The mechanics still work with huge maps, as long as the designers make sure it scales properly. Choke points might be 3 spaces wide rather than 1, but if the other fronts are also increasing by a factor of 3, and the number of units on the table has increased by a factor of 3 or more, it's still a very valuable choke point. It just requires more units to clog.
The reason I like huge maps isn't the "epic empire" feel. Instead, it's that in small games, one front could be the whole war and it collapsing will lose you the game. In a medium or large game, there's multiple areas, and while one could be lost, another could be won, leading to a much more dynamic game with more give and take. There will always be a big map for the junkies out there.
The mechanic that changes the most from small to big maps is the importance of individual cities. On small maps, losing one city is game changing because your empire only has 3-6. On big maps some cities feel more like wartime outposts that only serve to increase your culture border and have walls, which is a really really cool feeling in a war. Now if only the AI was just as smart and created specialized cities like that!
I'd like to try to respond kindly again to a couple of things.
First, just some general thoughts about huge maps. Because I've said this before or anyway it's still true - I really love huge maps and am a big fan.
Now, I'm not trying to say civ 5 won't even have a possibility of bigger maps, but what is true, is that the game balance is bound to change, and it certainly is NOT being balanced around larger maps. In civ 4 there are even significant differences - there's actually sizable contingents of people who hate anything longer than normal speed which makes larger maps about impossible but I'd not go there. However, there are clearly many things changed on larger maps anyway that make for huge changes in the relative strengths of various civilizations and strategies - barbarians, cost of technology research, expansion (in civ 4, think of the effects of creative/imperialistic).
So when we look at civ 5, what I am seeing is a ton of mechanics that simply wouldn't make sense on a map with a couple hundred cities. Would we expect a huge map to fill up with like 50 city-states - surely that is crazy and would be annoying. Barbarians are at least far more omnipresent and threatening, or that's what we'd expect - but we don't really know if this actually is going to scale well on civ 5's map sizes and game speeds. Most certainly expansion, getting more tiles and cities and so on will be at the same rate in the early game regardless of map size, and it's hard to adjust other factors to account for that (again, civ 4 as an example changes tech and maintenance costs, but these really do not actually scale the best). And when we look at diplomacy - well, tech trading alone and some factors like religions had MASSIVE effects in civ 4, and I don't know what will take the place of important things in civ 5 in a game that actually has a lot of civilizations - a whole other continent with its own internal politics is different from a standard map "I have two neighbors and then a couple more civs just a little further away"
Then, as has already been pointed out - the mechanics which focus on "capital cities" - many of the social policies, the domination and cultural victory conditions changed, and more, just drastically don't scale to larger gameworlds.
And of course, I don't see a way around the fact that on a huge map combat will be more tedious in civ 5. Having to move 50 or 100 or more units, on a one-unit-per-tile basis, is just not something I think most people would relish, and certainly would be far more time consuming that civ 4 or previous versions. (I say again and again that 1upt is clearly better designed and realized for smaller maps but people keep disagreeing so I'm not going to try again here)
I hope things work out, but really - I think we're waiting for proof that civ 5 will work on larger/different map sizes, there is already sufficient reason to discuss the other way around.
I can understand that people don't want civ to become a war game. But I honestly can't understand how people could say that stacks offer more strategic options than 1upt would offer
I wanted to answer this again, because this is the core point of the most important and best argument I can make here. And I actually don't see a lot of other people suggesting this, however I've been trying to get the point across every time.
In my opinion, on the same level/scale of play, 1 unit per tile definitely will result in more complex and tactical combat. Moving big stacks around is simpler, not as tactical. I agree with that, I accept all of that - in short, that is NOT the problem with 1upt.
The reason 1upt could be BAD (!!!!!) is because it detracts from the non-combat aspects of the rest of the game. In my opinion, combat in civilization should strive as much as possible to NOT depend on minutae of tactical situations. Going to and fighting a war, as a strategic decision - as in, what do you do with the economy, how do you get other civs to ally, what do you aim to get out of the war - that should be the important part. The more important it becomes to micromanage and move units around chokepoints, pull off various maneuvers to trick the AI and so on, the less important the other affects of war will be. Lastly and most simply of course, I still adamantly believe the AI will not be something miraculous that will make it exceptionally fun to wage war against an AI you should be able to crush in tactics anyway.
Like I said, I don't know if 1upt is a better mechanism logically or not, but I somehow doubt that the vast majority of users get their jollys from 10 minute turns waiting for hundreds of units in SoD to make their moves.
In fact, I'd say the single biggest flaw with Civ4 is turn length being so long due to this. It drives you crazy and it is part of what makes the late game such a pain.
Edit: also wanted to mention this, because it annoys me to no end. So look:
The total number of units to move around has about *nothing to do with one-unit-per-tile* This is entirely a result of other aspects of the game - the cost of units and the economy of your empire, and of course importantly, the size of the maps you are playing on. I just can't stand comflating things any more, when
-half the people arguing 1upt are assuming that maps will be smaller, and assuming things about economies or technology or diplomacy or whatever that makes for small-scale, tactical combat (which I agree, we will see, but this is not all because of just 1upt)
-The other half are calling me crazy for saying it is balanced for smaller maps or the other reasons why the 1upt system will encourage certain setups and gameplay.
I know they are not the same people, people are not necessarily contradicting themselves, but we can't have it both ways. And imo, the right decision is to consider 1upt on its own, not make it entirely related to maps or unit upkeep or so on. Because, civilization 4 can and has been modded in ways that certainly adjust or eliminate the problem of "too many units" but it doesn't require getting rid of stacks, so the analogy should hold for civilization 5. What we should really hope for is that 1 unit per tile still works on different scales and to different styles of gameplay, without having to assume small scale/tactical wars with neighboring civs or something as we seen in most examples right now.
