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

[aieeegrunt]

I found a way to make 1UPT tolerable by downloading a mod that doubled movement allowances.

Got rid of the sliding tile, ranged units are no longer OP, and positioning, strategy and keeping reserves and fromt lines actuly matters. Also makes ranged units far less stupidly OP

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

Well, the boardgame has a mechanism called stack limit (number of figurines you can have per tile). That would have a direct impact on the strengh of the attacks, since you can field 3 troops cards for one figurine, and two more for each extra figurine in the combat.

That stack level would begin at two, and could be increased through different technologies.

This is not directly convertible into informatic versions of CIV since there was a difference between the figures (potential number of cards) and units (the actual cards). Iy you have more unit potential than cards you actually built you don't get any bonus...

But in informatic versions, you could replace the army/regiment system by unit stacking. This would be represented by higher supply chains, either unlocked by technologies (refrigeration, manufacturing, etc...) or dogmas (nationnalism, triangular trade, etc...). Those stacks increase wouldn't necessarily get you new units, but would give you an edge over less advanced civs. However I don't see (or don't want to see) really big stacks, 4-5 should be an higher ceiling...

 

[DeckerdJames]

The world would probably make more sense if an army fit into one hex. The hexes are supposed to represent a large area. The world would not be cluttered with units.

How do you get the units into one hex and still avoid complaints about sod? Is each hex an area that zooms in for 1upt style tactical combat within the appropriate terrain and feature type? Could each hex be procedurally generated so that they always resolve to the same battlefield for that hex on that specific game world map?

If they did it that way, then we might not get ranged combat that can reach beyond a single tile until we get very long-range weapons. It might make the late game seem much more strategic, while shorter range weapons like bows and rifles/sniper rifles take place inside a hex. Aircraft and long-range missiles might be able to target over a large area of the world map and do damage, but you still have to march an army or armies there to occupy and movement might be 1 tile at that the time or 2 if they are wheeled and powered.

That might seem less strategic, but maybe it would be more strategic because you might be at war with more than one civilization or attacking a civilization on multiple fronts and it wouldn't take a very long time to process your turn unless two armies enter the same hex.

In that case you could auto resolve it or play it out. Perhaps a game setting.

Well, I would be interested in single tile armies and seeing how that kind of scheme could work. I want good strategy, but I also want a clean looking world map and more realistic movement speeds across the world. At least for them to seem realistic.

In a different game we could have a real-time mini game whenever two armies entered the same hex. Genre mixing...

 

[1SDANi]

Stack of Doom is literally the worst thing in the history of Civilization to me. Impossible to properly defend yourself against the stack of more than 100 units (yes, I've experienced it) invading your empire.

1 UPT isn't perfect either. Moving units around with such restriction can be annoying.

That's why I prefer the option available in one of the mods for Civ IV - ability to set the maximum number of units per tile. I've found that setting it to 15 or so is the best for me. In Civ VII I think that setting it to 5 or so UPT would be nice.

Carpet of Doom is literally the worst thing in the history of Civilization to me. Impossible to properly defend yourself against the stack of more than 10 units (yes, I've experienced it) invading your empire (I keep 1 defender in each of my cities because I spend all of my production on buildings).

 

[Leyrann]

Carpet of Doom is literally the worst thing in the history of Civilization to me. Impossible to properly defend yourself against the stack of more than 10 units (yes, I've experienced it) invading your empire (I keep 1 defender in each of my cities because I spend all of my production on buildings).

You don't need to keep defenders in your cities in 5 and 6, cities can defend themselves. All you need is to put a unit into a city if it's about to come under attack for the added city strength. Other than that, you can use your 10-unit army (assuming 10 cities) to fight off your opponent's 10-unit army... while having the advantage of city strikes and more healing due to home terrain. Plus, often you can let your opponent come into you - your war goal is 'don't lose', while they need to actually make progress. So long as you're not at a significant ranged damage disadvantage, you can just park your melee units on high defense tiles and fortify them, and that's enough to fend off an attack.

 

[1SDANi]

You don't need to keep defenders in your cities in 5 and 6, cities can defend themselves. All you need is to put a unit into a city if it's about to come under attack for the added city strength. Other than that, you can use your 10-unit army (assuming 10 cities) to fight off your opponent's 10-unit army... while having the advantage of city strikes and more healing due to home terrain. Plus, often you can let your opponent come into you - your war goal is 'don't lose', while they need to actually make progress. So long as you're not at a significant ranged damage disadvantage, you can just park your melee units on high defense tiles and fortify them, and that's enough to fend off an attack.

I have 3 cities with 1 archer each.

 

[Leyrann]

I have 3 cities with 1 archer each.

Then the issue isn't the enemy's carpet of doom but rather your lack of expansion.

Unless it's like, late Ancient Era levels of early in the game, but in that case three Archers could hold off 10 attacking Warriors with proper positioning and always keeping a unit in the city (the goal here being to raise the city's combat strength, meaning enemy warriors take a lot of damage every time they attack it). Also, the moment war is declared in such a situation, build 1-2 warriors, which you strategically use to deny the AI important tiles. Just remember that you've got your Archers to deal the damage - don't needlessly let your Warrior(s) get damaged just to dish out a bit more damage in a single turn.

Side note: if an Archer is standing on a Hills/Forest tile, or across a river, it can match a Warrior in combat strength on defense. It will additionally have 5 combat strength over the Warrior on offense (this all without counting promotions). As you're standing on a 2+ move cost tile, the enemy Warrior will have to step next to you first. Then, you attack, and deal roughly 40 damage. He attacks, you both take 30 damage. You attack, you deal 40 damage and the Warrior is dead, while your Archer is still at 70 hp. This to illustrate just how strong Archers are against Warriors.

 

[1SDANi]

Then the issue isn't the enemy's carpet of doom but rather your lack of expansion.

Unless it's like, late Ancient Era levels of early in the game, but in that case three Archers could hold off 10 attacking Warriors with proper positioning and always keeping a unit in the city (the goal here being to raise the city's combat strength, meaning enemy warriors take a lot of damage every time they attack it). Also, the moment war is declared in such a situation, build 1-2 warriors, which you strategically use to deny the AI important tiles. Just remember that you've got your Archers to deal the damage - don't needlessly let your Warrior(s) get damaged just to dish out a bit more damage in a single turn.

Side note: if an Archer is standing on a Hills/Forest tile, or across a river, it can match a Warrior in combat strength on defense. It will additionally have 5 combat strength over the Warrior on offense (this all without counting promotions). As you're standing on a 2+ move cost tile, the enemy Warrior will have to step next to you first. Then, you attack, and deal roughly 40 damage. He attacks, you both take 30 damage. You attack, you deal 40 damage and the Warrior is dead, while your Archer is still at 70 hp. This to illustrate just how strong Archers are against Warriors.

k

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I've been getting back into SMAC and I honestly think it handled stacks the best of any civ game.

In SMAC, your faction had a support rating where it got a certain number of free units in a city and then any unit above that consumed 1 production point. This meant that if you spammed too many units, that city would eventually drop to zero production and not be able to produce anything. It was a very effective way to limit how many units your civ could support. It also put an emphasis on having high production cities because they could support a larger military. With this mechanic, you could have stacks but they were never stacks of doom. The game did have the clean reactor ability that you could add to units which made the unit cost no support. So you could spam those units but the clean reactor made units more expensive so they would take longer to build. So there was a trade off between building cheaper units faster that would have a support limit or building more expensive units that would take longer but with no support limit. SMAC also had the collateral damage mechanic where an artillery attack on a stack, would damage every unit in the stack. This was effective because it made big stacks more vulnerable. If you went around with one single huge stack, the enemy could bombard the stack and damage all your units in the stack at once. You could find yourself with a big stack of severely damaged and therefore weak units, easy for the enemy to wipe out.

With support and collateral damage, I find that SMAC does not have carpet of doom or stacks of doom.

Another mechanism that civ7 could do is reduce movement points for bigger stacks to represent the difficulty in moving large armies. This would make it easier for the enemy to outmaneuver big stacks. You could also have large stacks get a penalty to combat strength unless they have a general unit to represent the fact that a large army without proper command would be disorganized and a less effective fighting force.

With all these mechanics, I don't think carpet of doom or stacks of doom would be a problem. And the player would need to plan carefully their military, deciding how many units they can afford to support, which units are worth building, and then how to organize their stacks to make them effective.

 

[1SDANi]

I've been getting back into SMAC and I honestly think it handled stacks the best of any civ game.

In SMAC, your faction had a support rating where it got a certain number of free units in a city and then any unit above that consumed 1 production point. This meant that if you spammed too many units, that city would eventually drop to zero production and not be able to produce anything. It was a very effective way to limit how many units your civ could support. It also put an emphasis on having high production cities because they could support a larger military. With this mechanic, you could have stacks but they were never stacks of doom. The game did have the clean reactor ability that you could add to units which made the unit cost no support. So you could spam those units but the clean reactor made units more expensive so they would take longer to build. So there was a trade off between building cheaper units faster that would have a support limit or building more expensive units that would take longer but with no support limit. SMAC also had the collateral damage mechanic where an artillery attack on a stack, would damage every unit in the stack. This was effective because it made big stacks more vulnerable. If you went around with one single huge stack, the enemy could bombard the stack and damage all your units in the stack at once. You could find yourself with a big stack of severely damaged and therefore weak units, easy for the enemy to wipe out.

With support and collateral damage, I find that SMAC does not have carpet of doom or stacks of doom.

Another mechanism that civ7 could do is reduce movement points for bigger stacks to represent the difficulty in moving large armies. This would make it easier for the enemy to outmaneuver big stacks. You could also have large stacks get a penalty to combat strength unless they have a general unit to represent the fact that a large army without proper command would be disorganized and a less effective fighting force.

With all these mechanics, I don't think carpet of doom or stacks of doom would be a problem. And the player would need to plan carefully their military, deciding how many units they can afford to support, which units are worth building, and then how to organize their stacks to make them effective.

Civ 4 had roughly the same mechanics except with gold instead of production, "stacks of doom" only ever exist if you let your opponent outnumber you 3 to 1

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Civ 4 had roughly the same mechanics except with gold instead of production, "stacks of doom" only ever exist if you let your opponent outnumber you 3 to 1

I think production is a more effective limiter than gold. With production, if a city builds too many units, it slows down production until you eventually cannot build more units from that city. But with gold, you could still build more units just as fast. In theory, you could bankrupt your civ with too many units but in civ4, I found that it was generally easy to have a strong economy with more than enough gold to support stacks of doom.

 

[1SDANi]

I think production is a more effective limiter than gold. With production, if a city builds too many units, it slows down production until you eventually cannot build more units from that city. But with gold, you could still build more units just as fast. In theory, you could bankrupt your civ with too many units but in civ4, I found that it was generally easy to have a strong economy with more than enough gold to support stacks of doom.

That is true, but in either case, whether you have 3 units against 10 or 30 against 100, you're up against a stack of doom.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It doesn't really matter if the support is by production or gold. The units just need to be sufficiently expensive to maintain that building a large amount costs you a lot in maintenance and slows down other parts of your economy (either production or commerce/gold/science). The difficulty with using production is that it is a local, city based resource instead of an empire-wide resource. It is weird to have units linked to specific cities and that's why that way was abandoned since civilization 3.

By the way, I think it is absolutely necessary that an AI opponent can build a stack of units that can be of worry to the player. If it can't do that, then it can never be a military threat. If an AI opponent invests a lot of resources into building an army while the player is just peacefully building and not reacting to the threat of the militaristic AI empire at all, then it should become a problem.

In civilization V and VI, the AI could never pose a military threat, so those games failed hard in that regard.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Then the issue isn't the enemy's carpet of doom but rather your lack of expansion.

Unless it's like, late Ancient Era levels of early in the game, but in that case three Archers could hold off 10 attacking Warriors with proper positioning and always keeping a unit in the city (the goal here being to raise the city's combat strength, meaning enemy warriors take a lot of damage every time they attack it). Also, the moment war is declared in such a situation, build 1-2 warriors, which you strategically use to deny the AI important tiles. Just remember that you've got your Archers to deal the damage - don't needlessly let your Warrior(s) get damaged just to dish out a bit more damage in a single turn.

Side note: if an Archer is standing on a Hills/Forest tile, or across a river, it can match a Warrior in combat strength on defense. It will additionally have 5 combat strength over the Warrior on offense (this all without counting promotions). As you're standing on a 2+ move cost tile, the enemy Warrior will have to step next to you first. Then, you attack, and deal roughly 40 damage. He attacks, you both take 30 damage. You attack, you deal 40 damage and the Warrior is dead, while your Archer is still at 70 hp. This to illustrate just how strong Archers are against Warriors.

This is an excellent example of how stupidly OP ranged units, especially multi hex range units, are in a One Unit Per Tile system with such limited movement points.

It’s far too easy to focus fire and delete opposing units as they slowly crawl towards you, compounded with how unrealistically effective muscle powered missile weapons are in this game. Terrible gameplay and terrible historical role play.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Roman Legions, Macedonian Pikeman and just about any heavy infantry unit would mow through a mass of bowmen like carving a cake.

Fire didn’t really start to overtake shock till you got flintlock muskets and the European Drill system.

That is true, but in either case, whether you have 3 units against 10 or 30 against 100, you're up against a stack of doom.

This sounds like a You Problem. You neglected your military, and surprise surprise a neighbour took advantage of it.

 

[1SDANi]

This sounds like a You Problem. You neglected your military, and surprise surprise a neighbour took advantage of it.

It appears you agree with me.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

That is true, but in either case, whether you have 3 units against 10 or 30 against 100, you're up against a stack of doom.

I don't consider 10 units to be a stack of doom. And being outnumbered does not make it a stack of doom. For me, a stack of doom is simply a very large number of units, regardless of whether you are outnumbered or not. So a stack of 50 against a stack of 50 would be 2 stacks of doom, even though they are equal. Also, if you are outnumbered by a stack 3 times bigger than your stack, that is not a failure of the game, that is a failure of the player that neglected their military. I have no problem with being outnumbered. My issue is that without a cap on units, you get an arms race situation where it is disadvantageous to ever stop building units because if you don't continuously build more units, then you get outnumbered. Ultimately, I think the point is that 10 units in a stack is much more manageable than 100. So the idea is to limit the number of units, not to prevent you from being outnumbered, but to make moving/managing units more manageable. Put simply, you want to reduce the micromanagement that comes with having a spam of units on the map.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is an excellent example of how stupidly OP ranged units, especially multi hex range units, are in a One Unit Per Tile system with such limited movement points.

It’s far too easy to focus fire and delete opposing units as they slowly crawl towards you, compounded with how unrealistically effective muscle powered missile weapons are in this game. Terrible gameplay and terrible historical role play.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Roman Legions, Macedonian Pikeman and just about any heavy infantry unit would mow through a mass of bowmen like carving a cake.

Fire didn’t really start to overtake shock till you got flintlock muskets and the European Drill system.




This sounds like a You Problem. You neglected your military, and surprise surprise a neighbour took advantage of it.

IF any one wants to make 1UPT work (which I regard as spending all your effort to build the perfect Buggy Whip) this is one place to do it.

To reiterate: Ranged troops pre-gunpowder, had virtually no Melee factor. That's because being a really good archer was a nearly Full Time Job - you didn't have time to also become a decent swordsman, and hauling a spear and shield around simply loaded you down when you needed to carry more arrows. Consequently, armies that relied on Massed Ranged Troops also had to protect those troops, or the enemy would simply charge, and no matter how slow they lumbered up, even men on foot would reach the Ranged Troops in a few seconds, perhaps with arrows sticking out of their shields, and proceed to massacre the ranged troops. Give the ranged troops armor and melee weapons, and unless they were full time 24/7 warriors like the early Samurai, they would be inept swordsmen/spearmen in armor and just get massacred a little more slowly. The end result was the same.

The armies that did successfully use Massed Ranged Troops either protected them - as the early Indian and Burmese armies that put their archers behind or on top of Elephants - or increased their effectiveness by using drill (as invent ed in China) so that multiple ranks of archers/crossbowmen could keep up a continuous, massed fire (the same drill of fire-by-ranks that was independently invented in Europe for the earliest muskets close to 1000 years later) - or put the archers on horses so they could ride away when the enemy got too close.

The consequence was that Massed Ranged Fire was never important in European Ancient/Classical/pre-gunpowder warfare: whether your opponent was Greeks, Romans, Germans, Gauls - they all charged, and so the ranged troops got in a few shots and then ran for it or died. - And before you ask, the English Longbow was a system, not a weapon: men who practiced constantly so they could fire fast and accurately, organized into groups under their Shire Reeves (sheriffs) who were their officers in the field so they could present massed fire On Order, and protected behind an array of stakes in the ground, or dismounted knights (as at Agincourt) or mounted knights (at Poitiers) or other really good melee troops to keep the enemy from simply trotting up and mopping up the archers. And, by the way, where they didn't have time to set out the stakes or didn't have knights and other melee troops with them, the longbowmen got ridden down like dry grass, just like every other type of pre-gunpowder ranged weapons-carriers.

The earliest gunpowder weapons, the 'hackbusses' were designed to be fired while rested on walls - they were defensive weapons to be used from fortifications, so the enemy could not charge and drive the gunners off. When they evntured onto the battlefield as arquebussiers, they, like their archery predecessors, also had virtually no Melee Factor - no bayonets, a clumsy 15 pound musket for a club, and usually no armor and no decent sidearm or training in how to use one. They had to be combined with melee troops in Pike and Shot units (or, earlier, Shot and Halberd and pike and sword units like the earliest Tercios and Colunelas) to give them a chance of surviving.

All of which makes the flintlock musket with socket bayonet such a Game Changing weapons system. Without a lighted match hanging about him, the musket-wielders could be shoulder to shoulder and close enough behind that barrels went over shoulders and 2 or 3 ranks could fire at once, and reload fast enough to fire 1 - 3 more times within a minute. If the enemy did make it through the fire to close, a 60 inch long musket with a 17 inch bayonet on the end made a very effective melee weapon against either infantry or cavalry, so the Fusilier with his musket and bayonet could, for the first time in history, have effective Fire/ranged effect and melee effect.

 

[UWHabs]

IF any one wants to make 1UPT work (which I regard as spending all your effort to build the perfect Buggy Whip) this is one place to do it.

To reiterate: Ranged troops pre-gunpowder, had virtually no Melee factor. That's because being a really good archer was a nearly Full Time Job - you didn't have time to also become a decent swordsman, and hauling a spear and shield around simply loaded you down when you needed to carry more arrows. Consequently, armies that relied on Massed Ranged Troops also had to protect those troops, or the enemy would simply charge, and no matter how slow they lumbered up, even men on foot would reach the Ranged Troops in a few seconds, perhaps with arrows sticking out of their shields, and proceed to massacre the ranged troops. Give the ranged troops armor and melee weapons, and unless they were full time 24/7 warriors like the early Samurai, they would be inept swordsmen/spearmen in armor and just get massacred a little more slowly. The end result was the same.

The armies that did successfully use Massed Ranged Troops either protected them - as the early Indian and Burmese armies that put their archers behind or on top of Elephants - or increased their effectiveness by using drill (as invent ed in China) so that multiple ranks of archers/crossbowmen could keep up a continuous, massed fire (the same drill of fire-by-ranks that was independently invented in Europe for the earliest muskets close to 1000 years later) - or put the archers on horses so they could ride away when the enemy got too close.

The consequence was that Massed Ranged Fire was never important in European Ancient/Classical/pre-gunpowder warfare: whether your opponent was Greeks, Romans, Germans, Gauls - they all charged, and so the ranged troops got in a few shots and then ran for it or died. - And before you ask, the English Longbow was a system, not a weapon: men who practiced constantly so they could fire fast and accurately, organized into groups under their Shire Reeves (sheriffs) who were their officers in the field so they could present massed fire On Order, and protected behind an array of stakes in the ground, or dismounted knights (as at Agincourt) or mounted knights (at Poitiers) or other really good melee troops to keep the enemy from simply trotting up and mopping up the archers. And, by the way, where they didn't have time to set out the stakes or didn't have knights and other melee troops with them, the longbowmen got ridden down like dry grass, just like every other type of pre-gunpowder ranged weapons-carriers.

The earliest gunpowder weapons, the 'hackbusses' were designed to be fired while rested on walls - they were defensive weapons to be used from fortifications, so the enemy could not charge and drive the gunners off. When they evntured onto the battlefield as arquebussiers, they, like their archery predecessors, also had virtually no Melee Factor - no bayonets, a clumsy 15 pound musket for a club, and usually no armor and no decent sidearm or training in how to use one. They had to be combined with melee troops in Pike and Shot units (or, earlier, Shot and Halberd and pike and sword units like the earliest Tercios and Colunelas) to give them a chance of surviving.

All of which makes the flintlock musket with socket bayonet such a Game Changing weapons system. Without a lighted match hanging about him, the musket-wielders could be shoulder to shoulder and close enough behind that barrels went over shoulders and 2 or 3 ranks could fire at once, and reload fast enough to fire 1 - 3 more times within a minute. If the enemy did make it through the fire to close, a 60 inch long musket with a 17 inch bayonet on the end made a very effective melee weapon against either infantry or cavalry, so the Fusilier with his musket and bayonet could, for the first time in history, have effective Fire/ranged effect and melee effect.

I wonder how well civ 6 would work if, say, archers and other siege units acted like battering rams, in that they had literally zero defense and were auto-killed when someone stepped on them. But that they could stack with other units to defend them. If you do that, and then also drop the ranged range down to 1 by default, it would more or less change the game into a "2upt" game, since you'd always want to stack a ranged and melee unit together.

Obviously IRL an archer wouldn't have truly zero defense, they would still beat a warrior who was on 1 HP left even with their defense, but for gameplay reasons, it would be an interesting proxy.

 

[1SDANi]

I don't consider 10 units to be a stack of doom. And being outnumbered does not make it a stack of doom. For me, a stack of doom is simply a very large number of units, regardless of whether you are outnumbered or not. So a stack of 50 against a stack of 50 would be 2 stacks of doom, even though they are equal. Also, if you are outnumbered by a stack 3 times bigger than your stack, that is not a failure of the game, that is a failure of the player that neglected their military. I have no problem with being outnumbered. My issue is that without a cap on units, you get an arms race situation where it is disadvantageous to ever stop building units because if you don't continuously build more units, then you get outnumbered. Ultimately, I think the point is that 10 units in a stack is much more manageable than 100. So the idea is to limit the number of units, not to prevent you from being outnumbered, but to make moving/managing units more manageable. Put simply, you want to reduce the micromanagement that comes with having a spam of units on the map.

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.

 

[Leyrann]

This is an excellent example of how stupidly OP ranged units, especially multi hex range units, are in a One Unit Per Tile system with such limited movement points.

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.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Roman Legions, Macedonian Pikeman and just about any heavy infantry unit would mow through a mass of bowmen like carving a cake.

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.