CIV VII: 1UPT, Stack of Doom or Carpet of Doom. What's your prefs?

[civac]

It's may be a good idea to limit army sizes by massively increasing the resources needed to maintain said army. But mass ultimately should be the deciding outcome in a Civ war. It's a strategy game. Unit tactics are in theory something people might like. But neither Civ5 nor Civ6 delivered on that promise and the AI is unable to handle it.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I don't know if I play a different game to you guys, but my armies never reach the point where I wish I could stack 10.

It's may be a good idea to limit army sizes by massively increasing the resources needed to maintain said army. But mass ultimately should be the deciding outcome in a Civ war. It's a strategy game. Unit tactics are in theory something people might like. But neither Civ5 nor Civ6 delivered on that promise and the AI is unable to handle it.

I'm not sure what you're smoking; I love the tactics aspect of Civ5 and Civ6.
There is both tactical and strategical aspects of modern Civ. I can't speak for old Civ, but the point is, you get to have both.
The swinging scale of how much is strategical and how much is tactical could be adjusted however.

Moreover let me just say, the game would be very boring if mass is the only deciding outcome. In fact it's not really very realistic. Many times in history, a huge mass, a technical advantage, or more, got undermined by strategic and tactical advantages, guerilla warfare, positioning, and more.

No, it's an excellent example of how Warriors specifically are greatly outmatched by Archers specifically.

Look no further than competitive multiplayer to find the units that are actually OP - the Heavy Cavalry line of units, most notably Cuirassiers and Tanks.



And they do.

A 35-40 strength Swordsman, Legion, Pikeman, whatever absolutely destroys an Archer. Takes at most 15 damage when attacked, then attacks for 70 damage while taking 15, takes another small hit, then gets the kill and survives with 50% HP. Oh yeah, and the defensive anti-archer promotion for Melee units outperforms the offensive Archer promotion to attack them.

Agreed. And nothing wrong with Archers winning in tactical advantage, that is the whole point...

 

[Patine]

Ah, I always understood "doom stack" to mean a stack that is unable to be defended against due to its size. My apologies. In that case, if the problem is one of snowballing, I feel that's a problem with civ as a whole. Without a system like Rhye's and Fall's stability, there is no reason not to be constantly expanding, be it your military, your territory, etc. Even if stacks were limited to 10, that'd just mean the arms race will be one of spamming as many 10 unit stacks as possible and throwing them into enemy cities fast enough that you never have a traffic jam. That said, if we really wanted to limit stack sizes, a few civ 4 mods add a really interesting rule to the game's existing supply rule. Much like how civs pay 1 extra gold for every unit outside their territory beyond X, with X being determined by the civ's number of cities, some mods make civs pay 1 extra gold for every unit in a stack beyond Y, with Y being determined by the civ's number of cities, preventing giant stacks without impeding decision making. As for limiting forms of snowballing like arms races, I don't expect a single Civ game to ever be released where it's not optimum. It was optimum in 1, it was optimum in 2, and 3, and 4, 5, and 6, and I'd be surprised if arms racing wasn't optimum in 7.

Can you please explain how this stability works? Although I have certainly heard of this mod, I have not played Civ4 (save for a very limited demo) and am also not familiar with endemic mechanics to the mod.

 

[Arent11]

Moving large armies in 1UPT from one part of your empire to the other - especially through choke points - was just lots of work. I originally was critical of stacks of doom, but seeing 1UPT in reality quickly turned me off.

I think a greater spread of units can be archived by having artillery units damage all units in a tile, forcing you to spread out.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Even if stacks were limited to 10, that'd just mean the arms race will be one of spamming as many 10 unit stacks as possible and throwing them into enemy cities fast enough that you never have a traffic jam.

That is why I say that you need a cap on total units in your civ to prevent the arms race. The reason civ4 has an arms race is not because there is no limit on stack sizes, but because there is no real limit on the total number of units you can have in you civ. There needs to be an effective max on the total number of units in your civ so that you cannot just spam infinite units or infinite stacks. And that is why I say that carpet of doom and stacks of doom are actually the same problem. Both are the result of too many units on the map, it is just that 1upt spreads them out on every tile (carpet of doom) while the other system piles the units up in huge stacks (stacks of doom).

In fact, I would argue that if you have an effective max on the total number of units in your civ, then you probably don't even need a cap on the stack size. Players could have a small number of big stacks or spread their units out depending on how they want to cover their territory. That should be a decision up to the player. The key is you don't want too many units on the map because that creates clutter and excessive micro.

 

[Leucarum]

Agreed that a more stringent limit on/cost for how many units you can field would lessen the sliding puzzle element of 1UPT which a lot of people dislike while also reducing the utility of stacking - since there won't be as many units you could stack. It'd also lower micromanagement especially in the late game. As a solution, 1UPT with fewer units seems pretty solid.

Maybe could be tied in with some of the supply line ideas that have been posited on here from time to time as a way to limit unit numbers but also slow down snowballing?

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Limited stackings. (Somewhere between the two), similiar to Total War series.

 

[1SDANi]

Can you please explain how this stability works? Although I have certainly heard of this mod, I have not played Civ4 (save for a very limited demo) and am also not familiar with endemic mechanics to the mod.

Technically, different mods implement Stability differently, but the overall concept is that it's a number broken across various categories which, should it get too low, may trigger negative effects. Rhye's and Fall is a very "history sim"-esque series of mods, so there are often mechanics that would need some changes to fit with the sandbox nature of Civ. For an example, Dawn of Civilization has 5 categories, expansion, economic, domestic, foreign, and militaristic. Expansion Stability is increased by recent expansion but is reduced by having more population in you cultural periphery than in your cultural core, Economic is increased by growth in your average gold per turn and reduced by stagnation or recession, Domestic is increased by religious unity and compatible civic choices but reduced by religious instability or incompatible civics like a totalitarian democracy, Foreign is increased by having positive average relations with other civs and reduced by negative average relations, and militaristic is reduced by war weariness, razing cities (you get -10 for every city you raze and it takes forever for it to decay, so you only want to raze a city if it's really REALLY bad) and losing battles to barbarians and increased by militaristic alliances. If you have negative 20 net stability for 10 turns, you lose the game. Some Rhye's and Fall mods tie other negative events or even outright civil war to instability, though Dawn of Civilization uses it more as a fail condition that makes it take a lot of skill to snowball and easy to topple a civ that overextends itself.

If I were to adapt this into a sandbox like mainline Civ, I would mainly change how Expansion works, perhaps by the instability be based on the culture level of a given city, where your capital gives +1 stability, each culture level gives +1 stability, and every city gives -3 stability, meaning that it won't be until you reach refined culture that a city starts being positive for your stability. To translate this into more general terms, if you don't invest in culture, your cities will always be a malus stability-wise, but if you commit to culture in a given city, you can get it to be net neutral in about 50 turns or so, and while initially conquests may be useful with +1 stability for 10 turns with every city you take, your instability from the cities you take will start to rapidly destabilize you if you expand too fast without nurturing positive diplomatic relations, spreading a religion to your cities, growing your economy, or entering into military alliances.

 

[1SDANi]

That is why I say that you need a cap on total units in your civ to prevent the arms race. The reason civ4 has an arms race is not because there is no limit on stack sizes, but because there is no real limit on the total number of units you can have in you civ. There needs to be an effective max on the total number of units in your civ so that you cannot just spam infinite units or infinite stacks. And that is why I say that carpet of doom and stacks of doom are actually the same problem. Both are the result of too many units on the map, it is just that 1upt spreads them out on every tile (carpet of doom) while the other system piles the units up in huge stacks (stacks of doom).

In fact, I would argue that if you have an effective max on the total number of units in your civ, then you probably don't even need a cap on the stack size. Players could have a small number of big stacks or spread their units out depending on how they want to cover their territory. That should be a decision up to the player. The key is you don't want too many units on the map because that creates clutter and excessive micro.

I guess that would work, but it'd feel odd to find yourself unable to build a unit to protect a city because the game literally won't let you. I think I'd much prefer exponential unit costs, so that you'd absolutely destroy your economy and cause your army to start going AWOL if your army is too big.

 

[pokiehl]

In fact, I would argue that if you have an effective max on the total number of units in your civ, then you probably don't even need a cap on the stack size. Players could have a small number of big stacks or spread their units out depending on how they want to cover their territory. That should be a decision up to the player. The key is you don't want too many units on the map because that creates clutter and excessive micro.

This is the most sensible solution to me. Great idea.

 

[GeneralZIft]

These games already have a system for this, every unit has upkeep. Although it would be smart to have gradually increasing upkeep with army size. That way you don't have to artificially limit army size, but you make it clear that it's slowly harder to govern a huge army at once.
Then, if you go into bankruptcy, have them disband.
Or disband from happiness.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I guess that would work, but it'd feel odd to find yourself unable to build a unit to protect a city because the game literally won't let you.

Well, if you have hit the cap then you should have enough units already on the map to defend that city. So if you can't defend the city, it might be a question of bad military strategy because you are not deploying your military to defend the right cities.

And to be clear, I am not suggesting an arbitrary hard cap. I am not saying that you could have a huge empire but oops, the game only let's you have 10 military units so you are stuck not able to defend your cities. The cap would be based on things like pop, tech level, civics, government, etc... So the cap would change during the game. The player could raise that cap during the game. Bigger civs with more pop, better tech, more military infrastructure, could have bigger armies. The idea is just to have some sort of mechanism to prevent infinite unit spam.

I think I'd much prefer exponential unit costs, so that you'd absolutely destroy your economy and cause your army to start going AWOL if your army is too big.

Yeah, that could work. Again, I am not suggesting an absolute cap. But I am suggesting a cap that is reasonable and prevents infinite unit spam.

For example, in the Master of Orion reboot, your ships cost a certain number of command points. You get a max command points for your empire. This cap can be raised by building starbases and with tech. But when your fleet exceeds your empire command points, you get high maintenance costs that can cause big budget deficits. So if you try to spam a huge fleet much bigger than your empire command points allow, you will destroy your economy and eventually have no money and lose units if you don't address the situation. This forces players to keep their fleet within the range of their command points and also increase their command points and build a strong economy to support a bigger fleet. If you have a strong economy, you can afford to exceed your command points a little but you need to be careful or you can get into a big deficit if you keep building more ships.

Something similar with civ7 could work. Military units could cost 1 command point. Your capital might grant you 5 command points to start the game. Each military district adds 5 command points. Barracks and military academies might add an extra command point each. If you exceed your max command points, units cost double gold to maintain.

 

[civac]

You could have a distinction between militias and armies sufficiently well-trained and well-equipped for offensive warfare. Then you can raise some cheap defenders in an emergency that don't fight as well as your main army, This doubles as the games defender's advantage. @Boris Gudenuf proposed something like that at some point I think.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

These games already have a system for this, every unit has upkeep. Although it would be smart to have gradually increasing upkeep with army size. That way you don't have to artificially limit army size, but you make it clear that it's slowly harder to govern a huge army at once.
Then, if you go into bankruptcy, have them disband.
Or disband from happiness.

Yeah. I think part of the problem with previous civ games is that the games did not properly scale up unit upkeep costs with late game economies. So it was possible to spam a lot of units and not really suffer any serious deficits. I know in civ6, it is pretty easy with a few trade routes to have +200 gold per turn. So you can spam lots of units and not suffer any economic downside.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Well, if you have hit the cap then you should have enough units already on the map to defend that city. So if you can't defend the city, it might be a question of bad military strategy because you are not deploying your military to defend the right cities.

And to be clear, I am not suggesting an arbitrary hard cap. I am not saying that you could have a huge empire but oops, the game only let's you have 10 military units so you are stuck not able to defend your cities. The cap would be based on things like pop, tech level, civics, government, etc... So the cap would change during the game. The player could raise that cap during the game. Bigger civs with more pop, better tech, more military infrastructure, could have bigger armies. The idea is just to have some sort of mechanism to prevent infinite unit spam.



Yeah, that could work. Again, I am not suggesting an absolute cap. But I am suggesting a cap that is reasonable and prevents infinite unit spam.

For example, in the Master of Orion reboot, your ships cost a certain number of command points. You get a max command points for your empire. This cap can be raised by building starbases and with tech. But when your fleet exceeds your empire command points, you get high maintenance costs that can cause big budget deficits. So if you try to spam a huge fleet much bigger than your empire command points allow, you will destroy your economy and eventually have no money and lose units if you don't address the situation. This forces players to keep their fleet within the range of their command points and also increase their command points and build a strong economy to support a bigger fleet. If you have a strong economy, you can afford to exceed your command points a little but you need to be careful or you can get into a big deficit if you keep building more ships.

Something similar with civ7 could work. Military units could cost 1 command point. Your capital might grant you 5 command points to start the game. Each military district adds 5 command points. Barracks and military academies might add an extra command point each. If you exceed your max command points, units cost double gold to maintain.

Not a fan of "command points" but that's me being a hater of arbitrary currencies.

Yeah. I think part of the problem with previous civ games is that the games did not properly scale up unit upkeep costs with late game economies. So it was possible to spam a lot of units and not really suffer any serious deficits. I know in civ6, it is pretty easy with a few trade routes to have +200 gold per turn. So you can spam lots of units and not suffer any economic downside.

Agreed.

 

[Roland Johansen]

You don't need something artificial like exponential unit costs of command points to somewhat limit the number of units. You don't need any artificial mechanic of diminishing returns.

First of all, without the 1UPT limitation, you wouldn't get so quickly restricted with unit movement.

Furthermore, the number of units that can be maintained has always been limited in any version of this game. The balance was just so that that limit tended to become bigger with your economic growth and advancement and at some point, that limit becomes very high. The solution is as simple as making modern units cost more maintenance. And it makes sense that they cost more maintenance as that was what happened in real history. A modern aircraft carrier costs more than a wooden frigate, a modern tank costs more than a rider on a horse.

Still, modern nations do field a larger number of soldiers than ancient ones, so some growth in the number of units during the game is justified. You can just limit it a bit by increasing the maintenance of more modern units.

 

[1SDANi]

Not a fan of "command points" but that's me being a hater of arbitrary currencies.



Agreed.

Technically, the games already have command points in their "Free Upkeep/Supply" system, where you don't pay Upkeep/Supply on X/Y units, with X/Y increased by your number of cities or the difficulty or other factors. I think making it clear where those free units are coming from would both help players understand the game by increasing transparency and provide an easy way for modders to expand that system.

 

[DeckerdJames]

Stacking units could be thought of as raising the defensive strength of the tile. So supposed you stack 8 units of infantry into dense wood and hills. That tile has a very high strength. Putting 8 tank units into such terrain might do much much less to defend it. However. 8 tank units on flat plains would make the tile very strong. An urban environment might do much better with mixed infantry and tanks. Tanks alone are juicy targets to urban infantry but tanks help control the roads.

So one thing is to make stacking units make sense for the terrain. Roads also benefit from armor and infantry. There are many unit types so this would present enough complexity for it not be boring.

Next, how do you equalize offense to this? You tweak the flanking bonuses a lot. Suppose you have 12 infantry units in hilly woods. Now suppose you surround that tile with 12 infantry units but place 2 in each adjacent tile. Because the stack of 12 are completely surrounded you could do a couple of things.

You could flatly increase the bonus damage the flanking units do significantly enough to simulate a great advantage and/or each turn that passes when a stack is surrounded causes a penalty to accrue on their tile to simulate broken supply lines.

Another option is to allow the siege mechanism to work on units and unit stacks just like it does on cities in Civ 6. If you can zone of control all 6 sides, then it is sieged, and the stack will not heal. For units, I would not require water tiles to be controlled, however, only a fraction of the stack can embark per turn if it is sieged against water. The whole stack can embark if it is not adjacent to an enemy, but the fraction grows to a maximum reduction to 1/6 the stack can embark per turn. (i am not sure how to do this mathematically. Obviously, it can't be 1/6 of the remaining every turn or it would be ridiculous. The point being they have some difficulty embarking from a siege)

So why not just break out? You can but suppose for every side of the hex you are flanked; you lose offensive power to a maximum of 5/6ths reduction. If the sieged stack is 12 units, and they are surrounded by 12 units, they attack with 1/6th offensive power. Now if the stack were allowed to attack the same hex with only 2 units for multiple turns, and there were no counterattacks against the stack for some reason, the stack would break out after a couple of turns because the stack has 12 units of HP vs 2 units of HP.

So, supposing the same 12 units were surrounded by 6 units, they would have their offensive strength reduced by 3/6ths or 1/2.

In these 2 examples I am assuming all the units are infantry. If 1 of the 12 infantry units were instead a tank unit, this could greatly modify how much the offensive power was reduced depending on the terrain the offensive goes into. If it is open and flat, a tank would greatly assist in breaking out into that hex and the computer could choose the best units to lead with.

Another equalizer would be that a stack operates as 1 force. You choose to attack one adjacent hex and the computer decides the mathematical results and the resulting survivors and their hex positions. So, splitting stacks allows you to target more hexes.

Rough idea

edit: alternatively, flanking could work a little differently. Instead of simply needing to be adjacent for the flanking penalty to apply to the flanked units, the flanker needs to actually make the attack. So, as the attacks of flanking units are made against a stack, on the same turn, they become more impactful. Also, to reduce, or in theory split the offensive potential, of the stack between flank attacks, the flank attacks must have been made. Otherwise, if no attacks have been made against it, the stack can attack at full strength into a tile. Also, there is the option of applying some of the flanking bonus for being adjacent, but you must attack to get the full bonus. So, there may be a partial reduction in the offensive potential of the stack for simply being flanked, but unless they are actually attacked the reduction is only partial.

I am presuming that for this idea of flanking to work, that each flanking unit does not fight the whole strength of the stack, but only fights a fraction of the stack based on how many sides are flanked. The computers can determine which units of the defending stack fight which flanking unit(s).

Also, flanking bonuses and bonuses in general probably need to vary and sometimes be very pronounced. Groups of knights attacking a stack of siege, for example, would probably massacre them. (perhaps capture them?)

I think part of the solution is flanking bonuses; however, it is done. There needs to be reasons to unstack, but situations or formations where having a larger stack among support groups that prevent flanking might make sense.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah. I think part of the problem with previous civ games is that the games did not properly scale up unit upkeep costs with late game economies. So it was possible to spam a lot of units and not really suffer any serious deficits. I know in civ6, it is pretty easy with a few trade routes to have +200 gold per turn. So you can spam lots of units and not suffer any economic downside.

Yeah, in 6 modern unit upkeep is only like 6gpt, which is ridiculously cheap compared to some of the bonuses you can get. If a Tank in civ 6 cost 60gpt instead of 6gpt, war would be very different. If it was actually expensive to run a war, and to have a big army you would actually have to care a lot more about what policy cards you're slotting in, making sure you're running commercial hub projects to fund, etc... then yeah maybe you don't even need to be as strict on limits.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

Yeah, in 6 modern unit upkeep is only like 6gpt, which is ridiculously cheap compared to some of the bonuses you can get. If a Tank in civ 6 cost 60gpt instead of 6gpt, war would be very different. If it was actually expensive to run a war, and to have a big army you would actually have to care a lot more about what policy cards you're slotting in, making sure you're running commercial hub projects to fund, etc... then yeah maybe you don't even need to be as strict on limits.

In CIV6, it is not the money that is limitting, but the amount of strategic ressource you have to pay each turn for later age units. If you don't have a lot of petrol, you can't really field a sea of tanks...