Ai stacking 250+ units is there a limit to madness

[terranu1]

Hello I just want to share what happens in my game (snail/emperor) currently with Egypt which has been fighting all his neighbours on and off since the begining. I guess I'm lucky I haven't spawned close to him.

He has 3 or 4 stacks of at least 200+ mixed units similar to that in my picture that he uses to one-shot enemy cities everytime he gets mass war declarations by all his neighbours. With the bonuses the AI gets on upgrading units, I can't imagine fighting him later in game lol. All I can do and did was to assasinate all his generals which he had about 9 stacked in just one of his cities.
I fought much earlier germany which had only one stack of about 300+ counted units but it was easey he only had one stack and he just suicided on my most fortified city.
Fortunately turn times are very fast still only about 20 seconds or so ,after 1000 turns.

Is this normal, what's the biggest AI stack you had to face ?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I suppose you know you can limit the stack size with Unit-per-tile limit under BUG options.

 

[jsk119]

How long did it take you to reach 406 AD in snail speed? I play normal speed and it takes me like 25 hours...

 

[terranu1]

Forgot if there's a log that shows the total time played but I've been on this game 4-6 hours every day ,over a week now. The turn times in this new version are much faster since I've last time played, thought.

 

[terranu1]

I suppose you know you can limit the stack size with Unit-per-tile limit under BUG options.

ok thanks, didn't knew about that.

 

[terranu1]

I suppose you know you can limit the stack size with Unit-per-tile limit under BUG options.

Ok so I used the max value, 100 UPT and only then I realized Egypt had almost 1k units in that single stack from the picture because after a turn that got from 20 seconds to almost 5 minutes long, I finally saw about 8 stacks being split from his city.
But there is very big problem with this 100 upt. Next turn took forever and I thought it's because AI logic has to redo all his stuff to split and move but the next turns were taking up to 1 minute from 30 seconds max, in before..then a few turns after, game crashed for the first time in over 1000 turns. I suppose if I could limit to maybe 300 units that would still be fine but 100 is too little...seems it's making ai taking too much time thinking where/how to move them around now.
Also realized it shows how many units of one type are, in that tooltip info so I guess even 1k stack is fine if I can see what's in there, at least I can prepare some counters.

 

[Rezca]

I have my UPT at 80 personally.
Anything less than ten is too boring and gets the maps all cluttered, and anything above a hundred gets kinda scary ^^

 

[terranu1]

I have my UPT at 80 personally.
Anything less than ten is too boring and gets the maps all cluttered, and anything above a hundred gets kinda scary ^^

yeah lol , I followed his 800+ stack with a few spies to see what he's doing at war and he seems to just a-move taking cities in one turn, loosing tons of units everytime. Hopefully he won't come at me for another 200 turns or so, until I catch up in tech cause he's also tech leader...Ramses wtf.
I could catch up faster in tech but I got scared and went full military mode to build about 500 units more myself "just in case" .
An hour ago when I was last time spying on his doom-stack he had about 300 longbowmen, 150 crosbowmen, 250+ hswordsman and ...almost 300 bombards f** , about 100 or so mixed calvary and other melee stuff. That's just his main army that he moves around, ,without dozens of units in his cities.
But I kinda love the challenge..and why I got back to trying AND2 and C2C ,after two years of Civ5 and now CivVI which is amazing but plagued by the same "having to order every single unit and city something every turn & logistics nightmare late game" ...I'd take 1k doom stack over that anytime.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Changing UPT limit during a game is not advisable, especially with such huge stacks. I was suggesting you start a game with that limit. Using this feature might slow down turn times because there's a lot more calculation involved in path finding and units placement. The higher the number of units, the slower the turns.

 

[Sartre311]

Wow I didn't know that the stacks could get that ridiculously huge, where do you set a limit before you start a game?

 

[aggri1]

Hey Terranu, I'm really surprised that it's possible to support such huge armies financially at that (medieval) stage of the game. Egypt must have a very strong economy, and appropriate civics. Nuts!

But collateral damage will be useful in such a case. Obviously you still need a huge number of units which can inflict collateral. I usually build huge swarms of bombers if I can't keep up on the ground. And then lots of forts behind the front lines to house them all. Strategic bombers are even better as they can actually kill enemy units. But the horses which inflict collateral on archers are useful much earlier.

Good luck!