Downside of 1upt

[bjbrains]

It is a large price to pay for a possible small improvement in gameplay.

Please explain yourself. Civilization has *always* gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay, and this allows archer's to function properly in warfare (otherwise they'd be useless under the current system). It just sounds like you're being contrary for the sake of it.

 

[CrossRFC]

My main concert with 1upt is that if the military AI sucks (which it might, but maybe it won't), the AI will send a conga line of units to pointlessly get picked off one at a time by a fortified unit on a fort on a hill, thus decimating his entire army trying to kill one unit. However I am not against the 1upt system nor the SoD system. (Therefore I am unit placement Switzerland).

 

[hk2717]

@Commander Bello: My point is that one unit in 1upt is different from one unit in limited stacking. Obviously we will have fewer (if not much fewer) units in the 1upt system. Capable of moving multiple units together doesn't mean that movement is just easier in limited stacking system. And losing one unit in 1upt is definitely not the same as it is in limited stacking. Because in limited stacking, you lose one unit whenever you lose a fight, while this is not true with 1upt in CiV. Why can't you get the idea that one unit in 1upt is just (more or less) one stack in limited stacking but much easier to manage and more fun because there's no more best-defender-automatically-chosen problem. Users like aziantuntija has talked about this a lot. Have you ever read their posts?

 

[Commander Bello]

Once you knew what a good composition was, you just replicated that game after game after game ... etc. Get x swordsman and y spearman and z axeman together, suicide some catapults and the city is yours. If a CPU foolishly left its city to counter attack your stack, you didn't even have to bother because you had the right counter units in case he attacked you. In other words, you could totally ignore the military presence outside the city, because it posed zero threat to you if your SOD was properly composed. I fail to see how that is more 'real' or 'tactical' or 'strategic' in any possible way.

Wrong example.

First, if it would have been that easy, why was the AI never told about it?
Second, I have fought most of my defensive battles outside of cities. Why? Because this disallows the opponent to make use of all the modifiers for Trebuchets, Swordsmen and so on. Furthermore, that way the city's fat cross was protected.
In turn, I tried always to get my opponents while they were sitting in the cities, because that way I could make best use of the city attack modifiers by myself.
The fact that AI's counterattacks typically fail utterly is not because of stacks, it is because Civ4's AI was literally unable to fight.

Please explain yourself. Civilization has *always* gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay, and this allows archer's to function properly in warfare (otherwise they'd be useless under the current system). It just sounds like you're being contrary for the sake of it.

There would be other options to make Bowmen helpful, like delivering support to adjacent units.
And yes, one the "abstractions" of Civ4 has lead to "suicide siege weapons" rolleyes, but that is bad design and not a consequence of stacks.

@Commander Bello: My point is that one unit in 1upt is different from one unit in limited stacking.

Exactly.

Obviously we will have fewer (if not much fewer) units in the 1upt system.

Agreed.
The point is that fewer units may very well mean that the loss of one of those fewer units may make a very big difference, both in terms of frontline composition and replacement.

Capable of moving multiple units together doesn't mean that movement is just easier in limited stacking system.

Of course it does.
First, it is less manual work to move a "stack" of n (with n being a number somewhere <= 10) units and second, whoever once tried to move his army through mountainous regions in games like Panzer General knows, how much time this costs - not moving every single unit by itself, but to find the right sequence.
And the last point is, where I expect the AI to fail.

And losing one unit in 1upt is definitely not the same as it is in limited stacking. Because in limited stacking, you lose one unit whenever you lose a fight, while this is not true with 1upt in CiV.

Wrong again.
The fact that in Civ4 losing a fight means losing a unit is not due to stacks, it is due to design. The same design could be used for 1upt, too and vice versa.

Why can't you get the idea that one unit in 1upt is just (more or less) one stack in limited stacking but much easier to manage and more fun because there's no more best-defender-automatically-chosen problem. Users like aziantuntija has talked about this a lot. Have you ever read their posts?

Once again, the problem of picking the defending units is not a problem of stacks per se, but of the design and logic which has been made use of.

I completely agree that Civ4's combat design was heavily flawed and I would be the last one to defend it for it's "perfectness", but this was not because of stacks, it was because of poor design.

We may face similar poor design in Civ5, too (I hope not, but there is not guarantee for it).
And if poor design comes into play, then your frontline will easily crush under the attack of a skilled opponent - just because there is no "backup".
And typically, it will be the human who is regarded as being the "skilled opponent". Actually, I expect that after a month, after people have explored strenghts and weaknesses of the combat system, the AI will suffer and lose. Or - like in Civ4 - it will need modifiers to make up for it's weaknesses.

 

[Earthling]

The example I love to give is forts. Forts in civ4 are largely pointless. Oh sure, everyone has one story of when they built a fort in a great spot, but largely, pointless.

This actually has nothing to do with a one-unit-per-tile system. Just because forts in civ 4 are not very interesting or useful, doesn't mean they couldn't be - it's a problem with forts and not anything special about one-unit-per-tile. Having hex instead of square tiles improves control over chokes and zones of control. But ranged attack, zone of control, etc... could also be added in civ 4 and the purpose would be served just fine. There's no reason, if forts granted ZoC and especially if ranged attacks exist, that in civ 4 someone could not also put a few longbowmen on a fort in a hill to ward off enemy attacks. In fact, this is already possible in various mods, nothing necessary about 1upt, and leads to exactly the results you would want - it's possible to make strong defensive positions entirely apart from cities (and also destroy the AI who can never get close to your ranged attackers/forts)

My guess is that combat is going to become what combat actually is; a fight for land. When you win a tile, you won't want to give it back. The city is the end goal, certainly, but the land is what's far more important. That's never actually been reflected in the civilization franchise in the military game.

That's actually not what combat should be either, from a tactical and strategic perspective. The most important part of combat, by far, is destroying your opponent's army, and there isn't any heightened focus on that.
Now, this wasn't always true historically, (obviously the player trying to win the game can have a better focus) but what you suggest doesn't really fly there either. The ultimate goal of sacking an opponent's cities, if a mere victory over their army isn't the aim, is represented by, well, going after the cities. And I would not be surprised in the least if it quickly becomes apparent that the best strategy in civ5 is still going to involve blitzing after cities.

Oh, and to the people who're terrified that the game will always devolve into a bunch of units mashing into each other. Imagine a few well-entrenched forts with archer-style units inside of them creating a series of kill zones. Enemy unit moves into the tile directly in front of a fort, cannot keep moving because of the Zone of Control, next turn, gets obliterated by ranged units. Repeat ad nausium. You can add in some mounted units in there just to clean up any kind of mess that might occur.

I don't know who is worried about the first thing you suggested, because the scenario you described is EXACTLY what I would say is the crucial problem with the system. The AI will be devastated, warfare will not reflect the strategy and macroscopic aspects of gameplay and instead devolve into highly abusable tactics. For all those complaining and complaining about civ4 and civ3 and previous versions, I expect you to be sorely disappointed to see this in action in civ5, as it will most likely be worse than ever. On the scale of a civilization game warfare should clearly reflect a lot of the preparedness and strength of the civilizations involved, and the more it depends on tactics, the less this matters. If you complain that previous systems allowed the player to defeat AI civilizations who were economically stronger and had far larger militaries, by abusing tactics, it will only be worse here, that's almost guaranteed.

 

[Calouste]

Your killzone is flawed sir. Some good trebs and thins get interesting for those guys in the forts fast.

Siege units take a turn (or maybe one of their two movement points) to "set up" before they can attack. So you can't move a treb within range of a fort and attack on the same turn. Which means that the fort gets a turn to shoot at the treb and reduce the effectiveness it will have when it is allowed to attack. If the defender just doesn't shoot away the melee unit that is in front of the treb with the fort and another ranged attacker or two and then charges the treb with a knight. It's not that simple.

 

[Commander Bello]

Siege units take a turn (or maybe one of their two movement points) to "set up" before they can attack. So you can't move a treb within range of a fort and attack on the same turn. Which means that the fort gets a turn to shoot at the treb and reduce the effectiveness it will have when it is allowed to attack. If the defender just doesn't shoot away the melee unit that is in front of the treb with the fort and another ranged attacker or two and then charges the treb with a knight. It's not that simple.

All of this may lead to the fact that we may face some kind of "trenchline warfare" from the very beginning:
frontline units will entrench where ever they can, long-range units will be placed behind them and both sides don't dare to move forward, since this could result in losses which are hard to replace.

Since in such a scenario you would almost only have a chance against an opponent whose production is considerably below your own, it may lead to the "necessity" to steamroll weak opponents early, since by that you will get their lands, too.
And that means that in the early ages it might be mandatory to boost your military as much as you ever can, just to avoid such fate.

This would make for quite some limited general strategy.

 

[SalmonSoil]

On the scale of a civilization game warfare should clearly reflect a lot of the preparedness and strength of the civilizations involved, and the more it depends on tactics, the less this matters. If you complain that previous systems allowed the player to defeat AI civilizations who were economically stronger and had far larger militaries, by abusing tactics, it will only be worse here, that's almost guaranteed.

Alexander the Great created his empire because he used tactics in a world where armies would normally just crash headlong into each other. The Roman Army managed to succeed so often mainly because of tactics.
And most importantly, field battles are more fun than ramming a stack of units into a city. (The one reason I avoid war in civ 4 is because it is boring, ramming stacks into cities.)

I have also seen AI operate well with 1upt combat systems. No reason Firaxis can't emulate this.

Also people complainging about how the loss of one unit will be far more devastating in 1upt than in SoD. Of course it will, because you have less units. The main thing is though, your units are far harder to kill. They only lose health now, there isn't always an eliminated unit in a fight. Also, combat has always been about breaking the enemies lines

 

[tom2050]

Siege units take a turn (or maybe one of their two movement points) to "set up" before they can attack. So you can't move a treb within range of a fort and attack on the same turn. Which means that the fort gets a turn to shoot at the treb and reduce the effectiveness it will have when it is allowed to attack. If the defender just doesn't shoot away the melee unit that is in front of the treb with the fort and another ranged attacker or two and then charges the treb with a knight. It's not that simple.

Good point... It is 100% for sure human players will play better than the AI with everything even; it's just how it is. I'll tell a tactic right now with 1upt for stopping siege.

You see AI bring a siege unit towards you. The unit is surrounded by other swordsman for defense in all tiles. Since the siege can't be protected in it's tile; the defender only needs to destroy 2 or 3 of the outside defenders to kill the siege engine (and if roads give move bonus, defender has mobility advantage). And defender has tons of time to do it also, since it has to deploy then set up.

Chances are there won't be enough units in the game to have each siege surrounded by 5 swordsman.

If roads give no mobility advantage (which is the sole purpose of a road), then this is stretching the gameplay > realism argument to la-la fantasy land.

Having 2 or 3 upt is about using Combined Arms properly. 1upt there is no combined arms at all. It is every unit on it's own... and you have to coordinate them together that is important (the Coordination strategy). Civ 5 is a coordination game, not combined arms.

Having the ability to use certain units in the same stack as others gives combined arms use a reality. The coordination game still exists.

If badly implemented, then having max units in each square wins.

If properly implemented, then using certain mix of units at best times wins. The mix would vary depending if on a certain type of attack (to breakthrough), or might be single unit (to flank), or might be other types of defenders (to defend), border AA defense (AA and dug-in defenders), etc...

It's just that I like combined arms and coordinating them. Civ 5 is coordination Only (combined arms doesn't exist) which is good; but could be better. Some may hate combined arms, but I have always found it to be fascinating, and it was one of the biggest things that wins battles.

 

[Louis XXIV]

This would make for quite some limited general strategy.

I will point out that there are overall flaws to over-expansion that have to be considered. Steamrolling your opponents early could lead to a civilization that is incapable of competing against all remaining opponents. Fighting entrenched opponents might be a better idea instead.

BTW, I'm going to disagree with the thought that combined arms don't exist. The basic combined arms model is the offensive unit and the support unit. In Civ4, that meant you'd have a unit in the same stack to protect against an opposing counterattack. In Civ5, it means that the protecting units would be in front, while the archers are behind them.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

I set up my trebs farther away then your archers can fire, unless you have your own trebs, in which case I'll just move back and hit the forts. Unless of course your trebs are in the forts in which case you have a dilemma, attack my trebs so they can't attack you, or attack my troops before they reach the forts.

 

[__JR__]

So is 1upt going to be perfect ? Probably not.

But there's certainly nothing perfect about the system in Civ 4.

You'd think that most people here, obviously avid Civilization fans, would give Sid Meier and Firaxis a little credit. That just maybe they'd know a little bit about making a game both fun, challenging, and new.

I mean, if everybody is afraid that Civ 5 won't live up to their expectations, that's understandable too. But if you go in with that mindset, it almost certainly won't live up to your expectations.

I'll trust Sid's and Firaxis' track record here. I've not played all of their games, but I have enjoyed those I have played.

 

[__JR__]

I set up my trebs farther away then your archers can fire, unless you have your own trebs, in which case I'll just move back and hit the forts. Unless of course your trebs are in the forts in which case you have a dilemma, attack my trebs so they can't attack you, or attack my troops before they reach the forts.

So, I'm not sure if I sense any sarcasm here.

But this is exactly what we want, right ? A dilemma, a problem that needs to be solved. We can attack, but it leaves something open. Doesn't this encourage creative thinking, not just SOD warfare ??

 

[tom2050]

I'll trust Sid's and Firaxis' track record here. I've not played all of their games, but I have enjoyed those I have played.

This is the point, trusting their track record. Most everyone on the forums absolutely hates SoD's and trashes them whenever they can, and everyone applauds them for doing it. This is their combat track record in what we are referring to.

So this track record is what you trust for the new combat mechanics? You should be hoping that they throw their track record in the toilet and flush.

 

[Howard Mahler]

I quoted a statement which included no explanation at all, which although the author did not say so, was a matter of opinion. I turned it around and gave my opinion with an equal amount of explanation. There seems to be a double standard; only one side of the discussion needs to explain itself.

As has been explained repeatedly, different people have different items which ruin their suspension of disbelief. For example, having archers fire across the English Channel makes the game silly, in my opinion. Silly enough that my enjoyment of the game will be significantly diminished. (If it displeases you sufficiently, do not buy the game.)

"Civilization has always gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay", is your opinion, shared by others. But it is just an opinion, provided with no explanation. It is not even clear that the changes in the military system simplify game play.

What helps game play for one person may hurt game play for another person.
As has been said repeatedly, the current changes will appeal to some people and not to others. To some extent how it will appeal to different people can be predicted, but only to some extent. We will find out soon enough when people start playing the new CIV V.

If I want to play a World War II strategic level simulation, I can already do so. Some of us do not want to be playing a wargame in which we have to spend a lot of time micromanaging our military units. It appears we will have to spend a lot of time very carefully positioning our military units and in case of war very carefully maneuvering them. Kind of like a game a chess. I can already play chess if I want to.

Many decisions are being taken away from players, and others added. Whether that is a good thing or bad thing depends on what a particular player enjoys.
For example, one will no longer have to make a decision as to how many transports (galleys, etc.) to build, when to build them, and where to move them or position them. In CIV IV and previous editions, on relevant maps, this was one of many tradeoff decisions one had to make. Those who just found this annoying will enjoy the change. On the other hand, some of us found that interesting and a good simulation of history in which ship transport in the appropriate situations was an important issue. (See Spanish Armada, Mongol failed invasion of Japan, etc.)

Here is a possible simplification. Just have generic land units, all the same except for strength (which would depend on tech level when built, veteran status, effects of enemy attacks, etc.) I do not think I would enjoy this, but it would greatly simplify game play.

Please explain yourself. Civilization has *always* gone for abstraction whenever it would help gameplay, and this allows archer's to function properly in warfare (otherwise they'd be useless under the current system). It just sounds like you're being contrary for the sake of it.

 

[aMoralAtheist]

Good point... It is 100% for sure human players will play better than the AI with everything even; it's just how it is. I'll tell a tactic right now with 1upt for stopping siege.

You see AI bring a siege unit towards you. The unit is surrounded by other swordsman for defense in all tiles. Since the siege can't be protected in it's tile; the defender only needs to destroy 2 or 3 of the outside defenders to kill the siege engine (and if roads give move bonus, defender has mobility advantage). And defender has tons of time to do it also, since it has to deploy then set up.

Chances are there won't be enough units in the game to have each siege surrounded by 5 swordsman.

If roads give no mobility advantage (which is the sole purpose of a road), then this is stretching the gameplay > realism argument to la-la fantasy land.

Having 2 or 3 upt is about using Combined Arms properly. 1upt there is no combined arms at all. It is every unit on it's own... and you have to coordinate them together that is important (the Coordination strategy). Civ 5 is a coordination game, not combined arms.

Having the ability to use certain units in the same stack as others gives combined arms use a reality. The coordination game still exists.

If badly implemented, then having max units in each square wins.

If properly implemented, then using certain mix of units at best times wins. The mix would vary depending if on a certain type of attack (to breakthrough), or might be single unit (to flank), or might be other types of defenders (to defend), border AA defense (AA and dug-in defenders), etc...

It's just that I like combined arms and coordinating them. Civ 5 is coordination Only (combined arms doesn't exist) which is good; but could be better. Some may hate combined arms, but I have always found it to be fascinating, and it was one of the biggest things that wins battles.

Why are you surrounding the treb? Why not build a line in front of them, makes a much longer area to go around. You will have to pick teh right route to attack with of course. And also if the computer moves its army to your rear they have just left you an open lane to the cities. Also this is fixe dby making all roads useable to all civs even in enemy territory. With SoDs that was a bad idea, now however, a good idea. It will encourage defenders to set up roads in a way that is defensive minded, but would also eliminate road spam, since it would let enemies move so fast in their territory also. Without road spam your fears go away.

 

[aziantuntija]

Can you people tell me and everyone else here in your own words what means combined arms?


If you guys think it means some kind of "stacking" where all the different "units" are in the exact same position, then then as a soldier myself i must say that you guys are so wrong.


If army uses combined arms like somekind of stacking or limited stacking then it would propably look something like this:


General says: Oh heres finally our artillery, lets just take these guys and put them in the exact same place as the infantry goes. Hey look everyone! We got helicopters! Lets put them also in the exact same place were we have allready our infantry and artillery. Damn im good general!


Liutenant: Sir, now that we are having all of our units in this same area defending each other to form (as you call it) combined arms, then what if the enemy just goes around us and charges our nearest city?


General: I dunno. Perhaps we should just back it up to the nearest city ourselfs and wait there?


Liutenant: So we will just abandon our nations border and back up to the nearest city and just wait?


That example doesnt sound like it is going to be happening in modern days. If you think that ancient battles were fought in stacks then i must say that IMO you are wrong again.

Once again this is what i wrote in Unit Stacking thread:

Fact is that Firaxis wanted to make the battles more realistic AND more tactical for ALL the different eras, thats why we have 1upt to look for. Everybody has seen some historical films where some ancient armies have been battling it out. The question is, do you see all the units archers, cavalry, swordsmen, spearmen and catapults stacked up in making a one messy bunch? No we dont see that. We dont even see just cavalry, catapults and archers stacked up as messy bunch (limited stacking). What we DO see is archers being in place A, and spearmen in place B, catapults in place C, and so on. They might be standing close to one another, but they are NOT BUNCHED TOGETHER.

I have never seen a film where there would be a ancient well organized army appearing in the battlefield and it would just start mixing their units, like mixing archers, spearmen and catapults all together making a one disordered bunch of people. What kind of commands would you give to this bunch that would contain all these different weapon classes? What is their job in the battlefield? I really doubt that they done that in the ancient times.. ..And as far as i know, they didnt. Also, if chess was invented to teach soldiers the art of war, why is it 1upt if they used only stacks back then?

So once again, can you people please tell me and everyone else here in your own words what means combined arms? IMO it doesnt mean that helicopters, infantry, and artillery are all standing in the exact same place "supporting" each other.

So "units" are NOT bunched together in modern times and they were NOT bunched together in ancient times. Your vision of limited stacking brings my mind to some old western film where indians attacked some cowboys. Some of the indians were riding with horses, some of them were on foot, some had axes, some had rifles, some had bows etc etc.. To me that looks more like your vision of combined arms

 

[__JR__]

This is the point, trusting their track record. Most everyone on the forums absolutely hates SoD's and trashes them whenever they can, and everyone applauds them for doing it. This is their combat track record in what we are referring to.

So this track record is what you trust for the new combat mechanics? You should be hoping that they throw their track record in the toilet and flush.

Well, that's one way to take my point, I guess.

What I really meant, however, was that regardless of the game mechanic, the game is likely going to be fun and enjoyable, challenging and fair, and hopefully just complex enough to create plenty of replayability without becoming too bogged down with MM.

That's not too much to ask is it ??

I'd guess that if this whole 1 upt mechanic wasn't fun, or challenging, or fair they would have scrapped the idea after some testing. That's what I meant when I say I trust their track record of making good games.

 

[Howard Mahler]

In my opinion, one unit per hex was a radical "solution" to a perceived problem.
I do not see any reason to "arbitrarily" limit the number of units per hex for a game like Civ.

One can reduce the number of military units a country will have by tweaking other features.
Think about CIV IV, but double the cost of building every military unit and maintaining every military unit.
Optimal strategy will involve on average fewer military units.
Think about CIV IV, but tripling the cost of building every military unit and maintaining every military unit, etc.

Assuming you believe CIV IV has on average too many military units. At some point, you will reach the happy medium which in your opinion has the right average number of military units.

Throughout history, quantity has a quality of its own. Better weapons, technology, tactics, generals, etc, can make up for more. But sometimes more wins the day.

Having cities having an inherent defense makes some sense, and could be added to the current game if one thinks it an improvement.

Having the number of units that depend on a resource limited is an example of complicating gameplay in order for more realism. I have my doubts that this change will make the game more enjoyable for me, but I am not sure. It seems like it will further reward the luck of starting position or having an iron mine suddenly appear as can currently happen.

 

[kozzer]

o this track record is what you trust for the new combat mechanics? You should be hoping that they throw their track record in the toilet and flush.

By eliminating stacks altogether, isn't this exactly what they've done?

If the majority "hate" SoD's, then wouldn't the best way to go be to eliminate them? Even the "little SoD's" (e.g. 4 upt)? No combat system in any game will ever be perfect - there are just too many variables and considerations - but personally, I've been playing since Civ I, and I'm ready for stack-less combat. Because SoD-based combat is merely a numbers game once you figure out how to build an effective stack. With 1upt, and resource-capped units, you're going to be much more focused on how you use your units, rather than building more units and beating a city over the head with the stack.