Downside of 1upt

[KaiserJohan]

I really hope they implement some sort of "group-move", in any form, because I don't want to spend hours just moving my 10ish unit army a few tiles in ordered formation. Seriously they got to do something about it, or I am going 100% peacefull

 

[Ricci]

Someone mentioned units being land-locked, I believe I red that there will be a swap function for units in adjacent hexes, reasonable enough. Fear vanished.

We also know that:
- Battles should generally take place rurally (i.e within the surrounding hexes of a city), were formations/units placement is crucial, and defending in a city will be a measure of last resort (realistic enough).
- A City's range of working hexes goes 3 tiles now.
- Units have a base movement of 2 instead of one.
- There is ranged bombardment at least two hexes away.

These are all solid indicators that maps will be in fact pretty much larger too those from CIV IV. Not to include more cities & units, but to effectively accommodate all these features. All in all this seems way more realistic to have bigger maps and less concentration of cities.
Have to admit I am a bit inconclusive towards this new game, having much improved and also many things (entire systems) completely screwed up.

 

[AriochIV]

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.

The units of a friendly civ definitely have the potential to get in the way, but at least you will have the option to move "through" them (all units having a move of at least 2). But if you're expecting an AI ally to magically know that you want him to defend certain hexes and act accordingly, you're going to be disappointed.

Someone mentioned units being land-locked, I believe I red that there will be a swap function for units in adjacent hexes, reasonable enough. Fear vanished.

You can swap your own units, but this won't help if a friendly civ's units are blocking you. There's no way they will allow you to move units that aren't yours (nor should they... I would be enraged if another civ swapped my units around). You should be able to move through a single allied unit, but if there are more, logjams may still result. I can see human players deliberately using double-ranks of units to bar passage to "friendly" units.

These are all solid indicators that maps will be in fact pretty much larger too those from CIV IV.

I'm not sure this is the case; the desire may be to increase the rate of movement overall, which I think is a good thing, because it shouldn't take decades just to move a unit from one city to another. So far tiles seem to be proportionally larger than in Civ IV, and the land masses we've seen have relatively fewer tiles. Although the maximum city radius is 3 tiles, it only expands one tile at a time, and in an irregular fashion, so putting cities 6 tiles from each other may not make sense. A full 3-tile radius is 37 tiles (including the city tile)! Most cities will probably never be able to fill out this full radius, and even ones that can, perhaps not until the late game. The few on-screen examples we have show cities relatively close to each other, at about the same distance as in a typical Civ IV game.

 

[12agnar0k]

@Kaiser, group move isnt really a feasible option in 1UpT, as your formation you wish to move your troops in may very well vary, you may want to keep a +50% forest defence unit in forests for example, which wouldnt be the case if you moved the entire line all at once.

@Ricci, if someone mentioned units being land locked they were mistaken, units will be able to simply "transform" into a transport vessel when moving onto water terrain, however this will consume the rest of thier movement points, or a whole turn or w,e.

 

[travlake]

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.

I played WC3, know what you are talking about, and am guessing it will -not- be a problem in ciV.

This happened in WC3 because the cost per unit was not a smooth function of the number of units. When you jumped past 50 food, you harvested only 7 per trip instead of 10, a discrete jump in costs that made people hover at 50 until they had a good reason to jump.

However, to my knowledge and based on the approach firaxis has taken in other aspects of the game, I think per unit costs will be a smooth increasing function of the number of units.

If you think about it, optimizing with a discontinuous cost function often results in corner solutions (it is optimal to stay at 50 food for a while), whereas optimizing with a continuous cost function yields interior solutions (the exact size of optimal army depends on the value of available objectives.. exactly what you are looking for I think).

To be specific, I think we'll have, and correct me if I'm wrong:
1) A hard cap on a the number of a specific kind of unit (e.g. swordsman) per resource controlled (e.g. iron).
2) Some as-yet unknown cost of making new units that prevents huge armies. My guess: a per unit maintenance cost that is an increasing function of the number of units you have. The first few may be free (as in cIV), the next few may cost 1gpt (as in cIV), but after a while each new unit may cost 2gpt, then 3gpt, etc (similar to how each new city in cIV costs more than the previous one).

Together these things make an fairly smooth increasing cost of each new unit I was talking about. Sure you can reach a point where you can't make more swordsmen, but you can always make more archers or catapults.. it will just become really expensive to do so eventually.

Finally, I agree it will probably be optimal to have most (90%) of your army on the front, and the rest holding down key resources or perhaps in reserve in case of a sneak attack from another direction. Sounds about like how real armies were deployed, its not like we had a big garrison in chicago during WW2.

---
tl;dr = ciV not like WC3 because there are smooth costs instead hard food caps.

 

[Jamuka]

1upt discourage massing troops ? Because if I going to take the world by brute force like the way we do in Civ IV, for example a grand army of 40 rifles and 20 trebs/cannons. So I need a whopping 60+ tiles for my force ??? lolz.
or how an AI Monty attack us with 50+ outdated units now ? It will be a mess and I dont think AI can handle it!
Your thought ?

This sounds like a good thing to me.

 

[Tomice]

@ travlake:

Interesting thoughts!

I never thought about the exact mechanic they will limit non-ressource units with. Exponentially increasing upkeep seems like a very viable concept. The alternative would be a hard cap, based on your population or something similar - but your idea sounds better.

There is also the possibility that EVERY unit needs a ressource, but this would seem artificial and punish unlucky civs even further -> Not likely.


A bit offtopic, I've only seen iron and horses as strategic ressources so far. Apart from other ores, what could be other ressources that limit unit production in the early game?
Otherwise, before steam power there would basically be "heavy" units needing copper/iron, and light units (and cavalry versions of either)

 

[Wezqu]

I would think they will limit the units by population as its quite realistic way of doing it. I also think that the population number does also prevents building resource units if the limit set by population has been reached.

 

[tom2050]

The units of a friendly civ definitely have the potential to get in the way, but at least you will have the option to move "through" them (all units having a move of at least 2). But if you're expecting an AI ally to magically know that you want him to defend certain hexes and act accordingly, you're going to be disappointed.

That would be an incredible and probably easy piece for them to implement. When you sign a pact of alliance, you can work with your allies and ask them to guard a hex or row or hexes. They can do the same. It could count for or against your reputation if you do this or not (or try to).

Might be difficult to program for AI, but none-the-less would be a nice military-diplomatic feature.

 

[12agnar0k]

I'm sure that you will be able to move through allies, like you can move through your own troops, not sure if you will be able to remove through neutral parties, you could do it in civ4 but not in civ3, we will see exactly how movement is restricted.

 

[Schuesseled]

i'd like to see a, move this bloomin unit or we go to war, diplo option.

 

[Calouste]

@ travlake:

Interesting thoughts!

I never thought about the exact mechanic they will limit non-ressource units with. Exponentially increasing upkeep seems like a very viable concept. The alternative would be a hard cap, based on your population or something similar - but your idea sounds better.

There is also the possibility that EVERY unit needs a ressource, but this would seem artificial and punish unlucky civs even further -> Not likely.


A bit offtopic, I've only seen iron and horses as strategic ressources so far. Apart from other ores, what could be other ressources that limit unit production in the early game?
Otherwise, before steam power there would basically be "heavy" units needing copper/iron, and light units (and cavalry versions of either)

If they balance units properly I don't think there is a real need to cap non-resource units. It would just be too ineffective or expensive to wage war, at least offensive war, with only one or two unit types. For example, you could spam archer units, but they would be so vulnerable in the open to horsemen if they don't have spearmen to protect them that you would lose too many of them to effectively wage war. Archers fortified on hills, in cities and behind rivers would still make for a good defense though.

 

[Churchdown Yank]

I would think they will limit the units by population as its quite realistic way of doing it. I also think that the population number does also prevents building resource units if the limit set by population has been reached.

I hope number of units is not directly tied to population. For me, this links together two separate tactics that I might want to balance and pursue independently. If you start in a food poor location you want the ability to build a sufficient force to rush a nearby neighbour.

The resource limit on certain units is interesting. An increasing (perhaps exponentially) cost for large armies would be familiar - linking military and economy. But if you add another link to population I think it's just too many constraints.

Civ for me is about the choices to expand or not vs. war or not vs. develop tiles or not and those should be linked but not to the extent where you must have a strong economy and a high population before you build a capable offensive force.

 

[travlake]

I hope number of units is not directly tied to population. For me, this links together two separate tactics that I might want to balance and pursue independently. If you start in a food poor location you want the ability to build a sufficient force to rush a nearby neighbour.

I too hope units are tied to eco not pop. MB a combination of both would be cool, i.e. you get x units for free and x increases with your pop.

 

[Tomice]

If they balance units properly I don't think there is a real need to cap non-resource units. It would just be too ineffective or expensive to wage war, at least offensive war, with only one or two unit types. For example, you could spam archer units, but they would be so vulnerable in the open to horsemen if they don't have spearmen to protect them that you would lose too many of them to effectively wage war. Archers fortified on hills, in cities and behind rivers would still make for a good defense though.

Do you guys think there won't be melee units without the need for iron? I mean, is it likely that civs with a lack of iron will only be able to field an "incomplete", crippled army (e.g. only archers).

And, do you think there will be new ressources, something that limits wooden ships, archers, catapults,...? something like "high quality wood"? Or will only melee units be limited (pre-gunpowder)?

 

[Calouste]

Do you guys think there won't be melee units without the need for iron? I mean, is it likely that civs with a lack of iron will only be able to field an "incomplete", crippled army (e.g. only archers).

And, do you think there will be new ressources, something that limits wooden ships, archers, catapults,...? something like "high quality wood"? Or will only melee units be limited (pre-gunpowder)?

I think being completely without iron will be rare, far rarer than Civ4. But you might well be limited to 2-3 iron based units. Mounted units will be limited as well, screenshots have shown horses as a strategic resource (and oil and probably aluminium).

 

[12agnar0k]

warriors wont need iron, its just like in civ4 if you fail to get copper/iron/horses your early military possibilities are limited,

 

[AriochIV]

Do you guys think there won't be melee units without the need for iron? I mean, is it likely that civs with a lack of iron will only be able to field an "incomplete", crippled army (e.g. only archers).

The basic "Warrior" unit with the two-handed maul (seen in this shot in both regular and barbarian versions) will probably not require metal, as in Civ IV. Hopefully it is a little less useless in Civ V than it is currently in Civ IV.

 

[Calouste]

The basic "Warrior" unit with the two-handed maul (seen in this shot in both regular and barbarian versions) will probably not require metal, as in Civ IV. Hopefully it is a little less useless in Civ V than it is currently in Civ IV.

With cities now having an inherent defense value so that you don't immediately need archers, no indication so far that copper/bronze is a strategic resource and of course metal based units being limited based on the number of resources, warriors might have an extended shelf life. Although I expect that Civ5 has more emphasis on upgrading existing units, so your initial warriors won't become redundant.

 

[Schuesseled]

can't tell as of yet , but the ability of build warriors will proably be blocked out with discovery of iron working. my guess.