Has 1UPT Completely Destroyed this Franchise?

[ArdentFire88]

I think that 1upt is a cool feature, but what would be really cool is if there were certain techs/civics that would allow you to add more units to a tile, but not to the point where it is unlimited. This won't be like corps/armies and fleet/armadas where it is all the same unit. Instead, you can have multiple corps/armies and fleets/armadas of different units in one group.

Not at all has 1upt ruined the franchise, it honestly made it better with a fresh new concept, and offers the use of multiple strategies.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Ruined it for some? Sure. Ruined it for everybody? Not even remotely close. Sure, there are constantly threads full of posters waxing poetic about the virtues of stacks but there's plenty who are indifferent and others who see 1upt as an improvement. The game's sales sure don't show any sign of the franchise being ruined, not by a long shot. People are generally opposed to change and this is a major change but don't let your 'member-berries trick you into thinking everyone shares your viewpoint.

 

[Zuizgond]

1UPT vs Stack complaint threads should warrant a suspension or something at this point. Zero point but inviting repetitive arguing that never amounts to anything but beating dead horses at best.

Also, the AI in Civ 6 is leagues worse than Civ 5, and both use 1UPT. Of all the things to blame the state of Civ 6's AI on right now, picking 1UPT just sounds like trying to make it fit a narrative.

Again, please, we don't need these threads anymore.

I don't know why we should stop threads on 1upt. Just don't read them if you don't like them. Looks like a lot of people want to express their opinion about it.

 

[@Rob76]

I don't mind too much about arguments like unrealistic, poorly implemented or even unbalanced. There's basically just one (personal) argument: is it FUN to play? I've played this game since civ 1 and I'm still playing civ 6 (although somewhat disappointed), but for me the overall fun in playing civ has decreased by the 1UPT mechanics for only two reasons:
1. The AI can't handle it properly. It's not fun to watch an AI randomly shuffling units around. Has been an issue since its introduction in Civ V.
2. Moving units is a hassle. Even moving a 10-unit army from the east to the west of your own empire is not fun. My infantry unit can't move over my own roads because there's a missionary in its way. Not fun. Thers's plenty examples like this.
For me, there would be an easy solution: allow multiple units per tile, but dramatically decrease (or even eliminate, see what works best) offense and defense power of a stacked unit, so stacked units can't be used in battles, but you can stack units for moving/transportation in safe areas.

I agree w/ your two main points; the 1upt design decision was a bad one. And it's utterly unrealistic for a game of this high a strategic level. You have archers that can shoot 2 hexes, but they can't stack w/ the melee units that must provide them defensive support? That's ludicrous.

But what's missing in these threads is a realistic solution. I agree that Civ 4's mega-stacks were laughably unrealistic (but better than 1upt!). But what about a solution that's somewhere in between? I think that the right solution for a game of this strategic level and complexity (given the current limits of our available pc's) is probably 2upt. Okay, well maybe it's 3upt; but that can be resolved by play testing. There's a multiple upt mod available for civ 6, and I've used it to play at 2upt. It is a much better game: And I mean it's much more fun. You get more tactical complexity that warmongers love, but w/ a lot less of the logistical headaches. But you're only getting a taste of the potential improvement because the AI cannot use the mod; it continues to plod along at 1upt. But this approach opens up the possibility of developing an AI capability that rivals what we had w/ Civ 4. And maybe better. But I doubt we'll ever get close to that w/ 1upt. Civ 5 certainly never came close. If anyone could design a modpack to produce this result, then I would be glad to plunk down hard earned cash for it.

 

[HalveBlue]

1UPT was an inelegant solution to the Stacks of Doom phenomenon of previous titles in the series.

However, 1UPT does not work properly with the scale of civ games and results in overly simplified combat mechanics. Additionally, while 1UPT solves the SoD problem, it causes the Carpet of Doom, which creates its own problems because of the game's movement mechanics.

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.

Unfortunately, starting with CiV there seems to have been a focused effort toward reducing complexity for the sake of accessibility. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however I believe it was the wrong approach to take in regards to this aspect of the game. That having been said, I doubt there's an easy - if any - way to fix this, seeing how this is one of the core mechanics of the game.

 

[ThERat]

At least have the option for different types of units to share one tile, say one melee and one ranged attacker. and categorize any other unit under no limits to get rid of the traffic jams due to religious spam or workers colliding.

 

[Dale]

I think Call to Power 2 had the best solution. 12 unit max, stacks fought as an army not as 1v1.

 

[TruthfulCake]

I am not 100% happy with the current 1UPT system either, although I believe in tweaking 1UPT instead of regressing to the infinite stacks. Outside the OP, I think many have given their ideas on a compromise. Here's mine:

1. Civilians (workers, military engineers, great people) should be allowed to stack infinitely (and should be able to stack with units of other civs you are not at war with). An infinite stack of civilians does not have adverse effects on tactical gameplay, and each civilian unit most likely represents fewer numbers than a military unit anyway, so allowing leniency in stacking makes sense.

2. Religious units should occupy a different layer from other units (and should be able to stack with non-religious units of other civs you are not at war with). Stacking them would probably make it difficult to resolve theological combats, so 1 unit per tile is fine as it is. The biggest issue with religious units is how it hampers movement within foreign borders, and there is nothing much players can do about them other than declaring war (since theological combat is inefficient against carpets of religious units). Introducing a new layer that is not affiliation-sensitive fixes it.

3. Military units should be allowed to form a "transport formation" of max. 3 units that can be reverted to the original "battle formation" (where 1 unit takes up 1 tile) as long as they are outside of the enemy ZOC. In the transport formation, they can move together stacked in one tile, but cannot attack and do not get defensive bonuses from the numbers. This allows players to get a little more elbow room with troop movement without making stacks abusable in war. Armadas cannot form a transport formation. I believe this approach makes certain sense as an abstraction of transport units, since troops can clump together (and not be battle-ready) when they do not expect combat.

Incidentally, I believe that embarked land units should enter the aforementioned transport formation automatically, i.e. they cannot attack and do not get defensive bonuses. The current amphibious nature of land units is a head scratcher, even though Civ V did it right by making land units vulnerable to naval assault.

 

[Psychalgia]

I can see you point but Civ6 is not Civ4. So expect there to be some changes.

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

If you don't like the melee strength on barrage units then why not mod it away, reduce it. And to that end why not make a mod to improve the game to your liking.

As for the AI I do agree that they need to be more active and less diplomatic.

 

[kamex]

I think Call to Power 2 had the best solution. 12 unit max, stacks fought as an army not as 1v1.

Not played that game but I do like the sound of that. Shame they probably won't bring it to Civ. Having a tactically designed stack of 12 may be too complicated for a lot of players, and Firaxis seem determined to dumb down various mechanics as much as possible just to get more people to buy it.

 

[rezaf]

you are in no position to condescendingly tell people to Google abstraction.

While everything else you write is - in my opinion - flat out wrong, you're right in this one. You just want a totally different kind of abstraction, that's all.
My point about the discussion being like in that old joke with the mermaid was really the best I can do to sum up the state of affairs. So I'll leave it at that.

Otherwise, we could discuss the particulars for all eternity and never come to an agreement. So let's say the two of us want other parts of the mermaid to be fish.

 

[gaiko]

This will be another case of SP vs MP talking past one another. 1UPT was part of an effort to steer Civ towards multiplayer, because MP doesn't require a big investment in AI. Conversely 1UPT has been a disaster for SP, as 1UPT demands more, not less, AI processing power.

So it was basically a business decision to dump single play in favor of multiplay. Civ6 is simply the confirmation.

 

[UWHabs]

This will be another case of SP vs MP talking past one another. 1UPT was part of an effort to steer Civ towards multiplayer, because MP doesn't require a big investment in AI. Conversely 1UPT has been a disaster for SP, as 1UPT demands more, not less, AI processing power.

So it was basically a business decision to dump single play in favor of multiplay. Civ6 is simply the confirmation.

I don't think it's meant as a way to switch into multi-player. I think it's just that the designers were tired of the game being a simple "who can build the biggest army to crush the opponents", and so they brought 1upt as a way to make the game more strategic.

It's highly possible that when they decided to make the switch, they didn't understand the pressure it would put on the AI. But once you have it in, I think they probably also realized that you really couldn't go back - as tough as it is to manage, I just think it's pretty much impossible to return to the old way to handle things.

Now, I don't argue that they've tried to beef up the multiplayer aspect of it, but the fact is that civ 6 still came out as a single player game at its core. And I'm pretty sure the vast majority of players are still single-player focused, and I doubt they ever will be able to fully transition people over to a MP-system.

 

[ThERat]

Tried to play a game yesterday after a hiatus of almost a month and 1upt just kills it for me. I am not interested in a peaceful sandbox game, but the unit shuffle topped by the ridiculous unit upgrade system just kills it.

 

[TruthfulCake]

This will be another case of SP vs MP talking past one another. 1UPT was part of an effort to steer Civ towards multiplayer, because MP doesn't require a big investment in AI. Conversely 1UPT has been a disaster for SP, as 1UPT demands more, not less, AI processing power.

So it was basically a business decision to dump single play in favor of multiplay. Civ6 is simply the confirmation.

It is objectively true that 1UPT AI would be harder to code than SoD AI. It is also objectively true that good 1UPT AI has existed in a Civ game - it just wasn't made by Firaxis. The question is, if a mod can improve the AI to the point of making it pose a serious threat to human players in any era, why can't a patch? I have a lot of complaints about the AI, but the biggest of all is the regression of the AI quality in the base game, even between 1UPT Civ titles. It seems like something that you can solve by working together with the modder or at least emulating the AI design in said mod. Instead, now we have overly self-preserving AI that retreats with the slightest damage. It's not a question of 1UPT or SoD - either way the AI would be pathetically non-threatening if they refuse to attack your cities upon getting bombarded by an archer.

BTW, if you would like to experience a good 1UPT combat AI, try the Vox Populi mod for Civ 5, also known as the Community Balance Patch. Don't believe what they say about good 1UPT AI being an impossibility - such statements are baseless. We are already on our way to self-learning AI, and yet people want to regress to an inferior system just because they think good 1UPT AI is as advanced as a hoverboard. :/

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

regress to an inferior system

Your objectivity was doing so well up until this point.

 

[TruthfulCake]

Your objectivity was doing so well up until this point.

I was merely basing my argument off the person I quoted. He/she admitted that 1UPT is the superior system in multiplayer, although bad for the AI-centric single player. I proposed trying a mod where the AI is almost as competent as a good human player, wherein playing against the AI would feel like playing a good human. If single player feels as challenging as multiplayer, and 1UPT is superior for multiplayer, then 1UPT is the superior system. Of course, if you believe that SoD is also the way to go for multiplayer, then I can't help you. I am pointing at this mod only for players whose main grievance with the 1UPT system is the AI incompetence.

 

[Kwami]

It is objectively true that 1UPT AI would be harder to code than SoD AI. It is also objectively true that good 1UPT AI has existed in a Civ game - it just wasn't made by Firaxis. The question is, if a mod can improve the AI to the point of making it pose a serious threat to human players in any era, why can't a patch? I have a lot of complaints about the AI, but the biggest of all is the regression of the AI quality in the base game, even between 1UPT Civ titles. It seems like something that you can solve by working together with the modder or at least emulating the AI design in said mod. Instead, now we have overly self-preserving AI that retreats with the slightest damage. It's not a question of 1UPT or SoD - either way the AI would be pathetically non-threatening if they refuse to attack your cities upon getting bombarded by an archer.

BTW, if you would like to experience a good 1UPT combat AI, try the Vox Populi mod for Civ 5, also known as the Community Balance Patch. Don't believe what they say about good 1UPT AI being an impossibility - such statements are baseless. We are already on our way to self-learning AI, and yet people want to regress to an inferior system just because they think good 1UPT AI is as advanced as a hoverboard. :/

How are the turn times in VP compared to BNW without mods?

 

[TruthfulCake]

How are the turn times in VP compared to BNW without mods?

Never paid attention to the turn times, so either I wasn't observant, or it is unnoticeable. One thing: I played BNW with quick movement and quick combat on, so turn times never feel that long. Since the AI tends to use its units effectively each turn in VP, I assume that without quick movement/quick combat, the turns would take really long.

 

[Kwami]

Never paid attention to the turn times, so either I wasn't observant, or it is unnoticeable. One thing: I played BNW with quick movement and quick combat on, so turn times never feel that long. Since the AI tends to use its units effectively each turn in VP, I assume that without quick movement/quick combat, the turns would take really long.

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.