Dear developers, if you are reading this, please consider...

[NP300]

I think the one-unit-per-hex idea is wonderful. I have long thought that Civ would work better if the combat system were more like that of Panzer General. It eliminates unit spam and stacks of doom, improves strategy and introduces more tactical combat. It works well because a combat does not necessarily result in the death of a unit. In Panzer General most combats did not result in a destroyed unit, rather the units were weakened. If a unit was weakened enough, it was forced to retreat or be destroyed. Since most combats do not kill units, you don't need as many units.

The combat system as it exists in Civ IV can degenerate into a matter of who has the largest stack. To win in Panzer General you needed powerful units, combined arms, and proper tactics and strategy. To kill units, you needed to attack them with the proper units, bombard them and surround them. You would weaken a unit, then you would force it to retreat and then you would keep pounding it and/or force it into a place where it could not retreat until it was killed.

Szabolcs85, my suggestion is to not jump to conclusions about the one-unit-per-hex rule if you have never played a game like Panzer General. You might just love it.

 

[jbadams]

I think the one-unit-per-hex idea is wonderful. I have long thought that Civ would work better if the combat system were more like that of Panzer General. It eliminates unit spam and stacks of doom, improves strategy and introduces more tactical combat. It works well because a combat does not necessarily result in the death of a unit. In Panzer General most combats did not result in a destroyed unit, rather the units were weakened. If a unit was weakened enough, it was forced to retreat or be destroyed. Since most combats do not kill units, you don't need as many units.

The combat system as it exists in Civ IV can degenerate into a matter of who has the largest stack. To win in Panzer General you needed powerful units, combined arms, and proper tactics and strategy. To kill units, you needed to attack them with the proper units, bombard them and surround them. You would weaken a unit, then you would force it to retreat and then you would keep pounding it and/or force it into a place where it could not retreat until it was killed.

Szabolcs85, my suggestion is to not jump to conclusions about the one-unit-per-hex rule if you have never played a game like Panzer General. You might just love it.

NP300, I'm with you 100%. With the one-unit-per-hex rule, battlefields in Civ 5 will look like...battlefields!

In all candor, Conquest of the New World, which Interplay produced in the late 1990s, had superior combat mechanics to Civ 4.

 

[NP300]

Incidentally, the stacks of doom first became an issue in Civ 3. I have played Civ since Civ I. In Civ I and II there was no limitation to how many units you could stack. However, you had an incentive to not build huge stacks. If you built a 100-tank stack and it was attacked by a rifleman, and the rifleman lucked out and won, then the entire 100-unit stack was destroyed. So Civ I and II did not have the stack of doom problem due to this incentive.

In Civ III they eliminated this rule where a stack was destroyed if it lost one defensive combat. But they did not replace this with an effective disincentive to discourage stacks of doom. They tried to use artillery bombardment as a disincentive, but by limiting the number of units in a stack that could be damaged by an artillery shot, they effectively crippled the disincentive. As it stands, the only effective disincentive to stacks of doom in Civ IV is nuclear weapons, which are SOD-killers. Unfortunately they come too late in the game, but I use nukes to great effect as stack-of-doom-killers in the modern era.

 

[Raider]

I don't understand what everyone has against the stack of doom. In real world armies move and have several divisions of different units in them. Civ4 works in the same way. Why the change?

Perhaps they want to make combat more tactical. I am all for that. But I don't think 1 unit per tile for Panzer or Diplomacy system is necessary.

 

[Shorlin]

I think the 1 unit per tile could make for interesting gameplay, its too early to tell though.
What concerns me is the general direction of the game. I have a gut feeling they are moving away from the incredible depth of gameplay and epic feel of Civ4, and going for a watered down version that feels a bit more like an RTS or civ revolution.

 

[bonafide11]

What concerns me is the general direction of the game. I have a gut feeling they are moving away from the incredible depth of gameplay and epic feel of Civ4, and going for a watered down version that feels a bit more like an RTS or civ revolution.

I completely disagree. I feel like they are making the game more complex by making the military much more tactical. In earlier Civs, the military was pretty simplistic, whoever had the larger stack won. So the winner would be who micromanaged their cities the best. Now, in addition to needing to micromanage your cities, you also need to use a good military strategy.

 

[the343danny]

The realism stuff is getting really old

Complaining that archers can shoot over a tile is like saying

"The buildings in the cities are miles high!! Make them soo tiny we cant even see it"
"Flying in civ takes several years!! Make it nearly instant!!"
"Coorporations can spontaneously create foods out of already existing food to feed millions of people with 1 branch!! REMOVE IT"
"My Mongolian cavalry cant move fast enough to conquer much of Eurasia in a hundred years during the medieval age!! Give them all blitz and let them move 20 tiles a turn!!"

And finally (which I agree with, except the supply line part), "All of my armies of my global empire can fit and survive in a hundred miles by hundred miles square in the Saharan desert with no food or water!! Change it!!"

and like 1 guy said "Archers are miles tall"

GAMEPLAY

You talk about realism while promoting the unrealistic thing as the stack of doom. Maybe its not realistic until the modern age that my army is spread out over hundreds of miles, but atleast its possible, unlike the stack of doom, unless you were to put all your men on a tile with a black hole.

and OP, no, I dont want Civ 4.001, nor do I want Firaxis to create a 4.1 to go along with Civ 5; theyve got better things to do

 

[NP300]

I don't understand what everyone has against the stack of doom. In real world armies move and have several divisions of different units in them. Civ4 works in the same way. Why the change?

In the real world there are limits to how big an army you can put in a given area, and limits to how much it is wise to put in a given area. If you put your entire army in a small area (even if you could), you get surrounded, cut off and destroyed. In Civ 4 the stack of doom can occupy 1 tile and march deep, deep into enemy territory just occupying one square, as long as it is a gigantic enough stack.

But the main point against the stack of doom is that it is bad for gameplay. It leads to boring gameplay. With the stack of doom, the one with the biggest stack wins. Combat becomes more like the game of Risk than the game of Chess or Panzer General. With the stack of doom not only is quantity its own quality, but it becomes the only quality that can win. It is also a micromanagement nightmare to move so many units by hand. In the modern era I opt for a smaller empire and smaller army just because I can't be bothered to micromanage stacks of hundreds of units and I instead resort to nukes as an equalizer if I get into a fight with a giant AI empire.

 

[snapple232]

OP sounds like a very narrow-minded person.

 

[Sqwerlpunk]

Just to back up NP300's quote,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

Getting a superior (in both training, size, and equipment) into a very, very compact space is a BAD idea in modern warfare, and although ancient times more often had tighter battles, that was because they were fought with MUCH less men, and the technology of the time heavily favoured pike formations (200 men with pointy sticks in the same direction is kinda hard to come up and hit with a sword, hence why longbows become such a big deal).

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Incidentally, the stacks of doom first became an issue in Civ 3. I have played Civ since Civ I. In Civ I and II there was no limitation to how many units you could stack. However, you had an incentive to not build huge stacks. If you built a 100-tank stack and it was attacked by a rifleman, and the rifleman lucked out and won, then the entire 100-unit stack was destroyed. So Civ I and II did not have the stack of doom problem due to this incentive.

In Civ III they eliminated this rule where a stack was destroyed if it lost one defensive combat. But they did not replace this with an effective disincentive to discourage stacks of doom. They tried to use artillery bombardment as a disincentive, but by limiting the number of units in a stack that could be damaged by an artillery shot, they effectively crippled the disincentive. As it stands, the only effective disincentive to stacks of doom in Civ IV is nuclear weapons, which are SOD-killers. Unfortunately they come too late in the game, but I use nukes to great effect as stack-of-doom-killers in the modern era.

Yes I agree, people who think the SoD was a problem in Civ4 never played Civ3 much, in Civ3 the SoD was the ONLY true military solution, which lead to boring tactics eventually.

Now the colateral damage and unit maintenance in Civ4 were suppose to limit the SoD in Civ4, but didn't really do a good enough job and the SoD came back to haunt us.

Will the "panzer general"-like tile and combat system solve this *and* be fun and exciting? Hard to say now, but it's worth giving Civ5 a shot.

At any rate we still have people playing Civ3 so I imagine for people that don't like Civ5, Civ4 will be around for a long time and is very modable to the needs of the fans.

CS

 

[Sqwerlpunk]

also, in addendum to my other post, while ancient battles were heavily centered on one place, both forces ALWAYS sent forces on the flanks, like I said, pike formations are very hard to approach from the front, but are dead men when hit from the side/back (NO weapons). It was not SoD tactics, merely centered on a superior unit tactics.

 

[Disgustipated]

I have a feeling it will work out for the best. I'm an optimist. After the improvement of Civ4 over Civ3, I have faith in Firaxis.

Who wants a whole bunch of cumbersome units? These are especially annoying in war scenarios where you have to move around a gazillion units.

I'd rather have one unit per tile. It would be nice if you were able to make that unit stronger (say combine it with another unit). Why move 2 units when you can just move one?

 

[deanej]

That's why you stack them... so you don't have to move a gazillion units, you just move one stack!

I don't like all the micromanagment that will be required of the new system. And I suck at war enough as it is; I don't need it to become more tactical and make me suck more!

 

[Agrippa]

When reading such whining like in the OP about "please don't change...." it's usually the best to and go on.
HEX combat with one unit! I waited for decades

 

[-=Yin=-]

We've been playing the same basic formula forever, and it's exciting to see Civ do something fundamentally different. True, for some players this might not be a step forward, but I suspect many more will see it as an improvement over unit spam.

 

[AlphaShard]

I don't see the point in whining about this issue, if you don't like the way Civ 5 is going to be just play civ 4, it's not like it's going to go away just because Civ 5 is coming. Hell you can even play the previous ones as well if you really wanted to. Each Civ game has changed the way you played it and I admit I didn't like Civ 3 much, loved Civ 2 and so kept playing Civ 2 until Civ 4 came out and fell in love with that one.

 

[Joecoolyo]

In the real world there are limits to how big an army you can put in a given area, and limits to how much it is wise to put in a given area. If you put your entire army in a small area (even if you could), you get surrounded, cut off and destroyed. In Civ 4 the stack of doom can occupy 1 tile and march deep, deep into enemy territory just occupying one square, as long as it is a gigantic enough stack.

Except for the fact that 1 tile in Civ is equivalent to about size of the Netherlands.

 

[chips2150]

Except for the fact that 1 tile in Civ is equivalent to about size of the Netherlands.

Which is funny, because in fact it is rather equivalent to the size of Amsterdam.

 

[paulhager]

Finally, it appears that enhanced Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is being effectively debunked. Can we now purge the game of Environmentalist Dogma? Get rid of windmills after the middle ages. Also, make nuclear realistic - eliminate the nuclear bomb-type meltdown. Allow for advanced nukes - you don't have to explain how they work but make them more efficient. I wouldn't be averse to advanced thorium reactors - if the game still has uranium resources then add thorium.

If the official policy is to maintain AGW mythology at least make it easy to eliminate everything in the game associated with AGW. It took a lot more effort to eliminate AGW from Civ IV than from Civ III.