Downside of 1upt

[Commander Bello]

Aussie, please!

First you praise 1upt to make SoD's obsolete, then you point out that mp experience made you to make use of smaller stacks (which assumedly would not fall under the definition of 'SoD' anymore) which are more likely to be harmed by siege weapons' collateral damage?

Ok, at this point I am out of the discussion.

 

[aziantuntija]

1upt is more logical than stacking or limited stacking because in 1upt system you dont have to do a ton of work to properly occupy a hex AND you dont never ever have to manage what kind of mix of units it is holding.


Also the stack combat is horrifying, your always up against the best possible defender and there is NO WAY you can get your hands on the enemys weakest (perhaps ranged?) units in that hex but by ramming a ton of units against the best defender. You say its combined arms system and i say its brainless and frustrating system.


Limited stacking sounds horrible, its like SoD but with added MM and it still has the same problems that SOD have.

 

[Ricci]

ZoC would be pretty useless if you can concentrate an ENTIRE ARMY into the space of a single hex...

No, it wouldn't be useless at all. I am not surprised that you stated this as valid without providing any argumentation because there simply isn't. Some examples of good usefulness have indeed been given in this same thread, though it has became large and I understand if you didn't read it much.

It will be certainly nice to see ZoC working in CIV IV, hence my certain guess is they were never in because of the AI being even more unable to handle it in battle. I hope that with the simplicity added by 1UPT (my crumbling opinion) the AI in CIV V will indeed be greatly improved, though I am learning in this same thread very experienced players (specially in other 1UPT games) don't share my faith.

For the record, the siege weapon approach didn't KILL SoD's, but it made their use slightly less effective. Having learned from their mistakes, though, the Civ team have decided to eliminate the SoD problem altogether.
Aussie.

Some people see a problem with infinite stacking and others don't. I never saw SoD as evil nor I see 1UPT as evil now, I have never tried it actually. What I do see is a group of users discussing over speculation about the new 1UPT system and/or asserting good and bad features they already know form previous experiences, and on the other hand another group of posters fervidly supporting the new combat system no matter what, confused about different issues and aspects of what little we know of the new game and many times without any argumentative value. Actually this behavior has become quite common in many threads of this forum, and frankly it started to get pretty annoying.

 

[Calouste]

No, it won't be useless at all. <snip>

ZoC would have been pretty useless in Civ4, where you could put an entire army in one tile AND that army had typically the speed of the slowest unit, i.e. one tile per turn. Unless ZoC would have been that you couldn't move a stack from one ZoC tile to another ZoC tile at all.

 

[aziantuntija]

What I do see is a group of users discussing over speculation about the new 1UPT system and/or asserting good and bad features they already know form previous experiences, and on the other hand another group of posters fervidly supporting the new combat system no matter what, confused about different issues and aspects of what little we know of the new game and many times without none argumentative value. Actually this behavior has become quite common in many threads of this forum, and frankly it started to get pretty annoying.

The way i see it that most people are just fed upp with stacking and they want a change after 20 years of stacking. So they are not saying that 1upt is flawless system, but they are defending Firaxis decision for a change against a handful of "hardcore stackers" who just want to figure out new ways how we could continue the "best defender always defends" syndrome.


1upt civ game will have its flaws but as they say "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress". We allready know the flaws of stacking, why not try something else instead for a change? I dont have any reason not to, do you?


EDIT: So because we allready know the bad things about stacking, there is plenty of argumental value against it. But what we DONT yet have is argumental value against civ game with 1upt. And yes, i know we dont have any real argumental value for the good things in civ with 1upt, but the bad things that we allready know about stacking justifies the change.

 

[Ricci]

ZoC would have been pretty useless in Civ4, where you could put an entire army in one tile AND that army had typically the speed of the slowest unit, i.e. one tile per turn. Unless ZoC would have been that you couldn't move a stack from one ZoC tile to another ZoC tile at all.

Exactly as they worked in Civ. Why do you bother to post when you already know the deal?

 

[Calouste]

Exactly as they worked in Civ. Why do you bother to post when you already know the deal?

You say: "No, [ZocC] wouldn't be useless at all. I am not surprised that you stated this as valid without providing any argumentation because there simply isn't" and "It will be certainly nice to see ZoC working in CIV IV," arguments which I counter by showing that with a SoD and 1 tile per turn for most units for most of the game, ZoC would have had a neglegible effect in Civ4, as it would have worked exactly the same way the game works now.

 

[Ricci]

1upt civ game will have its flaws but as they say "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress". We allready know the flaws of stacking, why not try something else instead for a change? I dont have any reason not to, do you?

Amongst some things I would already don't want to see in CIV V 1UPT is not. It will be interesting to try this new thing, I agree. We do have some arguments of disadvantages about 1UPT but they are of course very speculative without the game been played and they don't worry me much.

Still, allow me to answer you these two azian:

1upt is more logical than stacking or limited stacking because in 1upt system you dont have to do a ton of work to properly occupy a hex AND you dont never ever have to manage what kind of mix of units it is holding.

This is quite true, however we will still need to arrange a series of units throughout the terrain to properly occupy it and manage all of these. Don't know if this is going to be a ton of work, more or less.

Also the stack combat is horrifying, your always up against the best possible defender and there is NO WAY you can get your hands on the enemys weakest (perhaps ranged?) units in that hex but by ramming a ton of units against the best defender. You say its combined arms system and i say its brainless and frustrating system.

I'll give you two examples in which you can access siege for instance, being the so called weak units of an enemy stack.
- Having units specially promoted so that say catapults become the strongest defenders of the stack; e.g spearmen with charge against a stack of just mounted and catapults (which happens to be quite popular with some AIs). This together with variations I have used a lot, sometimes you require to lose a couple of units to free the rival stack's main strength against your promotions and bonuses.
- Flanking damage. Having flanking II promoted HAs, Camel archers or Curassiers is very effective indeed.


All in all, I can understand and accept that many people are frustrated, tired or simply not fond of stacking units in a game. Neither is my case. Nor anything they say about stacking should be wright or be valid!!
Lets embrace 1UPT soon enough and reunite in these same forums my friend...

 

[Ricci]

You say: "No, [ZocC] wouldn't be useless at all. I am not surprised that you stated this as valid without providing any argumentation because there simply isn't" and "It will be certainly nice to see ZoC working in CIV IV," arguments which I counter by showing that with a SoD and 1 tile per turn for most units for most of the game, ZoC would have had a neglegible effect in Civ4, as it would have worked exactly the same way the game works now.

But in the next sentence you provided the answer which invalidates your counter argument. And of course this was the ZoC I was thinking of. Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself completely clear when I said that ZoC worked this way in Civ (refering to Civ I the original game, where units couldn't move at all towards a "controlled" tile, though unoccupied).

 

[Calouste]

But in the next sentence you provided the answer which invalidates your counter argument. And of course this was the ZoC I was thinking of. Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself completely clear when I said that ZoC worked this way in Civ (refering to Civ I the original game, where units couldn't move at all towards a "controlled" tile, though unoccupied).

Was that the case in Civ1? Too far back in the mists of time for me to remember those kind of details, even though I probably played that more than any Civ version since (life has moved on ). I'm not sure if that would have worked as well in Civ4, as I remember (but see above) that you typically used far less units in Civ1 than in Civ4.

 

[NKVD]

exactly azian , i never really understood the logic behind always getting against the best defender...

What i miss though are the Army of Civ 3. A bit like limited stacking but you couldnt move units out or upgrade them. I think those were the most ''realistic'' combats in all civ version.

another thing i dont understand is why couldnt civ 4 just take all the attacker and simulate one big attack instead of going one attacker at the time. Let's say 5 axemen against 3 archers and 1 chariot. 3 axemen attack each an archer so even if one is super upgraded he wont defend 2 times. and 2 axemen against one single chariot. it would result in a battle with not necessary a winner even if one side has 3 times the units of the other.

 

[Ricci]

Was that the case in Civ1? Too far back in the mists of time for me to remember those kind of details, even though I probably played that more than any Civ version since (life has moved on ). I'm not sure if that would have worked as well in Civ4, as I remember (but see above) that you typically used far less units in Civ1 than in Civ4.

Haha, I couldn't help notice that Civ I ironclad image you have in your profile. I can just assume you know it and spent hard hours with it. I recall it even had a unit limit of a short integer (128) and units simply disappear when your production exceded the limit.. hahah!! Only to reappear again randomly when your amount of units went down again.

 

[Calouste]

Haha, I couldn't help notice that Civ I ironclad image you have in your profile. I can just assume you know it and spent hard hours with it. I recall it even had a unit limit of a short integer (128) and units simply disappear when your production exceded the limit.. hahah!! Only to reappear again randomly when your amount of units went down again.

The Ironclad is a tribute to my favorite Gunboat Diplomacy tactic in Civ1. They were available on the beeline to Railroad, the essential tech in Civ1. They were faster than any land units and had a far higher attack value than the defense of most land units and could fire inland while being invulnerable to counter attacks. So you could just build a few, send them around the coast and, with diplomacy basically non-existant in Civ1, have them shoot at anything that moves until you run into the naval equivalent of

 

[Commander Bello]

The way i see it that most people are just fed upp with stacking and they want a change after 20 years of stacking. So they are not saying that 1upt is flawless system, but they are defending Firaxis decision for a change against a handful of "hardcore stackers" who just want to figure out new ways how we could continue the "best defender always defends" syndrome.

You have brought this "argument" before already, as I remember and it renders your whole "argumentation" obsolete.
"The best defender always defends" is not a consequence of stacking, it is a consequence of the design of Civ4.

There are quite some other ways to deal with stacks. Just have a look at the combat system of CtP II, which actually was quite convincing.
Or think about a system in which each single unit would contribute to the combined power of the stack, so that finally stacks would fight against each other and not the single units one after the other.

But no, for you the way it was handled in Civ4 seems to have been dictated by natural law. 'nuff said.

 

[aziantuntija]

You have brought this "argument" before already, as I remember and it renders your whole "argumentation" obsolete.

I must say that my english could be better, but i really do not understand what are you trying to say with that. Seems like some fancy way of saying in english that i would be somehow wrong and you would have somehow proved me wrong, wich we both know that it hasnt happened.

There are quite some other ways to deal with stacks. Just have a look at the combat system of CtP II, which actually was quite convincing.

Im sorry im not really a gamer myself (exept civ) and i do not even know what is CtP II and i must say that i dont really care to study.

Or think about a system in which each single unit would contribute to the combined power of the stack, so that finally stacks would fight against each other and not the single units one after the other.

Sound better but if i understand it correctly, to me that still sounds like just a complicated 1upt and civ is much more than just a combat game. So what is wrong with 1upt + promotions? To me it sound like there is no way of pleasing you unless you see multiple units inside a hex I just dont understand how someone can be so turned on about stacking

 

[Commander Bello]

(...) and i must say that i dont really care to study.

That actually seems to be part of the problem.

Sound better but if i understand it correctly, to me that still sounds like just a complicated 1upt and civ is much more than just a combat game. So what is wrong with 1upt + promotions? To me it sound like there is no way of pleasing you unless you see multiple units inside a hex I just dont understand how someone can be so turned on about stacking

I know about how time consuming 1upt can be, since I play Panzer General very often (and I like it very much). As I have stated before already, a single turn in PG can easily take up to more than half an hour (talking about dealing with something like 30 to 50 units).

Since PG is all about tactical combat, there it is fine and it fits the needs of the game.

For Civ, it is very different.
The scale of maps does not fit tactical combat, since you're playing on a strategic map.
You're having a lot of other things to do as well, like organizing your production, dealing with diplomacy, improving your land and whatnotever.

In the beginning I have been enthusiastic about the 1upt for Civ5, too.
The more I think about it and the more videos I've seen, the more I tend to thinking that it is just not the right scale.

 

[Perfection]

1upt civ game will have its flaws but as they say "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress"

Who says that?

 

[brianshapiro]

Who says that?

Progress said that.

 

[brianshapiro]

You have brought this "argument" before already, as I remember and it renders your whole "argumentation" obsolete.
"The best defender always defends" is not a consequence of stacking, it is a consequence of the design of Civ4.

But it is a consequence of how generals in history would create unit formations. They put pikemen in a square around musketmen, so the best defender would always defend. The only thing that would change that is if enough pikemen were killed that they could no longer flank the musketmen, which Civ didn't model, and 1upt doesn't model either.

 

[Commander Bello]

To match the historical deployment of troops, we would have to have zoomed-in combat screens.

Actually, I would prefer such a thing, but I am fully aware of the fact that many other would not like it, as it would be time-consuming and effort.

Nevertheless, it would be fun.