A map of a few square miles ? I think that is exactly what he mean. If you want to play it the PG styrl, the huge map you have now, needs to be 10X huger to get the same effect.
A few square miles? What are you talking about?
Depending on the number of Civs you want to play with and the number of cities a civ should be able to build within it's starting territory the map need only be twice the *dimensions* of the current huge map.
I think people are over stating the size a PG combat system requires to be playable to overstate their case against 1UPT. Obviously you're not going to create a world map to the same scale as say the 40x30 hexes england occupies in the Seelow scenario for example. However such scales are completely unecessary. The PG system is a GAME system, not a simulation and as such it isn't tied to any 1 particular scale - hence the same mechanics were used on the whole of balkans were also used to fight on tiny tarawa atoll. The maps themselves merely add historical flavour to the GAME being played out on top of them. The key thing is that the UNIT DENSITY is correct for the scale of the combat system, not the underlying geography scale beneath them - again it is a GAME system, not a simulation.
As such the only thing Civ needs is to be big enough to lower the city and unit density to the point where the system works for a given number of units, NOT make it big enough to match the detail of PG maps - which would require a huge increase in the number of units to retain the same density.
Given the old huge maps (~100x60) could accomodate 8-10 civs with 15-20 cities apiece, with 4 tiles between cities it seems logical that with mechanics to encourage city spread doubling map dimensions to ~200x120 would give the same number of Civ and cities but with an average of 8 tiles between them instead of the current 3 that is common in Civ5.
But they did not, did they ? So we have to deal with it the way it is. And from a experience wargamer to another; i
say: it s*cks how this is done in CIV 5.
...
As a player, it's quite easy to take out his weaker units; over and over again. With hardly any if none losses. Won't you agree that's a failure ? A bad design ?
Where do you see me suggesting that Civ5 wasn't a failure?
I'm not disagreeing it sucks, nor am I suggesting that that they could fix it without starting from scratch. I'm merely disagreeing with the post I quoted and now you that the fact that it sucks wasn't an
innevitable consequence of 1UPT.
Shall i tell you why 1 UPT is a wrong design decision in this case ? Because the AI haven't got a clue how to protect his weaker forces, to defend properly and to attack properly. Due to the 1 UPT rule, the AI is forced to move his weaker forces without protection, hardly any protection. bypass his spear or whatever, nail him from the back, take out his ranged stuff first and finish the melee off with your cav, whatever.
It's all too easy. Humans are superiour in manouvring to computer AI's.
Thanks Mr. Condescending for your deep reflections upon of the obvious hurdles the AI faces with 1UPT.
Nope, the AI was always dumb, there you have a point. The difference is: CIV 5 losses count more then ever, even for the AI. Because there are fewer units to go with. Back then, the poor AI was compensated by numbers, lots of numbers; and SOD. Multliple units defending a tile/city/ whatever. What is the compensation now ?
A few more units, easily picked off by a good player, while they all come in "one-package" meals ....
Shall I give you an example of why you continue to confuse the broader issues of the game as a whole as being unsolvable issues specific to 1UPT?
As you rightfully point out production bonuses are one of the mechanisms Civ4 used to compensate for the poor AI. However you are incorrect in saying those same bonuses applied to 1UPT done right couldn't make the AI more competitve. Simply put the change they made to attempt to manage army size - increase unit production costs) didn't effectively accomplish the task while at the same time divorcing warfare from the production base the AI requires to be competitive:
One advantage a human has over the AI is we're better at unit preservation, regardless of the system used, agreed? Unfortunately Civ5 borked the relationship between cost to repair and cost to replace.
In Civ5 consider the AI and I each have a swordsman. Over 2 turns I kill his swordsman at the cost of 9pts of my own strength. As long as I can pull him back to a safe place my swordsman will essentially repair all 9pts of strength FOR FREE, other than the cost of up to 9 turns doing nothing (which itself can be reduced by medic promotions or insta heal). As a bonus he gets to keep all of of his promotions and is somewhat near the theatre of operations. The AI on the otherhand has to PAY to rebuild all 10 of his strength points in a newly recruited unit, either with gold or city production time. City production time on average usually being more than field repair time. Because of this the production bonus the AI receives is not being used to maximum effect. He may get his new unit for cheaper than I'll get mine but the end result is because I got my repairs for free and am using my full production to expand my army I'm essentially getting a unit for free. Despite the fact we originally suffered near identical damage the AI is now facing 2 swordsmen to his one thus negating the production advantage supposedly given to him.
Yet you ascribe this weakness to 1UPT? Tell me if you're an experienced wargamer how many wargames have you played where units could repair for "free" **during a scenario**.
In Panzer General you payed prestige to keep your forces repaired. In more complex wargames you generally have a finite rate of replacement per turn based on abstract production or logistics constraints, to which you could apply an AI production bonus. In Steal Panthers you weren't able to repair at all.
The only one that comes to readily to mind might be SC where the Zerg and Protos "healed" themselves. But in both cases it was balanced by other factors such as the speed at which it happened relative to the production costs of the unit.
Even in Civ4, where units were only sub components of stacks, generally to keep a force up to strength required continual diversion of resources into building replacement units which cost you city time you couldn't use to expand or develope. If the AI and I each had a stack of 10 units and he lost 10 and I lost 9 the effort to rebuild our stack would be a question of production, to which the AI's bonus would apply directly. I we were fighting in his territory he gets the added advantage of being able to deliver those units into action quicker.
But instead CIV5 gives a bonus to parts of the game where a human is strong (free rapair) and penalize the areas of the game that made the AI competitive (unit production, attrition).
Yes the situation was created in part by the move to 1UPT, but it wasn't because it was an innevitable consequence of 1UPT but rather because they chose a poor solution to the requirements of the system - namely making units more survivable without paying repair costs AND increasing *fixed* production costs as a means of controlling army size.
Charging players for repair and reducing production efficiency as armies get larger coupled with larger maps sizes so the AI could actually make reasonable use of it's numbers would make the AI much more of a challenge. Yes it would still suck at tactically postioning units but as long as it could reasonably compentantly position them operationally and strategically such changes would go along way to restoring the AI's ability to win by attrition while still giving players the satisfaction of being "tactical geniuses."
That even goes for PG, i can tell. Played all PG's there were, Steel Panters also and i can tell; offensive PG-like games are pretty weak; the only part that was a bit harder were defence; where they defend staticly.
Ow; last but not least; those PG scenario's were based on fixed maps, with fixed conditions, and tested thoroughly. That's another reason why "it worked". Conditions, which are lacking in CIV 5 and cannot be added due to the dynamic nature of the game. And that's why i say 1 UPT for CIV is a failure; any CIV, incl. V.
Your analysis of both PG and SP is too simplistic - the scenarios in PG were one reason why it worked and equally the reason why it was broken - because it was a scenario it generally played out similarly every time. The enemy on turn 1 always started the same and you could always expect what kind of forrces you would run into as you moved through the map. As such your supremacy over the AI wasn't entire due to your tactical accumen but rather the fact you had already "solved" the puzzle. You never needed to worry about surprises like a big force just over the hill, or an enemy army suddenly attacking you from the opposite end. In Civ 4 how much less of a challenge would it have been if you KNEW that on turn 60 Monty would *always* appear at the same city with a stack of doom with 10 Swordsman and 4 Catapults? Obviously you'd just spend the first 59 turns positioning your forces to meet it.
Likewise SP - assuming we're talking about the free WINSP versions, (I haven't played the originals in over a decade) - I found was very dependant upon the circumstances of the scenario - if you had Tiger and Panther tanks defending a small cluster of objectives on a small, high visibility map against T-34s then yes, it was trivially easy to win without losing a tank. On the otherhand if you had an equivalent number of PzIVs defending a large map of spread out objectives with low visibility against KV tanks then it was quite a challenge despite the fact it was still the same poor AI whose only plan is "drive west".
That's really the crux of my argument concerning 1UPT: Civ5 is Tigers and Panthers firing at long range versus lemming T-34s. That doesn't mean the same incompetant AI coun't have delivered a reasonable challenge with the exact same mechanics if you design it around PzIVs vs. KVs at close range.
There are several ideas to fix this micromanament nightmare, without having to throw SOD away. TW: Rome or Shogun show how it can be done in more sophesticated way; easier to control and manage.
That there are possibilities to improve stacking does not preclude the possibility of a working 1UPT system.
I will grant, as evident by Civ5, there is a disadvantage in adopting "new" (for the Civ series) rather than tried and true. However given they had used stacks for the 4 previous games and still hadn't gotten it right isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for status quo either.
