A Serious Proposal to address adding Unit Stacking

Rick Drayson

Chieftain
Joined
Jun 9, 2020
Messages
63
My Background:
Played civ since first release on Amiga 500. Plus more importantly i recognise that Civ V Vox populi is the best Civilization experience ever realised. (not just blowing smoke)

Single unit stacking limit problems:

-Reduces strategy. Cannot effectively recognize and create a schwerpunkt
-Stagnation can occur when a wars front is narrow and the cities supplying units are deep. Causing unit replacements capacity being greater than possible loss rate. Specifically prior to modern age where air units and 3 range units can somewhat address this.
-Terrain can make certain cities uncapturable without tech advantages
-Problem worsens on larger maps and on higher difficulties. Greater number of units vying for the same limited number of tiles
-Player frustration over road blocks


Proposal:

Each tile is given a base stacking limit.
-snow, desert, tundra: 0
-plains, grass, ocean: 1

Tiles can then be modified
-Friendly City: +1
-River connection to a friendly city: +1
-Ocean connection to the capital: +1
-Road or adjacent road connection to a friendly city: +1
-Rail connection to a friendly city: +1
-Scouts grant themselves +1 (so can always stack on top of other units or any tile but not on another scout)

These are just initial figures. Possibly a connection to the capital adds an additional 1 stack limit.
Image below portrays the effect upon the map. Stack limits in white.

proposal.png


Map display would need to indicate to the player how many units can enter the tile as shown above.

Desired Outcome:
-Units are killed on both sides of the conflict at a higher rate than currently. Thereby deciding larger wars, quicker.

Combat
-Outside the scope of this proposal. This proposal is about allowing for the increase in units within core areas of the map so that wars are shorter, especially in later periods of the game. So that combat power can be concentrated for both defender and attackers. There are plenty of options to address unit stacking for both attackers and defenders. Many of which has been successful in other past games. My personal preference is that the attacker stack attacks all at once with all units able to attack and the combat rolls are spread across all defenders at once:
e.g: 3 Archers, 1 trebuchet, 3 swordsman range attack a tile 2 squares away. Only the treb attacks. On the same turn the player attacks the adjacent defenders stack. First the archers fire their free hit. Then the 3 swordsman attack all 7 defending units and spread their attacks as "splash" damage across each and take in turn 7 units of defensive roll across themselves
Alternatively that turn the player could of chosen to attack one unit at a time and leave out the swordsman.

Scouts
-Scouts essentially carry their own supplies. This allows scouts to traverse terrain like deserts and tundra from the beginning of the game whereas other units will not be able to pass. But of course it opens up unique possibilities for Civ bonuses such as what we already see for Iroquois.

Disclaimer:
I don't know if this is technically possible. Not a modder for this game (though am for paradox games). My hope is to trigger a positive discussion and open minds for new possibilities to address the issues that are real and affecting the game.
 
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-Scouts grant themselves +1 (so can always stack on top of other units or any tile but not on another scout)

This logic does not actually accomplish the stated aim. You'd have to set the possible +1s as a definite list to begin with, the condition for this one +1 of which is the presence of a scout, but even then, your logic for enabling a unit to enter a tile would thereby involve a check with the state of it hypothetically being there, instead of a check of if it can fit.

On that note, the issue of such permissions disappearing during events other than unit movement will require a rule. Roads can be broken and oceans can be blockaded. Cities can be razed off-turn.
 
1UPT is a core part of Civ V and I don't see it being changed within VP.
 
How is combat against a stack determined? Like in Civ4?

I'm all for unit stacking but not sure we can consider this a "serious" proposal as it lacks a lot of information.
 
How is combat against a stack determined? Like in Civ4?

I'm all for unit stacking but not sure we can consider this a "serious" proposal as it lacks a lot of information.
I’m civ 4 it’s the unit with the best odds of winning.

For example, let’s say I have a musket man and a knight in my stack and my opponent has a pikeman and a knight. If I select the musket man and attack then it will fight the knight since the knight is stronger vs musket men. However if I select the knight and attack then it will fight the pikeman since the pikeman is stronger vs knights.
 
I’m civ 4 it’s the unit with the best odds of winning.

For example, let’s say I have a musket man and a knight in my stack and my opponent has a pikeman and a knight. If I select the musket man and attack then it will fight the knight since the knight is stronger vs musket men. However if I select the knight and attack then it will fight the pikeman since the pikeman is stronger vs knights.
I know how civ4 works, I still play it regularly. The thing is the game would need a lot of rebalancing as siege units could now be stacked with defensive units for example.

Again, I'm all for unit stacking as I think 1UPT is the weak point of civ5 but OP only talks about how many units you can stack in a tile...
 
It's funny how they re-added limited stacking back in civ 6 with the corp/army system, but then pushed so far back in the tech tree that no one uses it anyways.

Personally, I think unit stacking should be limited to only certain types of units, ones where having a dense mass of soldiers actually makes sense, like spearmen etc. It makes no sense for scouts or skirmishers to be included into that system.
 
How is combat against a stack determined? Like in Civ4?

I'm all for unit stacking but not sure we can consider this a "serious" proposal as it lacks a lot of information.
The proposal was not combat focus which is a separate discussion. But for the allowing of concentration of units within high value areas of the map in order to speed up combat
If i were to digress into this subject, my preference would be splash damage which essentially means that 1 unit attacking 4 would spend 25% of its total attack upon each of the defending units with separate rolls for each combat value.
You have to remember that there are games from paradox that essentially do unit stacking and combined combats
yes im aware it sounds like a bunch of work to implement.
 
This logic does not actually accomplish the stated aim. You'd have to set the possible +1s as a definite list to begin with, the condition for this one +1 of which is the presence of a scout, but even then, your logic for enabling a unit to enter a tile would thereby involve a check with the state of it hypothetically being there, instead of a check of if it can fit.

On that note, the issue of such permissions disappearing during events other than unit movement will require a rule. Roads can be broken and oceans can be blockaded. Cities can be razed off-turn.
The scout only impacts the scout.
Scouts would be free to enter ANY tile except tiles with other scouts. That was the condition.
 
It's funny how they re-added limited stacking back in civ 6 with the corp/army system, but then pushed so far back in the tech tree that no one uses it anyways.

Personally, I think unit stacking should be limited to only certain types of units, ones where having a dense mass of soldiers actually makes sense, like spearmen etc. It makes no sense for scouts or skirmishers to be included into that system.
The way to view it is that unlimited unit stacking created stacks of doom. It was an extreme system that introduced issues for the player. (ps: civ6 did everything half arse. bad game imho)
But 1 unit per tile was just as extreme but in the opposite design decision direction and added new issues for the player which i mentioned.
My proposal is a middle ground. Not extreme. Grants strategic decisions to players. But causes coding headaches for devs to compensate
 
I really like the 1UPT system, the unit stacks of death SOD in IV is what turned me away from playing it
But have you or have you not run into issues where you cannot push or be pushed from an area of a map during a war because there are more units than the map allows and loss rates for either side are less than the replacement rates. This causes stagnation that can go on for a very long time.
And wars greatly slow down game speed
And on larger maps + higher difficulty the problems compound with ever greater unit limits for both sides.
And it gets old, tiring and boring to spend thirty turns trying to take a single city only to have dozens of damaged units to show for it.
(because the ai in this mod is as nearly as good as the player at rotating units out to safety)
 
Skirmishers are only held back by the 1UPT system and the traffic jam it creates. If we allow stacking, what's stopping you from just amassing skirmishers and attack 20 times per turn under your frontline melee?
 
What? Of course it's used, because corps/armies are powerful.
I personally like the combat mechanics of Civ 6 more than Civ 5 :
  • Corps and armies mean that you can keep your total number of units low, but they become stronger ;
  • This reduce combat tediousness by a lot ;
  • You could double/triple strategics upkeep to keep the balance ;
  • I would also remove reduction to army cost from Civ 6 (why making a super-army costlier to then reduce it's cost ? It defeat the aim to reduce number of units across the board) ;
  • I'd add that I prefer the combat strength calculation from Civ 6 better, too.
 
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