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

[Lazy sweeper]

This makes no sense. If an opponent can get 100 units there is a priori no reason you can't get as many either. Also while the AI can fight somewhat competently in Civ3/4 they are still not that good at it and you can fight them with less then they have usually.

Yes and no, a well placed Pikemen, Swordsman stack, on mountain tile, or more, can resist or seriously injure an opponent 50+ stack.
This is especially true when invading islands civilization, and you get only a few galleys or Galleons of units.
One must choose the best city to invade first.
It has to be coastal, and preferably surrounded by mountain tiles, that can be better defended by a bunch of Spearman/Pikeman class units.
The reward factor, when pulling off an oversea invasion, and then resisting the massive assault of 100+ units, with just a dirty dozen... its priceless...

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Elaborating a bit on How To Apply Stacking:

1. Stacking Limits, based on terrain and technology, that Severely penalize Overstacking. In the length of the average game turn, if you cannot supply food and (later) spare parts, replacements and fuel, units start to disintegrate fast.

2. Supply Sources. To avoid the penalties above, they would be, possibly, three types:
a. The Tile the stack is in. Sitting in a friendly city that is larger in Population points than the stack is in Units - No Problem. That tile already supplies that many people on a regular basis. Other terrain - a range of problems, not so much in tiles with Farms, Plantations, Villages or Settlements, and other infrastructure, to really, really serious in barren Tundra or Desert. You should quickly learn to avoid some tiles with large Stacks.
b. A Supply Line to a Supply Source. Source could be that friendly city if it is large enough, or a series of Friendly Cities if they are connected by, say, a Sea Trade Route or navigable River that can transport 100s of tons daily by ship or boat or barge. The length of that supply line would also be heavily dependent on the tile and technology: trace a line using pack animals over Tundra, it won't stretch very far at all. Over roads with motor vehicles = long supply line. Over a railroad to that set of connected friendly cities = virtually infinite on the map. Until, of course, an enemy unit plunks itself down on that railroad.
c. Enemy Tiles. You can almost always pillage the heck out of any enemy territory. That will keep your Stack generally supplied (but less so in late game, when the bulk of your 'supply' is ammunition, personnel and machine replacements not generally available in enemy territory) but only for (usually) 1 Turn. After that, you have to keep moving or suffer Penalties, because as a general rule, a Pilllaged Tile provides nothing to Supply.

Some units should have Special Capabilites vis-a-vis Stacking:
a. Recon units require no supply, but in Non-Supply status in the post-Gunpowder Eras they have 1/2 their normal Attack Factor. On the other hand, they can always reveal the contents of any Stack they are or move adjacent to, and in the late game, that might extend to any stack within a radius of 1 - 2 tiles (using advanced UAVs, helicopter-borne Special Forces, etc)
b. Barbarians, for this purpose, function as Recon Units, but with limitations. They can 'see' an entire Stack over a certain size ("too many troops to hide" rule), but may only give you the size in units and possibly Unit Types, not actual Combat Factors (because they aren't really trained reconnaissance types)
c. Unique Units. There are a host of potential Special Capabilities these could have related to Stacking: For examples
Hardy Troops could subsist on less, so can stack more units compared to 'regular' armies.
Stealthy troops, like most Native American warriors and many tribal warriors elsewhere, could be Invisible to other troops and possibly Invisible within a Stack until in combat.
Many forces are better At Home than elsewhere, so these as Uniques could get some of the Hardy or Stealthy qualities only in Home Territory.

Civ III had units degradation when camping for too much time in marshes or jungle tiles.

Historically the worst stacking degradations were on ships. Magellan around the world first and only voyage, before LapuLapu took its life, he had five ships with about 100+ mens for ship. Only 18 (Elkano) made it back to Spain.
Navies could be expanded on units ideas a lot. Even Greeks Double deckked Triremes needed probably hundreds of mans to manouver those ships.

Napoleon sack of Moscow came at an astonishing human cost price. Same happened to almost every army sent to the Russian front during winter times. Italians troops had cardboard shoes and could not even eat those.
Entire regiments vanished bc of the freezing winter conditions, and only the Germans managed to survive, because they had the supply lines.

Alexander Magnus Greek army refused to advance in India jungles because of heat and illness.

In Civ Beyond Earth there was Miasma, which was a quite beautiful way of saying, you don't belong here, get medicines, or else die here...

With that I just want to say, that units degradation is a nice mechanic, but it expands further than stack mechanic. Stacked could add penalties or bonuses.
Greek Falange, Romans formations, are all about stacking your comrade near you. And with good supply lines, it almost never turned into a penalty, only massive bonuses.
Extreme territories, that could replicate the otherworldly miasma effects in Earth, though are a good starting point for applying negative multiplier to overall unit health.

Unit health, I think it's the key word here.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Civ III had units degradation when camping for too much time in marshes or jungle tiles.

Historically the worst stacking degradations were on ships. Magellan around the world first and only voyage, before LapuLapu took its life, he had five ships with about 100+ mens for ship. Only 18 (Elkano) made it back to Spain.
Navies could be expanded on units ideas a lot. Even Greeks Double deckked Triremes needed probably hundreds of mans to manouver those ships.

Napoleon sack of Moscow came at an astonishing human cost price. Same happened to almost every army sent to the Russian front during winter times. Italians troops had cardboard shoes and could not even eat those.
Entire regiments vanished bc of the freezing winter conditions, and only the Germans managed to survive, because they had the supply lines.

Alexander Magnus Greek army refused to advance in India jungles because of heat and illness.

In Civ Beyond Earth there was Miasma, which was a quite beautiful way of saying, you don't belong here, get medicines, or else die here...

With that I just want to say, that units degradation is a nice mechanic, but it expands further than stack mechanic. Stacked could add penalties or bonuses.
Greek Falange, Romans formations, are all about stacking your comrade near you. And with good supply lines, it almost never turned into a penalty, only massive bonuses.
Extreme territories, that could replicate the otherworldly miasma effects in Earth, though are a good starting point for applying negative multiplier to overall unit health.

Unit health, I think it's the key word here.

Marshes, Jungle, Tundra/Snow, Desert, Mountains - all of them could kill armies.​

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Extreme attrition of ship's crews was a very temporary phenomena, lasting only on long ocean voyages between about 1450 and 1750 CE, and mostly caused by the lack of knowledge about deficiency diseases like scurvy. Vikings made equally long voyages over the rivers of Russia and had no such problems because they were able to supplement their diets from the country they passed through.​

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A classic Trireme had a crew of about 230 men. Virtually all of the galleys and polyremes used in the Classical Era by Greece and Rome had to put to shore every few days because there was no way they could carry rations for the number of men it took to row them. That's also why the classic Pirate craft, which didn't dare put to shore in most places for fear of being attacked, were part-sail, part-oar craft like the Librunians or Tremiolas so they could carry about half the oarsmen the polyremes did for the same hull size.​

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Napoleon lost far more men in the Russian summer than he did in the Russian winter, By the time he arrived at Moscow he had less than 125,000 men left out of over 400,000 he started with in his main column. Heat (as in Stroke) and Typhus killed more of his men than Cold did.​

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Everyone talks about the severity of the Russian winter against invaders, forgetting the first Mongol invasion of Russia, which was made in the winter of 1237-1238, because the snow and ice gave them more mobility than the muddy fields of spring or autumn. They stomped everything flat from Kiyev to Novgorod in less than a year.​

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Alexander's army didn't refuse to advance because of any type of terrain, they refused because they were already past the edge of the earth as the Greeks knew it, there seemed to be no end in sight ahead of them, and they had been away from home for over 12 years, and finally, someone told them there were enemy kingdoms with 6000 battle elephants ahead of them. They'd had enough, and their specific request of Alexander was that he send or take them home and come out with a new army to finish whatever he wanted to do - which is precisely what he as preparing to do when he died in 323 BCE.​

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The problem is, a great deal of 'army attrition' is related to moving through the wrong terrain in the wrong season with the wrong (as in: ill-prepared) troops. Given Civ's timescale, which is too long to include seasons, that all has to be simulated by other means. But, to take the discussion back to the supply that started it, much of it could be tied to the requirement for supply to the army unit/stack to avoid problems.​

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Having played (board) games with attritional effects on units, I can tell you that this is one place where they have to ignore any tendency towards boardgamery and use the computer: keeping track of attritional losses to combat factors or mobility is a micromanagement nightmare if you don't simply let the computer do it and have it tell you when you are in trouble.​

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[Patine]

Marshes, Jungle, Tundra/Snow, Desert, Mountains - all of them could kill armies.​

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But guerilla and Indigenous resistance armies love to utilize these terrains defensively against mainstream armies.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

But guerilla and Indigenous resistance armies love to utilize these terrains defensively against mainstream armies.

To work well, any Supply Rules have to take into consideration the groups not subject to them: guerrillas and partisans mostly, reconnaissance troops, pastoral cavalry on plains - in fact, for game purposes you could simply rule that All Barbarians and All Recon Units are not subject to Supply limitations and it would practically cover everything.

 

[Krajzen]

Whatever happens, I am glad that on the 20th August our years long debates about the deepest fundamentals of the combat/army system shall move towards discussing some tangible choice Firaxis made

Personally I came to conclusion that I have absolutely no idea how to design civ combat/army system as it is miserable task with everything having terrible downsides. I really hope they radically reworked civ6 system of logistic pain - tedious micro - impotent AI trifecta of problems, but I shall be open for anything the devised... As long as it is significantly different than civ6 idea of 1UPT and old 4x idea of stacking.

 

[UWHabs]

Whatever happens, I am glad that on the 20th August our years long debates about the deepest fundamentals of the combat/army system shall move towards discussing some tangible choice Firaxis made

Personally I came to conclusion that I have absolutely no idea how to design civ combat/army system as it is miserable task with everything having terrible downsides. I really hope they radically reworked civ6 system of logistic pain - tedious micro - impotent AI trifecta of problems, but I shall be open for anything the devised... As long as it is significantly different than civ6 idea of 1UPT and old 4x idea of stacking.

When I read this, I initially read the first line as "...shall move towards discussing some terrible choice Firaxis made " and chuckled a little about the nature of forums like this seemingly always hating everything that they do

 

[Psychotronics]

Avoid bottleneck nightmares of cities with just one tile open for attacking the city, that with walls and one archers,
it become almost impossible to conquer. In my video there is a city I took and it took me 50 turns to conquer.

In my opinion, that's how it should be. A city should be made harder to capture by its natural borders, bottlenecks should make it hard to pass through without gettin decimated. How many battles, especially in ancient warfare, have been decided by the terrain?

 

[Patine]

In my opinion, that's how it should be. A city should be made harder to capture by its natural borders, bottlenecks should make it hard to pass through without gettin decimated. How many battles, especially in ancient warfare, have been decided by the terrain?

As I said several times, above, that's a fine viewpoint for a tactical-scale game. But in a global, strategic, 6000+year-scle-game, it's nonsensical. And how is one supposed to emulate Napoleonic or World War-calibre events?

 

[aieeegrunt]

As I said several times, above, that's a fine viewpoint for a tactical-scale game. But in a global, strategic, 6000+year-scle-game, it's nonsensical. And how is one supposed to emulate Napoleonic or World War-calibre events?

I think Civ6 is trying to use the same map for both strategic and tactical scale. Think of things like multi hex range archers and so on

 

[Patine]

Think of things like multi hex range archers and so on

That, too, is jarring. Anyting short of a bombard cannon should not have multi-hex range.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I think Civ6 is trying to use the same map for both strategic and tactical scale.

Yep and that is the major flaw in civ6's design. The same map can't be both strategic and tactical.

 

[pokiehl]

Yep and that is the major flaw in civ6's design. The same map can't be both strategic and tactical.

Why not? Nothing in any Civ game has ever had consistent scale, including individual tiles compared to one another.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Why not? Nothing in any Civ game has ever had consistent scale, including individual tiles compared to one another.

Then that is a flaw carried over from previous civ games. Look, I am not saying that everything in civ should be perfectly to scale. That is not possible in a game that spans 6000 years of history. But I think the game should try to use maps in a consistent way, as much as possible. It would make for better game design IMO.

 

[pokiehl]

Then that is a flaw carried over from previous civ games. Look, I am not saying that everything in civ should be perfectly to scale. That is not possible in a game that spans 6000 years of history. But I think the game should try to use maps in a consistent way, as much as possible. It would make for better game design IMO.

I think it's fine the way it is and it's completely impossible to make the map scale consistent across all gameplay elements. It's not even worth pursuing, especially in the face of all of the other impossible scaling across the game's systems. There's no point in nitpicking this or complaining about how 1 battle in the ancient era lasts 700 years, for instance. It's just a compromise of the game format. The player intrinsically understands this.

I'm not sure what removing the range of archers is going to do to benefit gameplay. It's already balanced around that. If it were taken away, then it'd be balanced around it that way. The net difference is zero.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Why not? Nothing in any Civ game has ever had consistent scale, including individual tiles compared to one another.

Very true, and never more so than on the map/ terrain and time scales for events in Civ games.

BUT

Using 1UPT, in order to keep everything on the one 'strategic' game map, warps both time and distance scales:

A battle involving multiple units spreads from one city to the next and beyond, so that the 'tactical' battle becomes strategic or at least operational - and, by the way, that implies that each unit now represents an entire army or corps all by itself, so the map scale versus battle/combat scale is warped completely.

A battle almost always takes multiple turns, with each turn representing 1 to 40 years. That warps the time scale, in that each battle in the game takes as long or longer than entire wars did IRL. - And wars in Civ VI last centuries until the modern/late game Eras, when they 'merely' last Decades.

Neither of which is particularly important as long as the game plays well,
but 1UPT does not play well on Civ maps.

Cue the multiple discussions and complaints about traffic jams and fiddly movement to get every unit where it's supposed to go and the by-now-obvious fact that the Civ VI AI cannot handle 1UPT movement at all so that the entire strategic balance of the game is thrown off: in 4000+ hours of playing, I cannot remember ever being particularly concerned about what an AI was going to do with its military units, which makes the entire Combat portion of the game largely irrelevant.

All strictly in support of my own opinion, which is that 1UPT has from the start been ridiculous in the Civ games. I have put up with it in Civ V and VI, but as I have said before, if they can't do any better in Civ VII I won't waste money on it.

Oh, and before you post anything, yes, I have played Old World's version of 1UPT, but that is also irrelevant to this discussion: that game is at an entirely different time scale, and relies on exorbitant movement rates to make 1UPT work. Introduce those to Civ, and the game either becomes a Dual only or the maps have to expand to the point where the bulk of our computers can't render them. Not a viable solution for Civ.

 

[pokiehl]

Neither of which is particularly important as long as the game plays well,
but 1UPT does not play well on Civ maps.

I don't think it's 1UPT's fault entirely. Whether you have 1UPT or a stack, the time scale makes zero sense. I guess a large unit stack can make it easier for one to overlook the space issues in some regards, but it's not like that's a clean solution for it. (For the record I fully support bringing back essentially unlimited stacking like Civ 4).

The real culprit is simply having battles play out on the map the way they do. Maybe a separate "tactical battle phase" would help some of the concerns, but then you still have the time distortion when the units are moving across the map. And I really, really don't want a separate screen for battles in the game.

I just don't think these scale issues are problems worth explicitly addressing. If a player is really taken out of the game by it for some reason, then I don't see how they'll ever be satisfied given all the other abstractions and distortions in the game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think it's fine the way it is and it's completely impossible to make the map scale consistent across all gameplay elements. It's not even worth pursuing, especially in the face of all of the other impossible scaling across the game's systems. There's no point in nitpicking this or complaining about how 1 battle in the ancient era lasts 700 years, for instance. It's just a compromise of the game format. The player intrinsically understands this.

I'm not sure what removing the range of archers is going to do to benefit gameplay. It's already balanced around that. If it were taken away, then it'd be balanced around it that way. The net difference is zero.

So what you are saying is that this part of the game design should change because it will just be a new balance of the same elements.

That's about the lamest argument I have ever heard.

It is precisely the different balances and designs that make games repeatedly playable and why there is more than one game on the market: because different balances appeal to different people.

I respect that you like almost everything about the game (at least, most of what you've posted on) as it is now. In fact, I agree that a great deal of the game is very enjoyable as it has been designed and refined.

But to say from that that no design element should change because it makes no difference is to ignore the differences among gamers and what they enjoy - and to ignore most of the discussions on these very Forums.

Some of us really do not enjoy the as-currently-balanced 1UPT design, and no barking that Anything Different Will Be The Same is too silly to change that.

 

[pokiehl]

So what you are saying is that this part of the game design should change because it will just be a new balance of the same elements.

That's about the lamest argument I have ever heard.

Well calling what I said "lame" is uncalled for, and I think you may have misinterpreted what I've said.

It is precisely the different balances and designs that make games repeatedly playable and why there is more than one game on the market: because different balances appeal to different people.

I respect that you like almost everything about the game (at least, most of what you've posted on) as it is now. In fact, I agree that a great deal of the game is very enjoyable as it has been designed and refined.

I've never said that, and I have posted about many things I dislike in the game. In this very thread I've posted in support of the return of unlimited unit stacking, so I have no idea why you keep thinking I'm defending 1UPT.

But to say from that that no design element should change because it makes no difference is to ignore the differences among gamers and what they enjoy - and to ignore most of the discussions on these very Forums.

I absolutely did not say that at all. I was explicitly commenting on having ranged units attack 1 tile away or not. That, specifically, is a pretty inconsequential decision. To take that and stretch it out like I said "no changes are worth making ever" doesn't make any sense to me.

Some of us really do not enjoy the as-currently-balanced 1UPT design, and no barking that Anything Different Will Be The Same is too silly to change that.

Again, no idea what you're going on about 1UPT. I certainly don't like it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't think it's 1UPT's fault entirely. Whether you have 1UPT or a stack, the time scale makes zero sense. I guess a large unit stack can make it easier for one to overlook the space issues in some regards, but it's not like that's a clean solution for it. (For the record I fully support bringing back essentially unlimited stacking like Civ 4).

The real culprit is simply having battles play out on the map the way they do. Maybe a separate "tactical battle phase" would help some of the concerns, but then you still have the time distortion when the units are moving across the map. And I really, really don't want a separate screen for battles in the game.

I just don't think these scale issues are problems worth explicitly addressing. If a player is really taken out of the game by it for some reason, then I don't see how they'll ever be satisfied given all the other abstractions and distortions in the game.

My apologies: we are talking past each other.

I agree that inherent in trying to portray 6000 + years makes for severe Time Scale imbalances and I will fully admit that I don't think there is a 'solution' for this: the game simply has to pick some kind of series of balancing acts and trust that they appeal to enough gamers to make it all work. (And, everything else aside, the Civ series has largely succeeded in this)

We are agreed: a separate tactical map is a lousy, brute force solution, especially when Civ VI started (and I strongly suspect Civ VII will continue) the pattern f keeping everything possible on the one Game Map.

We are disagreed that the battle time scale issues are worth addressing, but, as posted, gamers are a multitude of individuals each of whom has their own ideas about what is worth addressing, worth discussing, worth changing, or not important.

We are agreed that stacking is part of the solution, although I would not go so far as to allow Unlimited Stacking, but stacking limited by technology, terrain, supply, and Command and Control - for most of history that the game tries to vaguely portray, there was a huge difference between the number of men you could put in a given area and what you could actually get them to do, which I think could make a useful limit on stacking in the game.

I have already (repeatedly) posted that I think a 'semi-automatic' battle solution in one tile on one turn is the answer to (some of) the worst of the time and distance scale distortions, and more recently I have been looking at the battle system in the game Millenia, which has, among its many massive deficiencies, at least the germ of a system for allowing gamer input before the battle so that the 'battle system' doesn't completely automate and lose all gamer agency.

But that's another discussion.