This is an important sentence.
1upt requirese more effort.
Many people mix this with being "intellectually more challenging", which it is not, at least not in Civ5.
Yes, 1upt works in certain games. But these are games with a much different scale (in all regards, might it be map-size, unit speed, timeframe, whatever).
1upt is a tactical combat system.
As Civ by definition is played on a worldmap, combat takes place on a map scaled for strategic decisions. The mismatch is obvious.
Almost nobody says the Civ4 AI would be "smarter". It is just that the flaws of the combat AI are to a certain degree covered by a stacking system, whereas the same flaws are exposed by an 1upt system.
In both games, the human player has an advantage over the AI, as far as combat is concerned.
In Civ5, however, this advantage cannot be compensated by production bonuses. The "stack of doom" pictures only make this obvious.
Talking about "the Civ5 combat AI just needs to be smarter": There is a reason why it just isn't smarter.
First, Firaxis was never known for smart combat AIs. Sad, but true.
Second, a combat AI which is not only able to determine the correct sequence of attack movements, but simultaneously is able to grasp the concept of "battle theatres" (or regions, or areas, or provinces, however you would like to call it), to identify the correct sequence of movements, to properly estimate the consequences of enemy movements and whatnotmore would not only take a huge amount of time (in terms of months and man-hours) to create, but it wouldn't even be tolerable in terms of playtime.
Since years, cpu speed has stagnated at around 4 GHz. And there are only that many calculations you can do within a given period. More cores don't help (at least not much) as combat cannot really be split up between different processors.
Bottom line: even if a better combat AI could be programmed (and Firaxis has proven over the years that THEY aren't the company to do so), it would require much more of everything: more processing power, more RAM, more inter-turn time.
This may be true for engaging just one city and not looking at anything beyond.
Actually, since combat always has to be looked at in the context of the whole game, this statement is not correct.
If in Civ4 you were going of a war, you were well advised to performe "good" attacks, meaning to minimize you losses.
Sure, you could just throw 25 catapults at an enemy city and finally you would have redlined each and every defender. But that would have been a complete waste of production. You would have been better off with only making use of say 5 catapults and then making use of your "real" troops in a good way - meaning that you would have to check which unit to attack at a given point, taking into consideration which defender was expected to fight against your attacker.
Finally, you would have to leave some troops in the just occupied city - something which is completely missing in Civ5. There, you can just move on. No need to care about what you leave behind. You even don't have to connect the new city to your empire.
I have to assume that you were playing on smaller maps, then.
For almost any Civ game, difficulty at any given level is enhanced when playing on bigger maps - just because you opponents will have much more space (=equalling production capacity).
Now, on huge maps you could easily overstretch your empire. You would conquer some cities, but the enemy would still be living. And your army would be somewhere in the south, 20 turns away from your core region, whilst in the north the next AI might prepare for an invasion.
This is much less the case in Civ5. Sure, moving your units from one front to the other is more of an hassle in Civ5. But that's just the point: moving within own territory where no enemy is imposing a threat on you is just this: more hassle.
There isn't any "challenge" in moving units through own territory. There is micro-managment.
Once again, I completely agree that this is less a factor on smaller maps.
Well, first of all many, if not most people who explain their enjoyment of 1upt almost in the next sentence add "if only I could do some stacking" (might it be one ranged with one melee unit, might it be civilian units, whatever).
Secondly, many people have more success in military terms due to the current system. There isn't any real challenge in defeating the AI in Civ5.
You can even break a stalemate in many cases by just sending out a worker. The AI will try to capture it, thus giving up its defense positions.
And finally, you will get your worker back. How much of an "intellectual challenge" is that?
Exactly. Therefore, a uupt system benefits the AI. 1upt benefits the human player, as if he wouldn't have enough advantages already.
I completely agree.
Quite confusing, no?
We might assume that there are some reasons for this.
Unfortunately, we are way beyond this question.
Before release we were promised that combat wouldn't any longer be about "just conquering cities".
Today, we know that this is just plainly wrong.
The AI is just not able to grasp the concept of building "fronts" in the countryside, although this was one of the big promises.
And no game element would even call for this. Still, it is all about cities. Hell, we even don't have to care for interrupted connections to our resources, because they are magically beamed to whereever we need them.
The developers weren't able to deliver what they'd promised. And there isn't the slightest indication that they are trying to do so now.
What they are trying is to band-aid things, resulting in game concepts constantly changing.
