PG lately, and yes, sometimes you clog up roads and stuff, but that just means you need to learn to prioritize what units' movements are more important to you. Sometimes that means you can't get the arty where you want it to defend your units from counterattack. You either push your luck or you play it safe and hold back. The one could lead to bold victory or disastrous loss, the other could lead to bold defense or disastrous loss of initiative.

Civ is all about making tradeoffs. I too thought taking away ALL stacking was a bad idea, but it works reasonably well in Massive Assault (with the caveat that you can load units onto transports) and it works really well in Panzer General too, so I'm willing to take a wait-and-see approach. Heck, I'd like to see Civ designed with MA as its inspiration, but I think everyone would cry at the "step backwards in realism" and forget all about the elegance of the combat system.

Regardless of anyone's thoughts, you should give it a fair shake before you go and change all the rules, having very little knowledge of how the system really works and why the rules were made. Stacking might very well break the game, or at least turn it into something it wasn't meant to be. OTOH, the inability to defend islands may be overwhelming. But on the gripping hand, islands might be invulnerable if you can't do amphibious assaults of any kind, or they're weakened too much. Hopefully they've noticed that and take it into account.

So let's wait and see; vote abstention in the poll if you agree with me.

Of course we will wait and see, we´re all waiting for Civ 5 to be released, waiting is all we can do, plus of course making suggestions on how the game could be improved.

In my opinion stacking should be retained WITH a STACKING PENALTY which would eliminate the problem of SoDs and give us field battles like in Panzer General, WITHOUT clogged roads and overcrowding. With stacking penalty you would have BOTH. I think it´s a great idea and I got the idea from a Paradox strategy game, they have stacking penalty for air units in Hearts of Iron 3 for example.

But since the decision has already been made to have a 1upt system, I can only hope that there will be a mod that enables stacking etc. and so do all the others who think that stacking is a necessary tool, not because they like SoDs but because it is NECESSARY to move lots of units around and to fit armies into islands etc.

Cheers!

Stacking penalty which reduces strength by half? With that, you should just go ahead and disable stacks anyway.

Why would Fireaxis make a mod to change the big new feature of their game and go on to rework the AI, units, and everything else to fit it because they would have to do that to make stacking work again.

You also make it sound like there's only like, ten hexes on a map.

Units clogging up roads make sense if you didn't plan things efficiency. Supply holdups and reinforcement problems because of backup can be a very real problem if you didn't plan accordingly.

Britain and Japan also had a ton of territory and were major naval powers. The British didn't keep their entire army on the island during WW2. That had forces in Africa and in India and god knows whatever other territory they controlled.

Maybe some sort of "logistics" score like in the Galactic Civilizations game. In GalCiv it determines how many ships one can put in a fleet that fights as one unit. A similar score based on wonders, buildings, techs, Civ5's equivalent of civics, etc. could be used to limit the number of units per tile while limiting the stack'o'doom phenomenon.

Yes, the idea with stacking penalty is to limit the Stack of Death (Doom) phenomenon.

With a stacking penalty, that is configurable, so everyone can set the penalty to whatever they see best, you can still fit your army in small places like islands, there´s one reason to enable stacking, you need to be able to fit your huge army into a small place if need be.

Consider for example the Normandy invasion, the whole of england was a huge staging area for the invasion, how are you going to fit your hundreds and thousands of units onto a small island like Britain without stacking? You can´t or you would have to store them in ships at sea with a huge blob of units ranging from the East Coast of US to England blocking the whole Atlantic while at it.

A second reason is road congestion, without stacking the roads will be completely clogged up with units moving in a long column along the single road, with stacking in Civ 4 there is no such problem.

A third reason is multiple unit movement and that is an important one. Right now I don´t know if Civ 5 will have ANY sort of a system in place for moving several units at a time or will you have to move units one by one, which will take forever with larger armies. There simply HAS TO BE a way to move multiple units at a time or else the game will become boring when you move your thousand unit army one unit at a time.

For these reasons I believe that stacking is NECESSARY, we need stacking as a TOOL for better gaming. I hope there will be a mod that makes all this possible, it would be great if Firaxis could do such a mod professionally and release it with the game. They have the resources and money to do so, so why not, it would please all those fans who believe like me that we need stacking.

The idea with stacking penalty is to make the stacks vulnerable, so they would not form into those horrible stacks of death that annihilate everything in their path. Stacks would remain as "marching formations" units would move in large numbers as a stack and when battle begins, they would deploy to an open formation from the stack, so basically you would have BOTH, stacked movement which takes less space and allows multiple unit movement AND open combat which is being introduced with 1upt, you would have armies deployed from stacks to open battle formations, just like in 1upt.
This would also make the modding simpler, since the combat AI doesn´t need to be much different from that in Civ 5 with 1upt, since armies would deploy into battle formations just before the battle. All that would need to be added is the AIs "awareness" of what stacks are and what to do with them if it meets them (destroy them since they are vulnerable)
Of course stacking related elements would have to be brought in, these include some graphics elements, menu functions etc., but mainly the game would stay the same, unit graphics could stay the same etc. etc.
I believe that such a mod is very much doable and I hope that such a mod appears.

Alternatively if you like stacked combat, you could have combat as stacks, stacks fighting stacks, all units together, but that would take some coding to do the new kind of combat system. Maybe you could have armies like in Civ 3, where multiple units could form an army and fight together?

Of course in stacked combat one problem is that for example cavalry will always meet pikemen or spearmen etc. That could be solved with targeting and placing spearmen in a class of their own, melee units and spear units and cavalry will target archers and melee units first in a stack. Of course placing spearmen in a class of their own would allow cavalry to destroy melee and archer units completely and never meet spearmen, making spearmen useless as protecting units.
Of course, you could have a counter-unit to spearmen, like a special type of cavalry that gets a bonus when fighting spearmen, like lancers or uhlans etc.

The possibilities are endless, but I believe we NEED stacking for the aforementioned reasons. Let us hope that a suitable mod is made.

Cheers!

Why not just keep playing Civ4 if you want a mod that's going to make the game exactly like it.

stacking and i is a love hate relationship. i hate it because some leaders send a 20 unit stack at me and i get destroyed. i love it because i have done the exact same thing

Why not keep playing Civ 4?

Because Civ 5 will have all those cool new features and better graphics.

Although I would wish they had not removed religions, now religions have to be added aswell by modding, but that too can be done I think.

So Civ 5 will need some modding but in the end it will be a good game I think.

Cheers !

Brownsfan02 said:

stacking and i is a love hate relationship. i hate it because some leaders send a 20 unit stack at me and i get destroyed. i love it because i have done the exact same thing

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I like them because there's a bunch of units in one place that I can weaken with siege, air strikes, etc. and then whittle them down to nothing.

Of course, if I don't have the units available, that can be a problem.

ETA: Forgot to mention, I play Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn mod with the ranged bombardment option on so I don't risk losing my siege units, though ranged attacks can miss. Have had a whole stack of Bombards (think early cannon) miss their ranged attacks for that turn. THAT is annoying. Otherwise, the Barrage promotion seems to work with it because when it does hit, multiple units in the SoD are damaged.

Demanding a mod be made for a game that's not even out yet is NOT the same as waiting and seeing how that game will work out.

I'm not disagreeing with any of your points, Jopo, it was a bit of a shock to me too at first, but there are lots of games where there is no stacking. Indeed, I'd say the majority of games allow no stacking, if we include simpler strategy games like Chess and Checkers that have been around forever.

Wait and see how it works BEFORE you cry gloom and doom and demand things. You just might be pleasantly surprised, but in the meantime, all you're doing is being angsty for no reason and closing your mind to the possibilities. Emo is the new gay. If it sucks that bad, you won't be the only one complaining by a longshot, I guarantee it, but right now, you're acting like an idiot by getting all worked up about it.