1 unit per hex: failed experiment

[Venereus]

Most of what's in the OP sounds like realism at work in game. If any form of military unit stacking is brought back in Civ 5 I'll be done with it. As many others have commented, 1upt and the hex map are the two best additions to the series by far. Allowing stacking of military units of any kind is a huge step backwards in my opinion.

Read the thread. We know it's a good idea, but it's badly executed.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I think 7upt is the solution, per my post in the suggestions sub-forum.

The idea is that for combat each hex expands to seven hexes (a ring of six hexes with one in the middle roughly forms a hex). Combat is 1upt at this level in this "combat" view of the map.

In the normal view of the map you can stack up to 7upt and if you double click it zooms in to a combat view showing the 7 units laid out on individual sub-hexes. You can arrange them into whatever formation you like--they'd have a front and a back, if you move them around, the front will be facing the direction of movement.

This preserves the 1upt combat system but resolves the clogging issues.

It should also be much easier to implement, adding a combat view, than redoing all the maps and changing the whole interface.

 

[vandyr]

Dont you see the problems with it though?

Not really. I actually like the idea of unit congestion, because its more realistic. I like moving each unit individually because it helps me to keep a grasp on the tactical situation during a battle. I have a fast rig too, so I don't have much problem with long turns either. Unit stacks was archaic and crappy and completely removed any semblance of tactics or strategy, which is why I would rather not see any form of unit stacking whatsoever, unless its limited stacking for worker units.

Only thing I have a problem with is the AI, but I can't really say its any worse than the previous series' AI.

Read the thread. We know it's a good idea, but it's badly executed.

I disagree. Thought I made that clear.

 

[mrt144]

The entire idea of adding a secondary zoomed in menu is completely out of the question. That's a monumental addition to a game that already has 1upt baked in.

 

[mrt144]

Not really. I actually like the idea of unit congestion, because its more realistic. I like moving each unit individually because it helps me to keep a grasp on the tactical situation during a battle. I have a fast rig too, so I don't have much problem with long turns either. Unit stacks was archaic and crappy and completely removed any semblance of tactics or strategy, which is why I would rather not see any form of unit stacking whatsoever, unless its limited stacking for worker units.

Only thing I have a problem with is the AI, but I can't really say its any worse than the previous series' AI.



I disagree. Thought I made that clear.

So basically you choose to ignore blatant gameplay problems currently created by 1upt because of realism. I'm not arguing for a return to stacks (although I always viewed combat in Civ to be more symbolic and didn't worry I wasn't playing The Operational Art of War) but there needs to be a solution that rectifies all the problems shown in this thread it creates.

 

[Venereus]

Not really. I actually like the idea of unit congestion, because its more realistic. I like moving each unit individually because it helps me to keep a grasp on the tactical situation during a battle. I have a fast rig too, so I don't have much problem with long turns either. Unit stacks was archaic and crappy and completely removed any semblance of tactics or strategy, which is why I would rather not see any form of unit stacking whatsoever, unless its limited stacking for worker units.

Only thing I have a problem with is the AI, but I can't really say its any worse than the previous series' AI.

I disagree. Thought I made that clear.

You said it yourself. I like the realism from choke points and such. It's badly executed because the game can't contain it and the AI can't get it's "head" around it. May be you and others are right, may be the AI is just as bad as it used to or even better, but it doesn't fit in this game. If the AI can't be improved to properly cope with 1UPT, and some people here are quite certain of it, then you gotta fix the equation from the other end, you need to change 1UPT.

 

[JBConquests]

The original premise of the game was that players would have fewer units. I think in it's current form, Civ 5 has bugs which are allowing AI/Players more units than they maybe intended in the design of the game.

I saw a screen shot on another thread, somebody had an entire large island, almost every square had a unit on it. This is clearly not fun. I would encourage the programmers to make having units more costly so that we can't end up with so many.

Part of the challenge should be in usingfewer units to:

A) provide empire defense in all corners of the empire
B) ability to quickly move them towards an enemy to attack if needed.

This forces tough decisions, do I evenly spread them out during peace time for defense? Do I park them together as an Army centrally located (1upt - not a stack) and move them to defend if attacked, etc..

 

[vandyr]

So basically you choose to ignore blatant gameplay problems currently created by 1upt because of realism. I'm not arguing for a return to stacks (although I always viewed combat in Civ to be more symbolic and didn't worry I wasn't playing The Operational Art of War) but there needs to be a solution that rectifies all the problems shown in this thread it creates.

What blatant gameplay problems? Units blocking tiles? Congestion? Those aren't gameplay problems to me, they're tactical issues that I need to resolve in order to be successful at whatever I'm doing. To me it adds more to the game, not the other way around. I still haven't seen an argument anywhere in this thread that really makes any sense about why 1upt isn't successful. People crying because they find moving multiple units to be "tedious" is not what I characterize as a gameplay problem.

If your complaint is with the AI, make it so, but I haven't seen anything in here aside from some personal opinions, which I don't happen to share.

 

[vandyr]

You said it yourself. I like the realism from choke points and such. It's badly executed because the game can't contain it and the AI can't get it's "head" around it. May be you and others are right, may be the AI is just as bad as it used to or even better, but it doesn't fit in this game. If the AI can't be improved to properly cope with 1UPT, and some people here are quite certain of it, then you gotta fix the equation from the other end, you need to change 1UPT.

That's not a problem of 1upt, that's a problem of the AI needing to be worked around the 1upt system. 1upt in and of itself is fantastic, imo.

 

[Venereus]

The original premise of the game was that players would have fewer units. I think in it's current form, Civ 5 has bugs which are allowing AI/Players more units than they maybe intended in the design of the game.

I saw a screen shot on another thread, somebody had an entire large island, almost every square had a unit on it. This is clearly not fun. I would encourage the programmers to make having units more costly so that we can't end up with so many.

Part of the challenge should be in usingfewer units to:

A) provide empire defense in all corners of the empire
B) ability to quickly move them towards an enemy to attack if needed.

This forces tough decisions, do I evenly spread them out during peace time for defense? Do I park them together as an Army centrally located (1upt - not a stack) and move them to defend if attacked, etc..

First, we need a challenging AI that forces you to make those choices. Without it, all that strategy would become empty wanking. And we don't want that, do we?

 

[Venereus]

That's not a problem of 1upt, that's a problem of the AI needing to be worked around the 1upt system. 1upt in and of itself is fantastic, imo.

Nothing in this world is fantastic in and of itself. That's a huge fallacy. Words need a context to have meaning, and gameplay mechanics need a game to work in. It doesn't work in Civ V, not in it's current form. I won't repeat the reasons, read the thread. But just in case, allied workers blocking your army is tedious and dumb. No realism there.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

Yes, I think this is the way is should go. Just a simple "Merge Units" option in previous Civ's would have got rid of the micromanagement. Instead of Units, you build armies. However, this would be uninspiring with a simple "strength" attribute that added up. Something like ratings for attack, defence (like the old days!), ranged attack would be considered separately.

I agree with those saying the current system is not good. It messes up the scale so much, I can't believe the decision got passed the first design meeting! If you could take your units onto a separate tactical map (like Heroes of Might & Magic), it would make sense. I've enjoyed Panzer General before, but generally hex wargaming is a totally inappropriate concept to the world building high level strategy of God games like Civ.

Hexes don't make the game worse - but after a few games, I don't think they are adding anything of value either. There's a reason hex-games have dwindled to a small cult following... Hexes started as a board game mechanism before we had computers that could crunch a galaxies worth of numbers in a millisecond. On original Civ 1 and Civ 2, 486 processors with 32M RAM and 100Meg hard drives(!), tiling was a necessary abstraction. If anything, with quad cores, 4 gig RAMS and terrabit HD's, it's disappointing that we need any tiles at all.

Maybe the next step forward for Total War is to introduce hexes.....

Hexes were introduced because they allowed an accurate representation of movement in a two-dimensional space by eliminating the need for diagonal movement and the distortion it caused. This was meaningful in an operational or tactical game, particularly one whose map portrayed a real piece of the earth. Of course one can get the same effect by off-setting squares in a brick pattern, but hexes look better.

I still think them an improvement, but on a map which portrays a sphere there's only so much that can be done..

 

[mrt144]

What blatant gameplay problems? Units blocking tiles? Congestion? Those aren't gameplay problems to me, they're tactical issues that I need to resolve in order to be successful at whatever I'm doing. To me it adds more to the game, not the other way around. I still haven't seen an argument anywhere in this thread that really makes any sense about why 1upt isn't successful. People crying because they find moving multiple units to be "tedious" is not what I characterize as a gameplay problem.

If your complaint is with the AI, make it so, but I haven't seen anything in here aside from some personal opinions, which I don't happen to share.

On of the reasons for going with 1upt was because some people found moving hundreds of units into stacks to be tedious. Just be cause you can't fathom why something may be a gameplay problem, doesn't mean it's not a gameplay problem.

How are units warping to the next available space not a gameplay problem? How is the swarm of doom not a gameplay problem?

1upt isn't successful because the problems it seeks to resolve are still present. Figure out the problems you have with stacks and see how 1upt solves them on an objective gameplay basis.

I'll start right off the bat and say that you can win with no more tactical thought now than when you had stacks. Moving units is tedious when you OR the AI has tons of units.

 

[CYZ]

Personally I don't mind the issue of moving armies around so much. After all, it's like that in the real world. In fact, getting reinforcements to the battlefield requires some strategy of it's own, you usually want your melee units arriving first afterall

The main flaw with 1 unit per tyle is the weak ai. This is mostly a programming flaw. I've seen the ai putting archers in front, right there for me to take them out. But instead of moving them to a safe location (or firing even) the ai decides to let them stay put or moves them even closer to my units. I've won from the ai with 3 units versus 15+ of theirs while mine were actually outteched...

Fact is, one unit per tyle might have it's flaws, but so does stacking. The main flaw is that the ai does not know what it's doing at all. That's fixable though.

 

[Jharii]

They took a big risk applying that extra processing to a hexa map system.

Actually, there should be less processing, by 25% to be precise. 6 directions of movement is less than 8 directions of movement (diagonals were allowed). Hex maps are far superior in more ways than this, however, so I agree with the rest of your assessment.

That being said, 1upt is far better for a strategy game, which this is. You actually need to use *gasp* strategy, not just piling on a massive and indestructable death stack and stampeding it across the map.


Experiment? Not even close. A calculated decision that was a vast improvement to the Civ series.

 

[Conspirator]

A calculated decision that was a vast improvement to the Civ series.

Again, no it's not. Having stacks that can only be defended by one of the units in the stack, would have given all the tactical benefits of 1upt, and more, without any of the drawbacks of 1upt. And this system was used in Civ 1 and 2. So yes, 1upt is an experiment, an experiment that doesn't work.

 

[Svest]

I wouldn't call 1UPT a failed experiment, but it certainly needs some tweaks. Some restrictions need to be eased up to allow for easier movement IMO for example.

The AI needs a serious overhaul to be able to adapt the the combat. It could get away with a certain level of stupidity with SODs (they really don't require any intelligence to use). With the more tactical combat of 1UPT the stupidity really starts become obvious.

Failing an increase in intelligence (I think this will take quite a bit of time and effort to achieve) they need to do something to make the AI a challenge despite its stupidity (at least on the high difficulty levels). Being able to produce more units is not the answer as they can already fill up the available space and it makes no difference. What they probably need is a direct increase to combat strength in order to compensate for their poor tactics.

 

[Conspirator]

That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea Svest, because let's face it, they won't be adopting the 1 defender stack system - or at least I doubt they will.

 

[vandyr]

On of the reasons for going with 1upt was because some people found moving hundreds of units into stacks to be tedious. Just be cause you can't fathom why something may be a gameplay problem, doesn't mean it's not a gameplay problem.

Really? Lets try to have a serious discussion here.

How are units warping to the next available space not a gameplay problem?

What are you talking about? When open borders ends?

1upt isn't successful because the problems it seeks to resolve are still present. Figure out the problems you have with stacks and see how 1upt solves them on an objective gameplay basis.

It "solves" them for me because there was zero tactics and strategy in SoD warfare, and now there is. The AI is having trouble with 1upt and hex based combat, but that's a UI issue. Workers blocking roads is perfectly acceptable to me, because you can still move through them, although, I think the noncom/combat unit stacking should extend to neutral units as well.

I'll start right off the bat and say that you can win with no more tactical thought now than when you had stacks. Moving units is tedious when you OR the AI has tons of units.

This is a crock. In the SoD era you didnt' need combined arms so long as you had more units, and you could put bajillions of units in one place. There's no tactics or strategy involved.

 

[mrt144]

Really? Lets try to have a serious discussion here.



What are you talking about? When open borders ends?



It "solves" them for me because there was zero tactics and strategy in SoD warfare, and now there is. The AI is having trouble with 1upt and hex based combat, but that's a UI issue. Workers blocking roads is perfectly acceptable to me, because you can still move through them, although, I think the noncom/combat unit stacking should extend to neutral units as well.



This is a crock. In the SoD era you didnt' need combined arms so long as you had more units, and you could put bajillions of units in one place. There's no tactics or strategy involved.

No, I'm talking about when a the area surrounding a city are completely filled, or even worse, when theres only a few hexes open on the map due to unit clutter, a newly built unit will warp to the open hex.

You don't need combined arms now because the horsemen rule the roost and the AI is incompetent. This is no better than the rock paper scissors system that was shamed by stacks of doom in civ 4.

And I completely view combat as a means to an end in Civ, not a completely interesting or fun or important system in itself particularly BECAUSE it can be so easy to mess up.