Some announcements have been made regarding the design of Civ6, so consider this a suggestion for a mod, or for Civ7, or some other civ-like game in the genre. In fact, as a developer I might put this in a game of my own, so I would appreciate feedback.
I think that some of the greatest pain with 1UPT comes from the movement part of it, completely independent from "actual" combat.
1) Chokepoint of 1 tile (particularly hill/forest) with N units? It will take N turns to get through. This means that the total number of turns to cross the map can be greater than the number of tiles crossed with the army, which drags out games and is tedious.
2) AI has a harder go of it.
3) Again, it's tedious, even without chokepoints, to move armies. I'd rather spend my time plotting my building order or in the actual combat. While individual units can be sent across the map with pathfinding, there's no reasonable way to scale this effectively to the armies of units that are typically sent.
One possible solution is to allow unlimited units to stack on top of each other. Since this is not that kind of game, I don't think there should be support penalties, because they're not fun and basically reintroduce N-UPT. Stacked units could be effectively sent across the map with pathfinding, with the result being reasonable and as-expected. Thousands of clicks are saved (per game).
You could also box a bunch of military units with the mouse and send them to a point on the map, and they'd behave reasonably well and let you know when they get there, even if they didn't all start on the same tile.
But to retain the main advantage of 1UPT - strategic positioning and combat, careful consideration of how to plan an attack and exert the maximum pressure on a point (such as a city) - units that start the turn on a tile with more than 1UPT cannot attack. They must first move off the tile and end the turn on their own tile, at which point they are good to attack on the next turn.
(I'd also recommend against splash damage against stacked units, to reduce the vulnerability of AI. To prevent the stack from being abused for lots of healing, the unit with the highest defense value could always be chosen to defend, regardless of its HP level - allowing units to be picked off from within the stack. Perhaps other ideas would also prevent it from becoming a great combat tactic, which goes against the intent here. For example, maybe damaged units couldn't join stacks until healed to full. Also, maybe it is impossible to heal while stacked.)
Thoughts / suggestions / comments / rotten fruit?
I think that some of the greatest pain with 1UPT comes from the movement part of it, completely independent from "actual" combat.
1) Chokepoint of 1 tile (particularly hill/forest) with N units? It will take N turns to get through. This means that the total number of turns to cross the map can be greater than the number of tiles crossed with the army, which drags out games and is tedious.
2) AI has a harder go of it.
3) Again, it's tedious, even without chokepoints, to move armies. I'd rather spend my time plotting my building order or in the actual combat. While individual units can be sent across the map with pathfinding, there's no reasonable way to scale this effectively to the armies of units that are typically sent.
One possible solution is to allow unlimited units to stack on top of each other. Since this is not that kind of game, I don't think there should be support penalties, because they're not fun and basically reintroduce N-UPT. Stacked units could be effectively sent across the map with pathfinding, with the result being reasonable and as-expected. Thousands of clicks are saved (per game).
You could also box a bunch of military units with the mouse and send them to a point on the map, and they'd behave reasonably well and let you know when they get there, even if they didn't all start on the same tile.
But to retain the main advantage of 1UPT - strategic positioning and combat, careful consideration of how to plan an attack and exert the maximum pressure on a point (such as a city) - units that start the turn on a tile with more than 1UPT cannot attack. They must first move off the tile and end the turn on their own tile, at which point they are good to attack on the next turn.
(I'd also recommend against splash damage against stacked units, to reduce the vulnerability of AI. To prevent the stack from being abused for lots of healing, the unit with the highest defense value could always be chosen to defend, regardless of its HP level - allowing units to be picked off from within the stack. Perhaps other ideas would also prevent it from becoming a great combat tactic, which goes against the intent here. For example, maybe damaged units couldn't join stacks until healed to full. Also, maybe it is impossible to heal while stacked.)
Thoughts / suggestions / comments / rotten fruit?
