Noob Question: Stack of Doom.

[Gemini1706]

i.e. stacking units on the same square.
Are they beneficial? in what way?

I do not see any bonus on having multiple units attacking from same square, as they attack one by one anyway.
Any modifiers that kick in when you have mutliple units stacked?

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[The Condor]

No there isn't really any benefit. A much better alternative would be to split up you SOD into three parts so a few lone catapults or artillery don't decimate your SOD with their collateral damage bonuses.

 

[Dragonlor]

Stacks of doom are mainly for an intimidation factor. Although in Civ4 they are a bad strategy.

 

[snizzake]

Stacks serve a vital purpose... Survivablity.

If you have 3 groups of 5 each. 1 Arty could suicide on your group of 5 and then your enemy can attack that group of 5 with 5+ weaker units of his own to wipe out those 5. If you have 15 your enemy would have to use a lot of arty or a lot more weaker units to even get 1 kill. I've fended off invasions of Infantry + Helicopters using mass amounts of musketmen and riflemen. In the last Emperor game I played I got attacked by the tech leader when I just had Cho-Ko-Nu's, he took a city of mine with a couple cavalry and a couple grenadiers, I suicided a bunch of Cho-Ko-Nu to take back the city.

 

[Gemini1706]

If you have 15 your enemy would have to use a lot of arty or a lot more weaker units to even get 1 kill.

How come???
I thought units fight one by one? So how having more units in square make a single unit there much stronger?

 

[snizzake]

if you have 1 unit on a square and 1 unit attacks it and loses. That unit will be damaged and will be easier to kill by another unit. For example bring an archer and a warrior to attack 1 archer, use the warrior to lower the archer and then get a guaranteed victory with the archer. Where if you had 2 archers defending the person would lose 1vs1 warrior vs Archer and assuming open territory would be attacking the next archer who is full health at 3vs3, chances aren't great to win and even if you do the archer that beat the warrior will probably kill your wounded unit.

 

[Meatbuster]

snizzake is correct, but let me add:

On defense your strongest unit IN A STACK is always placed against the attacker. If an enemy (they go 1 by 1 right) attacks a stack with any unit they will be up against the most health units/units with most chance to win against the 1 attacking unit, not the damaged ones. (Encourages balanced stacking like macemen + pikemen + longbow stacks instead of mass macemen for example. So if a knight attacks a stack of mace pike longbow, they will often go up against the pikeman with most life.)

Stacks of doom still work, but it has to be a whole lot in a single square. And even then, enough of collateral damage attackers (around 1/4 to 1/3 of the size of your DoomStack) will decimate the army.

In one of my Monarch level games, I went up against 20+ cossacks + rifles + grenadiers in a single city, so it still took around 7-9 bombers to cut them all to about 1/2 life.

 

[Crimso]

I usually split what would be an SOD in Civ 3 into two groups when conquering. If I did three groups, I would loose a significant combined arms advantage, and the third group would always be a turn late to the next city.

In my experience, stacks being "decimated" by artillery is a myth. As an example, throw in a Horse Archer (or better, and elephant) with Charge and a suicide catapult won't do more than 0.8 damage to your precious Swords. The AI is better programmed for combined arms combat, and so they are powerless against the mighty stack.

 

[zeeter]

This can change in the modern era, though. I like to stack my armor and MA in the same square simply for ease of movement. Nothing like moving 20 MA around in the same turn one by one.

Yeah, arty will take them down a notch, that's why you send a couple ahead to clear the way. Let that one MA take the damage then clean up the artillery later with the SOD. Better yet - send an MA with Commando and just let him run roughshot over the land. Or even a gunship.

 

[Ultima Dragoon]

AI in used to SoD a lot, especoially if they had a bigger military.

To combat that, you would either have to SoD a lot of units, or, use a nuke.

It's less viable in because of colateral damage.

 

[zafyro]

collateral damage makes it impossible to use SoD in civ IV. I´m so gratefull each time the AI comes into my territory into an organiced stack...

In modern eras it become even more dificult due to bombardiers and tanks posibility to have collateral damage [i have not used artillery in a lot of time]

 

[Draconian]

Concentrating your forces on one tile does NOT make them more vulnerable to collateral damage. Every catapult/cannon/whatever can only deal collateral damage to ~5 units. So if you split your units into multiple stacks with a few units your enemy still needs the same amount of artillery to dead collateral damage to all units. Unless ofc you use very small stacks with 3 units, but those are way to easy to kill.

 

[cleverhandle]

Concentrating your forces on one tile does NOT make them more vulnerable to collateral damage. Every catapult/cannon/whatever can only deal collateral damage to ~5 units. So if you split your units into multiple stacks with a few units your enemy still needs the same amount of artillery to dead collateral damage to all units. Unless ofc you use very small stacks with 3 units, but those are way to easy to kill.

Exactly. Except maybe for very early catapult-era wars, you're probably going to need so many units for sustained city-conquering that each "small stack" will still have more than the max number of collateral damage targets. The SoD is alive and well.

 

[civzombie]

"Exactly. Except maybe for very early catapult-era wars, you're probably going to need so many units for sustained city-conquering that each "small stack" will still have more than the max number of collateral damage targets. The SoD is alive and well."


You know, it is nice to read this. It seemed like Commander Bello and myself took a lot of flak for predicting in July that SoD would be alive and well in Civ 4. See this thread. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=124282&page=2

It seemed like people kept arguing essentially that: 1) SoD is dead because the game designers said it would be and they are the experts and 2) that we could not possibly predict the viability of such a strategy without playing the game.


Well, we did predict that SoD would be advantageous for the same reasons that posters in this thread are commenting that it has been advantageous.

 

[zafyro]

hmm... i find so much easier to atack a single SoD instead of groups off 4-5 units.

If you have all your units in a same hex they can be all targeted by several collateral units that being defender will have the advantage of mobility while the SoD will move just 1 [until mechanized inf starts being of use] so they can group and pound the single stack for a lot of damage.

In an scenario with rougly equal forces SoD is not of use... at least to me

 

[Magnumaniac]

Hell, the SoD works fine in SP because the AI still doesn't know when to use it's siege weapons for best effect.

For example, current game I'm sticking it to Isabella with a nice Civ3 style stack of one unit type only (OK, so they're Cho-ko's, so they count as about 3 unit types on their own). Arrive at her capital which has 15 or so archers / spearmen / axemen and 5 catapults - end turn, and she attacks my stack with 2 axemen only???? Next turn I attack the city with everything and it's left with 1 archer, 1 axeman and 5 catapults - all damaged due to collateral. Still no attack from her catapults as my second wave arrives and takes the city the next turn!

What was the point of the AI building those catapults if they're never going to get used? She was toast anyway, so they might as well suicide.

First time playing the Chinese - I can't believe how powerful those Cho-Ko's are. 2 first strikes gives them a fighting chance even against city defence longbowman!

 

[The Last Conformist]

SoDs are still viable, but less dominating than in CivIII. That's as it should be, I think.

 

[Roxinante]

SoD is not impossible in IV - though inadvisable. SoD is effective against a live player who either has no units which can cause collateral damage, or is unwilling to burn up siege units trying to kill your stack.
I recall the AI once showed up with a SoD mostly comprised of knights. I had three or four units protecting my city, but opted to sue for peace rather than fight it out. Right now I'm building a cannon in my current game because Japan is building an SoD at the gates of one of my cities - I would like to discourage that, and so I will send my cannons out to beat on their SoD. Even with the SoD damaged, however, I expect Japan to make a play for my city - the stack might burn through all but one of its members, but if that last member beats the last of my defenders, its worth the massive casualty levels.

 

[civzombie]

"SoD is effective against a live player who either has no units which can cause collateral damage, or is unwilling to burn up siege units trying to kill your stack."


Some posters still don't seem get it. Big stacks (7-8+) are how you take cities over in civ4. Before you knock big stacks (7-8+), ask yourself what alternatives do you have for taking cities???? Lets go through them systematically together.

1) Send isolated single units. Not a good alternative because they can get picked off easy by an opponent taking advantage of rock, paper, scissors. I think we can all agree that lone units are very vulnerable. Good for scouting to find a vulnerable city to send a stack to, but not taking over a city.

2) Send pairs of units. Better than 1, but still very vulnerable to an attacker taking advantage of r/p/s.

3) Send trios of units. This might be the best alternative to a huge stack. You can make sure groups of threes don't get owned by r/p/s. Still not great though because once one of your better defenders dies, the other two units are very vulnerable to r/p/s.

4). Send groups of 4. Almost the same as groups of 5. See groups of 5.

5) Okay, not vulnerable to r/p/s but EQUALLY vulnerable to seige units as a bigger 6+ stacks. A 6+ will never suffer collatoral damage to more than 5 units from a seige attack. Moreover, once the equally vulnerable 5-stack does get hit by a seige unit, it will be easier for your opponent to use r/p/s effecitvely against the damaged 5 remaining guys.


Therefore, since stacks of 5 are JUST as vulnerable to seige as stacks of 7-8+, why would you prefer them over stacks of 7-8+? They are more vulnerable to r/p/s since they have fewer best defenders guarding them.


Groups of three might be the best alternative to stacks of 7-8+, but only in rare circumstances where a defender has lots of seige and very few normal attack units. Such a defender cannot take advantage of r/p/s effectively and thus the vulnerability of small groups in this regard is mostly obviated.

 

[Roxinante]

"SoD is effective against a live player who either has no units which can cause collateral damage, or is unwilling to burn up siege units trying to kill your stack."


Some posters still don't get it. Before you knock SOD, ask yourself what are the alternatives???? Lets go through them systematically together.

1) Send isolated single units around. Not a good alternative because they can get picked off easy by an opponent taking advantage of rock, paper, scissors. I think we can all agree that lone units are very vulnerable.

2) Send pairs of units around. Better than 1, but still very vulnerable to an attacker taking advantage of r/p/s.

3) Send trios of units. This might be the best alternative to a huge stack. You can make sure groups of threes don't get owned by r/p/s. Still not great though because once one of your better defenders dies, the other two units are very vulnerable to r/p/s.

4). Send groups of 4. Almost the same as groups of 5. See groups of 5.

5) Okay, not vulnerable to r/p/s but EQUALLY vulnerable to seige units as a SOD. A SOD will never suffer collatoral damage to more than 5 units from a seige attack.


Therefore, since stacks of 5 are JUST as vulnerable to seige as SOD, why would you prefer them over SOD? They are more vulnerable to r/p/s since they have fewer best defenders guarding them.


Groups of three might be the best alternative to SOD, but only in rare circumstances where a defender has lots of seige and very few normal attack units.

Well, that was almost a flame, and you didnt actually adress either of my situations - having a huge stack of units is intimidating, and as stated by a previous poster, often the computer doesnt use collateral-capable units effectivly - when was the last time you saw the computer promote a tank with the collateral damage ability? Even when it does, the sheer weight of an SoD, even damaged, can be useful. Why do you make it sound like I'm standing on a street corner preaching against the sin of SoD?

The alternative to a SoD is to produce "strike teams" - smaller stacks that move through different squares to a single target. While less able to juggle defense, units spread over a wide area disperse your opponents forces, and against AI, sometimes that means they move offensive units or siege units without a good defensive unit. So if you have 3 stacks of defender/artillery/and a few attack units chances are good that one stack will get pounded on - but you'll still have 3 artillery units to reduce the city defense to 0, and two stacks that have pristine attack units.

Statement #5 becomes obsolete with bombers - three or four bombers can pound a SoD into mush - using blitzkreig tactics, you soften your opponent with bombers, then send in the armor for the kill. Multiple small stacks arent any better in this scenario, but still retain the benifit of forcing your opponent to split his forces to deal with multiple threats.