1 unit per hex: failed experiment

[Doctor Phibes]

In Total War, the battles ARE the primary draw of the game. In Civ, it's just not. War is of primary importance, but micromanaging combat is not. Civ is already a time vampire, imagining zooming in on EVERY battle like in Total War...

Plus, that's ALOT of combat modeling, and it frankly only works for melee era units. Once you hit the US Civil War you start to run into problems modeling combat...

That's one of the reasons the CTP2 tactical screen would work I think for Civ(n). Once you've got the right stack, you commit. The only decision when you are on that screen is to retreat or not.

 

[SerriaFox]

Can a defender of 1upt please tell me how having an archer one tile behind the line, firing over a spearmen unit is deferant than, having a archer cower behind, but in the same tile as the spearmen with a firing range of only 1?

 

[jaldaen]

Can a defender of 1upt please tell me how having an archer one tile behind the line, firing over a spearmen unit is deferant than, having a archer cower behind, but in the same tile as the spearmen with a firing range of only 1?

Although I'm not an 1UPT fanatic (I'm building a MOD to improve it here)... I think I can answer this: Horsemen... If you position them properly, you can devastate archers. Of course, you also have to coordinate your attack so that you at least damage the spearman enough so that he isn't a threat to destoy your Horseman (or UU) with a counter attack. The zone of controls keep other melee units from going around the spearman easily, but with a combined arms attack, you can ruin someone's (usually the AI's) day.

1UPT allows for the possibility to destroy the archer outright and bypass the spearman, while stack requires the horseman to go through the Spearman to get to the the archers (which isn't a good idea for the Horsemen)

 

[isau]

A lot of the problems with "shuffling" seem avoidable if we could stack unlimited units within cities but only allow one to attack or move per turn.

The "board game versus sim game" seems to have taken root, but IMO some portion of Civ IV was actually a "player versus environment game" as well. By that I mean the player is set in some set of circumstances where he or she has to prevail against challenges that are actually not balanced as if rival players are equals, but rather simply obstacles that have to be overcome. Someone will be offended by the comparison, but it's similar to how a game like Mario Brothers works (i.e. the levels, bosses, and enemies are not considered "equals" to the player, they are simply "challenges"). The religion system, in particular, struck me this way in Civ IV.

 

[JudgeDeath]

The only problem with 1UPT is that the AI is not very good with it. I say "the only" but it's not clear to me that it's fixable. As I've noted before, this is a lot more complex than Chess, so expecting a decent opponent from the AI may be a forlorn hope.

Still it could be vastly improved by the addition of some good algorithms.

 

[mrt144]

A lot of the problems with "shuffling" seem avoidable if we could stack unlimited units within cities but only allow one to attack or move per turn.

The "board game versus sim game" seems to have taken root, but IMO some portion of Civ IV was actually a "player versus environment game" as well. By that I mean the player is set in some set of circumstances where he or she has to prevail against challenges that are actually not balanced as if rival players are equals, but rather simply obstacles that have to be overcome. Someone will be offended by the comparison, but it's similar to how a game like Mario Brothers works (i.e. the levels, bosses, and enemies are not considered "equals" to the player, they are simply "challenges"). The religion system, in particular, struck me this way in Civ IV.

This is what was so great to me about Civ IV. And religion was one of the things that provided a great obstacle in the form of huge alliances that couldn't necessarily be overcome through war alone.

 

[LDiCesare]

I still don't get why people are so resistant to the idea of having Total War style RTT battles for Civilization games as an idea. It seems to be perhaps the only solution to this combat problem.

Because these people wouldn't play that kind of game. I don't like real time. I think it's totally unrealistic to begin with. I want to give orders at the start of the battle, and then let things be. I could at best order reinforcements to strike here or there once or twice in a battle, but not miicromanage units all over the battlefield like a magical commander with extraordinary communication powers. Battle plans are made in advance, particularly before radio was available.
I also don't like to click-clikc-click.
I also don't want each battle to take forever and a game to be finished in one or two years real-time.

CtP2 system was good on the other hand.

I like 1UPT. I don't mind the ai being bad at it yet, it's been so much worse strategically that its tactical inability has been irrelevant to me so far.

Regarding scale, it's been mentioned that most wars (not battles) shouldn't take more than one turn or two if you want to respect realism and scale. Alexander's conquest of the known world? About 1 turn. Gengis? 2 turns. Civ combat system cannot be realistic in any way because wars are short things. Only way to make it realistic would be to simulate more or less constant wars, with a very abstracted army, and if your military power beats that of your opponent, you suddenly flood all or part of its territory in one turn. Or you play each of the thousands of wars that happened during 6 thousands years in 'real time' (that is about 100 or 1000 times faster than real time) and never finish a game.

 

[mrt144]

I still don't get why people are so resistant to the idea of having Total War style RTT battles for Civilization games as an idea. It seems to be perhaps the only solution to this combat problem.

If you think balance is an issue now, imagine trying to balance units and eras and even flavor. It's much easier to implement incremental unit upgrades in one era of similar nunits instead of having balance every possible unit in history.

 

[mrt144]

Because these people wouldn't play that kind of game. I don't like real time. I think it's totally unrealistic to begin with. I want to give orders at the start of the battle, and then let things be. I could at best order reinforcements to strike here or there once or twice in a battle, but not miicromanage units all over the battlefield like a magical commander with extraordinary communication powers. Battle plans are made in advance, particularly before radio was available.
I also don't like to click-clikc-click.
I also don't want each battle to take forever and a game to be finished in one or two years real-time.

CtP2 system was good on the other hand.

I like 1UPT. I don't mind the ai being bad at it yet, it's been so much worse strategically that its tactical inability has been irrelevant to me so far.

Regarding scale, it's been mentioned that most wars (not battles) shouldn't take more than one turn or two if you want to respect realism and scale. Alexander's conquest of the known world? About 1 turn. Gengis? 2 turns. Civ combat system cannot be realistic in any way because wars are short things. Only way to make it realistic would be to simulate more or less constant wars, with a very abstracted army, and if your military power beats that of your opponent, you suddenly flood all or part of its territory in one turn. Or you play each of the thousands of wars that happened during 6 thousands years in 'real time' (that is about 100 or 1000 times faster than real time) and never finish a game.

This has been one of the stumbling blocks I've faced with any of the total war games; If I play every single battle I've played 120 hour games for one campaign and I'm simply burnt out on re-playability after that. I still have an unfinished English campaign where I've insisted on commanding each battle, and it's been about 200 hours of gameplay.

 

[Jediron]

That's why you can AUTO battle in TW. Fight the interresting battles, leave the rest for calculation. That solves the "time-consuming" and more so; it prevents repetative actions (see below for example, but i guess you can come up with much more repetative actions with a very much predicted outcome).

Honestly, why is that bad and seeing your spearman winning every battle in CIV5 against the barbs over and over again would be any better ?
The only solution for tactical warfare is realtime, 1upt HEXs/turn based just does not cut it. Period!
In that sence, all debate about "tactical & strategical" warfare in CIV is "nuts".

 

[mrt144]

That's why you can AUTO battle in TW. Fight the interresting battles, leave the rest for calculation. That solves the "time-consuming" issue ;-)

Honestly, why is that bad and seeing your spearman winning every battle in CIV5 against the barbs over and over again would be any better ?
The only solution for tactical warfare is realtime, 1upt HEXs/turn based just does not cut it. Period!

But that just raise the question from a developer's POV of "is the marginal return worth the marginal cost of development" for something like creating a functional real time battle system and undoubtedly this doesn't mete out for the most part.

 

[lordqarlyn]

I can handle the one unit per hex. What bothers me is that we cannot have a naval unit in the same square as our embarked land unit. That is simply stupid considering embarked units are totally vulnerable.

I only had the game for 3 days, and already lost five tank units to caravels because they could maneuver around my destroyers.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

Although I'm not an 1UPT fanatic (I'm building a MOD to improve it here)... I think I can answer this: Horsemen... If you position them properly, you can devastate archers. Of course, you also have to coordinate your attack so that you at least damage the spearman enough so that he isn't a threat to destoy your Horseman (or UU) with a counter attack. The zone of controls keep other melee units from going around the spearman easily, but with a combined arms attack, you can ruin someone's (usually the AI's) day.

1UPT allows for the possibility to destroy the archer outright and bypass the spearman, while stack requires the horseman to go through the Spearman to get to the the archers (which isn't a good idea)

Why? It's the natural use of spearman stopping horses...

What you are proposing is the use of strategy on battallion scenario scale on the Civ scale Moderator Action: *snip* no trolling here.

And what if you have a line of spearman dude (as i used often filling the hexes on front)? how you outright them? Especially if hexes are so few to manouver...

This strategy is applicable on a battallion scale map, the good point about hexes is the front\rear\flank concept if you use an army logic, assuming archers are on the rear, if you attack the tile from rear (assuming the front is the movement angle) the first to suffer will be the archers and artillery... But it's way to complex for civ gamers.
So the best will be the army system, that combines the troops by type, combining efforts and bonuses.

 

[lordqarlyn]

But it's way to complex for civ gamers.

Yeah you're spot on with that! Most gamers these days prefer simple straightforward game play.

I prefer gameplay where I have to think, plan, organize, decide, and accept the consequences of my poor planning, poor organization, and poor decisions.

 

[the Wahoo boy]

Moderator Action: *snip* no insults here.

 

[Jediron]

But that just raise the question from a developer's POV of "is the marginal return worth the marginal cost of development" for something like creating a functional real time battle system and undoubtedly this doesn't mete out for the most part.

the last piece of your line i can't get, my english ain't that good (what is "mete" ?)
The worth for the developer is a more mature game, making it much more attractive for warmonger gamers. Like they did in TW; you CAN do a automated battle, but the reward for doing it yourself CAN also be more fullfilling; do it good and your win Glorious on the battlefield, with fewer losses. Yes, you can even win when the ODDs are against you.

Infact, on a smaller scale you could win with ONE horsemen vs 2 warriors + 1 archer with the present system. Problem is you're gonna need alot of turns to achieve this, hexing in and out, healing etc. So you say people like this better, then settle the score once and for all in ONE, realtime battle ? I know what i choose, no chess/risk for me; bring it LIVE!

A good TW general, can crush those three units (in a army) with his horses, if he handles them properly. That's the difference, that's pure tactical skills, my friend. Such a depht you won't find in Civ 5. Infact, what you do find is the "horce" rush. Something, that should not be possible to begin with. The skill ? Manouvring your horses in and out the battleline, healing and kill,kill, kill.
Such a issue should have been fixed in the beta-stage, not in the final product. That's another thing why CIV 5 isn't good enough.

Afcource, anyone who loves the game can find 1000 excuses why it's still a good game.
I loved them all, but after 10 years, is it too much to ask for something better ?
And no, i don't want to be a beta-tester for a finished product.

 

[nokmirt]

Because chess has limited pieces and limited moves. Civ has a randomly generated map, more tiles, and a ton more pieces. It also has players who aren't willing to wait a minute between decisions.
And despite all those limitations, the calculations required to do just chess are huge and processing sinks.

I'm no AI expert, but I think the usual approach for "smarter" ai is to take some rules of thumb used by human players and make the ai use those rather than actually calculating what is the better play. So it looks smarter than just mindlessly tossing units forwards, but you can still learn and abuse its rules of thumb.

Not if it is programmed to learn from it's mistakes. And it could be programmed as well, to learn from the human player's strategy and mistakes. Indeed it could learn to defeat the human.

 

[Psyringe]

Not if it is programmed to learn from it's mistakes. And it could be programmed as well, to learn from the human player's strategy and mistakes. Indeed it could learn to defeat the human.

Well, this is like Jules Verne saying "We could fly to the moon" in 1865. While it's theoretically possible that an AI able to analyze and learn from the player's moves, in a game as complex as Civ, may be conceived at some time in the future, we currently have neither the technology nor the programming concepts to get anywhere near there. As long as we haven't, it's science fiction.

 

[Buccaneer]

The best combat system ever in a single-player game was my favorite, Conquest of the New World. Does anyone remember that?

 

[SerriaFox]

yeh, it was quick to load and play, without being a total distraction