Downside of 1upt

[Thyrwyn]

Greg has confirmed that the largest maps support 23 civs; and that there are typically more City States than civs.

Elizabeth said that "huge maps are really huge".

There is nothing to suggest that the game will not be balanced for large maps. As for the domination victory - we know next to nothing about the specific implementation other than the vague statement that (paraphrasing) "you only have to conquer all the other capitals". This could mean that the winning civ has to have conquered a capital from every other civ, or it could mean that once a civ loses its capital, it counts as "conquered" for any other civ pursuing a domination victory.

We don't know what happens to a civ that loses its capital - except that they are not eliminated. We also don't know if you will be able to move/rebuild your capital.

1upt does not make it easier to "blitz" capitals. Even if the capital is on the coast, you will only be able to land one unit/turn in each unoccupied coastal tile. and they have already stated that the AI will get very antsy about troop buildups along their borders. In order to blitz their capital you will need a fleet that covers 1 sea tile for each and every unit you want to land - and every enemy ship in the area will block your way. The AI does not need to be programmed to obsess over their capital - they just need to be programmed to respond to troop deployments - which firaxis has already indicated is the case..

 

[tom2050]

Well, if it's true that units are insanely expensive, that means it will take how many turns to build a warrior? 50? It must be that or more, because if you could build a unit every 25 turns, between 5 cities you would pump out a unit every 5 turns. This could quickly become a large army.

Obviously time will be spent building improvements also. Is it fun watching a unit being built for 50 to 75 turns? All done to keep unit counts low? No it's not at all. It's more fun to sleep or watch paint dry.

I guess it's good that once the unit is built, it has an incredibly difficult time of dying. This means you will probably keep your units throughout the whole game, as they have stated in an interview.

This is another definite case of gameplay > realism. The gameplay aspect of it is questionable though because normal gameplay usually means getting a unit somewhat quickly so the game doesn't 'bog down'.

I suppose it's possible that units are cheaper and that there is a Unit Cap. Once you hit the cap, no more units for you.

 

[Commander Bello]

Greg has confirmed that the largest maps support 23 civs; and that there are typically more City States than civs.

Elizabeth said that "huge maps are really huge".

There is nothing to suggest that the game will not be balanced for large maps.

Except experience from former versions.
One of the very first modifications for Civ4 actually was about bigger maps.

Yet, game design doesn't support it very well.
Civ4 was completely and solely designed for small maps, which the official "huge" blush size being the maximum. They even hardcoded number of civilizations and display of yields, which is completely insane except if you want to keep numbers and sizes low.

Let's see what Civ5 will offer in this area. I do have my doubts that it will support big maps well.

 

[mattcrwi]

I suppose it's possible that units are cheaper and that there is a Unit Cap. Once you hit the cap, no more units for you.

The resource cap is already confirmed. You can't build infinite tanks without infinite steel and Oil/Uranium. It looks to me like a big part of Civ V will be fighting over resources. More-so than is was in Civ IV.

The second cap, which won't be a hard cap, is that units cost upkeep. If your money is running negative that is not sustainable and you may end up culling some of your army. We don't know much about this one but I would imagine that they would work out the numbers so the upkeep costs are relative to your empire size.

 

[12agnar0k]

We have already stated many times, resources will be limited. So units will cap as resources will run out, it has also been recently confirmed, some buildings will require resources too, the factory will take up one unit of coal. So unless you plan to have 0 strategic buildings you will again further limit your already limited units.

Suffice to say, this Civ will emphasise so much more, the importance of "gotta catch em all" on the resources. War's may be fought over an important resource that is on a neighbouring city. Certainly in the late game, for very important resources like oil which can be game winners.

 

[Earthling]

1upt does not make it easier to "blitz" capitals. Even if the capital is on the coast, you will only be able to land one unit/turn in each unoccupied coastal tile. and they have already stated that the AI will get very antsy about troop buildups along their borders.

Nobody ever said this had to be that way, it is a complete strawman. This only has to do with the Domination victory condition, which requires players to blitz capitals. I actually may think the opposite is true - the new system may in fact make it about impossible to ever invade another nation overseas. But the incentive to blitz capitals is still there.

 

[YoHo]

AS has been pointed out on this page, All we've heard suggests that production and resources are what will put a clamp down on units. So I'd expect build times to remain reasonable. It's just that you won't be able to build as many units.

As for huge map sizes, Has anybody thought about just how unrealistic a total domination victory and such massive armies are?
In the real world, if you had the combined Armies of China and Russia, with the US Navy and the combined Air Force of US and Russia, you still wouldn't have enough of an army to completely rule the world. It is beyond unrealistic. 1upt is a mechanism that favors a realistic size of force compared to the real world. Going into a total war scenario should be difficult and require specific compromises in the game.
Also, one advantage of Cities now defending themselves is that in early game, you aren't devoting turns to building defensive units to place in the city. That's a significant reduction in total number of units. You don't have to have at least 1 if not more units defending every city out there.

So you can devote all or most of your resources to maneuvering armies.

So that will keep total unit count down as well.

I think there is no doubt that this is a different direction for players with a military bent in Civ, not just 1upt in isolation, but the entire concept of how this will work.

I for one, as a player that prefers cultural and time victories may actually be more interested in the military side of the game now as I don't need to devote so much of my production to building massive armies.

 

[tom2050]

The resource cap is already confirmed. You can't build infinite tanks without infinite steel and Oil/Uranium. It looks to me like a big part of Civ V will be fighting over resources. More-so than is was in Civ IV.

The second cap, which won't be a hard cap, is that units cost upkeep. If your money is running negative that is not sustainable and you may end up culling some of your army. We don't know much about this one but I would imagine that they would work out the numbers so the upkeep costs are relative to your empire size.

We have already stated many times, resources will be limited. So units will cap as resources will run out, it has also been recently confirmed, some buildings will require resources too, the factory will take up one unit of coal. So unless you plan to have 0 strategic buildings you will again further limit your already limited units.

Suffice to say, this Civ will emphasise so much more, the importance of "gotta catch em all" on the resources. War's may be fought over an important resource that is on a neighbouring city. Certainly in the late game, for very important resources like oil which can be game winners.

The resource cap is not a unit cap, first of all. The resource cap is a cap on building special units that require the resource. If you don't have that resource, you can still build lesser units. If you lose the resource, the special units you have may require more maintenance or something.

* If you claim units are cheap to produce, this means there would have to be a hard cap in the game, otherwise you could landlock yourself by building hordes of units.

Units cannot be cheap, because they already stated that units will not be cheap. I doubt a hardcode cap is in place, but a variable absolute cap may be in place depending on civilization size, etc.

* If they have it so economic penalties of units is used to keep unit count down, then this means your economic gold production is probably going to suck for most of the game, or units will be extremely expensive in maintenance.

Having a single unit cost you such an outrageous amount of possible maintance to keep unit numbers so low is a bit frustrating. This would be another example of taking the gameplay > realism to the outermost fringes of ridiculousness.

Civ 5 is no different in the importance of resources as Civ 4 or even 3. Nothing new at all in that area; 0% new.

 

[YoHo]

What units in the game don't require a resource though?

 

[12agnar0k]

The resource cap is not a unit cap, first of all. The resource cap is a cap on building special units that require the resource. If you don't have that resource, you can still build lesser units. If you lose the resource, the special units you have may require more maintenance or something.

Civ 5 is no different in the importance of resources as Civ 4 or even 3. Nothing new at all in that area; 0% new.

The resource cap is a unit cap because the units, (the good ones anyway) will require a resource, your right that any unit that doesnt require resources will only be limited to maintanence, but I think that will still lead to less units than in civ4.

So you don't think that having limited resources which can only provide a certain number of limited "special" units or buildings as you call them, won't make resources more important to capture... okay, you may go now and live peacefully in delusional bliss.

 

[tom2050]

The resource cap is a unit cap because the units, (the good ones anyway) will require a resource, your right that any unit that doesnt require resources will only be limited to maintanence, but I think that will still lead to less units than in civ4.

So you don't think that having limited resources which can only provide a certain number of limited "special" units or buildings as you call them, won't make resources more important to capture... okay, you may go now and live peacefully in delusional bliss.

It's nothing new to Civ 5. Same was the case in 3 and 4. Certain units require certain resources. I don't think it's something that can be argued about... play 3 or 4 and see for yourself.

The limit of 1 (or w/e the num is) unit per resource is a new cap.. but the importance of resources has always been there.

 

[bjbrains]

It's nothing new to Civ 5. Same was the case in 3 and 4. Certain units require certain resources. I don't think it's something that can be argued about... play 3 or 4 and see for yourself.

The limit of 1 (or w/e the num is) unit per resource is a new cap.. but the importance of resources has always been there.

You again miss his point. Because there is a *cap* on how many units you can build of that type, and more resources give you access to more units of that type, then multiple sources become relevant. Having an extra iron was useless (unless you traded it) in previous civs. In civ 5, it'll allow you to build more of the units that depend on it.

 

[bjbrains]

What units in the game don't require a resource though?

Based on what I can guess/estimate:
Spearmen (come before iron), Pikemen (tooltip says nothing about needing iron), archery units/siege units (at least before the industrial era). Also gunpowder infantry (no sign that saltpeter exists).

 

[tom2050]

You again miss his point. Because there is a *cap* on how many units you can build of that type, and more resources give you access to more units of that type, then multiple sources become relevant. Having an extra iron was useless (unless you traded it) in previous civs. In civ 5, it'll allow you to build more of the units that depend on it.

So because of this you say I miss the point because you are saying that the importance of resources has increased in Civ 5?

So older Civ games resource importance is lower than Civ 5's resource importance? I seriously hope this is not what you are trying to convey here. Oh Dear....

Whereas I think resources have always had a major importance?

I could say that in other Civ games, if you had no iron to build any swordsman at all, you will likely lose if you get into a land war against someone with iron. Therefore, resources are more important there?

I agree resources are important; and they always have been. I'm not sure what else I should respond with.

Perhaps give me a multiple choice and I'll pick a letter that seems most appropriate

 

[bjbrains]

How about this Tom:
Resources have always been important in Civ. However, in Civ 5, access to 'more' of the same resource has a direct impact on your ability to build important units. This means that while presence/absence is still essential, fighting wars over *more* of a resource is now probable. See the difference?

Another note I forgot to add that is definitely relevant: Units are definitely more expensive in production, and apparently in maintenance (no exact numbers on the upkeep though). For example, the civ 5 pikeman is 100 hammers, even though it appears a bit earlier in the tech tree at civil service.

 

[PieceOfMind]

In civ4 there was rarely any incentive to obtain more than one copy of a resource. The only benefit was if you could trade it away or if you wanted redundancy as a means of security. (Oh, and corporations too, but even then that was only for a few special types of resource - especially fish with Sid's Sushi)

Finite resources is definitely a theme of request that I have seen numerous times in the past with civ4.

I think it will be an interesting change on the whole. As some have already noted, wars over oil may actually be more interesting than they were in civ4.

 

[Calouste]

In civ4 there was rarely any incentive to obtain more than one copy of a resource. The only benefit was if you could trade it away or if you wanted redundancy as a means of security. (Oh, and corporations too, but even then that was only for a few special types of resource - especially fish with Sid's Sushi)

Finite resources is definitely a theme of request that I have seen numerous times in the past with civ4.

I think it will be an interesting change on the whole. As some have already noted, wars over oil may actually be more interesting than they were in civ4.

I'd still be interested to see if you can have wars with the sole purpose of capturing hexes (with resources and/or strategically useful), not cities. Just put a unit on an enemy hex for a turn or two ad you have captured it, and then you can negotiate peace. Those kind of wars have happened throughout history, even until fairly recently

 

[12agnar0k]

It's nothing new to Civ 5. Same was the case in 3 and 4. Certain units require certain resources. I don't think it's something that can be argued about... play 3 or 4 and see for yourself.

The limit of 1 (or w/e the num is) unit per resource is a new cap.. but the importance of resources has always been there.

Okay perhaps I should again be forced into to be more specific, I just got told off for ignoring the differentiation of commerce & gold, now I am being told off for ignoring the difference between "importance of resource's." and "importance of more than 1 resource" even though I could argue I implied this with the plural "resource's" which can mean "more than 1 resource of the same type" as well as what you percieved me to say which was "obtaining a singular resource of every type".

So I will calirfy shall I, Thier is no such thing as "spare" resources in Civ5, if you have 1 Iron you will still want to gain more Iron resources, so even if you have 5 Iron resources, and your enemy has 5 Iron resources too, a particular Iron resource close to your borders belonging to an enemy, will certainly be more important to capture than it was ever previously.

I will give another example to further my point, Oil, is a very important late game resource, it allows you to build and use Destroyers/Battleships for example. In Civ4 an earlier unit, the inefficeint "Iron Clad" has a useful strategy described which was that you could sit it on an enemies Ocean Oil Tile, and that enemy would have no easy way to dispose of your Iron Clad because they wouldn't have Oil powered ships, nor would they ever have if this was thier only source of Oil. Eventually when you used an Oil of your own you could but destroyers on the tile and that Civ would severly be hampered due to not having anything better than an Iron Clad. This shows the importance of "preventing another Civ from obtaining 1 singular occurance of a type of resource", in Civ5, this will still exist, but not just this, even if they have a land based Oil source, placing naval units on thier Coastal Oil sources will severly limit the number of Oil based units they can build compared to if you let them have multiple sources of Oil, this prevention will lead to your dominance of late game seas even more than before in Civ4, because now not only is "complete prevention of enemies obtaining oil" important, but also preventing them from gaining additional sources of Oil.

 

[12agnar0k]

I'd still be interested to see if you can have wars with the sole purpose of capturing hexes (with resources and/or strategically useful), not cities. Just put a unit on an enemy hex for a turn or two ad you have captured it, and then you can negotiate peace. Those kind of wars have happened throughout history, even until fairly recently

This is speculatory, thier is no evidence that this is in the game, infact with game demos we can see units moved onto enemy territory and nothing happening to the tile.
So although it is an interesting feature, it doesn't look possible.

An alternative which may be possible, depending how it works, is if you border an enemy city and your 3 hex distance around your city includes tiles that currently belond to an enemy, maybe you will be able to use the "buy hex" feature to buy it off the enemy. Or perhaps you will simply have to let the automatic cultural development of your city border grab the tile in time.

 

[mattcrwi]

in the new post the German magazine GameStar confirms that in play testing late games often boils down into wars for oil. Clearly strategic resources are of much more importance. From the other thread:

- Every strategic resource gives a certain amount of supply for a limited number of units (not new) and buildings (new for me).

For example, a coal mine gives three units of coal and with these resources exactly three factories can be built. The results of this limitation were massive wars for oil in the later phases of the testgames.

If someone has 2 oils tiles that might mean 2 battle ship and 4 tanks. If their rival has 4 oil tiles that would me something like 4 battle ships and 8 tanks. (I'm assuming 3 units per resource). The empire with the most resources has the upper hand hence the wars over oil late game.