Are you sticking with civ4?
- Thread starter fathertuck
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NihilZero
WHEOOHRNY
Am I the only one who actually likes stacks o' doom? 
Seriously, I do. As a big fan of historical battles, military history, and general ass-kicking throughout the ages, nothing says epic to me like a massive stack of scores of units bearing down on you like a juggernaut. 
Would Napoleon have settled for 1upt? I think not. Would Hannibal's trek through the Alps possess the same legendary status if he'd had one elephant, a donkey, and a couple of guys with sticks? Would Alexander the Great's battles astound and inspire awe without a cast of thousands?
Apart from missing the stacks of doom and being generally unimpressed with the meagre scale of the armies in the game, I found gameplay flat and frankly rather dull, with none of the ingenious intricacy and enthralling subtlety of Civ 4. It was basically like playing one of the later Total War games after the series went to hell, only with worse graphics. Even the flashy new leaderheads had none of the personality of their Civ 4 counterparts.
I hope Civ 5 turns into something one day, but I hear that with the Civ series it's a case of two steps forward, one step back. Which means civ 6 should be good. And let's be thankful to the dumb fanboys - it's their money that keeps the series going and hopefully provides enough of a development budget that we get a new Civ worthy of the name sometime soon.
Seriously, I do. As a big fan of historical battles, military history, and general ass-kicking throughout the ages, nothing says epic to me like a massive stack of scores of units bearing down on you like a juggernaut. Would Napoleon have settled for 1upt? I think not. Would Hannibal's trek through the Alps possess the same legendary status if he'd had one elephant, a donkey, and a couple of guys with sticks? Would Alexander the Great's battles astound and inspire awe without a cast of thousands?
Apart from missing the stacks of doom and being generally unimpressed with the meagre scale of the armies in the game, I found gameplay flat and frankly rather dull, with none of the ingenious intricacy and enthralling subtlety of Civ 4. It was basically like playing one of the later Total War games after the series went to hell, only with worse graphics. Even the flashy new leaderheads had none of the personality of their Civ 4 counterparts.
I hope Civ 5 turns into something one day, but I hear that with the Civ series it's a case of two steps forward, one step back. Which means civ 6 should be good. And let's be thankful to the dumb fanboys - it's their money that keeps the series going and hopefully provides enough of a development budget that we get a new Civ worthy of the name sometime soon.
Ignorant Teacher
Emperor
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Totally agree with you. The system in Civ 4 is not perfect, but 1upt is fun for a while, but it's tedious and totally unrealistic regarding numbers and scale.Am I the only one who actually likes stacks o' doom?
Would Napoleon have settled for 1upt? I think not. Would Hannibal's trek through the Alps possess the same legendary status if he'd had one elephant, a donkey, and a couple of guys with sticks? Would Alexander the Great's battles astound and inspire awe without a cast of thousands?
Mine too.
mindseye1220
Chieftain
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- 31
Probably sticking with IV... V is fun, but I just love IV so much.... I went a while only playing V and started showing withdrawal symptoms.
PraetorianSteve
S.P.Q.R.
Having tried out Civ V and gotten the chance to play with it for a while, I will definitely be sticking to Civ IV. I have played the game since the first one came out, (something that the CivV forums seem to think is a bad thing), and for the first time I was not left with the "Just One More Turn" feeling that all the other games have left me with. I know that the other games have felt like more of a letdown at first, and that they grew better with patches and expansions. I felt for example that Civ III was a letdown when it first came out, in need of a good patch. But it still felt like a Civ! So did Civ IV at first. I should also mention that when I did get a PS3 the first game I bought for it was CivRev. I traded that in for a different game, as it wasn't what I had hoped for at all, but it still had some good qualities, and I didn't hate it as much as just didn't play it.
The main difference this time around is that they have removed so many features, and yet left in so little of what made even the first Civilization so engrossing. I can't control taxation? I can't trade maps or even technology? The diplomacy module is atrocious: I have absolutely no way of knowing what the other leaders are meaning! Pact of Secrecy? What does that do? How do I gain by joining one? The AI needs serious work. Other things are lesser annoyances. While I appreciate the attempt to destroy the stack of doom with 1UPT, the limitation of the new system is just far too much, and certainly on the Earth maps gives a massive problem with scale.
Of course there are also good things, but they seem to be mostly visual. Hexes are natural to me, as I have a wargaming background, but hexes vs. squares is really an aesthetics question, both have pros and cons. I like the Art Deco style, but again it is a visual thing, and some parts of the UI could have been improved upon. The social policy system is interesting, but could have been much more polished. I also don't see a problem with Steam, as I have played many games on there, and rarely encountered any problems.
My last playthrough of Civ V actually ended with the game crashing to desktop. Unlike previous Civs when this has happened, my immediate thought was not "oh no!"... it was more like: "meh". I doubt that I will be enthused to resume my playthrough before I uninstall it.
The main difference this time around is that they have removed so many features, and yet left in so little of what made even the first Civilization so engrossing. I can't control taxation? I can't trade maps or even technology? The diplomacy module is atrocious: I have absolutely no way of knowing what the other leaders are meaning! Pact of Secrecy? What does that do? How do I gain by joining one? The AI needs serious work. Other things are lesser annoyances. While I appreciate the attempt to destroy the stack of doom with 1UPT, the limitation of the new system is just far too much, and certainly on the Earth maps gives a massive problem with scale.
Of course there are also good things, but they seem to be mostly visual. Hexes are natural to me, as I have a wargaming background, but hexes vs. squares is really an aesthetics question, both have pros and cons. I like the Art Deco style, but again it is a visual thing, and some parts of the UI could have been improved upon. The social policy system is interesting, but could have been much more polished. I also don't see a problem with Steam, as I have played many games on there, and rarely encountered any problems.
My last playthrough of Civ V actually ended with the game crashing to desktop. Unlike previous Civs when this has happened, my immediate thought was not "oh no!"... it was more like: "meh". I doubt that I will be enthused to resume my playthrough before I uninstall it.
Psyringe
Scout
I like the stacking mechanic. I didn't like the "of doom" part so much - or, to put it differently: I like stacks, but I think they were a bit too powerful in Civ4 (compared to single units).
In Civ4, it's almost always best to stack your units. There are no game situations that really require you to think whether it's a good idea. You never sit there and think "okay, this city is defended by (X) which does a lot of damage against huge stacks, so for this attack it will be better to split my stacks like this ...". (I think some mods tried to work n this direction, but the base game clearly favors stacks.)
However, Civ5's "solution" to the problem was to remove the ability to build stacks altogether. That's not more strategic or more challenging, it just shifts the player's planning focus from stack composition to tactical formation.
What I would have liked instead is a system that kept stacks, but offered more counters against them, so that in some situations, it would be better to attack with a stack, while in others it would be better to use single units or small groups. That would have actually increased the strategic challenge, because then you'd have to think about both elements, group composition and tactical formations.
I actually like SoDs. Especially on immortal and deity where the AI built absolutely ridiculous stacks. There was nothing more satisfying than noticing Monty or Shaka on your border with a huge stack of ancient era units on your border and then whipping walls and a few defenders and letting them suicide all their units on your city. Or running around obliterating AI stacks with a mass of cannons - it just made everything feel a bit more epic, with real armies, not just single units, clashing with each other. Yes the player who could get their siege in first nearly always held the advantage but still, 1UPT isn't a solution to that problem really.
Also civ 4 did have some limitations on stacking. Air units were limited to 4 per city. Admittedly that was easily gotten round by building airports, forts on the border, and massing invulnerable aircraft carriers in border cities. However it did add a bit of a strategic element. Maybe civ 5 should have gone with a limited number of upt, it would have made things a lot more flexible than a draconian 1. Or maybe they could have kept stacking but linked the limited number of strategic resources to it - i.e. you can build as big a stack as you like, but you can only have 2 swordsmen in it if you only have 2 iron. Therefore you would still have stacks, but they would mostly be filled with weaker units.
Pathfinding seems to be a big issue with 1upt in civ 5. It really slows the ai down and makes the interturn really long. I also think the limit on civilian units is really stupid as well. I mean, if you want a road built quicker you should be able to hire more workers do it for you.
Also civ 4 did have some limitations on stacking. Air units were limited to 4 per city. Admittedly that was easily gotten round by building airports, forts on the border, and massing invulnerable aircraft carriers in border cities. However it did add a bit of a strategic element. Maybe civ 5 should have gone with a limited number of upt, it would have made things a lot more flexible than a draconian 1. Or maybe they could have kept stacking but linked the limited number of strategic resources to it - i.e. you can build as big a stack as you like, but you can only have 2 swordsmen in it if you only have 2 iron. Therefore you would still have stacks, but they would mostly be filled with weaker units.
Pathfinding seems to be a big issue with 1upt in civ 5. It really slows the ai down and makes the interturn really long. I also think the limit on civilian units is really stupid as well. I mean, if you want a road built quicker you should be able to hire more workers do it for you.
fathertuck
Warlord
I like SoDs too. How can you claim to be a real civfan and NOT like them, since they've been around since civ1? I remember a RTS game named Warlords 2 in which you could stack 8 units on one tile, and that worked well for that game. So restrictions isn't automatically an evil thing in my opinion, but I'm not against unlimited units per tile either.
I like big stacks. They may be a bit over the top but it gives an epic dimension to the game. 1 upt is a bit of a hassle (I have only played the demo but it is the thing that prevented me from enjoying it that much).
ParadigmShifter
Random Nonsense Generator
I like big stacks too!
Am I the only one who actually likes stacks o' doom?
What is a single unit versus a massive army? Strength in numbers. I've never had an issue with the SOD concept, although I also like to make it about 14UPT to keep things a little more tactical (and higher performance).
What real-life examples are there to large army counters that don't work similarly or better versus smaller ones?
Psyringe
Scout
I may have worded it badly. In Civ, the comparison is between (for example) a) one stack of 15 units, and b ) five stacks of three units each. We can also add c) 15 single units as a third condition. All these three conditions have the same "strength in numbers". In Civ4, due to its mechanics, option A is almost always the best one. In Civ5, option C is the only one left since the others have simply been removed. What I'd prefer is a rules system that doesnÄt simply forbid one or more of these options and doesn't clearly favor one either, but lets the player make a strategic decision how/if to split his stack, which can turn out to be good or bad, depending on the counters the opponent has.
There are lots, I'd think. The most simple one is artillery. try to fire a cannon on a battlefield with 20 swordfighters on it vs. firing the same cannon on the same area filled with 200 people. In the second condition you have a much higher chance to hit and therefore will do more damage (on average) with each shot. This could be easily modeled by giving artillery a chance to hit (miss) that increases (decreases) with the size of the stack it fires upon, or (if you don't want the potential player frustration when many shots miss) by scaling the damage accordingly, or by letting artillery do a lot of collateral damage. Other examples would be gas (the same amount of gas will do much more damage when many opponents stand close together), or (to an extent) minefields, though the latter would be difficult to implement. But generally, any area of effect damage, would work well as a counter against stacks.
"More damage" isn't the only way to implement a plausible counter against huge stacks either. Another option is the choice of defender. In Civ4, the best defender will always defend against every attack, which often makes it difficult to "crack" a huge stack even if it has just a few good defenders. However, why do the mechanics assume that in a huge army, the few good defenders can as easily and reliably reach the point of attack as in a small group when there's possibly a whole army of hundreds of people between them, instead of free space? That's not realistic either. So, another possible counter against huge stacks is to implement a chance that a non-optimal defender will have to fight the battle, and have the chance increase with the number of units in the stack.
What I don't get is how "remove the stacking feature" has turned out to be a widely accepted "cure" against the power of stacks. Imho, if one wanted to remedy that, there are many options to fix the mechanic by implementing appropriate counters, instead of removing the whole feature and calling that an improvement. The whole discussion about "where should we put the hard cap to prevent stacks of doom" is, imho, based on the flawed premise that hard caps are a good solution at all. Usually, implementing counters is a better option (and leads to richer games) than implementing hard caps.
Pretty sure the units in civ aren't equal to "20 swordfighters", though. Demo screen would imply a typical civ unit is battalion-division sized. So what is there that will really damage an entire army versus just a couple battalions? Arty/gas/minefields are all going to affect both sizes about equally. Your sense of scale is really off wrt units.
There was a mod that did indeed give a -bonus to stacks larger than a certain number of units. Might have been an old RoM version. I know the new AND lets you choose how many UPT you want. I would imagine this one modification could be isolated if you really wanted just it.
I just hope that the reverse can be done for C5: adding multiple/infinite UPT back in.
There was a mod that did indeed give a -bonus to stacks larger than a certain number of units. Might have been an old RoM version. I know the new AND lets you choose how many UPT you want. I would imagine this one modification could be isolated if you really wanted just it.
I just hope that the reverse can be done for C5: adding multiple/infinite UPT back in.
Psyringe
Scout
I'm disappointed. I explained several game mechanics which could (hopefully) turn the "SoD vs. 1upt" question into a strategical decision, instead of making it a no-brainer (as in Civ4) or totally ripping one of the two out of the game (Civ5). I'm also using two arbitrary numbers to illustrate the fact that weapons with an area-of-effect damage do more damage per shot if the concentration of enemies on the battlefield is higher. This fact is valid no matter which exact numbers we chose to illustrate it. If you load a catapult and throw boulders into area A, then you will do more damage (on average) if this area is filled with N enemies compared to when it's filled with M enemies, given that N>M.
In your reply, you don't address the proposed game mechanics at all, but instead choose the arbitrarily selected numbers to criticize the example with by presenting a value of "scale" that's nowhere defined in the whole game, so your impression of scale is in fact as arbitrary as my two numbers. We can now discuss the validity of the illustration I used, or the validity of your impression of scale, but where's the use? I suggested (imho) sensible game mechanics to enhance one aspect of the game, I didn't want to start one of these "what does a unit really represent" discussions.
Anyway, this discussion is off-topic in this thread at any case, so I probably shouldn't have wrote my last two posts anyway.
NihilZero
WHEOOHRNY
It's not really off topic, since it relates to a key discussion as to why one might prefer either Civ 4 or 5.
One thing about stacks of doom and the question of over-crowding and density - don't squares (and presumably hexes) in civ represent rather large areas in terms of square mileage? And wouldn't such areas be functionally able to accommodate as many units as you like? I don't know what the largest army ever mobilised was, but the limitations of such are determined by logistical considerations rather than matters of space. Napoleon's invasion of Russia failed because of his inability to supply his troops, not because his army wouldn't fit in Russia.
EU3 deals with massive stacks by depleting units' strength to simulate such logistical difficulties (especially in winter). In Civ 4, the only drawback to marching massive numbers of units around in enemy territory is supply costs and war weariness, which are irritating but don't have quite the same debilitating effect on your fighting strength.
I really don't have any problem with stacks of doom, though. Civ is a grand strategy and empire management game, as opposed to a tactical battle game. Managing your empire so that you have the biggest stack of doom is the challenge. Actually using the thing is pretty simple and generally a formality after you have devised a winning strategy that allows you to assemble the winning SoD.
One thing about stacks of doom and the question of over-crowding and density - don't squares (and presumably hexes) in civ represent rather large areas in terms of square mileage? And wouldn't such areas be functionally able to accommodate as many units as you like? I don't know what the largest army ever mobilised was, but the limitations of such are determined by logistical considerations rather than matters of space. Napoleon's invasion of Russia failed because of his inability to supply his troops, not because his army wouldn't fit in Russia.
EU3 deals with massive stacks by depleting units' strength to simulate such logistical difficulties (especially in winter). In Civ 4, the only drawback to marching massive numbers of units around in enemy territory is supply costs and war weariness, which are irritating but don't have quite the same debilitating effect on your fighting strength.
I really don't have any problem with stacks of doom, though. Civ is a grand strategy and empire management game, as opposed to a tactical battle game. Managing your empire so that you have the biggest stack of doom is the challenge. Actually using the thing is pretty simple and generally a formality after you have devised a winning strategy that allows you to assemble the winning SoD.
May Day 10
Prince
^^^
definitely.
I would expect them to come up with "smarter" ways to deal with SoD if they wanted to limit or eliminate them.
definitely.
I would expect them to come up with "smarter" ways to deal with SoD if they wanted to limit or eliminate them.
Psyringe
Scout
Yep, that we can agree on.
The attrition mentioned by NihilZero is another viable means to the same end, and there do exist several more imho. That's what I find puzzling: They said they wanted more tactical variation than SoD combat (which is fine; as i said the SoD combat didn't bother me that much, but I can see why others would see that differently), and then their solution is to completely remove any stacking feature (with one exception, you can stack one civilian with one military unit). It seems as if "smarter" ways to limit a stack's power weren't even considered, which is ... surprising.I don't think so. You make an interesting case in these posts of yours Psyringe. I do agree that there must have been some other option to balance things out without implementing a 1 upt limitation.
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