Instead of 1UPT (one unit per tile) why not just make armies?

I mean they could have simply backtracked and made it similar to Civ III.

My thought would be allowing 3 to 5 individual units to create small groups and then the player can train (or can be born on the battle field) generals. General units would allow for a more expanded # (let's say 7-8 max) and then if the person obtains a great general they can max out at 10.

From there would be certain benefits from combining like arsenals. For example if you have warriors and horsemen the warriors ride (if you command them to) with the horsemen. Then in the modern age, you can have soldiers ride on tanks. Or else you can combine similar pieces like marines then army men with one acting as a front line then the others as reinforcement. Then as the number go down you can combine groups or send in individual or selected units to re-reinforce that group.

Wouldn't this just mean a return of the Stack of Doom? Seems like the whole 1U/T rule is designed to move away from that, which is an excellent choice.

Limited stacking leads to the same problems as unlimited stacking. That there will be a big pile of units defending a city and the only way for you to take it down will be to concentrate your forces in large stacks that don't do any fighting until they reach the city walls. The only way to avoid this style of battle is by using a 1upt rule.

1 upt makes a lot of sense as a way to bring fighting out to the countryside and force the players to make strategic decisions rather than just put a whole lot of guys together and attack head on.

helpless_writer said:

I mean they could have simply backtracked and made it similar to Civ III.

My thought would be allowing 3 to 5 individual units to create small groups and then the player can train (or can be born on the battle field) generals. General units would allow for a more expanded # (let's say 7-8 max) and then if the person obtains a great general they can max out at 10.

From there would be certain benefits from combining like arsenals. For example if you have warriors and horsemen the warriors ride (if you command them to) with the horsemen. Then in the modern age, you can have soldiers ride on tanks. Or else you can combine similar pieces like marines then army men with one acting as a front line then the others as reinforcement. Then as the number go down you can combine groups or send in individual or selected units to re-reinforce that group.

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because its a complete different concept...

Makes good sense. The new rule is going to require you to surround a city in order to get enough units to takes it. Providing that the one unit one resource allows you to build enough units to create an army and still hold your cities. The build an army along with build a colony were two of the better ideas from Civ III that were unfortunately left out of Civ IV.

I Like the one unit rule. It worked very well in Panzer General. I will miss placeing a Pikeman in the same square as my catapult. But the cat can shoot over the Pikeman defending it's front anyways. Also with the hex grid more units can attack a city at a time.
I hope they keep the paper, rock, scissors aspect of combat. It will make various points of a one unit line, much weaker.
So I don't think the system is gona kill your offensive ability.

why do people keep saying hexes have 2 more sides/ 2 more attack options, do people not realise you can move an attack in diagonols on the sqaure system.

A square tile has 8 directions available
a hex has 6 available.

I stand corrected

What if they had it where you could combine units into an army like civ-rev?

I didn't like the game, but I thought that feature was cool.

Wald

Yeah, that is what the OP is suggesting, though I think you guys are trying to remove a central feature to Civ5. One unit per tile is what they WANT, why would they weaken it with armies, etc.? Hopefully there can be mods designed to adjust it for people unhappy with the new system.

helpless_writer said:

I mean they could have simply backtracked and made it similar to Civ III.

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But why would they do that? 1upt sounds much much better than stacks wich are just called armies instead of stacks. In other thread i have allready told my opinion about limited stacking, its not a solution to anything.

duckofspades said:

So I don't think the system is gona kill your offensive ability.

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No, more like the opposite. The system will either have problems that are incredibly annoying or game-crippling for everyone, (too much luck and randomness, which with few units and small maps can make or break things) or it will just be extremely easy (they want the latter) and it will be easy to outmanoeuvre all your enemies.

Earthling said:

No, more like the opposite. The system will either have problems that are incredibly annoying or game-crippling for everyone, (too much luck and randomness, which with few units and small maps can make or break things) or it will just be extremely easy (they want the latter) and it will be easy to outmanoeuvre all your enemies.

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Yes this is definitely true. IN OPPOSITE WORLD.

I mean, seriously, did you even play Civs 1-4?

Randomness?
Luck?
Incredibly annoying? Stacks on a forest hill
Game crippling? The entire fricking stack mechanic
Easy combat? Oh, you mean Civs 1-4, where you can walk past the enemy and gank their cities

1upt, unlike stack combat, makes it impossible to just walk past all the defenders and take the enemy cities. It means conflict in the field will determine who holds cities. And it means that well established AI routines for 1upt -- which is the standard in practically every wargame ever -- can be used instead of whatever it is they cooked up for the earlier games.

If you don't want deeper and more interesting combat than Civ 1-4, where you mostly just traded units with city defenders until "durp de durp city taken", don't buy Civ5.

duckofspades said:

I stand corrected

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It's not just you, i've read several previews that have said the same thing, gives out far too much mis-information.

Walderschmidt said:

What if they had it where you could combine units into an army like civ-rev?

I didn't like the game, but I thought that feature was cool.

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Cool, perhaps. But it effectively ensured taht every unit built had to be combined with anohter, two, may as well just built an army (taking 3 times as long) in the first place and be done with it.

Which i think is the route they have gone in Civ5, units consist of a dozen troops rather tahn the standard 3, they have larger than standard strengths from previous games too.

helpless_writer said:

My thought would be allowing 3 to 5 individual units to create small groups and then the player can train (or can be born on the battle field) generals. General units would allow for a more expanded # (let's say 7-8 max) and then if the person obtains a great general they can max out at 10.

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This is what i wrote in "Unit stacking" thread according to limited stacking:


"You should really understand that for example 3upt (or any other stack limit bigger than 1) WOULD NOT just be an tactical option, it would be A TACTICAL MUST, because now IF YOU ARE HAVING just 1 unit inside a hex, it is going to be ran over by enemys 3upt SSoD (SSoD=Small Stack of Death). So basicly, 3 units in hex are NOT 3 units in a hex at all, it is a one (1) full unit and anything less than 3 units in a hex (1 or 2 units in a hex) is an incomplete unit wich will be ran over by enemys full unit SSoD wich is goint to be 3upt or 4upt or whatever you might want it to be. In SSoD (lets say 3upt) civ game, you wouldnt even be moving your three different units one at a time, you would select all the 3 units that are occupying that tile, and move them all at once. So basicly, you would be ALWAYS treating them like being 1upt! And i really mean ALWAYS cause you CANT break your full 3upt SSoD unit in a combat because then it will just be picked up by a enemy SSoD. So it doesnt really add anything to tactical decision making in battle.

The only thing that 3upt brings to 1upt gameplay is micromanagement. After all, you dont wanna put 3 Modern Armours in the same hex cause then enemy can easily run them over with 3 Gunships, you would always have to manage what units you are having in your SSoDs, so 3upt, 4upt or whatever, would just be a micromanagemental hell compared to 1upt where you DONT have that kind of MM problem. You dont have to be constatly checking what stack needs what kind of unit right now to stay alive.

The bigger the SSoD gets, lets say 8upt, it will just get more closer to the infinite SoDs in civ4, wich are horrible. Also, to occupy more hexes effectively, you need more units (9 units to occupy 3 hexes when 3upt), this encourages unit spam wich also increases micromagent."

I ghanged some minor things from that script, but basicly the point is the same than when i first writed it.

When I first read about the 1upt, I was quite happy since I still love (and play) Panzer General.

Nevertheless, in Panzer General, you did have much space between the "cities" (victory points) which allowed (and requested) you to deploy your army.
The same thing would require really over-huge maps in Civ5 (and disallowing close cities).

Furthermore, 1 turn in Panzer General can easily take more than 1 hour (at least the closer you're coming to Oak Ridge, for instance). Now, translate this into Civ5 and I foresee many complaints about the ridiculous length of military campaigns.

Therefore, meanwhile I have become sceptical whether 1upt will be the right choice for Civ5.

Regarding the statement that SSODs are just like 1upt:
This is not necessarily correct. The SSOD might get it's real power from the composition of units in it.
You might have 1 spear, 1 axe, 1 sword and 3 archers.
Or you might have 3 spears, 2 axes and 1 archer. (just wild examples without any real idea behind)

Both SSOD would serve completely different purposes.

Commander Bello said:

Regarding the statement that SSODs are just like 1upt:
This is not necessarily correct. The SSOD might get it's real power from the composition of units in it.

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Yeah well.. as i allready said then its not a tactical option but a tactical MUST.

If you can have limited stacks then you must be constantly building new units to replace the units that have died from that stack so that the stack doesnt become woulnurable to some particular type of unit.

If you have 1upt then you know exatcly the weakness of that particular unit and you cant do nothing about it, exept use tactics in a combat wich is way more fun than thinking something like "Damn i would of liked to add one SAM infantry to my stack so that it wouldnt be easy target for a Gunship but the stack is allready full!" That would be annoying.

Commander Bello said:

You might have 1 spear, 1 axe, 1 sword and 3 archers.
Or you might have 3 spears, 2 axes and 1 archer. (just wild examples without any real idea behind)

Both SSOD would serve completely different purposes.

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Sounds bad to me.

This is what i also wrote in "Unit Stacking" thread:

"Id say there is always less tactics in stack combat cause the best defence unit always defences against the attacker. And that is A FACT.

If there would be situation where archer and spearman would be against horsemen and spearman. Tell me wich type of system would make you think tactically the most, infinite stacking, limited stacking or 1upt. By the way, you can choose either one of the unit combinations and i just threw some units there, i didnt really think them over

in infinite stacking you would just stack em and charge/defend, in limited stacking you would just stack em and charge/defend, in 1upt you would have to think a bit more how to position your units cause you cant stack them.

It really doesnt become anything else even if we add some troops to this example, the 1upt just becomes more tactical, stacks arent going to change. Well if we keep on adding troops to the example, the limited stacking eventually becomes 2 stacks and that basicly means that now you must occupy 2 hexes instead of 1! And then we have x2 times the fun of SoDs! Wuhuu! If you think that it is good thing that you will eventually have to occupy 2 hexes instead of just 1 hex, then why not go 1upt in the first place? Limited stacking basicly just adds numbers of armies when compared to the 1upt now dont they? More armies means more micromagent, not forgetting the configuration of stacks that reguire MM, why not use units that are ready to fight right when they are produced? And if we dont have more units to make limited stacking occupy more hexes, then why use stacks in the first place? So that the stack battles would again be pointless slaughtering against stacks best defender?"

I made a small update to this script

aziantuntija said:

If you can have limited stacks then you must be constantly building new units to replace the units that have died from that stack so that the stack doesnt become woulnurable to some particular type of unit.

If you have 1upt then you know exatcly the weakness of that particular unit and you cant do nothing about it, exept use tactics in a combat wich is way more fun than thinking something like "Damn i would of liked to add one SAM infantry to my stack so that it wouldnt be easy target for a Gunship but the stack is allready full!" That would be annoying.

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I don't get your point.

If it is bad to have to replace a unit in an SSOD, then it will be also bad that I will have to care for a single unit which might be lost.
More about this later.

aziantuntija said:

"Id say there is always less tactics in stack combat cause the best defence unit always defences against the attacker. And that is A FACT.

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This is a FACT for Civ4. There is no natural law forcing that combat system (which actually I think to be rather weak).

aziantuntija said:

in infinite stacking you would just stack em and charge/defend, in limited stacking you would just stack em and charge/defend, in 1upt you would have to think a bit more how to position your units cause you cant stack them.

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I completely agree that the infinite stacking was a horrible idea (except for easy moving).

aziantuntija said:

It really doesnt become anything else even if we add some troops to this example, the 1upt just becomes more tactical, stacks arent going to change

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Actually, I don't see why moving single units around is interesting tactical combat preparation, whilst maintaining SSODs would be boring micro-management?
In terms of tactical considerations, both seem to require the same amount of considerations.

Yet, and now I come back to the "later" from above, the 1upt requires (due to limited space on the map) limited number of units.
This is good at first glance. Yet, under the assumption of random combat results, it makes the loss of even 1 of your units (especially in the early game) very dangerous.

(Note, that here I make use of two assumptions which both can be true or false:
a - That the RNG will present you the same awful results as in Civ4, where you could easily lose even 99.x % fights
b - That it may take long to replace a lost unit)

The one and basic problem Civ had in regards to combat is that you are playing on a map which is "strategical", yet your combats are "tactical".
This is something, which cannot easily be solved, since combat on a truely "tactical" map (so whith higher resolution) would take much more time. (Personally, I would love this, but I am fully aware that many people wouldn't like it half as much as I do).

Commander Bello, the funny thing is that i had to explain this same thing to RickInVA about a month ago so ill just copy paste my answers from "Unit Stacking" thread to you and make a couple of ajustments to it

So here we go:


"1) In 1upt i build a unit and occupy a hex with it, if i build another one, then i can occupy another hex. You dont need to think about adding units to those particular hexes anymore, because they are now full and thats it, also, you cannot change that units advanteges or disadvantages by adding some other type of troops to the same hex because it is not possible, pretty simple eh. To FULLY occupy a one hex in 3upt, i build a unit, then i build another one but it propably should be a different unit from the first one i builded, yet i build one more unit wich propably should also be different from the once that i builded before this one, and after that, i can FULLY occupy a hex. Thats just a one hex tough.. So there is MUCH more MM in 3upt to get to the same result wich is, making a full (unit) fighting force/fully occupy a hex. AND as i will tell you in my point 3, there is NOTHING added to the strategy in something like 3upt.


2) If we forget the stack combat for a moment, 3upt is basicly just 1upt with much added Micromanagement. When you are at war, and you are doing some battles and loosing some units, Its not fun to go trough your stacks to look for what units do you need to build next to this particular stack, so that it wouldnt be an easy target for the enemy stack just because you dont have certain kind of unit in it. Remember that because you CAN stack units you MUST stack units so you BETTER build at least one SAM Infantry to EVERY STACK if your enemy is using lots of Gunships. Thats just MM.


3) But dont forget the stack warfare problem! Because for example something like 3upt will also bring back the frustation like when you are attacking an enemy stack that has for example one Marine and two Gunships in it, and your attacking them with your stack of two Modern Armour and one SAM Infantry. When you attack with Modern Armour, then the Gunship will defend, and when you attack with SAM Infantry, then the Marine will defend. And it doesnt get much better if your having the Marine+Gunship stack and the enemy has the Modern Armour+SAM Infantry stack. So its civ4 all over again.


And as ive allready told you once, big stack limit basicly means SODs again.


So, in something like 3upt system, there is HUGE amount of micromanagement but not that much of tactical warfare. I really dont understand why somebody would want to have something like that in a game? Firaxis certainly didnt want it so they made it 1upt, wich is good, most people here seem to like it because there are only few people here saying that its bad thing."



So there you have it, do you now understand my point?

helpless_writer said:

I mean they could have simply backtracked and made it similar to Civ III.

My thought would be allowing 3 to 5 individual units to create small groups and then the player can train (or can be born on the battle field) generals. General units would allow for a more expanded # (let's say 7-8 max) and then if the person obtains a great general they can max out at 10.

From there would be certain benefits from combining like arsenals. For example if you have warriors and horsemen the warriors ride (if you command them to) with the horsemen. Then in the modern age, you can have soldiers ride on tanks. Or else you can combine similar pieces like marines then army men with one acting as a front line then the others as reinforcement. Then as the number go down you can combine groups or send in individual or selected units to re-reinforce that group.

Click to expand...

Too much like Stack of Doom. Though battles were very small from ancient times through the renaissance, at least compared to modern battles, manuevers were still important. Cavalry waiting in the rear echelon to execute flanking manuevers, and skirmishers behind melee units was still the order of the day in ancient times.

This would only make sense if combat in CiV were like the total war series. We already know this is not the case, and the tactical thinking used in the Total war series will still be used in much teh same way as the combat system in CiV.