Has 1UPT Completely Destroyed this Franchise?

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I don't know. I haven't played VP and it's been a long time since I played BNW. But generally, fan-made AI is better than official AI in just about every game for two reasons:

1. The turn time need to be kept short, and the game has to run well on slower systems, and
2. The AI can't be so good that the game is too hard for most players.

Of course, the AI in Civ VI needs some fixing. It'll probably never be at VP levels, though, for the above reasons.

I would highly recommend the mod, although it does change the base game pretty drastically. If you are looking for only improved AI and quality-of-life level improvements, I think the Community Patch Project (which is integrated into the VP mod) covers it without changing the base game too much. I don't think the turn times really differed that much at all, but you can make a better call if you experience it firsthand.

Gimping the AI to make the game easier and more accessible to most players is fine. But I think there should be an in-game option to toggle the AI difficulty outside of the existing settings, where the AI just gets bonuses without playing better. That said, I had to level-down from Immortal in vanilla BNW to Prince in VP, so the increase in difficulty is noticeable.

EDIT: I believe that the Community Patch also solves other problems with 1UPT, such as civilian traffic jams, by allowing infinite stacking of non-military units.
 
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A better solution would have been to have a sensible unit-tile cap of around 4 units. That would have provided tactical flavor to the game and allowed terrain to play a more important and realistic role. Additionally, such a unit cap roughly mirrors the order-of-battles found in many militaries. Most military formations are usually comprised of around 4 subordinate elements - sometimes less, sometimes more, but 4 is a good compromise.

To be honest, that's what I was expecting to see when I was reading about the armies before let's plays became public. This would make more sense than "combine three units that took ages to build for the unbelievable +17 bonus".
 
I need to correct some flawed logic that I see running through this thread and several others on this forum. It's this contention that the civ6 players who oppose the 1upt design are an insignificant minority, this issue is settled, and that they ought to shut up about it; done deal. This supposed minority status is probably true in terms of the the community playing civ6 right now; but it neglects the bigger picture that I don't think anyone has mentioned. There are many who are not playing Civ6 (or civ5) because of 1upt. Instead they playing civ3, but especially civ4. The civ4 forum is replete w/ civ 5&6 refugees fleeing for many reasons but 1upt is often mentioned. So if you count these missing players, I'm not sure it would be a minority. And I think that one of the things that the ongoing popularity of civ4 and the buzz from its forum is telling us is that 1upt is holding back this franchise. Why is that? Many reasons. It's certainly less fun to play 1upt. But I think the crucial issue is the AI. Civ4 at the higher difficulties is tougher to beat than civ5 and much tougher than the helpless civ6. Because of the better AI. The civ4 AI is not weighed down by the logistic challenge of 1upt--which our present generation of home pc's simply can't handle.

So the 1upt issue is not going away. There are too many players, especially those who have played all of the civ games, who can see what civ6 might have been were it designed for 2upt or 3upt or some similar concept.
 
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I need to correct some flawed logic that I see running through this thread and several others on this forum. It's this contention that the civ6 players who oppose the 1upt design are an insignificant minority, this issue is settled, and that they ought to shut up about it; done deal. This supposed minority status is probably true in terms of the the community playing civ6 right now; but it neglects the bigger picture that I don't think anyone has mentioned. There are many who are not playing Civ6 (or civ5) because of 1upt. Instead they playing civ3, but especially civ4. The civ4 forum is replete w/ civ 5&6 refugees fleeing for many reasons but 1upt is often mentioned. So if you count these missing players, I'm not sure it would be a minority. And I think that one of the things that the ongoing popularity of civ4 and the buzz from its forum is telling us is that 1upt is holding back this franchise. Why is that? Many reasons. It's certainly less fun to play 1upt. But I think the crucial issue is the AI. Civ4 at the higher difficulties is tougher to beat than civ5 and much tougher than the helpless civ6. Because of the better AI. The civ4 AI is not weighed down by the logistic challenge of 1upt--which our present generation of home pc's simply can't handle.

So the 1upt issue is not going away. There are too many players, especially those who have played all of the civ games, who can see what civ6 might have been were it designed for 2upt or 3upt or some similar concept.

I need to correct some flawed perception and statements made with no basis of actual evidence.

So taking the statement There are many who are not playing Civ6 (or civ5) because of 1upt. Instead they playing civ3, but especially civ4.
Civ 6 steam stats - Peak current players yesterday 37,983. Current players in last 2 weeks 561,743
Civ 5 steam stats - Peak current players yesterday 47,052. Current players in last 2 weeks 760,043
Civ 4 steam stats - Peak current players yesterday 104. Current players in last 2 weeks 2,192
Civ 3 steam stats - Peak current players yesterday 1,238. Current players in last 2 weeks 19,975

So according to actual reported figures if people don't like 1Upt they seem to prefer civ 3 not civ 4 as you seem to think.

Now the statement So if you count these missing players, I'm not sure it would be a minority.
Well as we are discussing 1Upt specifically at this point we shall combine the figures for 5&6 as they are both 1Upt and also 3&4 as they are both not 1Upt.
This tells us that of the people who played a civ 3-6 game yesterday, 85,035 people played 1Upt where as 1,342 people played not 1Upt.
Therefore 1.6% of people who played a civ 3-6 game yesterday played a not 1Upt version where as 98.4% played a 1Upt version.

As more data is always better, if we compare the 2 week figures then in the last 2 weeks 1,321,786 played 1Upt where as 22,167 played not 1Upt.
This then shows us that 1.6% of people who played a civ 3-6 game in the last 2 weeks played a not 1Upt version where as 98.4% played a 1Upt version.
Considering those two results came out at the same figure i find it reasonably safe to say that 1Upt only left behind 1-2% of the potential player base which i most certainly a most insignificant minority.

Finally the statement And I think that one of the things that the ongoing popularity of civ4 and the buzz from its forum is telling us is that 1upt is holding back this franchise.

To test that perception we could also compare ownership of the different versions to see how much 1Upt is holding back the franchise and how much changing to 1Upt has cost the franchise.
Considering civ 6 is still new with expected expansions to come as well as other adjustments it seems unfair to compare it to older, complete versions so we will ignore civ 6 ownership*.

We see that civ 3 has a recorded 1,161,000 owners while civ 4 has a recorded 1,487,425 owners and we could surmise from those figures that the sales grew by approximately 28%. Therefore it could be said that for civ 5 (and therefore 1Upt) to perform equally it should at least grow the sales by around 28% which means the expected ownership of civ 5 would be around 1,900,000 but we see the ownership of civ 5 is actually 9.986,650 therefore with the transition to 1Upt sales increased by 571%.
Now i was very careful with that last statement to not say that 1Upt increased sales by 571% as i am sure there are numerous factors that increased the sales but it shows that 1Upt certainly isn't holding back the franchise.

So from all that we can surmise that the 1Upt refugees actually prefer civ 3, not civ 4 as your flawed perception presumed and during the transition from stacking to 1Upt the player base and sales have exploded and the number of 1Upt refugees are an insignificant minority therefore returning to stack of doom game play has the potential to lose a much larger number of players that it could potentially gain.

*It is still interesting to note that even at this early stage civ 6 still has more owners than civ 3 or civ 4 on top of the fact that vastly more people are playing this far from perfect game (civ 6) than are playing the complete games(civ 3 & 4).
 
If I don't want to play 1 upt, I can always play Civ 2, 3, 4 (sadly, I never played 1). If I want to play 1 upt, I can play 5 and now 6. It has been proven that the AI can be pretty dang good at 1 upt if it is implemented right (I bet there are only a handful of people who have beaten the Acken Mod for Civ 5 on Emperor, let alone Immortal and Deity), so the AI argument that it "can't" be done is just a poor argument -- it's been done. I lean toward liking the non-1 upt but I actually see the benefits to both sides. I would contend that probably younger people like 1 upt more and older veterans like the non 1 upt. That doesn't make it right or wrong. In multiplayer I think 1 upt is much more appealing.

And, I would have to contend, if 1 upt is destroying the franchise, with those sales figures I sure wish someone would find a way to destroy my business like that.... :crazyeye::lol::thumbsup:

I need to correct some flawed perception and statements made with no basis of actual evidence.

*It is still interesting to note that even at this early stage civ 6 still has more owners than civ 3 or civ 4 on top of the fact that vastly more people are playing this far from perfect game (civ 6) than are playing the complete games(civ 3 & 4).

This statement is just false. You didn't need steam (still don't) to play Civ 3 and 4. Those were only the steam purchases, and those were basically after 5 was released. I went ahead and purchased 3 for $2.99 back then just to have it on my steam account, but obviously (from my join date) I've been playing 3 for a little more time than since 2011. Civ 4 was (and probably still?) more expensive on steam, so that same decision may not have been made by the masses.

EDIT: In other words, it is impossible to extrapolate Civ 3 or 4 sales to current Steam owners -- no correlation whatsoever.
 
Civ 4 steam stats - Peak current players yesterday 104. Current players in last 2 weeks 2,192.

I think the vanilla Civ 4 statistics is not very representative here.
You need numbers for BTS : Peak concurrent players yesterday 1405. Current players in last 2 weeks 17,052.

All in all you should sum up Civ IV vanilla + Warlords + BTS.
 
I think the biggest issue with the game right now is the tuning of the values. I've been playing my "combined" mod with the excellent AI++ mod. I just had a game going as India where I expanded quickly and went for wonders... and got STOMPED by an invasion force from Brazil.

The potential is totally there. The tuning is what is off.
 
.For sales: in those 25 year anniversary write-ups from last spring the numbers they gave were that the franchise as such had sold 33 million in total and that civ 5 alone had sold 8 million.
 
Again, the steam stats do not account for all of the non-steam sales, so the numbers are not representative. 100% of Civ 5 and 6 sales are "steam" sales, whereas only a small fraction of 3 and 4 are.

EDIT: So, with liv's numbers above, that means that 25 million of Civ 1-4 were sold. Looks like a pretty even distribution considering....
 
Again, the steam stats do not account for all of the non-steam sales, so the numbers are not representative. 100% of Civ 5 and 6 sales are "steam" sales, whereas only a small fraction of 3 and 4 are.

EDIT: So, with liv's numbers above, that means that 25 million of Civ 1-4 were sold. Looks like a pretty even distribution considering....

I think they consider an expansion a full sale from what I read. That confuses the numbers a bit again. In april 2014 they said that 21 million copies of civilization games were sold. That makes 12 million in the time span between april 2014 and october 2016. It looks like they even count DLC...
Also note that not all Civ 5 and 6 are Steam Sales. I play 6 and 4 on steam, but never played 5 and expansions on steam.
 
Also note that not all Civ 5 and 6 are Steam Sales. I play 6 and 4 on steam, but never played 5 and expansions on steam.

Did you not play Civ 5, or did you buy the Mac AppStore version? Are there public stats about AppStore purchases (or does Apple keep that data close to the vest)?
 
As with all statistic based arguments they can often be interpreted in many way and are always up for adjustment based on extra factors that can be added such as it could be said that considering civ 6 has no expansions currently i would not be appropriate to add expansion figures from previous versions.

It is also difficult to choose a really fair comparison considering there appears to be two figures for each expansion of civ 4 listed where there seems to be no discernible difference between versions while there are only one set of figures listed for both civ 5 and civ 6.i.e. civ 5 in particular is not broken down by expansion but even if we decide to add in all expansion figures and the doubling up to give none 1Upt as much of a boost as possible we get a total over last 2 weeks for none 1Upt as 58,370 and 1,321,777 fot 1Upt which give us only 4.2% of people playing none 1Upt which if we do wish to consider possible players doing so without steam that could be balanced by possible players playing both but even if we wanted to be very generous and get into immeasurable speculation to make the number of none 1Upt players at 10% it is still a very small minority of players not playing 1Upt instead of playing 1Upt.

It is correct though that actual sales of civ 4 and before are skewed by the fact you didn't need steam to play it but 11.6 million owners (civ 5 and 6 combined) is not exactly a flagging franchise along with the fact that civ 6 was the fastest selling entry in the franchise (among other articles) which means people liked civ 5 with it's 1Upt concept so much they were so eager for the next installment they broke the sales record for the franchise on release.

All available measurable evidence points towards 1Upt at least not holding back the franchise.

Yes civ 6 certainly needs a lot of improvement but it's poor performance is down to poor AI and balance rather than it being 1Upt although all the 1Upt haters seem to want to point at it's poor performance as evidence that 1Upt is a failure with no other evidence than my friends agree while the is measurable evidence that 1Upt did not harm the success and continued affection for civ 5 or the initial sales of civ 6.

If nothing else there is pure business to consider. The only people who know the exact figures will be firaxis/2k and if 1Upt has such a detrimental impact on the franchise especially as using 1Upt makes things much more difficult for them to develop then they would have dropped it like a brick but instead with all the extra complication, difficulty and effort that it takes to have 1Upt they decided to stick with it.
 
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Did you not play Civ 5, or did you buy the Mac AppStore version? Are there public stats about AppStore purchases (or does Apple keep that data close to the vest)?
AppStore Version. But I couldn't find data how much people bought it there.
My perception that the number is small compared to PC, but still matters is probably heavily biased anyway due to my location and my fields of work. I don't know a lot of people that own PCs, so almost all players I know used the AppStore version of civ 5.
 
The evident answer to this is 'no' on two empirical grounds: firstly, Civ V is enduringly popular commercially; and secondly both of the first two Civilization games effectively used 1UPT and managed not to destroy the franchise. The stack system as favoured by Civ IV veterans was introduced in Civ III - arguably the weakest entry in the series, and also arguably in part because of stacks.

But of course the OP's issues with the system fundamentally have little or nothing to do with 1UPT and instead are issues with its implementation - something that can more productively be discussed, and particularly with reference to the older 1UPT Civ games' arguably superior approach compared with Civs V and VI.

Moving units has become a tedious PITA, and the "Go To" function has become not only useless, but actually dangerous to use.

There's little to be done about the former, save either reinstating faster movements or allowing road construction as a builder action; the latter is a programming problem

To stop the inherent problem of units clogging the map, individual units have been made too expensive, powerful, and valuable. Meaning that a correctly used small army can conquer the whole world.

Firstly there's no reason for this 'inherent problem' to exist. Civs I and II, while in practical terms 1UPT games, did allow units to move through and occupy the same tiles as one another. The downside was that all units in the stack were destroyed if any one of them lost a battle. This was tactically interesting in its own right and could easily be reinstated - though I'd caution that from recollection this was a way to exploit the AI in the early games, as it would stack units. An alternative easy way to implement in Civ VI would be to prevent combat units stacked with other combat units from attacking at all. Civilian units should be stackable in any event and it was very disappointing that Civ VI didn't make this widely-suggested change. The corps/army system Civ VI added in place of stacking turns out to be more tedious than stacking was, and whatever happened to the idea of support units that could be added to stacks? Does that just refer to medics and field engineers?

Secondly, I don't see that having units be expensive and valuable is an intrinsic problem - they should come with a cost proportionate to their ability, and making them valuable makes protecting them more important (though this does lead to AI issues). Power issues are balance-related rather than 1UPT-related - for a start the ranged unit system should either be removed entirely or confined to later-game bombardment units. People seem to see this as part and parcel of 1UPT, but nothing comparable existed in Civs I or II, nor does it exist in traditional 1UPT wargames.

Because you can't stack units in cities for defence, the cities themselves have been made ridiculously powerful, making garrisoning redundant. A city with walls can easily hold off most AI armies. This makes it even easier to conquer the world, as there is no need to garrison your own or captured cities.

More an issue with AI behaviour and with balance than anything else. The AI doesn't make enough units and is reluctant to attack cities directly past the earliest game stages. That the AI is intrinsically capable of taking cities with the 1UPT system is testified to by the fact that they sometimes do take other AI cities, and in Civ V would much more commonly do so.

The AI in Civ4 wasn't exactly brilliant, but it knew how to build stacks and use them, and as such could be a formidable opponent, especially on higher levels. In contrast, the Civ6 AI is completely unable to execute either attack or defence with 1UPT, meaning that even when it starts a surprise war against you, with massive superiority, you can roll it like a cheap fag.

Sadly true, but Civ V was much more capable even pre-expansions and was actually moderately good by the end of its life cycle - again an AI problem, not a 1UPT problem, and while 1UPT is intrinsically more difficult for the AI than stacks (at least with the implementation of AI-hostile systems like ranged combat) it isn't impossible by any means to do a much better job than Civ VI.

Because 1UTP is apparently incompatible with transports, land units have been given the ability to swim, whilst apparently retaining their strengths. This leads to epic infantry battles in the middle of the ocean, and effectively makes naval units redundant.

Again non-combat stacking would resolve this by allowing units to be transported, or simply changing the way embarked units work. In Civ V embarked units without support were very fragile. I can only assume the change is intended to benefit the AI, as even after other kinks were largely ironed out the Civ V AI could apparently never be trained to avoid embarking close to ranged attackers (once again, an issue introduced by a system not intrinsically related to 1UPT that has no need to exist)

The lack of stacking makes anti-cavalry units pointless (if you'll excuse the pun) so they have to be given their own offensive strength which is nonsense.

I'm not altogether sure what this means - spearmen had offensive strength in Civ IV as well, and indeed every Civ game to date. I presume you aren't holding up Civ IV, a game whose leaders routinely quoted Bette Midler and which had a 'Native American' civ (one concerned with political correctness, no less) as an example of stark realism?

Because you can't stack ranged units, they have been given stupendous range to enable them to fire from the hex behind. So you have ancient archers apparently able to hurl the arrows right over an entire city.

As above, this system is completely unnecessary, and the major cause of AI problems. A 1UPT system works perfectly well with archers having a first-strike ability similar to Civ IV, the ranged attack system but with range 1, or some other way of representing their weapons. I'd be a fan of removing this system altogether for units earlier than, at least, bombards (and possibly than artillery) and later-game naval units (frigates onwards), but keeping city bombardment. This is actually essentially the Panzer General system, and this game is reportedly part of the inspiration for the one used in Civ V.

Because you can't stack them, barrage weapons have been given melee strength to enable them to stand alone. WTF?

Also true in earlier games, but as in those games they don't stand alone very well. In Civ VI for some reason later-game artillery is rather resilient to attack, but in Civ V they folded like paper when enemies reached them - so, again, evidently nothing to do with 1UPT as a system.

I also blame 1UTP for the stupid situation with Builders. Presumably to stop your builders clogging the whole map, they now build things instantaneously, and repair improvements for free. But to limit their usefulness, they expire after 3 builds.

You can blame it on 1UPT all you like, but again this system did not exist in Civ V which had an identical 1UPT system, so you're empirically wrong to do so. Late-game workers being of little use has been a longstanding issue with Civ - all that's changed is that it's a bit harder to park them out of the way, but given that civilian units can be placed in cities and you don't need many, that's not much of an issue (for the player at least - Civ V AIs spammed workers, missionaries and archaeologists).

The limited 'charges' isn't even a bad idea strategically, but the fact that you need to build new workers just to repair pillaged improvements is a pointless nuisance. Keep the unit around on zero charges, a la Beyond Earth exploration rovers, and have a city 'project' to renew a builder's charges (basically, at a production cost slightly lower than that of a new builder, replenish the unit)

As a flow on from above, because Builders are now too valuable to waste building roads, roads just magically appear if you have a trade route (or if you are Rome) AND magically upgrade.

A problem with the builder system, which as above is unrelated to 1UPT. And yes, builders should be able to construct roads.
 
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At the end of the day, the people who frequent this forum and debate so aggressively this topic are just a spec in the pool of total Civ6 players, 95% of whom have never and never will attend a fan forum, let alone this one.

Our voice and opinion is irrelevant.

Learn that!
 
But the question I pose to you all (which has been mentioned in different words), if 1UPT killed the franchise, has 1UPT saved the franchise from this death? I mean, it seems clear the decision has alienated many fans of the series. But I also know that many find it (and V-VI) much more enjoyable than stacking (and III-IV), myself included. The games seems to be at its peak as of yet in terms of sales (although improved distribution and access to necessary hardware surely help), and is incredibly profitable. So popular and profitable that many cannot even fathom how bad VII would need to be for an VIII to never be made.
 
1UPT always feels like it takes so long to do, the logistics of it wear the heck out of you. It's appropriate for a separate tactical map, for Panzer General-type scenarios, etc. Wars with stacks tend to be brisk and to the point. I think that fits Civ better.

Its a valid view, but not one that I ascribe to.

At the end of the day, the people who frequent this forum and debate so aggressively this topic are just a spec in the pool of total Civ6 players, 95% of whom have never and never will attend a fan forum, let alone this one.

Our voice and opinion is irrelevant.

Learn that!

Sorry wrong room, its fun with meaningless stats here, fatalism anonymous is two doors down the hall ;)
 
I think most of the playerbase has actually been created with civ5. Before Civ5, Civilization as far as I know, was not that popular worldwide, mostly in North America and some in UK/Europe. I would mention it to some people in Australia or even some people in the US and they had never heard of it (pre-Civ5), although these people had played quite a few different games. My personal favourite is civ3 because of its simplicity, but yet complex gameplay. It is also easily moddable. You can especially see this by how many modded files are in the database currently, which is much higher than every civ game on this site. With steam, many more players have bought civ3, especially because of its very cheap price, but they take a while to understand it, and some dont stay. I have over 1k hours for civ3 on steam (I had more on the few different disc versions I've had over the years), and I play it regularly Multiplayer with the small population left. Some consider civ3 the weakest, but there are many who think its the best. Civ3 had a troublesome development period so it actually has more of a reason to have been lacking on release than civ5 or civ6, but of course you can still say why release an unfinished game and that's true as well, though sometimes game companies run out of money and need the sales to keep working on it.

So while Civilization lost a decent portion of its original playerbase (there are those who have transferred fine) with 1UPT, it gained a whole new playerbase and that is who Firaxis is mainly looking towards now. There is also some who left the series entirely after civ4/civ5.
 
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