Downside of 1upt

[Ricci]

Well, the number of units that your empire will have at a given time will also be reduced what with limited resources and all that so you can rest assured that a global clusterf*ck of units is less likely. You'll be concentrated more on managing a smaller (but in many ways more valuable) set of units.

I think that 1UPT has very good omens coming up. Specially because it might ease the ground for the programmers to effectively set up a truly better AI. And clearly it also eases the mayor numbers of units which appear at some stages of a CIV IV game. Personally, I always thought CIV IV lacked for a higher maintenance cost of units as tech advances; this together with a slightly higher cost in unit production as from Infantry and on might be a proper solution to the matter (for excessive numbers, but not for the poor AI).

Still, I can foresee that 1UPT, together with all of it's so claimed virtues, may bring less strategy to some aspects of the combat system, particularly due to the reduced number of units & unit capacity.

I am very fond having to manage say 20-25 units within this frontage instead of 50-60, that is certainly good. But, if the number of units is terribly reduced, the cost of opportunity (marginal cost) of risking these much smaller (but in many ways more valuable) set of units in alternative missions, diverting attacks, exploring missions, etc, might be too high to go for. Thus reducing our options in regards to unit placement and usage. Maybe I put it too complicated, hope not.

As to unit capacity is concern I fear any civ might be almost compelled to have it's army at the maximum of it's capacity (i.e given capacity at a certain point) or it will be selling itself out if it doesn't; or even having very little operational range. Again, taking away the player's (and AI) choice about the size of the army (given the capacity). Compared to CIV IV where unit capacity is very flexible, specially around some broad margins (depends on the structure of your empire but still). I can't possibly know how the game will play out here, but it will be sad if it turns out that you are always working to keep your units at theirs maximum capacity.

 

[AriochIV]

I should have said "not determined solely by overwhelming numbers," but yes.

 

[Ricci]

Ok man, no worries. I am more interested Arioch in your opinion about my next post #21. Thanks.

 

[AriochIV]

Ok man, no worries. I am more interested Arioch in your opinion about my next post #21. Thanks.

I'm also a little bit concerned that the number of units might be too restricted, but hopefully that's not the case. So far the only hard unit cap I've heard about is for units that require certain resources: we can probably assume that units requiring copper or iron or horses will be limited and you'll want to keep those capped at all times. However, "auxiliary" units like archers and club-weilding warriors (and perhaps even catapults) don't require any resources as far as I know (though they probably have significant monetary maintenance costs), so I suspect you will need to use these less-critical units as best you can to preserve your primary units. Which is relatively realistic, from a historical point of view: the heavy infantry of Roman legions and Greek hoplites were usually in the minority of the total force.

The one example I've seen from gameplay footage shows an Iron tiles providing 2 resource points, so that seems pretty tight. However, we have no idea how common these tiles are. I'm assuming that they're going to be a lot more common than in Civ IV.

edit: However, if you're going to be at the cap all the time, then you may be changing production a lot and having resources capped and uncapped a lot, and hopefully the build system will be forgiving enough that this does not turn into a nightmare. Currently in Civ IV if you're building a unit and lose access to a resource, the build is terminated and removed from queue, and you lose any hammers invested in it (iirc). That could be a serious problem if it's happening regularly.

 

[tom2050]

From the screenshots I have seen, most all of the maps look quite small IMO. It may be that there are much larger sized maps available that we have not seen, but after counting the number of cities on them, and extrapolating from that an estimate of possible max cities for that map, it looks as if 20-50 total cities give or take may be the norm for the maps. With this in mind, if you are playing against 10 civ's, that would be about 5 cities each per civ.

This holds pretty consistent with the screenshots. With 5 cities , there is no possible way you will ever have 60 units per civ, otherwise the land would become gridlocked with 1upt. To be able to keep with free-flow of units, my Guess would be that a 5 city civ would have maybe 15 units in the field; just my guess.

Civ 5 MiniMaps

From only what we can see, I am disappointed with having 5 cities. Seems 'small' to me, and is completely opposite of the founding Civilization idea of ruling a mighty massive epic nation that will stand the test of time!

-----------------

Compared to the thousands of units and hundreds of cities Civ 3 and 4 were capable of (generalized here), the tactical game better be genius to compensate for such a change to the long-running foundation that the game was built upon; that has been erased in 5.

 

[Schuesseled]

its probably the small map setting so i wouldn't worry about it.

 

[CurseUppl]

Indeed. And if maps don't get any bigger for release, someone will mod it.

 

[Aramel]

I actually prefer not having to juggle dozens of cities and hundreds of units, honestly. It all blurs together and bogs the game down. That having been said, they probably aren't going to break out the Huge maps when they are just doing a demo. So there's no reason to think that's the biggest map size.

 

[AriochIV]

Those are also not real games, but demonstrations that were probably mocked up with a map editor.

 

[tom2050]

The top minimap looks like a small map, and the others look like medium sized maps. So I would agree that the large and huge maps are probably not shown. My guess would be that a huge map may contain 150 cities possibly (or more), since the medium looks like it has about 50.

So it may not be 'out' of having to deal 1 dozen of cities . With 150-200 theoretical cities on a huge map, with all civs in play, you would have about 10+ cities to maintain, and you may have 30-50 or so units to maintain. I give that estimate in my own view that the developers don't want to cause landlock problems with having too many units. I would guess 3 to 5 units per city may be common, but it may easily be more with other things taking place (such as 1 unit able to be used in each city for defense).

I can deal with this if it is the case for epic sized maps. On the other hand, I sometimes play tiny maps just to experience the gameplay difference occasionally.

 

[Shurdus]

I would not worry too much about the size of the maps. 5 cities may sound small, but keep in mind that ancient civilizations barely had more cities that were really noteworthy. If you keep in mind that a lot of the places on the map are supposedly there and only the greatest cities are under the control of the player, then 5 cities seems fine,especially in earlier era's when large empires were logistically very hard to manage anyway.

Also I like smaller maps, the games are over faster and they drag out way less. Larger maps make me want to smack my head against the wall.

 

[Tomice]

Also I like smaller maps, the games are over faster and they drag out way less. Larger maps make me want to smack my head against the wall.

Your opinion!

No seriously, I agree and still find myself playing larger maps with 12-15 civs and 10 cities average in the lategame. I just love the way the game looks and feels then, although from a pure gameplay perspective it's a bit annoying. Paradox feelings stuff!

Concerning warfare, I have three fears:

1) The "ball of doom": Like in Warcraft 3, the fixed number of units could force you to always keep your entire army in a tight formation. Two fronts, distraction maneuvers, or a navy not involved into the current battle would immediately mean defeat.

2) The large empire autowin: In Civ4, they managed it nicely to give small, but well-developed empires a chance. If you need ressources to build troops, an early landgrab could give a massive advantage. countries like real-world Russia would be in an excellent position (many ressources, bad infrastructure).

3) The warmonger autowin: If you can't beat an agressor by pumping units with your superior economy, his experienced troops will always win. You can't outnumber him.

 

[The_J]

From the screenshots I have seen, most all of the maps look quite small IMO. It may be that there are much larger sized maps available that we have not seen, but after counting the number of cities on them[...]

You assume, that you can see all cities on the minimap.
This could be wrong. If you look at the minimap of a gigantic Civ4 map, you will not see all cities. -> on the minimaps you show us there could be a lot more cities.
Could. I don't say there are, but there could be more.

 

[Frasco]

My worry: Having an ally AI messing up with my strategy (ie. occupying the spaces I intended or leaving empty those I needed him to stay in). That's a BIG issue for me.

 

[12agnar0k]

Realistically you wouldnt be showing a huge/marathon demo... those games can last for many many hours of gameplay. So these Demo's probably have everything on "normal" so they can show more.

 

[Tomice]

My worry: Having an ally AI messing up with my strategy (ie. occupying the spaces I intended or leaving empty those I needed him to stay in). That's a BIG issue for me.

Good Point. I'm very curious already about the general AI quality...

 

[tom2050]

You assume, that you can see all cities on the minimap.
This could be wrong. If you look at the minimap of a gigantic Civ4 map, you will not see all cities. -> on the minimaps you show us there could be a lot more cities.
Could. I don't say there are, but there could be more.

Are you implying that it could possibly be a Scrolling Minimap???



That would have to be the best thing ever if they implemented that!

 

[Wezqu]

Are you implying that it could possibly be a Scrolling Minimap???



That would have to be the best thing ever if they implemented that!

I think he is saying that when you start a game you don't see anything else than what you start troops show you. Then when you explore place the minimap grows showing the new parts. So how do we know if the minimap is even fullsize yet.

 

[The_J]

Are you implying that it could possibly be a Scrolling Minimap???

No, i don't imply that .

On a gigantic Civ4 map, you can sure see the whole landmass. But not every city is marked there as a white dot, only the bigger (?, not sure) ones are represented.
That could also here be the case.

Oh, and Wezqu .

 

[Ddude97]

I think he is saying that when you start a game you don't see anything else than what you start troops show you. Then when you explore place the minimap grows showing the new parts. So how do we know if the minimap is even fullsize yet.

Isn't this already in place with civ 4?
So wouldn't they keep this for civ 5 (Can't think of a better idea)

@The_J: I think you're right not all cities are shown on huge maps, though I never noticed