Ah, yes. So to keep the Maps managable, and enough room, the Pg-style would work on a huge map, with 4 players. Right ?
On a normal map 2 and a tiny map ? City-states only ?
What is your point? That for any given size map you'll get less content with 1UPT than you would Stacking? Obviously. If you're going to 1UPT you're going to need more map space for a given number of units. So the "normal" map has to be made bigger - as long as you're not increasing the number of cities or the amount of tiles requiring worker improvement it's not like this is a big deal?
Well, the underlying geography scale as you put it; is actually quite scaling well with the place, where the scenorio is historicly located.
I'm sorry I'm not following your english so I'm not sure whether you agree or disagree (or understand) the point I was making.
However:
I am not talking about detail, we both talking (i guess) about enough room to manouvre your units, so that you can actually use their abilities properly. You know, assembly area, offensive routes, deployment etc. In scal of things, i estimate that on average the unit vs hex ratio is about 1 unit to 8 a 10 hexes on average.
We seem to be on the same page that what is needed is space to manouvre, without which 1UPT bogs down into a pointless slogging match? 8 to 10 hexes per unit land unit is entirely reasonable. Given the current (civ4)huge size map is ~100x60*50% land that's 3000 tiles. At 1UP10T that's ~300 land units.
The question is, assuming the area was divided equally how many land units do you want an average civ to posses? And more to the point how much "growth" space do you need for the AI to be able to deploy it's superior force in order to be competive?
If you want more units per civ then obviously you need fewer civilizations for a given map area or make the map proportionately larger.
Not exactly; atleast the old AI could protect those weaker unit better; with multiple units on a tile. And yes, they increased production times and limited army size; but still; for the AI it gets cheaper on the high levels; it can still muster a bigger army then you; in that sence, nothing have changed.
But a bigger army is irrelavent if you can't deploy it - again it goes back to matching map size with a maximum number of units you're going to allow on it and then ensuring the system you pick will actually hold the numbers of units to it. Increasing production times was an insufficient cap because it was quite possible for the player, and the AI to exceed the desirable number of units in a given space and clog the map with units. Once that happens the fact the AI has a production advantage is irrelavent because without SOD it doesn't have the space to bring it's advantage to bear.
No, i don't. I goes beyond healing and replacements. Besides, PG and the like were simplifications of the mother of hex-tiles wargames;
HPSSims is the "god" mode for hextiles wargaming.
Look! SOD's!
Of course there are other factors beside healing and replacement - I said "EXAMPLE", not "complete analysis of everything wrong with civ5". But you implied in your previous post that the AI was disadvantaged because 1UPT made each unit more important:
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.
I was just pointing out it wasn't because there were fewer units that made them more important - afterall Civ4 units might not have been important but the AI lost them in droves - but rather the proportionate increase in difficulty in *replacing them* during wartime directly cripples the strenght of any civ series AI, namely that it would out produce you to challenge you.
And other than the fact that it's war and it's played on hexes what relavence does an HPS *SIMULATION* have to do with the point I was trying to make, or designing a viable warfare system for a Civilization series *GAME*? I've only played a half dozen but the former are geared towards detail and is even more dependant upon pre-made scenarios for 'balance' than PG, while both Civ and PG are geared to the slightly above beer and pretzels level.
That still won't solve the AI's weird behavior; like barbs, not attacking you, while you are attacking them. Enemy Archers, who won't fire (for whatever reason).
Again what relavence does this have to the suitability or otherwise of 1UPT?
You seem to be missing the point I'm trying to make - not that 1UPT doesn't have it's flaws or that Civ5 isn't a poor wargame but rather don't ascribe every flaw in the failure that is Civ5 as being an *inherent* flaw of 1UPT instead of the Devs doing a poor job. Do you think Barbarians or Archers not attacking you is an inherent defect to 1UPT as a system itself and that no reasonable AI within the power of a modern PC could handle the stress of having a barb attack on 1UPT? Or was it more likely the result of the same half assed job Firaxis did on coding and testing the AI in general that had AIs rage quitting and offering you all their cities? For that matter do you think because it had stacking Civ4 was immune to weird AI behavior?
Like i could say you are too simplistic here as well, but i don't. There was a little more to it, and you know it an i know it. That's enougn for me
All I'm saying is the success or failure of a certain approach in one game does not necessarily reflect the possibility success or failure of a similar approach in a different context.
Until PG-3D cam out you mean. Surprises on a regular base, new forces kept flowing in, from multiple directions. Sometimes a real pain in butt.
Given that Civ5 most closely resembles the mechanics of the original PG/AG I assumed the discussion was limited to those. But yes the scenarios of PG 3D did involve more randomness which atm Civ 5, despite the fact it's dynamic has failed to deliver. New forces do not keep flowing in - production is so slow once the AI has shot it's bolt it's done. Likewise unless another civ declares war on you there's not much surprise which direction the attack comes from when the AI only has a 10hex border to cram it's 30 units into it's attack.
Yep, but that is on a whole different scale; isn't it.
You were the one who brought up SP.
No, it's about a player who know how to use a Tiger, and a AI which is clueless to use a Tiger. you can change the unit types, the issue stays the same.
No it's about accepting that no matter what system you use, compared to a player an AI will always be clueless how to use a tiger and therefore any such system will have to be designed in such a fashion that the AI can successfully compete with a player by using steamroller tactics. Partly by giving the AI more tigers, partly by ensuring it understands to concentrate them, and partly by giving it enough map room that the point of attack isn't so predictable that the player can build a wall of doom in front of it and partly by giving the players Sherman's instead.
Firaxis adopted a 1UPT combat system but didn't put enough thought into the changes needed in the rest of the game to a)keep it fresh; b) accomodate the obvious handicaps any AI would would have with such a system; c) not doing nearly enough testing to catch even basic behavioral problems that are entirely independ of 1UPT.
As a result Civ5 with 1UPT is a failure.
However I disagree that, accepting certain axiomatic features of 1UPT, such a match couldn't have been made to work.
Regardless Civ5, short of an AI miracle, will never be rebuilt sufficiently to "fix" it so continued debate in the context of "what might have been" is largely a waste of time.... I'll pick up the debate again when CivVI is announced =P