1UPT - final verdict?

[santoo]

Strange thing: the impression I get from reading replies so far seems to be that most people prefer MUPT. According to the poll however, there's currently a 2/3rd majority for 1UPT...?

 

[Greizer85]

Why? Weren't the older strategic wargames, like the Panzer General series mostly 1UPT? IT's been a looong time, but their AI was fine, IIRC.

In Panzer General, the AI is almost always on the defense. They hardly move their units save for to respond to the player's actions, masking most AI deficiencies. Mind you, I found the game to be distinctly unfun to play ('I move my tank, so they pop out and kill it? Ok, now to try from a different hex... Oh, there's another invisible anti-tank gun hidden over there. Fun game; see ya!'), so I didn't play any further than the first map. But it's what I've heard most people say about it.

Strange thing: the impression I get from reading replies so far seems to be that most people prefer MUPT. According to the poll however, there's currently a 2/3rd majority for 1UPT...?

I could speculate as to the reason for this, but I don't want to risk getting infracted for trolling.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Personally I'd prefer a hybrid system like in Call to Power: One Army per tile, but that army may consist of multiple units.

1UPT can work, but it needs a different scope. CIV5 and CIV:BE simply have too small maps with too many obstacles for the AI to handle it.

 

[TNM]

Who is "we"? You play whatever version of the series that tickles your fancy but for sure you don't speak for me.

Dont be so overly sensitive. You didn't give Civ5 a chance then? Or what is your issue with my wording?

Do you seriously argue that combat in Civ5 or CivBE with 1UP works? That AI can do it? Is that even a disputed question anymore?

Strange thing: the impression I get from reading replies so far seems to be that most people prefer MUPT. According to the poll however, there's currently a 2/3rd majority for 1UPT...?

That can be explaind, i think, by what many of my friends do: they have accepted the downsides and just don't play war-games in Civ5 anymore. Civ can be enjoyable if you go for alternative victory scenarious and don't exploit the war game (=using combat to win, just selfdefence). MUP usually didn't allow that, or it was kinda dangerous. In Civ5 and CivBE its easy to play defensivley and it then becomes a stats game for other victories.

CivBE seems to be all about that, no?

 

[santoo]

In Panzer General, the AI is almost always on the defense.

Thanks for the explanation, that in fact makes a great deal of sense.

 

[Lord Tirian]

...and yet you see people defending even this baffling decision every day...

Really? I would be perfectly fine with stacking civilians and making them "transparent" to military and consider it an improvement - blocking people with civilians feels cheap and annoying.

Also, I agree with the suggestions that 1UPT means the unit system needs to do more "lifting" so an army system or a way to customise your units to represent different army compositions would be quite interesting.

It would also be interesting to experiment with the old attack/defence value system CivIII and earlier had because then making defensive frontlines would be very different from making offensive frontlines, there could be some interesting tactics there (but hard to tell without testing it as it might be too fiddly for no reason).

Strange thing: the impression I get from reading replies so far seems to be that most people prefer MUPT. According to the poll however, there's currently a 2/3rd majority for 1UPT...?

Because if you're okay with it, it'd be either a reply to a MUPT advocate or a "I'm fine with the status quo" which doesn't really warrant the effort of making a full reply (and doesn't really add to a discussion, since it's just "I like that").

 

[PhilBowles]

I said 'prefer 1UPT', having played Civ since its inception and so through all its stack and 1UPT phases, but that's less because of the way 1UPT vs stacks works intrinsically and more because of the way stacks were handled in past games and the game mechanics needed to support them (i.e. tech progression and build times that favoured repetitive unit-spamming, something I found very tedious). And where a player can win vs. mobs in 1UPT with a few units, in older titles you had to be pretty much continually generating units in at least one unit factory to keep up with rival civs, since whoever had the biggest stack wins. That sort of forced play does a lot to detract from the strategy.

1UPT is hampered in its execution in Civ V by the ubiquity and power of ranged units - something BE has done a lot to tone down, but then BE wars just turn into a repetitive stalemate of the same unit types slowly sniping at one another which is not really an improvement. The poor decision to prevent units stacking when not fighting, and to limit when they can move over/past other units, also results in terrible pathing. These are, I suspect, easier issues to fix than those affecting stacks.

Plus, as the games become more focused on graphics and animations, stack battles really aren't feasible any more. You were pretty much forced to play Civ IV with animations turned off to get anything done at all in wartime, but it seems unlikely that's the direction the developers want to push gamers in.

 

[Greizer85]

Because if you're okay with it, it'd be either a reply to a MUPT advocate or a "I'm fine with the status quo" which doesn't really warrant the effort of making a full reply (and doesn't really add to a discussion, since it's just "I like that").

It's also a factor that most of those who prefer stacked combat have moved on to other games; this is the BE forum, which means that few mupt fans are likely to be hanging around (since the poor combat AI with 1upt is a stickling point in buying and playing the game to most of them). So the sample is somewhat skewed in this respect. There's really no forum to reliably conduct this poll within; perhaps if it was on the actual front-page of the site, but I'm not sure what the procedure to make that happen is, if indeed it is even possible.

 

[Lord Tirian]

It's also a factor that most of those who prefer stacked combat have moved on to other games; this is the BE forum, which means that few mupt fans are likely to be hanging around (since the poor combat AI with 1upt is a stickling point in buying and playing the game to most of them).

Oh yeah, that's obvious, I was just addressing the disparity between the poll and the discussion.

 

[santoo]

It's also a factor that most of those who prefer stacked combat have moved on to other games; this is the BE forum, which means that few mupt fans are likely to be hanging around (since the poor combat AI with 1upt is a stickling point in buying and playing the game to most of them). So the sample is somewhat skewed in this respect. There's really no forum to reliably conduct this poll within; perhaps if it was on the actual front-page of the site, but I'm not sure what the procedure to make that happen is, if indeed it is even possible.

I fully agree, that asking this question in the CIV5 or the CIV4 forums would yield very different results.
That is exactly why I am asking this question here, at a time when CIV:BE is hopefully new enough that one can find curious 1UPTers from CIV5 and curious MUPTers from SMAC. If some admin or other site-deity would post a similar question (may including a stack-option as well) sitewide/on the frontpage, I'd be more than happy!

 

[Civking5]

Oh yeah, that's obvious, I was just addressing the disparity between the poll and the discussion.

Oh boy! The anti 1upt crowd are here in this forum with full force these days... I don't want to even waste my time arguing about this issue. Anyway, I voted for the third option. I started civing with civ2.

1 upt is here and civ 5 was a great success, get over it.... And hopefly civ 6 will keep it....and even if it doesn't, I don't mind because unlike some civ players, I ( and majority of civ players) can learn and adopt.

 

[Fabien]

Started with Civ II (but played Civ 4 the most) and I dislike MUPT and prefer 1UPT.

MUTP as implemented in Civ II/III/IV is even less of a challenge for the human and allowed for no variety at all. Terrain and positioning now actually plays a role; the SoDs of earlier civs got old really fast; check number of arts, check highest attack Chance, attack rinse and repeat until everything is dead. Even if they decide to go back to MUPT they need new mechanics.

 

[Bhoy]

Maybe knick Europa Universalis 4's attrition/manpower to punish stacks of doom - you can push a big stack together for a one off battle, but without supplies they'll soon start starving and you'll lose men?

Anyway 1 upt has to go.

 

[Question]

1 UPT is good for wars...mostly.

The problem is that with terrain it is very easy to end up in a massive traffic jam, not to mention the annoyance of having to move units out of cities to purchase more or just to refill a expedition module.

Thats part of why ranged is so strong in BE/Civ 5, you can just mass ranged and slowly snipe down enemy units as they slowly move 1 tile at a time to you in a column.

 

[Manannan]

Stacks of doom made Civ 4 really boring for me (well, among other things) and while the AI isn't very good at it I still vastly prefer 1UPT. For all the traffic jams and easy wars against vastly larger forces it causes I would never go back to slogging stacks around the map with perfect min-max compositions; it wasn't fun in the slightest and took no thought.

 

[TNM]

Well, i will leave this thread with Jon Shafers words of wisdom (it came too late for CIV, but ok):

"Speaking of which, what about combat in ATG? Well, for one thing the game will allow for stacks of units!"

 

[Greizer85]

Started with Civ II (but played Civ 4 the most) and I dislike MUPT and prefer 1UPT.

MUTP as implemented in Civ II/III/IV is even less of a challenge for the human and allowed for no variety at all. Terrain and positioning now actually plays a role; the SoDs of earlier civs got old really fast; check number of arts, check highest attack Chance, attack rinse and repeat until everything is dead. Even if they decide to go back to MUPT they need new mechanics.

While technically true, it's easy to make the right choice after you study the AI's decisions for a while. Mostly you just need bows, the more, the better. If you have enough, with enough upgrades, you literally *only* need bows plus one unit to take cities (and then Artillery and Planes, i.e. super-bows, once they become available). How this is better than stacks I'll never fathom.

I'm not saying there weren't problems with stacked combat, nor that it was all that exciting, most of the time. The point is that the AI could *actually do it*, which is more important in the grand scheme of things; after all Civ is not just a combat simulator, but a strategic empire-building game. Combat is meant to be one foot of the elephant, along with science, terrain improvement, etc. If any of these systems fails, the game as a whole cannot stand. A three-legged elephant is no good for its owner, no matter how strong the remaining legs might be (and in Civ V they're not that strong either, let's face it).

 

[Rathelm]

Not only do I prefer 1UPT, but I also think that all combat damage should resolve at end of everyone's turn. So hypothetically artillery could shoot at each other and both artillery units get killed.

 

[Wulf38]

I went from Civ4 to Civ5, putting quite a few hours into both games. I wouldn't say 1UPT has been a failure, since I've had some good times with Civ5, but it has been one of the more overrated addition to the Civ series. I'd be happy to see at least some degree of stacking in future Civ games, so that my units can spend less time getting in each other's way and more time supporting each other.

 

[ariefbud]

My personal preference and dream for civ battle was like a wargame(i play ageod titles mostly). Civ uses an army not individual unit. Army can consist several element like infantry, cavalry, range unit, artilery, etc. And have formation to organize those element. And supply mechanics to limit armies. In those games I play it seems the AI is more capable handling battle.