No stack of doom ! good or bad?

[Deep_Blue]

I am a civ fan since CIV3 , imo civ3 was the best one, civ4 was good but combat was disapointing. civ4 had good improvment over civ3 that made the game better (like limited movement on railroad) but in general civ3 combat was more fun.

now I was waiting for civ5 for long time expecting major improvement mainly on combat system, as I said before civ4 combat was disapointing. I still didnt get Civ5 but from the reviews and from what I read in the forums I learned that combat system was re-worked in civ5 and now it is very different than what it was used to be. I dont know all the chages but one major change bothers me :
No more stack of doom

ok .. SOD was unbalanced in civ4 and in someway made the game easier for human player, you just stack 50+ units and you win easily. but going to the opposite extreme of not allowing units stack is in my opinion much worse.. thinking about how I will move my units around the map and how do I protect exposed units and how to manage a huge battle , makes me feel that the combat will be slow , tedious and unenjoyable (Please note that this will have more negative effect on the AI because a human player is much better in micromanegment than the AI => weaker AI).

instead of removing units stack why didnt they just remove colleteral damage (which was the main problem by the way not unit saking) and then limit stacking to a certain limit, like for example up to 10 units of same type in one tile.. that make more sense plus it is more realistic.

To be honest I will not play the game.. I will just wait for the expansion pack when all gameplay problems and bugs are solved.

 

[Zhahz]

No SODs is one of the best things about the game, but, the AI will still spam ungodly amounts of units so you get sprawl of doom. At least the player doens't have to match it.

 

[SHaW1986]

i would like them to bring back the army concept. i dont like the crazy stacks but i would like more than just one unit per tile. hence the army

 

[dannythefool]

CivRev has armies of three units. Bring back CivRev armies!

(Please don't. They are too powerful.)

 

[Jediron]

I want bigger armies. Three S*ck!

 

[Snoopaloop]

"No stack of doom! Good or bad?"

good

 

[rschissler]

I am a civ fan since CIV3 , imo civ3 was the best one, civ4 was good but combat was disapointing. civ4 had good improvment over civ3 that made the game better (like limited movement on railroad) but in general civ3 combat was more fun.

now I was waiting for civ5 for long time expecting major improvement mainly on combat system, as I said before civ4 combat was disapointing. I still didnt get Civ5 but from the reviews and from what I read in the forums I learned that combat system was re-worked in civ5 and now it is very different than what it was used to be. I dont know all the chages but one major change bothers me :
No more stack of doom

ok .. SOD was unbalanced in civ4 and in someway made the game easier for human player, you just stack 50+ units and you win easily. but going to the opposite extreme of not allowing units stack is in my opinion much worse.. thinking about how I will move my units around the map and how do I protect exposed units and how to manage a huge battle , makes me feel that the combat will be slow , tedious and unenjoyable (Please note that this will have more negative effect on the AI because a human player is much better in micromanegment than the AI => weaker AI).

instead of removing units stack why didnt they just remove colleteral damage (which was the main problem by the way not unit saking) and then limit stacking to a certain limit, like for example up to 10 units of same type in one tile.. that make more sense plus it is more realistic.

To be honest I will not play the game.. I will just wait for the expansion pack when all gameplay problems and bugs are solved.

Initially, I thought not having it was a good idea, but as you have pointed out, it makes the AI more inept than it was before. In the past, when the AI could stack defensive units, they were much harder to beat. Now, we can just pick and choose which unit to attact first. It seems like the game developers didn't catch on to this when they were creating the game.

So, now I'm thinking that some stacking should be allowed. I'm just not sure what that number should be, though.

 

[avakki]

One unit per tile is probably the most appealing thing in the game for me. Compared to Civ4, it makes the combat require a lot more thinking and planning.

 

[lordqarlyn]

Well, so far, I get Carpets of Doom...

 

[Jediron]

One unit per tile is probably the most appealing thing in the game for me. Compared to Civ4, it makes the combat require a lot more thinking and planning.

What you call "thinking and planning" , i call puzzling. With a carpet of doom it's all a matter of where to start, what to hit and where to go and that multiple times, puzzling your units around to make it possible. It's one big jig-saw puzzle. In the early stages it's easy; you see that spear, take him out with your horse and archer in no time....NEXT!
Nice, one pieced meals. When you puzzle it right, they are going down, one by one. Every single time.

The difference with CIV 3/4 is Luck. Plain and simple luck. sometimes you ran into a brick wall, when that p#sky spear/rifleman whatever just kept beating your horses.
now, with the advisor, telling you exactly what the win/loss ratio will be; it's a pretty sure thing. Negative ? forget it. Good ratio ? GO GO GO. And that's makes ALL the difference, it's too predictable.

 

[MkLh]

IMO 1UPT is basically the only reason to play this game. In all other aspects the game is inferior to Civ4.

 

[Strategy Master]

1upt makes combat so much more interesting, but the civ map is supposed to be a strategy map. We are now mixing tactics and strategy onto the same map which is the cause of many problems. If they were on seperate displays all the problems of 1upt would be solved.

You would have two displays, on the strategy map you can stack all you want, on the tactical map it is a 1upt combat scenario for the battle.

 

[Jediron]

wishfull thinking, that is. lol. Just enjoy the 1UPT Terror as it si right now..hahaha

 

[Becephalus]

I think 1UPT is a huge improvement. Now they just need to make a freaking AI. I cannot believe they released the game with the AI in this state, but I suppose that is the luxury of having a triple A franchise.

 

[UKScud]

I honestly thought 1upt would make a real improvement to the combat system, but no...I'm not convinced by what I've seen. Some kind of compromise between stack and 1upt needs to be made (Armies seems good to me), and real work on creating an AI that can cope with that needs to be done.

One thing I never understood with Civ4 was why a limit, perhaps based on population or government type, on the number of military units was not imposed.

 

[Tssha]

Hell, taking out the stacks of doom was the number one reason I got this game. I haven't been disappointed since.

I mean, even if you're outnumbered you can take a defensive position, place your archers and have them whittle down one or two guys and you'll have a chance of surviving for awhile. Heck, if you're fighting near a city it can help out and give you a chance to at least repel the invasion. In Civ IV if you're unfortunate enough to be next to Saladin and he builds his doom stack of camel archers and you don't have a stack of doom of your own then you are going to lose...badly. At least in Civ V, you have a chance even if you're caught off guard (and nobody say "if you're caught off guard, you deserve to get spanked" because not surviving to the end of the game isn't fun).

I like having armies proportional to the size of the front line. It gives you something to wrap your head around. When they're practically limitless I have no idea what to defend against or how prepared I need to be to repel an assault. Plus the whole "collateral damage" thing was just a stopgap measure anyway. The real goal was to get folks to spread their armies out a little. At least in Civ I and II if you stacked your units, they would all die if you got attacked and lost (cities and fortresses excepted). Civ III was a bad step in the wrong direction in that regard.

And armies in Civ Rev were a really bad idea. At least in Civ III you needed a great general to form them...but that still just gave you another advantage over the AI. In Civ Rev, if you don't have enough units to form an army, you are at a MASSIVE disadvantage.

 

[Agent327]

Having played Civ since 1991, I must say: good. Stack o´ doom was the most boring (and unrealistic) feature I´ve come across in all Civ versions. Good riddance!

 

[Niedermayer]

The stack of doom was absolutely cheap to me. I don't like the strategic idea involved when you're just churning out units and stacking ALL of them into one single tile. 1UPT is a HUGE gameplay improvement. The change to hexes is a welcome change too.

 

[jdp29]

Good Riddance to bad rubbish, I hated the stack of doom. I want to play a game, not try to manage a 100 troops in one turn, figure out who attacks first, figure out who is sleeping, figure out...You get the point.

 

[Roland Ehnström]

1UPT is the best thing about Civ V.