1 unit per hex: failed experiment

[Jharii]

But that is exactly what many of the players complain about.

When your chosen game mechanics lead to the fact that the AI is weak, this decision is at the very least highly questionable.
A design decision should be checked against the abilities of the AI. If the AI cannot handle what the design requires then the decision was wrong.

The AI is inferior regardless of mechanic. The diplomacy mechanic should be evidence of that, let alone trade post spamming, illogical trading, resource management, etc. A real craftsman never blames his tools.

 

[Capt Ajax]

I like it....I hate the stack..

 

[Klyden]

Who told you that Civ4 tried to "mitigate" SoDs? If the Civ4 design team had wanted to do that, then there'd be lots of possibilities (stronger stack counters like collateral damage, give units in a stack negative modifiers, implement higher logistics costs for large stacks, implement a chance that a non-optimal defender is chosen which increases with stack size, etc.). Mitigating stacks is easy. The problem is whether the AI can grasp the rules.

Civ4 chose the route to make large stacks the best option most of the time, and Soren wrote an AI that coped with them pretty well (assemble stacks, move and attack with them in a coordinated fashion, transport stacks across oceans, etc.). It's a design decision that paid off with an AI that actually poses a challenge for new players. Calling it a "failed experiment" by supposing that the devs wanted to mitigate a feature that you don't like is a bit of a stretch, imho.

Actually, I remember reading someplace when Civ 4 came out that things were incorporated in Civ4 to punish the tendency to have SoD's. Specifically, artillery/bombardment affecting every unit in the stack was designed with this in mind.

Human SoD vs AI SoD was a joke. Send in several artillery units to weaken everything (they would die in the process, but oh well or you could use bombers many times for the same effect if they were available) and then clean it out with little further loss to you and that is the point. It gets to the point that the human player can inflict massive casualties against the AI so that no matter how much the AI has, it doesn't really matter to a point because a human will win the battle of attrition by a huge amount.

AI attacks on a stack are tough from the standpoint that typically, a full attacker will lose to a full defender in many cases, especially in the case of Civ4 where the stack automatically switches to the best defender based on who you attack with. The very wounded defender is then covered by a fresh unit against a fresh attacker. Repeat. Only if the attacker has a massive superiority in numbers will the defender actually take losses from their damaged units being attacked repeatedly. More often than not, the result is the attacker loses a ton of units while the defender takes few losses and winds up with a lot of damaged units that simply retreat back and heal up.

1UPT changes all that from the standpoint that the human can't hide their units in stacks and force a huge disadvantage when it comes to attrition. Your lead unit stands a really good chance of dying if attacked by two enemy units or a unit that just took a hex stands a good chance of getting pushed back by the AI since it probably took damage and if the AI can counter attack, it will likely die. Granted, the AI will still take a unfavorable attrition rate, but nothing like it did in Civ 3 or 4. At least this is what I think was going on when the decision to adopt 1UPT was made. Note that while I think this was a theory they had in mind, the implementation of an AI to make use of this is another matter.

One of the trends they have followed since Civ3 is lower unit density overall in game. Civ3 could grow to ridiculous unit amounts in game. Civ4 lowered that and Civ5 continues that trend, especially with 1UPT.

I noticed there were a lot of mentions about stacking in other games. Most of the classic strategic games (Third Reich, World in Flames, etc) feature 2 normal unit stacking. Panzer Blitz/Leader was 3 per stack in most cases. Typically, the more tactical a game becomes, the more stacking there is (Squad Leader for example to continue the mostly A/H line).

To me, I like the 1UPT, but I would not be upset if they bumped it to two and that would fit the scale of the game better I think while keeping mostly intact some of the ideas of the advantages of 1UPT in AI vs Human combat when it comes to attrition ratios. This would also allow an escort for troops at sea and troops to cover either cav/armor or artillery units.

 

[lschnarch]

The AI is inferior regardless of mechanic.

I agree upon the fact that Firaxis has a bad record in terms of creating combat AI's.
Yet, since 1upt has lead to the design decision of having only that many units, the fact that the human easily can have kill ratios of 15:1 and the like makes the AI suffer even more.

A good example of how the previous systems could have been advanced is given by the combat mechanics included in the RoM mod of Civ4.
There you have archers provide "supporting fire" on both the attacker's and the defender's side.
If this would have been combined with limited stacks, and making the AI being aware of the value of "ranged units", combat would have been really improved.

At higher difficulty levels that would have allowed the weak AI to benefit from it's production bonuses, while at the current implementation it will still lose the battle if not provided with much better units.

The diplomacy mechanic should be evidence of that, let alone trade post spamming, illogical trading, resource management, etc. A real craftsman never blames his tools.

A real craftsman KNOWS which tool to use for which purpose.

 

[Jharii]

A real craftsman KNOWS which tool to use for which purpose.

Touche! Well played, but as you noted...

I agree upon the fact that Firaxis has a bad record in terms of creating combat AI's.

The problem lies with the craftsman.

I don't necessarily disagree that there can't be some kind of hybridization of the two systems to make both sides happy, and to ultimately have a better mechanic. But it's really hard to gauge whether 1upt is a good fit or not since it's so poorly used. It's easy to fall back and say Civ4 BtS was better, but I can't say it was made better because of stacking, just like I can't say that Civ5 is made worse with 1upt. We really need to see it fully in action before we can past honest judgement.