1 unit per hex: failed experiment

[Archwizard]

boredatwork really hits the nail on the head.

The problem is scale. Scale scale scale. The maps are too small for 1upt, which in itself is a vast improvement over stacks.

If maps were large enough, and you could maintain larger armies, you could have some really neat tactical combat (given improved AI). But as it stands, battles are just a huge mess because the maps are running on a Civ4 scale and the combat system is fit for an entirely new scale.

When I heard about 1upt I assumed that they would be changing the whole scale of the game, so that you won't have cities only a few tiles apart, so that a single tile couldn't represent hundreds of square miles of territory. But unfortunately they didn't.

The insane cost of unit upkeep feels like a bandaid fix to the fact that the scale of the maps was far too small for large armies. Instead of rescaling the game, they tried to throttle empire and unit creation.

Well, part of this is an AI city placement problem. Now that cities have a radius of 3 hexes, you should have 5-7 spaces (ideally) between cities. That's much farther than Civ4. But the AI still plops down cities with only 4 hexes (or less!) between them.

 

[brianshapiro]

Limited stacking does not help the problem at all. Its not even a solution. Now all the tactics there is would be archers/spear stack. Counter units then become only a counter for defense. Just like Civ 4.

Just like in real life, really. With limited stacking, it would make sense only if units like archers had some type of bombard attack like they do now, although I'd expect it to be a 1 tile range. Two formations of archers/spearmen in the game would be in a dead match with each other if there are no other advantages, just like in real life. What you would need to do would be to use it in combination with other units, or either take advantage of the terrain to get the right advantages or the fog of war to surprise the other player.

I disagree with the negativism in this thread though about how 1upt has worked out in the game. I think it makes it much better that you're expected to build less units. In Civ4, whenever I was at war, my cities would be bogged down with producing units and so much time and energy would be lost. I find that I get less bored with Civ5 than with Civ4. So I don't see it as a 'failed experiment', even if I would have done it differently.

 

[Sc_0pe]

I read it that alot of 1UPT nay-sayers don't particularly like one thing about it:

Clustering of units, units of more than 150+ making it tedious to move them around etc..

Solution?
Why not make the game penalize for larger armies, be it trough maintanance or making the units cost more.

I personally love the 1UPT, it makes the game feel so much more realistic and fun.
To tackle the problem we first need to define it.

 

[kazapp]

So let me ask this. How do a million different wargames do no stacking just fine with a competent AI? How is it that it's been done a million times before with no problem and suddenly now it's impossible to program an AI without a big stack? Seems like it's a giant crock to me.

If you have bad AI, then it's because it was programmed poorly, not because of a system that's been around forever.

Thank you for saying what needed to be said.

 

[aimlessgun]

Well, part of this is an AI city placement problem. Now that cities have a radius of 3 hexes, you should have 5-7 spaces (ideally) between cities. That's much farther than Civ4. But the AI still plops down cities with only 4 hexes (or less!) between them.

Yeah that is definitely part of it. Though with current growth constraints and extremely slow culture acquisition, settling cities 3-4 tiles apart is just natural. To make everything "bigger" and have cities farther apart, they'd had to grow faster.

 

[drachasor]

Yeah that is definitely part of it. Though with current growth constraints and extremely slow culture acquisition, settling cities 3-4 tiles apart is just natural. To make everything "bigger" and have cities farther apart, they'd had to grow faster.

Indeed. After playing for some time I actually think 4 tiles of space between two cities is pretty good. You don't NEED more than that. That's already enough to cover a size 18 city, after all. I certainly feel you should make sure all the essentials for the city's development are within 2 tiles, unless you plan on fronting a good bit of cash for things at the outer radius.


Anyhow, I agree with what others have said about the AI. It should be a lot better and it is quite possible for it to be better. The problem is they just didn't put enough manpower/brainpower on the job.

 

[gunter]

I don't like within civ V the fact that you are pretty much obliged to build at least a dozen of cities ( small maps ) to have a solid empire.

I would have simplified this aspect, too many stuff to manage or micromanage when you have 10 to 20 cities to take care of.

 

[drachasor]

I don't like within civ V the fact that you are pretty much obliged to build at least a dozen of cities ( small maps ) to have a solid empire.

I would have simplified this aspect, too many stuff to manage or micromanage when you have 10 to 20 cities to take care of.

Eh? Are we playing the same game? You can easily get by with just 4 or so cities (even less).

 

[gunter]

Eh? Are we playing the same game? You can easily get by with just 4 or so cities (even less).

I am referring to Prince level. If you play the same level, how can you have a strong economy , ready to war with 2 dozens of units , if you miss trade routes income and production rate of ~10 cities ?

I tried a game having 4-5 cities... a weak and fragile empire vs multi cities rich opponents

Having 10-15 cities on my game style it is light years better, around 300 science point each turn on late stages, around 80 gold each turn, around 10 happy faces and around 20-25 units at war simultaneously.

 

[drachasor]

I am referring to Prince level. If you play the same level, how can you have a strong economy , ready to war with 2 dozens of units , if you miss trade routes income and production rate of ~10 cities ?

I tried a game having 4-5 cities... a weak and fragile empire vs multi cities rich opponents

Having 10-15 cities on my game style it is light years better, around 300 science point each turn on late stages, around 80 gold each turn, around 10 happy faces and around 20-25 units at war simultaneously.

I play at King and the most cities I've ever personally made is 7. Usually I make fewer. Why do you need 2 dozen units to make war? Man, that's overkill. 5 or less units can do a great job in the ancient or classic age if you manage them fairly well. Expand your empire by making puppets if you want more trade income. Focus the cities you control some.

Later on in the game you might have 20-some units for war, but that's pretty late. By then, if you are focusing on dominating or just like the extra cities, you should have a good supply of puppet states.

As for science and such. One guy got over 300 science per turn from just one city (though that IS extreme, I admit). So don't think you can't generate a lot of science from one location.

 

[gunter]

I play at King and the most cities I've ever personally made is 7. Usually I make fewer. Why do you need 2 dozen units to make war? Man, that's overkill. 5 or less units can do a great job in the ancient or classic age if you manage them fairly well. Expand your empire by making puppets if you want more trade income. Focus the cities you control some.

Later on in the game you might have 20-some units for war, but that's pretty late. By then, if you are focusing on dominating or just like the extra cities, you should have a good supply of puppet states.

As for science and such. One guy got over 300 science per turn from just one city (though that IS extreme, I admit). So don't think you can't generate a lot of science from one location.

20 or more units on late stages yes. During early stages 5-8 are enough I agree.

Told that, you know that more an empire is large more resources it can have, not to mention the strategic resource too. I mean, if you have spread 15 cities your chances to have the strategic resources when they spawn is definitely higher then having 4-5 cities only.

Same speech for luxury resources, if you have a wide empire you most certainly will have 80-90% of available resources, if you have a small empire ( in terms of tiles ) you will miss most of them and you are forced to try to acquire them via trade but as you certainly know that's a mess having a serious dialog with for example Songhai or similia...

 

[drachasor]

20 or more units on late stages yes. During early stages 5-8 are enough I agree.

Told that, you know that more an empire is large more resources it can have, not to mention the strategic resource too. I mean, if you have spread 15 cities your chances to have the strategic resources when they spawn is definitely higher then having 4-5 cities only.

Same speech for luxury resources, if you have a wide empire you most certainly will have 80-90% of available resources, if you have a small empire ( in terms of tiles ) you will miss most of them and you are forced to try to acquire them via trade but as you certainly know that's a mess having a serious dialog with for example Songhai or similia...

Which is why you puppet. Also helps manage the empire since you can afford more social policies and such. I usually have 15+ cities late in the game, but the majority of them are ones aren't don't directly control. Though, it is quite possible to do with fewer than that. Nice to have a buffer though, I agree.

 

[vranasm]

best solution would be moving units in stacks on strategy level and simulate battles with 1upt rule in separate map... Master of Magic was the same...

dunno seems best. The maps are small for proper maneuvers and ranges are too low too.
It was said that the 1upt is inspired by Panzer General, but the game was basically only tactical maps, so I think this is what is really not thought out enough

 

[gunter]

Which is why you puppet. Also helps manage the empire since you can afford more social policies and such. I usually have 15+ cities late in the game, but the majority of them are ones aren't don't directly control. Though, it is quite possible to do with fewer than that. Nice to have a buffer though, I agree.

Ah ok, 15 also for you on later stages. Ok.

Puppeting implies a small war and a bunch of annoyances like dozens turns to build a courthouse if you annex.....( a pretty much obliged path )..

I consider CSs a waste of time and a piece of crap to avoid and ignore

 

[Fariic]

I'd like the ability to stack workers, as well as to have more then one work the same tile. Single combat units should be able to stack with a multi-stack of workers, as well as stack multiple workers in the same city.

U nits should also be able to pass through other unit stacks as long as they have the movement points to do so. IE: when a worker and a combat unit are occupying ythe same tile another combat unit should still me able to pass through said tile; just not end their move on it.

I have not, personally, experienced any issues with the AI having trouble moving units. Those saying the hexes and 1upt make it impossible to write a working AI are blowing putty out their rear. They were able to do it 20 years ago on the nintendo for godsakes.

 

[db0]

Battle for Wesnoth has 1upt, hexes and ranged combat and the A.I. is quite decent.
It is not good as an human player of course... but I find it good enough, it can give a good challenge indeed more than often.

That's not exactly true. Wesnoth has no ranged combat in the way that Civ5 does. Archers need to be adjacent to the unit they are attacking, but it's simply that if the opponent is a melee unit, it will not strike back. However, on the next turn they are in a position to attack you immediately, so archers were not so much used to soften the enemy before it approaches but rather as part of a rock/paper/scissors setup.

As for the main subject, I agree that 1UPT is a great improvement over the SOD mechanic of Civ4 which ultimately was decided on who would make their suicide siege faster. However I agree with others that the problem with the current system is not the non-stacking but rather the scale. They tried to balance the scale to a CIV4 size which is just inane with the 1UPT, expecially on smaller than standard maps. To avoid this from coming up, they exploded the production and maintenance costs or units and roads so that they limit the army sizes, making the game completely unrealistic (globe-spanning empires fighting epic battles with...5 regiments of soldiers and two ships).

The solution would be to make the game far grander to allow for meaningful maneuvering and tactics, while also increasing the realism aspect. Imagine a map with landsize about 3 times the size of the standard map, cities which need to be at least 10 tiles away from each other, culture penalties for cities cut down (so that a larger number of cities can be considered "small"), road maintenance and unit maintenance severely reduced to allow for greater armier and maneuvering, but unit production staying the same so as to require more cities in order to build a serious invasion force and unit movement increased by 1 (i.e. an infrantry by default moves 3 tiles)

Then, if you could have a 20 hex frontline, you could so some significant maneuvering of units and wage some epic battles and you avoid both the issues with not being able to move your units and the lack of realism (archers shooting over mountains, spearman taking 100 years to climb a hill and so on)

 

[Sc_0pe]

They tried to balance the scale to a CIV4 size which is just inane with the 1UPT, expecially on smaller than standard maps. To avoid this from coming up, they exploded the production and maintenance costs or units and roads so that they limit the army sizes, making the game completely unrealistic (globe-spanning empires fighting epic battles with...5 regiments of soldiers and two ships).

I just finished a game on small map where America had well over 30 units at least (what I could see) attacking me so this is not true..

 

[Tutkarz]

Someone mentioned that scale not fit in this game. I would say it does fit. Because already you have production and movement out of scale. Especially in early years. Normally you wouldn build bank or unit for hundred of years or move said unit from one city to another in that time period.

All in all i like civ V combat way more than civ IV .

 

[gonzo562]

I read it that alot of 1UPT nay-sayers don't particularly like one thing about it:

Clustering of units, units of more than 150+ making it tedious to move them around etc..

Solution?
Why not make the game penalize for larger armies, be it trough maintanance or making the units cost more.

I personally love the 1UPT, it makes the game feel so much more realistic and fun.
To tackle the problem we first need to define it.

this is already in place. Its hard to maintain a huge army. You get a huge ---gold per turn if you have a huge army. 10-20units of just workers, and soldiers can hurt your economy.

As for scale I never really had issue with maps being to small for 1UPT. Even on duel maps i never had a issue.

 

[DagHammarskjol]

U nits should also be able to pass through other unit stacks as long as they have the movement points to do so. IE: when a worker and a combat unit are occupying ythe same tile another combat unit should still me able to pass through said tile; just not end their move on it.

This is already how it is in the game.