1UPT and Scale

[Solo4114]

This begs the question of why they didn't implement a more engaging unit supply system in order to keep unit counts down.

As for your concern, you can bombard a city using other methods, such as with a navy or an airforce, so that even a city with just one adjacent land tile can be taken.

Exactly. In a strategic game like the Civ series, supply lines would have made far more sense. Alternatively, you could "live off the land" but might generate far more partisan resistance, or prompt the enemy to implement a scorched-earth policy to leave you barren lands when you enter his territory. Of course, your territory and his territory might only be about three or four hexes big...

I wouldn't know about the airforce options, but it doesn't surprise me. I haven't gotten that far into the game, as I have been too bored to bother playing through a bajillion turns to get there.

I prefer my civ strategic, where you have military, diplomatic and espionage options, as well as cultural, religious, economic and scientific ones.

I don't feel like I have many options in V, but if they're going tactical on us, can't we have a tactical map, and more tactical gameplay, such as unit facing to determine flanking attacks and so forth?

Exactly, except then we'd have a totally different game with totally different requirements of scale. That or we'd have a hybrid game and call it....what was the name again? Oh yes. Total War. Someone else may have nabbed that one already, though....

Personally, of all the civ-games I felt that CTP2 had the best army stacking system.

12 units per tile max. Zones of Control. And stacking different types of units helped you succeed.

I'd pay big money for a Call to Power 3.

That seems like another decent compromise if you don't want the Mega SOD problems that could pop up in Civ 4. Sadly, that's not what we got here.

 

[boredatwork]

The trouble is...as you rightly pointed out, the MAP is still on a loosey-goosey strategic (a.k.a. "big") scale. A city is a single tile. Ok, fine. A mountain is a tile. Still fine. A forest or hill is a tile. No problem. A unit is a tile. Sure no pro--waaaaait a second. What?

A farm is a tile? A mine takes up a tile? A cottage takes up a tile? A workshop takes up a tile? A windmill takes up a tile?


While IMO Civ5's implementation of 1UPT was garbage, the "realism" of the scale is not one of my criticisms.

In all civs you can only have 1 improvement per tile, not because it's realistic but to force you to make a decision. Putting a farm in this spot precludes putting a _____.

They simply extended the concept to units now too. That Firaxis did a half assed job with the concept doesn't mean the concept itself was unworkable - as long as you're prepared to accept the changes needed to make it work. The problem with Civ5 seems to be little thought was given to the full implications of the changes they were proposing. They apparently decided to just copy and paste "the cool bits" from one game into another and then fudge the numbers to make it fit.

 

[Frozensky]

I'm still not quite sure why some people here are in favor of stack zergs.

The tactical system creates more engaging and more complex gameplay because you aren't simply marching a stack up to a city. The major flaw of this system is that the AI doesn't know how to use it, as I said. Doesn't have the first clue, and it's a glaring, and arguably game-breaking oversight. I'll grant you that.

But isn't the big thing from the CiV detractors that everything is too simple? Yet I see people here advocating unit stacking, removing meaningful choices about unit placement, tactics, and the battle system on the whole.

I mean, which is it, people?

 

[CivFanaticMan]

I'm still not quite sure why some people here are in favor of stack zergs.

The tactical system creates more engaging and more complex gameplay because you aren't simply marching a stack up to a city. The major flaw of this system is that the AI doesn't know how to use it, as I said. Doesn't have the first clue, and it's a glaring, and arguably game-breaking oversight. I'll grant you that.

But isn't the big thing from the CiV detractors that everything is too simple? Yet I see people here advocating unit stacking, removing meaningful choices about unit placement, tactics, and the battle system on the whole.

I mean, which is it, people?

You fail to realize that 1UPT fails to fix things and instead distracts the player from the more important aspect of the game; building a civ. The system just doesn't work out; it adds to many restrictions on gameplay, and it creates a whole new dimension to gameplay that was unneeded in the first place. I would have rather have been given improved diplomacy, deeper government system, more victory conditions, expanded religion, and improved AI over tactical combat any day. Either one is fine.

Besides, tactical combat only gives the illusion of deeper gameplay. After a while it becomes a repetitive feature, just like stacks, except with needless micromanagement. Yes there are general combat improvements in the system, but these improvements could have been made even with stacks.

I don't want to have to micromanage each unit every turn in a civ builder; i want to move the stack to its destination, and then go back to managing my empire. It seems like Civ5 is just the opposite: I want to micro my army around because its the only fun part, managing the empire is boring.

 

[Solo4114]

A farm is a tile? A mine takes up a tile? A cottage takes up a tile? A workshop takes up a tile? A windmill takes up a tile?


While IMO Civ5's implementation of 1UPT was garbage, the "realism" of the scale is not one of my criticisms.

In all civs you can only have 1 improvement per tile, not because it's realistic but to force you to make a decision. Putting a farm in this spot precludes putting a _____.

They simply extended the concept to units now too. That Firaxis did a half assed job with the concept doesn't mean the concept itself was unworkable - as long as you're prepared to accept the changes needed to make it work. The problem with Civ5 seems to be little thought was given to the full implications of the changes they were proposing. They apparently decided to just copy and paste "the cool bits" from one game into another and then fudge the numbers to make it fit.

Right, I think we're actually saying the same thing. You can get away with the loosey-goosey approach to scale the way Civ did for FOUR iterations (plus expansions), but it breaks down when you get to the unit level. They needed to do one of three things, basically, if ALL they were going to do was mess with scale:

1.) Forget the 1UPT approach and go back to stacks, maybe limiting the number per stack and perhaps imposing restrictions on how many of a given type you could have per stack.

2.) Upscale the map so that you ahve enough terrain to actually maneuver -- which itself involves HUGE changes to the game and probably strains the engine and graphics past a breaking point.

or

3.) Just do what Total War does and Maser of Orion and the Heroes of Might and Magic series did before it and break the game into two distinct "phases" of grand strategy and tactical battle. That said, I'm not 100% sure that such an approach would actually work in this day and age. MOO1 and MOO2 are still fantastic games, but they're also games from a bygone era. I'm not sure people would be willing to maneuver units in quite such a detailed fashion, which is why Total War is successful. Plus, in Total War, you can simply skip through the combat if you don't want to fight the battles (although, with a greater likelihood of losing).

I'm still not quite sure why some people here are in favor of stack zergs.

The tactical system creates more engaging and more complex gameplay because you aren't simply marching a stack up to a city. The major flaw of this system is that the AI doesn't know how to use it, as I said. Doesn't have the first clue, and it's a glaring, and arguably game-breaking oversight. I'll grant you that.

But isn't the big thing from the CiV detractors that everything is too simple? Yet I see people here advocating unit stacking, removing meaningful choices about unit placement, tactics, and the battle system on the whole.

I mean, which is it, people?

Good question. You might pose the same question to 2K and Firaxis, actually, because they don't seem to have a straight answer either. Ultimately, my point is that the particular blend of elements they picked do not go well together as executed. They didn't go far enough in one direction or the other to properly execute things.

As I've said, I'm actually NOT a big fan of the stack-o-doom approach. I found combat in Civ 4 and Civ 3 to be way too beneficial of a strategy, to the point where it typically broke down to "Well...I COULD go for the tech victory, or the diplo victory....buuuuut....I think I'll just steamroll people once my economy gets up to speed." Some of this was toned down with BTS, but even so, you needed a pretty heavy military emphasis to do well in the game. Not necessarily to the exclusion of all else, but you needed a STRONG military presence or you'd always have to fend off some psycho like Monty.

I actually LOVE tactical combat games. I love me some X-com, Steel Panthers, Battleground, etc. Those are all fantastic, deep and complex turn-based tactical games. I'd LOVE a MOO2 approach to combat, or even a more in-depth approach where I could organize my armies before sending them into battle. I think that'd be terrific. I also think I'm in a distinct minority as far as gamers go. And therein lies the weirdness of the devs' decision here. I suspect they wouldn't go develop such a system because they'd figure it'd turn players off. But they want those reviews saying things like "The combat is now much more interesting," so they shove a tactical system onto a game board that simply is not big enough for such a system.

So, now, the way Civ 5 plays, the Battle of Thermopylae would've been fought between one unit of Spartan Hoplites against three Persian Immortals and two Persian Swordsmen from 480BC through 400BC over a geographic area roughly representing about 40% of the Balkans. It just doesn't work as implemented. That's not to say that "tactical combat games are bad", just that THIS implementation of a tactical combat game IS badly executed.

 

[lschnarch]

Now, suddenly, scale matters. It REALLY matters. Check out the Earth map. Caesar can't exactly cross the Rubicon with his many legions. Why? Because he only has one or two tiles to do it, and with the alps to the north, you can really only fit a Legionnaire, a horse archer, and a catapult until you run out of room or find your army stretching clear to Albania!


Suddenly, we're Gulliver fighting on a Lilliputian map. How exactly does that work? In my opinion, it doesn't, really.

It is even worse.

Due to the scale mismatch, all the combat takes place in the same kind of map:
You have much forest, some hills and some "open land" which you better avoid because of the "open land penalty". Your abilities to manouvre are restricted by some obstacles which you just cannot cross (mountains and sea).

Literally, you are always fighting in some kind of densely covered bushland (from the tactical point of view), although the strategic map indicates that you are somewhere in middle Europe, the middle west, the middle east, whereever.
From a tactical point of view, your fights always take place in the same kind of environment, regardless of where on the earth you are.

Personally, of all the civ-games I felt that CTP2 had the best army stacking system.

12 units per tile max. Zones of Control. And stacking different types of units helped you succeed.

I'd pay big money for a Call to Power 3.

The CtP combat system was far superior for a strategic empire building game because it allowed to have the strategic ease of manouvering your armies and some kind of tactical setup.

Since CtP/CtP2 became a real threat to Civilization (there were legal fights about the use of the name "Civilization" for the first iteration), finally Civ3 was quite rushed out of the door, as more and more fans turned to CtP.

And many of the good concepts of CtP were never adopted for Civilization. I think that Meier actually does not allow for this, as by this he would finally have to admit how much those concepts from another company did improve the genre.

I'm still not quite sure why some people here are in favor of stack zergs.

The tactical system creates more engaging and more complex gameplay because you aren't simply marching a stack up to a city. The major flaw of this system is that the AI doesn't know how to use it, as I said. Doesn't have the first clue, and it's a glaring, and arguably game-breaking oversight. I'll grant you that.

But isn't the big thing from the CiV detractors that everything is too simple? Yet I see people here advocating unit stacking, removing meaningful choices about unit placement, tactics, and the battle system on the whole.

I mean, which is it, people?

The point is that most people do not complain about the "1upt" (which in the current game is not a real 1upt, btw) as soon as the real combat is concerned (except for the above mentioned restrictions in terms of the kind of map), but about all the consequences of 1upt.

Given the current scale of the game, you cannot really manouvre your units.
All what you can do is to roughly set them up, and then move a limited number of them against your enemy. But due to the way in which the maps work from a tactical point of view, they effectively have the same speed.
Real flanking or more extreme, getting into the back of your enemy very rarely takes place. You are always approaching the enemy more or less in the same way.
Some melee units first, some ranged weapons behind, some mounted units at the flanks.

And this kills quite some fun of the tactical combat. Your options are so much limited.
And actually, it is just due to the inability of the AI which makes this kind of approach successful.

It just comes down to the scaling issue: you cannot really have a tactical combat, because the available space and effective speed of your units is much too slow.
But from a strategic point of view you are punished by constant blocking of your units, even worse if some neutral units are in the way.

One could say due to the way it was implemented, you just get the worst of both worlds: restrictions in tactics and restrictions in strategy. It's just a foul compromise.

 

[Solo4114]

Precisely. It's not that 1UPT sucks in and of itself. It's not that stacks-o-doom are so much better. It's that THIS version of 1UPT is poorly implemented due to the fact that they didn't "fix the map" so to speak.

 

[freeluos]

Limited stacks (say 4 or 5 units) have more strategic options than 1 upt. (Going to the battlefield with different kind of (mini) stacks (front line units, ranged units, mixed) is great and create the feeling of a large war. Instead of three or four units banging on each heads.

If a stack has a front line and a ranged line it is possible to mix units. But it should also be possible to create a hard combat stack intirely with front line units. Depending on the units they fight against their attack strength could be combined ( if five units are attacking one unit the same time let them attack together).

If they attack 1 frontline unit and 4 ranged units let the four ranged units attack first the invading units and then the invading units attack together the defending front line unit. (If there are fast units in that stack flank attack could be applied to the ranged unit).

If there are some more parameters (morale) that affect combat results (invading units which are shelled suffer morale conflicts depending what veteran status they have. They outcome could be uncertain and very challenging.

But seen the current combat model and what they have done in the past I don't think something good will ever be implemented. It's all graphics now. Live with it.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

I have won games on immortal against 5 players and defeated them all without ever owning more than 10 units at a time. You don't need a huge army, you need to use them right. The AI spams units and most of the time they are massacred.

 

[freeluos]

I have won games on immortal against 5 players and defeated them all without ever owning more than 10 units at a time. You don't need a huge army, you need to use them right. The AI spams units and most of the time they are massacred.

That's sad. Very sad. Lucky me I don't play CIV V. May be when I do too much exciting things it can help me to get bored.

Thats why stacks are great. Ai uses balanced stacks giving you a hard time. Only thing the AI needs to do is place them well (on hills, in forests) and use the ranged attack to bombard your cities to the stoneage.

Do some AI cheating (let them know what kind of units you have most, where they are) and you will have a hard time. In CIV IV I have had some hard times. Thats fun. But SOD's are crap.

 

[Frozensky]

Spoiler :

The point is that most people do not complain about the "1upt" (which in the current game is not a real 1upt, btw) as soon as the real combat is concerned (except for the above mentioned restrictions in terms of the kind of map), but about all the consequences of 1upt.

Given the current scale of the game, you cannot really manouvre your units.
All what you can do is to roughly set them up, and then move a limited number of them against your enemy. But due to the way in which the maps work from a tactical point of view, they effectively have the same speed.
Real flanking or more extreme, getting into the back of your enemy very rarely takes place. You are always approaching the enemy more or less in the same way.
Some melee units first, some ranged weapons behind, some mounted units at the flanks.

And this kills quite some fun of the tactical combat. Your options are so much limited.
And actually, it is just due to the inability of the AI which makes this kind of approach successful.

It just comes down to the scaling issue: you cannot really have a tactical combat, because the available space and effective speed of your units is much too slow.
But from a strategic point of view you are punished by constant blocking of your units, even worse if some neutral units are in the way.

One could say due to the way it was implemented, you just get the worst of both worlds: restrictions in tactics and restrictions in strategy. It's just a foul compromise.

But you seem to be assuming that tactical play means freedom of movement and placement. I'd argue that it's more about using the terrain that's available to you to gain the biggest advantage.

There's nothing interesting about taking a city if there's enough space around the city to fit 20 units. It would be akin to taking Civ4's stacking, and adding a per-unit micromanagement layer on it. There would be nothing interesting about city placement, there would be nothing interesting about chokepoints, there would be nothing interesting about natural barriers like coasts and mountain ranges, because there's always enough room for your units. It defeats the purpose.

The gameplay doesn't become interesting until there's not enough room for your units, because that's when you have to start making decisions.

The sad thing is, I think this would be much, much, much less of an issue if the AI was even remotely capable of waging a war in this system. I think that if the AI, with any consistency, could put up a good fight on even footing, there would be fewer complaints about it. Even my argument is more about the potential of the system than the typical experience of it, to be honest.

I'm just hoping eventually Firaxis pulls it together.

 

[UWHabs]

They should have doubled the map size. While it still wouldn't have been "tactical" enough for some, it would have alleviated many concerns.

I like it. Sure, you can't replicate the battle of Thermopylae. But civ was never meant to replicate that. Because to get the scale right, a unit would have to represent less than 10000 troops, meaning to replicate the later WW1, you'd need like 500-1000 units in total on the map. And turns would have to last a week, which would be huge number of turns in the game. And to represent the map, you'd need a world map that's probably thousands or tens of thousands of tiles wide.

All civ games previously had some tactics involved. It's better to move your stack across forests than across the open. Or sending secondary stacks to cut off defending routes, and so on. This new edition just allows for more depth.

If I could wave my magic wand, I'd up the scale slightly (double the map width and height), and make a better AI. With those 2, we wouldn't see nearly the amounts of complaints we see now.

 

[Solo4114]

But you seem to be assuming that tactical play means freedom of movement and placement. I'd argue that it's more about using the terrain that's available to you to gain the biggest advantage.

There's nothing interesting about taking a city if there's enough space around the city to fit 20 units. It would be akin to taking Civ4's stacking, and adding a per-unit micromanagement layer on it. There would be nothing interesting about city placement, there would be nothing interesting about chokepoints, there would be nothing interesting about natural barriers like coasts and mountain ranges, because there's always enough room for your units. It defeats the purpose.

The gameplay doesn't become interesting until there's not enough room for your units, because that's when you have to start making decisions.

I think you're conflating tactical gameplay in Civ 5 to tactical gameplay in other games. I agree that Civ 5 doesn't become "interesting" (or at least require a bit more thought) until you have limited approaches and are forced to decide which units lead the charge, and where to stick your ballistic units.

But that's not really tactical gameplay.

Tactical gameplay involves a LOT more than freedom to place your units, because it requires a LOT more space to pull off effectively. Tactical gameplay involves things like unit facing having an effect on how much damage the unit takes in a given round, lines of sight (and manipulation of them via things like moving in cover or a reverse-slope defense), morale and command & control features (IE: your unit cannot effectively respond because it's too unconnected from its commanding officers and cannot be rallied in the face of heavy enemy fire), the art of maneuver (IE: actually flanking an enemy and having it actually matter -- see the bit about unit facing), covering fire (IE: you can destroy a unit's morale simply by firing enough AT it even if you don't HIT it -- like making it afraid to advance because you've got a machinegunner firing at it every time it pokes its head out), opportunity fire (IE: it's not your turn, but your unit has extra "moves" left, so if an enemy unit enters its line of sight during the enemy's turn, your unit can fire on it), and so on and so forth.

Tactical gameplay is very nuanced, and very complex. The gameplay in Civ 5 is not all that nuanced or complex, but it incorporates certain tactical SCALE elements with 1UPT.

The Civ series has often incorporated terrain bonuses, too, which are also part of tactical gameplay, but it was frequently very very simplified. IE: a unit on a hill gets better defense values. Well, in a true tactical game, that unit would have far more of a tactical advantage. It could be able to both fire and see farther. Units approaching it could tire and/or suffer morale penalties (and be more likely to rout) by advancing up the hill. It could also be exposed more to things like artillery fire (whereas hiding BEHIND the hill would help hide it, and provide other benefits). Civ just gives a "+X bonus to defense."


The problem here is not that we have tactical gameplay, but that the gameplay is NEITHER tactical enough NOR strategic enough. They didn't go far enough in either direction, so what you end up with is a strategic game that forces very limited tactical movement, and/or a tactical game that confines your movement by forcing you to play on a strategic-scale map.

Put simply, the two parts just don't fit together. Not like this, anyway. A better approach would be a split between tactical-level gameplay and strategic-level gameplay. Towards this end, Total War and Master of Orion offer the best examples that I can think of. In both series, you build your fleets (stacks, in Civ), and maneuver them to an enemy position. Upon engaging the enemy, you're taken to the "tactical view" which is almost a whole separate tactical game (in Total War, a real-time combat game, and in MOO1 and MOO2, a turn-based game). Positioning still matters at the strategic level (IE: this star system or province is situated such that it acts as a natural choke point -- similar to the Dardanelles or Gibraltar), but the tactics of the game are far more nuanced.



There seems to be this notion that Civ 5 somehow added "tactical" city placement. It didn't. Heck, as far back as Civ 2 you could place cities in locations that would act as choke points (back when we had ZOCs), and everyone who played Civ 4 knew the benefit of building a city on a forested hill surrounded on three sides by river tiles. Those are strategic concerns which can ALSO play out at a tactical level if you model your map the right way.

What we've got here in Civ 5, though, is tactical-level unit management on a board that doesn't fit that scale of movement. What's more, it's not even entirely clear as to WHY this change was made.

Was it to discourage combat? Maybe, but if so there are far more elegant, natural ways to do that (IE: resource limits, stacking limits other than the extreme 1UPT approach, supply line modeling, increased war-weariness, costliness of waging war, etc., etc.).

Was it to add depth to combat? Well...it doesn't. Not really, anyway. It adds headache, that's for sure, but it's pretty simple to figure out that you stick your melee units in front of your ranged units and your cavalry on the sides. Duh. The only question is how to best do that given the limited space you're dealing with. Trouble is, on a tactical level, that's ALL you're doing. You're NOT doing any of the other stuff I described above. What's more, it's not even all THAT different from stacks. You just have less space to bring a big army into, and battles take WAY longer now. As otehrs have mentioned, in Civ 4, I'd build a mixed stack, move it into place, and then bombard with artillery units, followed by maybe softening up with ranged units, followed by attacks by my melee units, with some defensive and/or medic units to keep the stack safe should it be attacked. How's that any more or less complex or deep than "I stick my melee units in the front, my ranged units in the back, and my cavalry on the side"?

I'd also pay attention to positioning on the board. I'd try to approach a city so that I didn't have to cross rivers, or I might position a bombarding stack on a hill across from a river, while I moved the actual direct attackers to a forest tile without a river crossing. How's that any more "tactical" than what we have now? The only real "tactical" element that we have is the scale of combat by forcing each tile to only hold a single unit. You could still get just as much bang for your buck out of ranged units by moving them in a stack. Ranged units would still have a unique benefit, in that they could fire on units that are out of range of the melee units.


Anyway, I'm not saying that tactical gameplay can't be fun. It can -- when it's done right. It just wasn't done right HERE. I suppose there's folks out there who like 1UPT for whatever reason, and that's fine, but it strikes me that the game should have shipped with an option to turn that feature on or off (or shipped with a built in mod to do so or whatever). Although there are plenty of OTHER things the game should've shipped with too that it didn't include.... (IE: an Earth map with proper starting locations....)

 

[Solo4114]

They should have doubled the map size. While it still wouldn't have been "tactical" enough for some, it would have alleviated many concerns.

I like it. Sure, you can't replicate the battle of Thermopylae. But civ was never meant to replicate that. Because to get the scale right, a unit would have to represent less than 10000 troops, meaning to replicate the later WW1, you'd need like 500-1000 units in total on the map. And turns would have to last a week, which would be huge number of turns in the game. And to represent the map, you'd need a world map that's probably thousands or tens of thousands of tiles wide.

All civ games previously had some tactics involved. It's better to move your stack across forests than across the open. Or sending secondary stacks to cut off defending routes, and so on. This new edition just allows for more depth.

If I could wave my magic wand, I'd up the scale slightly (double the map width and height), and make a better AI. With those 2, we wouldn't see nearly the amounts of complaints we see now.

That's probably true, actually. It would still be controversial, but it wouldn't be AS controversial. The thing is, I'm not sure the engine could handle maps that are so much bigger. But again, my point here is that the scale of the maps with the game that we got doesn't match up with the scale required to effectively implement the "tactical" 1UPT design.

And minor point -- choosing the path your units take isn't really tactical. It's still strategic. Tactics are at a far more "micro" level, and model far more stuff than Civ does. There's no real bonus for attacking someone's flank in this game, for example. There's no bonus for attacking from the rear. So, maneuvering your cavary around his line to attack him from the rear, or having one infantry unit pin down the enemy unit while a second swings around to flank it and fire into the flank....none of that really matters. You're still basically just bashing two units against each other and taking simple terrain effects into account.


Trust me. As I've mentioned, for those who want to try real tactical games and see the level of detail and consideration you have to make, check out the old Battleground series or Steel Panthers: World at War. SPWaW is actually freeware, by the way. You'll see what I'm talking about and you'll see why Civ isn't really a "tactical" game. It just involves some design decisions that force elements of it onto a tactical scale without changing the rest of the game to accommodate that.

 

[MaximumPain]

As life long wargamer I love the 1UPT. Its the best thing about the game. It adds a tactical level to it that the stacks of death cant come close to. I understand that other people hate it but I sure hope they dont change it or at least leave an option for those of us who like it the way it is.

 

[Hesha]

A farm is a tile? A mine takes up a tile? A cottage takes up a tile? A workshop takes up a tile? A windmill takes up a tile?


While IMO Civ5's implementation of 1UPT was garbage, the "realism" of the scale is not one of my criticisms.

In all civs you can only have 1 improvement per tile, not because it's realistic but to force you to make a decision. Putting a farm in this spot precludes putting a _____.

They simply extended the concept to units now too. That Firaxis did a half assed job with the concept doesn't mean the concept itself was unworkable - as long as you're prepared to accept the changes needed to make it work. The problem with Civ5 seems to be little thought was given to the full implications of the changes they were proposing. They apparently decided to just copy and paste "the cool bits" from one game into another and then fudge the numbers to make it fit.

The problem with the scale is not that a unit is a tile, just like a city, a mountain, a farm(land?), etc. Simply because it is stated nowhere, how many troops are represented by "a unit". The problem of scale becomes apparent when we look at the ranges of ranged units. When a prehistorical archer can fire across twice the area of New York City (after a range promotion that is), we see, that the devs worked with two different scales. A tactical one and a strategic one. And that just doesn't work.

If every hex on the main map would be sub-divided into a number of tactical hexes (lets say 9? I know - it is impossible to "cleanly" subdivide hexes into hexes without overlapping or loss - Thats not my problem) and every strategic hex could contain THAT amount of units, tactical "view"only being applied when more than one unit enter a "big" tile or during combat (or when you press the button for "tactical view"), we could fix that problem. but the lousy engine we have at the moment wouldn't survive that I guess.

 

[MaximumPain]

Just thinking about this a bit.... They could allow more then 1 UPT but have ranged attacks effect all units in the tile collateral damage style or even at full effect. Then it would be allowed but risky.

 

[freeluos]

Just thinking about this a bit.... They could allow more then 1 UPT but have ranged attacks effect all units in the tile collateral damage style or even at full effect. Then it would be allowed but risky.

Well all Civilizations I played had crappy combat models (except for CTP which I like to play with). What you suggets is to pick all the crappy combat models together and create an incredible crappy combat model. But I think Fireaxis can do that .

 

[MaximumPain]

Well all Civilizations I played had crappy combat models (except for CTP which I like to play with). What you suggets is to pick all the crappy combat models together and create an incredible crappy combat model. But I think Fireaxis can do that .

What is CPT?

 

[MaximumPain]

You know Im thinking that the real problem with Civ V is some of the players and not so much the game? The game is mostly fine once you get used to the changes. Im very glad they didnt make civ 4.5 and I like both versions of the game.

Edit ~ Ok the game is agonizingly slow Ill give you that!