1upt

[Rex_Mundi]

I do like the concept of 1UPT, it adds the tactical element to the game.
However the logistics with moving an army, or even worse an intercontinental invasion. It is so incredibly tedious work, and it adds nothing to the game.

So I think the implimentation of 1UPT in this case is lacking.

 

[Windsor]

You are responsible for moving your units each turn, or for providing them with routes to follow for however many turns.

How is that not part of the game?

That IS a part of the game. The responsibility stays the same, the game mechanics stays the same. This is only about user interface!

The decisions made in moving those troops from A to B and keeping them in a formation or moving them and then arranging a formation has a direct effect on their vulnerability in transit. How to handle a choke point, do you risk embarking, do you let the artillery wander through farmed grassland or keep them in the forests so they don't have as much heal time etc.

Current interface:
- Select unit 1. Order it to move from A1 to B1
- Select unit 2. Order it to move from A2 to B2

Better inferface:
- Select unit1+unit2. Order them to move from A1 and A2 to B1 and B2.

Less clicks, exactly the same outcome in terms of formation, vulnerability, choke point and so on. Scale this to 30-40 units and you'll save a bunch of clicks.

 

[TM Moot]

I don't think anyone (or hardly anyone ) disputes that 1upt increases the tactical requirement of Civ warfare.

Conversely, i think that most people would also admit that it was fairly poorly implemented in vanilla civ5. Alot of this was down to the amazingly initial duff AI, which has got better, but still has a long way to go.

 

[Babri]

I do like the concept of 1UPT, it adds the tactical element to the game.
However the logistics with moving an army, or even worse an intercontinental invasion. It is so incredibly tedious work, and it adds nothing to the game.

So I think the implimentation of 1UPT in this case is lacking.

This problem can be solved with little trouble. Add a formation option where you drag your mouse & select units (just like in RTS games) & make a custom formation or a pre-defined one. This will help player & the maybe even AI if they are taught to use the pre-defined formations. Also I would like to have 1upt per civ (when not at war) to avoid blockades & reduce micro.

 

[Roxlimn]

bitula:

Well one thing is that you had most of these in Civ4 as well, if not in BTS then in mods. The second thing is, that this is not 1UPT. For example, Ranged units I would concider a real feature. Although not a major one. There are no major features in Civ5 btw, just lots of small features, like ranged units, but since overall there are lots more of removal of major features and simplifications of previous features than addition of new small features, the game altogather is much-much less then Civ4. Ofcourse that AI is too dimb to utilize the 1UPT system doesnt help anything as well...

I've just played BTS again. Despite Civ 5 being "rough," since it IS a reboot of the concept, I'd say that it's a better game in nearly every respect.

There's more than just Ranged Units in Civ 5 that make it different. It's founded on 1UPT, but Ranged Combat is not the only difference, and if that's the only difference you see, then perhaps it's just as well that you only fight the AI and take advantage of its obvious flaws.

Ok but you cannot be serious that you enjoy this part (micromanaging inbetween A-B)... If you enjoy this, then we are probably from different planets... Also keeping the formation requires no creativity, just memory - static and boring.

Skill and preplanning allows you to move all your units in formation, quickly, efficiently, and without need of much micro. I mean, there is such a thing as the "Move" function, you know. If the terrain is mostly flat, you can just use that and trust the AI to auto-move the units for you.

Were you moving all your units all the time individually every turn to the site of battle? Wow. That WOULD be tedious. I hope you weren't using arrow keys or anything like that.

TomMcV:

I agree with Bitula that the management of units outside of combat (moving your troops to the front line) is incredibly tedious. I abandoned a game recently that I was destined to win simply because I couldn't bear the idea of a global war and moving, retreating, healing 50+ units per turn. For 20 turns or however long it would have taken. ("Fortunately" the civ5 game end is so lacklustre and disappointing i don't really care about finishing games I know that I have effectively won).

You have WAY too many units. Most of those just sucked up hammers and are continuing to suck up maintenance. You can conquer the world with 6 units, and probably can only use 10 to any effect. What the hell would you want to do with the other 40 units?



Windsor:

Current interface:
- Select unit 1. Order it to move from A1 to B1
- Select unit 2. Order it to move from A2 to B2

Better inferface:
- Select unit1+unit2. Order them to move from A1 and A2 to B1 and B2.

Less clicks, exactly the same outcome in terms of formation, vulnerability, choke point and so on. Scale this to 30-40 units and you'll save a bunch of clicks.

Why do you even have 30 to 40 units?!?! The longest ranged unit in the game that still respects 1UPT is a Range upgraded Rocket Artillery. Generously, such a unit would be useful in maybe 10 unit formations, assuming that the terrain is absolutely, completely flat and featureless. With that many Rocket Artillery, you'd need one Tank to capture cities, and maybe 2 Infantry for the odd flank position.

That's 13 units, on a wide featureless plain, straining the map with their sheer mass. How are you fielding 40 Rocket Artillery to any use, let alone 40 Archers?

 

[Becomedeath]

Stack mentality breeds units.

My flatmate does it, builds far too many units.

I assumed these numbers were heinous exagerations as nobody would ever build this many units unless they were planning to go for a one turn domination win.

 

[Babri]

Stack mentality breeds units.

My flatmate does it, builds far too many units.

I assumed these numbers were heinous exagerations as nobody would ever build this many units unless they were planning to go for a one turn domination win.

I think there is an achievement for having 100 military units in a single game so that is quite possible.

 

[Roxlimn]

You'd need an achievement to induce you to throw away that many hammers.

It's the stack mentality. In an SOD game, more units is always better, so long as you can afford it. Simplistic. In Civ 5, that is just not true.

 

[bitula]

There's more than just Ranged Units in Civ 5 that make it different. It's founded on 1UPT, but Ranged Combat is not the only difference, and if that's the only difference you see, then perhaps it's just as well that you only fight the AI and take advantage of its obvious flaws.

Yes there are few more, but 1UPT itself aint a feature, its just a system achieved by simplifying a previous feature. Because of choosing this system ofcourse they had to do tons of balancing and AI work. I would have rather spent this time creating REAL new Major features - from a technical point of view - like sub level tactical combat screen, city sreen like in civ1 etc. Also, I liked to build large armies and epic battles and that this screwed up 1UPT - not 1upt in general, but Civ5 version of 1UPT- penalizes doing so, makes the game unplayable for me.

 

[guenzak]

I was tlaking about the effort of doing a feature, and not what happened with the game element itself.



ROFL! Now you said it yourself: REMOVAL. And balancig AI? It is a well known issue, that they were not successful in this. Even Civ5 fans admit this. So then why not instead add something and stick to things which work.

You do realize that the "removal" word you seem so hung up on does not mean they were just able to open up the code, highlight a few lines, and hit delete. "there, you can only put 1 unit on a tile".

1UPT changed everything else around it. Tactics, movement, abilities, ranged, terrain, etc, etc. And all that needed to be redesigned and the AI totally redesigned to act accordingly (now the AI effeciency at combat is another topic) but it was redesigned none the less. So to say that because you used to be able to have stacks and now you can only have 1 is removal of anything, or was an easy and cheap way to do something is kind of silly IMHO.

 

[bitula]

I mean, there is such a thing as the "Move" function, you know. If the terrain is mostly flat, you can just use that and trust the AI to auto-move the units for you.

Were you moving all your units all the time individually every turn to the site of battle? Wow. That WOULD be tedious. I hope you weren't using arrow keys or anything like that.

Well ofcourse I dont use the automove (which is a basic feature in every civ game), it will screw up my plans and my formation. The whole point was in Civ4 that you could micromanage anything you want without getting bored. Here you are forced to do boring micromanagement just to avoid unexpected outcomes. Its a huge step backwards, unless you are a casual player and dont really care to execute everything as perfectly as you can.

 

[bitula]

You do realize that the "removal" word you seem so hung up on does not mean they were just able to open up the code, highlight a few lines, and hit delete. "there, you can only put 1 unit on a tile".

1UPT changed everything else around it. Tactics, movement, abilities, ranged, terrain, etc, etc. And all that needed to be redesigned and the AI totally redesigned to act accordingly (now the AI effeciency at combat is another topic) but it was redesigned none the less. So to say that because you used to be able to have stacks and now you can only have 1 is removal of anything, or was an easy and cheap way to do something is kind of silly IMHO.

No, I have stressed this several times, that 1UPT (the word or the notion 1UPT) is just what it is, and it does not imply anything which it influences or for which it could be a cause for including that something else. For example, ranged attack would work with SOD as well - so it is not tied to the notion of 1UPT in any way.

 

[Roxlimn]

bitula:

Yes there are few more, but 1UPT itself aint a feature, its just a system achieved by simplifying a previous feature. Because of choosing this system ofcourse they had to do tons of balancing and AI work. I would have rather spent this time creating REAL new Major features - from a technical point of view - like sub level tactical combat screen, city sreen like in civ1 etc. Also, I liked to build large armies and epic battles and that this screwed up 1UPT - not 1upt in general, but Civ5 version of 1UPT- penalizes doing so, makes the game unplayable for me.

Stipulating that only one unit can be on a tile rather than multiple units complicates combat - it does not simplify it. In fact, the very first Civ incorporated stacking because it made war simpler, not because it was more complex.

1UPT is a super-major feature. It changes the complexion of the entire combat.

Well ofcourse I dont use the automove (which is a basic feature in every civ game), it will screw up my plans and my formation. The whole point was in Civ4 that you could micromanage anything you want without getting bored. Here you are forced to do boring micromanagement just to avoid unexpected outcomes. Its a huge step backwards, unless you are a casual player and dont really care to execute everything as perfectly as you can.

There is no micromanagement possible in Civ 4 combat. None. You take your stack, you move it. That's it. Plausibly, you control your units so that your siege units go first. Whoo.

Not using automove is a big mistake. There is no point to wasting your time moving your units across your road system when your road system and your unit deployment is good. It'll just take care of itself.

Once you're in battle, the placement of every single unit is crucial to success. If you have a unit whose placement isn't important - that's a unit that's wasting your hammers, you maintenance, and you time. It was mistake to build that unit in the first place.

No, I have stressed this several times, that 1UPT (the word or the notion 1UPT) is just what it is, and it does not imply anything which it influences or for which it could be a cause for including that something else. For example, ranged attack would work with SOD as well - so it is not tied to the notion of 1UPT in any way.

No, dude, it wouldn't. The reason that ranged combat was NEVER introduced in all 4 iterations of Civ stack combat was because it would be either be pointless, or it would break the game. Siege design very nearly does in Civ 4.

 

[bitula]

This problem can be solved with little trouble. Add a formation option where you drag your mouse & select units (just like in RTS games) & make a custom formation or a pre-defined one. This will help player & the maybe even AI if they are taught to use the pre-defined formations. Also I would like to have 1upt per civ (when not at war) to avoid blockades & reduce micro.

Selecting several units for automove aint implemented you mean? But anyway, how will the formation go through bottlenecks? I dont really think that you can solve this problem. The problem itself is that the formation is on the main map, instead of on a seperate combat map.

 

[bitula]

No, dude, it wouldn't. The reason that ranged combat was NEVER introduced in all 4 iterations of Civ stack combat was because it would be either be pointless, or it would break the game. Siege design very nearly does in Civ 4.

Nonsense, it was implemented in several mods, and it played out quite well.

 

[bitula]

There is no micromanagement possible in Civ 4 combat. None. You take your stack, you move it. That's it. Plausibly, you control your units so that your siege units go first. Whoo.

Hmmmm.. Your comments are, well, quite of a strange... Ofcourse there is micromanagement in Civ4 combat. The micromanagement is chosing the right composition of the stack and the order in which you attack the enemy stack with your units - you know - you dont have to attack with a full stack, to be effective you should attack with each unit individually.

 

[bitula]

Not using automove is a big mistake. There is no point to wasting your time moving your units across your road system when your road system and your unit deployment is good. It'll just take care of itself.

In some cases to a certain degree I use it. But you know, there are other cases when this is unreliable, like places where you can be attacked during move. So in most cases it is better to micromanage as actually explained here by an othe Civ5 fan, read back. The only question is whether this sort of micromanagement is fun or not. Not for me, and I think not for anyone else.

 

[Ellye]

I'm a fan of wargames, and the lack of tactics was the one thing I really disliked about Civilziation.

The new 1UPT rule of Civ5 adds a tactical layer to the game, makes terrain and positioning relevant, and makes combat much, much more enjoyable for me. I appreciate it, a lot.

The implementation of 1UPT isn't flawless - mainly, the AI does some weird moves that apparently makes no sense at all, at times.

But it's still much better than nothing - because SODs, for me, was just that: nothing. Zero, absolutely no tactics whatsoever.

 

[RiceAndChine]

okay... so what you are saying is (correct me if I'm wrong):

1. (1)
   
   1upt has added complexity to the game, that annoys you (eg. controlling individual units, haveing to face bottlenecks and natural barriers, etc...). Additionally you claim, that anything of strategic value introduced along with the 1upt-concept (eg. ranged attacks,...) isn't related to the concept per se but was rather [coincidentally] introduced along with it.​
2. (2)
   
   (You insisted enough on this point to make it absolutely clear) The basic change of introducing 1upt was not at all the introduction of a new concept but rather a (cheap and easy) simplification of the old "SOD" concept.​

Now any personal favors put aside, (1) appears two me like another of those two-sides-of-the-same-coin situations, where the micromanagement-heavy 1upt forces you to make a lot of 'useless' moves, but on the other hand lets you effectively use tactics from classic (and i mean classic) strategy games (eg. Chess, GO, etc...). [I mean iagine a game of Chess, where all the figurines are clumped up on two single opposing squares. In terms of civ: the reason why horses are powerful is the same as in history: they are faster; the reason there are frontlines along groups of mountains, same as in real life: they prevent flanking and give cover from ranged units;...). These are examples of tactical advantages, that become relevant just by the pure concept of 1upt]

IMHO: If you think this tradeoff is a bad one, then maybe you should accustm yourself with the modder. As a special treat to convince anyone, we get the ranged upgrades and siegable cities concepts introduced along with it, since they make more sense on a map where you have to fight on a broader scale. I accept that it may need a lot of refinement (I mean the time that regiments stood up in lines in front of each other and then start firing has been abandoned for good reasons) but it is a reasonable decision of the developers to get the word "developement" back into their jobs and try a fresh approach. Especially in Multiplayer the youth of the implementation becomes apparent in the free-for-all-mannered combat system, where the slowest machine always loses due to lag-related response times.​

(2) on the other Hand doesn't make any sense to me. If Civ4 is the natural state, and Civ5 it's restriction. Then the stacking got removed. de facto. But as such it is a restriction on the players and therefore akes the game more complex, as Complexity of the game increases (not alone but also) with the underlying restrictions that the player needs to overcome to master it. The reason the AI cant yet compete to human players is because the AI isn't able to cope with that whole new dimension (formation and placement) of warfare. It may very well be the easiest answer to the cry for a more entertaining game, but easy isn't the same as cheap, much less bad.
It isn't cheap since 1upt needs those other changs to work, whereas SOD does. Would anyon want to remove ranged combat fro 1upt? (Hell, NO!) And giving the AI a completely new thing to worry about is also a bigtask for a game developer. So why cheap? It would have been way cheaper to just keep it the way it was and add a few random things. It's a whole new game they did. Its not flawless, but it promises the most iportant thing to any real CIV player: progress

 

[Roxlimn]

bitula:

Nonsense, it was implemented in several mods, and it played out quite well.

You have the advantage of me there. I didn't love Civ 4 enough to have played any mods. It wasn't that good of a game to me.

Hmmmm.. Your comments are, well, quite of a strange... Ofcourse there is micromanagement in Civ4 combat. The micromanagement is chosing the right composition of the stack and the order in which you attack the enemy stack with your units - you know - you dont have to attack with a full stack, to be effective you should attack with each unit individually.

Choosing which units to make isn't what I would call micromanagement.

Furthermore, selecting which units to attack would generally be selecting all your siege and attacking with them first. If you hadn't effectively won by that point, it was a mistake to go to war at all.

In some cases to a certain degree I use it. But you know, there are other cases when this is unreliable, like places where you can be attacked during move. So in most cases it is better to micromanage as actually explained here by an othe Civ5 fan, read back. The only question is whether this sort of micromanagement is fun or not. Not for me, and I think not for anyone else.

If you can be attacked during a move, then that's not simply tedious busywork - that's tactical management. I don't know how you can find any fun in a tactical game and not find fun in its core tactical application. Rest assured, there are those of us who find the positioning aspect of Civ 5 fun, and not tedious. It may not be fun for you.