1upt No So Cool

Dunno. Never played it (Civ is the only computer game I own).

MoM or chess? :p

Anything that is overly tactical is not a good feature for Civ, regardless of how good a feature it is in general.

The franchise has to move on in some way. I for one would have no problems with Civ introducing a tactical element in the proceedings and changing the core concept a bit.
 
MoM or chess? :p

MoM. :lol:

The franchise has to move on in some way. I for one would have no problems with Civ introducing a tactical element in the proceedings and changing the core concept a bit.

Well again, I think that some tactical innovation is fine, and needed in some cases (I prefer 1upt to SoDs, although I think a compromise between the two would be best), but I also do count it as a reasonably large consideration (my usertitle is more due to the frequency at which tactical ideas come up than the importance that I give to it tactics v strategy as a consideration).
 
it is far from perfect and even worse for the battle AI. It is now all too easy to take down the AI's arty, and you hardly can defend your arty (or other weak units) properly. It's a nightmare, and i am really stunned that alot of people don't see that.

Exactly, and I've given this quite abit of thought.

CiV could be easily modified to prevent the rout of AI archer and artillery units - units that in real life would always be supported. It would also prevent these support units preventing the AI deploying their forces effectively - archers preventing the deployment of swordsmen etc.

The solution, is to give support units such as archers, crossbows, artillery, anti-tank etc the same stacking ability as Great Generals.

Then these units can be easily protected by spears and such instead of being destroyed easily. These support units would no longer road-block the AI offensive units and the AI would stand a chance - it would also stop us just riding down countless archers and artillery with our cavalry.

Such a simple change, could significantly improve the game. I may even look to make a military mod at some time to fill this 'need'. I'd rather it be in the game as I love STEAM achievements.

Another way this change would improve the game is by bringing back combined arms, even in a limited fashion. Anti-tank guns, being mixed up with infantry makes sense. Not having them operating separately. Anti-aircraft guns deployed with infantry or tanks, makes sense. Having them deployed on their own and entirely vulnerable to ground forces makes no sense. The AI can't protect these units and countless numbers are easily destroyed - it is daft.


One simple change to certain classes of units could make a vast difference.


But, I'd also apply it to naval units. Naval units such as aircraft carriers should stack with AEGIS cruisers/CiV equivalent which would form a close escort. It should be possible to actually have a destroyer in the same tile as a embarked unit to provide close support - in convoy. As it is, it makes no sense and military concepts such as the convoy are not a feature of this game as any significant movement of ships or units takes up half the ocean because each vessel or embarked unit takes a tile.


1UPT has some nice features, but I think it is overkill ultimately and makes the game worse as by preventing combined arms, it allows the AI to be slaughtered as single player moves aren't simultaneous - at least in mp you can counter-attack, or move units immediately in response. Enforced as it is, just doesn't make sense as military history is about the concentration of force at a particular point, god help anyone trying to simulate WW2, you'll need a vast map if D-Day is going to be represented in any meaningful fashion.

If it was me, I'd also change the 1UPT for certain terrain. I wouldn't have it apply to naval units. I would have it relaxed in certain terrain types such as grasslands and plains, I would have it relaxed in tiles containing roads/railroads that would allow more units to deploy and be supplied.

I'd keep 1UPT for forests, hills, jungle, ice and desert etc. Terrain types that limit the deployment of units, but, in grasslands where large armies could deploy easily. It would encourage invasions along open terrain types and limit invasions across more tricky terrain - as in history.


1UPT was brought in as stacking was an issue, but it was overkill and makes for major pathfinding issues, makes the AI even more ineffectual and is even less realistic. It needs tweaking to allow limited stacking/escorting at the very least.
 
The solution, is to give support units such as archers, crossbows, artillery, anti-tank etc the same stacking ability as Great Generals.

Then these units can be easily protected by spears and such instead of being destroyed easily. These support units would no longer road-block the AI offensive units and the AI would stand a chance - it would also stop us just riding down countless archers and artillery with our cavalry.

Then you couldn't flank the spearman and pick off the archer unit from the rear. With 1upt, you have to position your units properly, anticipate the enemy, and protect your ballistic force. That's what combined arms means.

And as for mixing of the strategic and tactical, great leaders have done that throughout history. Alexander not only planned the invasion of Asia, but directed the tactical placement of his units before and during battle, then fought at great personal risk. Caesar not only planned the invasion of Gaul, then directed the siege at Alesia, but also placed himself at great personal risk to repulse attacks on his defenses. In later history, Napoléon's experience with the tactical use of cannon allowed him to innovate new battlefield strategies which were essential to his conquest of Europe. Wellington understood that subjugating India meant finding enough Oxen. Grant rose up the ranks as a quarter master and discovered how to win through logistics.

“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.” — Ulysses S. Grant.
 
Grant rose up the ranks as a quarter master and discovered how to win through logistics.

“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.” — Ulysses S. Grant.

Not really logistics. It's more of the fact that he knew that his side outnumbered the Confederate Army greatly and he was the only one who used that to effect. Other Generals held back in fear of losing men. :confused:
 
Not really logistics. It's more of the fact that he knew that his side outnumbered the Confederate Army greatly and he was the only one who used that to effect. Other Generals held back in fear of losing men. :confused:

Numbers only count when you can deliver them to the field. Grant certainly had numbers, but numbers didn't win at Cold Harbor. The Army of Northern Virginia, though outnumbered in whole, often outnumbered the Union where it counted, both tactically and strategically. Grant had a great deal of experience during the Mexican American war with logistics over very long supply lines. You win battles by being firstest with the mostest.

You may be a big hulking guy, but if you flail while your opponent keeps landing his fist on your nose, you may be going down.
 
You may be a big hulking guy, but if you flail while your opponent keeps landing his fist on your nose, you may be going down.

Ah. Makes sense.

Though, compared to other Union generals, he certainly knew how to use the rule of large numbers to his advantage when he could.
 
Solution is very simple:

Spoiler :
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\sid meier's civilization v\Assets\Gameplay\XML\GlobalDefines.xml

You have to find correct field and change do desired number:

<Row Name="PLOT_UNIT_LIMIT">
<Value>3</Value>
</Row>


Have a fun. BTW, It doesn't change other flaws Civ5 IMO has.
 
Solution is very simple:

Spoiler :
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\sid meier's civilization v\Assets\Gameplay\XML\GlobalDefines.xml

You have to find correct field and change do desired number:

<Row Name="PLOT_UNIT_LIMIT">
<Value>3</Value>
</Row>


Have a fun. BTW, It doesn't change other flaws Civ5 IMO has.

Thank you Eskel, a useful post!

As for Zachriel, pikemen would form squares, with the archers in the middle to deal with cavalry, they wouldn't remain separate and vulnerable. During Waterloo, when the French cavalry threatened, our gunners would enter the square and leave once the cavalry were driven off. Keeping support units separate is not combined arms and reduces its value.

Your point is invalid.
 
Thank you Eskel, a useful post!

As for Zachriel, pikemen would form squares, with the archers in the middle to deal with cavalry, they wouldn't remain separate and vulnerable. During Waterloo, when the French cavalry threatened, our gunners would enter the square and leave once the cavalry were driven off. Keeping support units separate is not combined arms and reduces its value.

Your point is invalid.

Yes, squares were sometimes used on battlefields to repulse cavalry. But squares tend to be less maneuverable than infantry lines, control less of the battlefield, hard to form in the heat of battle, susceptible to ballistic attack, and of being severed from the rest of the army and destroyed in detail. That's why they have a less frequent role in history than the infantry line.

In game terms, a slow moving pike/arquebus unit could be used, but it would be skewed to represent every army in such a manner.
 
I love the 1upt feature. In fact, it was one of the main features that made me decide to buy the game. I hated in Civ 4 how you could sometimes send 20-30 unit stacks, and it was still not enough sometimes. It just got to be ridiculous how you had to mindlessly manufacture huge numbers of units. I hated going to war just because it was so tedious. This is all just my opinion, but I feel having only one unit per tile increases the strategy quite a bit.

I do wish you could stack settlers with military units, though. Just seems like it would be logical since the unit usually ends up garrisoned in the city the settler founds anyway (at least that's how I do it).
 
"Not so cool." Vast understatement. "Game-wrecking" is more accurate. Jed's commentary is good. Combat units maneuvering on a battlefield would not be able to "stack." Civ maps are not battlefields. They are large areas of land, and the fact that each tile can be completely different-desert next to forest-indicates that the tiles be thought of as regions. TACTICS occur on a battlefield. STRATEGY is mapped out (emphasis on that term). Civ is supposedly a strategy game. It is not a tactical game. The attempt to implement a tactical battlefield movement/combat system on the map of a strategic game is stunningly inane. It suggests that the designer/s simply did NOT know the difference between strategy and tactics. It might be unreasonable to expect the average person to have good definitions of these terms, but it is a perfectly reasonable expectation that someone designing conflict-oriented computer games should. What amazes me throughout life is the pendulum effect in most peoples' thought. It swings one way--all the way. And then it swings back--too far to the other extreme. Where is moderation? If a hex-based tactical system HAD to be grafted onto the latest version of Civ, then why on earth wasn't it made into a subgame, where strategic armies/stacks move across the tile/regional landscape with conflicts being resolved in a tactical subgame? I repeat; this has been done as of 15 years ago w/strategy games of the first generation. It can certainly be done now, and in a far more refined and workable way. Instead, in CiV, we have a design CHOICE/DECISION by the dev team to go w/1upt. Pendulum. And failure. (and possibly stupidity as well. I'd like to hear more from firaxis on this, but they're pretty quiet these days.)

The issue is only complicated and revealed by such silliness as archery ranges vs. gunpowder ranges and the patent and unarguable inability of the V AI to do anything effectively within the present system. Not even the most ardent attack dogs defend the poor showing of the combat AI. This is an absurdity of the highest order. At its most effective, the V AI creates the "carpet of doom." The pejorative nature of the term is obvious. The overall descriptive statement of the combat system is astonishing; "In a conflict-based computer game, the AI performs extraordinarily poorly." If this was any other company or game series, frankly, it wouldn't be such a surprise. I expected better design from a civ game. That is precisely what one pays for.

Thankfully, I avoided purchasing the thing. My sympathy to those who did, who now feel dissapointed, deceived, and angry. Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back toward efficiency and good design with VI.

I'll wait.
This pretty much sums it up.
Both of these systems would be vastly superior to 1UPT. Many people reflexively knock stacks because of their revulsion for stacks as implemented in Civ4. The biggest problem with the stacks in Civ4 was the combat mechanic where armies stood by and fought a series of single unit duels with one another. Not only was this a crime against realism, but it made for terrible gameplay. Armies fight together at every level of warfare more advanced than that between groups of hunter gatherers.
Exactly.
A tactical subgame (where battles take place in one hex on the strategic map, but are resolved on a tactical / operational map) would be more realistic and would improve both tactical play as well as strategic play. Gone would be the problems with movement / deployment on the strategic map. AI could focus on battles with no thought wasted on noncombatants or any of the other distractions that the huge and necessarily complicated strategic map entail. Movement could be made more realistic on both scales so that you could actually move an army from one side of your empire to the other within a decade on the strategic map, while your units movement cross country could be realistically scaled on the tactical map.
May I add that "support" and "retaliation" fire both would be needed?
I have to agree with the poster who said that the designers of this game seem to be amateurs, with no feeling for either realism or good game mechanics. If a game like this had been released as a board game in the 1970s it would have been laughed out of the hobby store.
And that is just the worst point. Firaxis really hired an amateur, claiming that he loved Panzer General and did not even slightly understand the gameplay of PG.
 
Another frustrating thing is I've had a frigate and a cannon both in a city at once, but the unit icons where stacked ontop of each other. When I clicked the icons, only the cannon icon would come up because that was the one that was ontop. Nothing I did could access the frigate and I couldn't just move the cannon because my city was under seige and I need to bombard the enemy units! This REALLY frustrated me as I had no way to access the unit.

IIRC, in every previous civ you could access all of the units garrisoned in there by simply going to the city view screen. But what do I know?

If you keep clicking on the city tile (not on the unit icon), it'll cycle through the units on the tile.
 
I enjoy 1upt. It makes the game more chess-like and less "Mongolian horde of destruction"-like.

One negative aspect is having to move each unit separately; however, this is mitigated by there being a lot fewer units in Civ5 compared to Civ4. Heck, my early conquests usually consist of ~5 units. The game definitely favors a small number of highly promoted, high teched units over mobs due to combat mechanics and unit maintenance.
 
For the attack dog in question; Yes, I played the demo. I've played the thing on other people's computers. They don't like it and didn't want to play it either. Any more questions? :rolleyes:
 
Then you couldn't flank the spearman and pick off the archer unit from the rear. With 1upt, you have to position your units properly, anticipate the enemy, and protect your ballistic force. That's what combined arms means.
you still don't get it , do you ? Combined arms, in history, worked sight by sight, acting simultaniously. Now, can we do that in CIV, any CIV ? NO! It always comes down to, one fight at a time, any given time, the rest must wait. There goes your GRAND tactical wargame; down to the toilet.

Positioning is very important too in warfare, true. But army's behave dynamicly, ALL units could ACT at the same time. None of that is true in CIV, again it's a handicaped system of one by one.
So don't speak of "tactical" warfare in CIV 5, it does not exist. It never has, btw, in any CIV.
The bad thing is, with 1 upt, it's all to clear hoe handicapped the system really is.

You speak for example, of good positioning. Very solid argument. But then i ask: how many times you have enough space to position your army as you like ? I know from experience, most of the time you are fightinh the map, with cramp spaces most of the time. Far from realistic and very gamey. And still, even then you lack the dynamics of true tactical warfare, on the battlefield, where every second counts.

They should have sticked with the strategical approach, instead of going with this "semi tactical" nightmare. That's my idea of CIV 5.
 
After playing 1upt in Civ 5, i could never go back to the sod style of gameplay in Civ 4. To me this far and away better gameplay when it comes to combat and warfare.
 
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