Farewell to unit spam

[Charles Martel]

So, there will be far fewer units overall (That much is obvious from the info collected so far: one unit per tile, total number of units capped by resources and maintenance upkeep, self-defending cities, etc.). Finally, no more mindless spamming of units! This alone will have radical consequences on game-play:

• Less micromanagement: that is self-explanatory.

• Less things to produce: in Civ4, the warmonger keeps his production cities busy by churning out zillions of units. Not so in Civ5, apparently. So, what will production cities do with their excess hammer/shields (or whatever these will called in Civ5)? We already know that units will take longer to train... even so there seems to be a production gap: at some point all the available military will have been trained... so what to produce next? Maybe improvements will also take longer to produce, or units will have to be unlocked by new improvements, or they will need to be maintained/healed/upgraded through production...

• Troubles for the AI’s “brute force” approach: the so-called “better AI” compensates for its ineptitude with production bonuses and unit spam. Most of us know the frustration of being “Shaka’ed”, e.g. swamped by seemingly endless flow of obsolete cavalry that dumbly suicide on your garrison. On the battlefield, the AI is simply too stupid to compete on a par with the human player, and it often needs at least twice as many units to put up a decent fight. In Civ4 the player is typically outnumbered at the higher levels, and herein lies the challenge. But in Civ5, the AI will no longer rely on unit spamming... or so it seems.. so how will it cheat? The AI will have to be very good if it has to pose a decent challenge on tactical level, while using a limited number of units.

 

[Volapyk]

Didn't one of the previews also state that units cost has been increased? Limiting numbers of units that can be trained will indeed at some point mean you have reached that limit, in most scenarios. I'm fairly confident we will never get to the point where a city has nothing to produce, due to lack of unit capacity, out of buildings/wonders to produce.

As for the AI cheating, well increased number of units they can have per resource and a higher production per city is still an option. It would be wonderful if the AI could be programmed good enough so it didn't have to cheat, but that is probably just wishful thinking.

 

[bonafide11]

I don't see how "less micromanagement" is self explanatory. Please explain.

 

[Thormodr]

I think you could put your city on gold production/wealth. You will probably not have claimed all the hexes in the 3 rings around all your cities and it will apparently be quite expensive to do so.

 

[mattigus]

I don't see how "less micromanagement" is self explanatory. Please explain.

Less units in the game means you have less units to move around every turn.

Another possible change from this is that the game wont become as tedious in the later stages. With fewer military units, late game stuff will flow better.

 

[Chalks]

They have said that they have re-written the AI from the ground up to use a multi level approach.

One assumes that their attempts to make the AI significantly better will mean that such shortcuts such as artificial production bonuses are not required for an AI to be good.

I don't think you can take a single aspect that they have changed and analyse it in isolation - all their changes have knock on effects which result in the modification of other systems.

 

[bonafide11]

Less units in the game means you have less units to move around every turn.

Another possible change from this is that the game wont become as tedious in the later stages. With fewer military units, late game stuff will flow better.

Yes, there will be less units to move, but the units will be scattered. If you're at war, you're going to be moving many units individually instead of moving a large stack of doom. So I still don't see how there is less micromanagement.

 

[mattigus]

Yes, there will be less units to move, but the units will be scattered. If you're at war, you're going to be moving many units individually instead of moving a large stack of doom. So I still don't see how there is less micromanagement.

You're right. In an actual war, you'll be making movements for each unit. However, every move you make will have a significant effect on the war. Your movement decisions will be more interesting, instead of just shifting a huge stack from one place to the next.

Also, if you go in the warmonger path, your cities won't be spitting out units all the time. So you won't be constantly building new units to replenish your stack.

Maybe the game won't have less micromanagement, but it'll have less tedium.

 

[bonafide11]

You're right. In an actual war, you'll be making movements for each unit. However, every move you make will have a significant effect on the war. Your movement decisions will be more interesting, instead of just shifting a huge stack from one place to the next.

Also, if you go in the warmonger path, your cities won't be spitting out units all the time. So you won't be constantly building new units to replenish your stack.

Maybe the game won't have less micromanagement, but it'll have less tedium.

Oh, I definitely agree. I'm a huge fan of the one unit per hex addition. I'm not complaining at all. I think there will be more as much, if not more, micromanagement, but I think it'll be much more interesting and entertaining. War will no longer be so tedious and monotonous, and will actually require some strategy now.

 

[tom2050]

War will still be tedious and monotonous if you wish to take over the world with 12 units.

Strategy will help somewhat in actually destroying units, since they will be very difficult to destroy, since units won't die very often at all (from what they have said).

They have stated they are balancing power, so small civ's cannot get crushed by large civ's. So something will be implemented to make this happen (think Civ 3 corruption, just something not so annoying).

Sure, unit spam was annoying... but unit scarcity may be the same.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

or units will have to be unlocked by new improvements, or they will need to be maintained/healed/upgraded through production...

I Really hope this is the case, and I hope it isn't gold

Instead Cities turn production into "Military Maintenance" which is 'delocalized' and can be stored like gold, but can only be used for
Maintaining,
Healing,
or
Upgrading

Military units.

Gold should be used for other things.

 

[DPyro]

No unit spam = not having to set 10 thousand rally points and select 10 million promotions after loading 100 transports. The modern era gets really tedious if you're at war.

 

[Thormodr]

No unit spam = not having to set 10 thousand rally points and select 10 million promotions after loading 100 transports. The modern era gets really tedious if you're at war.

Yep. Bigger is not always better.

 

[tom2050]

Unit scarcity = nothing to do, and you'll be wishing that you could spam a few units

Less is not always better either

 

[Chalks]

Unit scarcity = nothing to do, and you'll be wishing that you could spam a few units

Less is not always better either

I'm not sure how having a few units = nothing to do. Moving 5 units into different positions probably takes about the same thought as moving 35 units into the same position.

Unless the reason you enjoy civ is literally "because I enjoy moving lots of units around", I don't see how it is going to negatively affect how much you have to do. More time will be needed to be spent on individual unit orders.

 

[tom2050]

early game you have 4 units for 50 turns (probably the whole first era). Maybe you can make-belief doing imaginary stuff. But that = not much to do.

Unless you really enjoy civ because you like to move hardly anything at all, because there is not much at all to move, then you can spend more time on thinking about what you wish you could do.

If you want a game which requires you have less to do, go play checkers, Civ is Civ, and it requires not being lazy.

They went to an extreme here, on purpose to make game easy for your grandma to play for more bucks in their banks. I have said this for years after seeing what 2K did to Civ 4.

I'm for a reasonable amount of units, not Twenty at the max. If a normal amount of units confuses you, then I understand your argument. But Panzer General did not have 20 units in it's games... and this is inspired after that game, so they are doing this for wrong reasons (better graphics over gameplay, speed issues because of the previous, ??, more units now makes game too slow).

 

[Chalks]

In early Civ you have 4 stackable units that were required for city defence.

In late game, how many stacks of units do you have? How does a stack of units in 4 differ from a single unit in 5 in terms of orders required or action needed? The only difference is that the stack needs lots of waypoints to be set in order to form it and increase it's strength - which is not tactical thought but rather just micromanagement.

 

[pi-r8]

Eh, when Civ 4 came out they promised that "city spam" was over, and that your empire would consist of just a few cities. It didn't people long to figure out that more cities = better empire, usually, and to learn lots of tricks to get lots of cities. I'll bet the same thing happens here, no matter how much they try to gimp unit production. Unless they literally put a hard cap on the number of units you can have, which just be stupid.

 

[bonafide11]

Tom2050, you win the award for the most irrationally cynical Civfanatic. How about you wait until the game comes out before you act like 1UPT, no religion, and no tech trading represent the downfall of the Civilization franchise? Since you seem to think any break with Civ IV is such a tragedy, why don't you just continue playing Civ IV? Civ V is for people who want a different game, not a Civ IV clone.

 

[DPyro]

Eh, when Civ 4 came out they promised that "city spam" was over, and that your empire would consist of just a few cities. It didn't people long to figure out that more cities = better empire, usually, and to learn lots of tricks to get lots of cities. I'll bet the same thing happens here, no matter how much they try to gimp unit production. Unless they literally put a hard cap on the number of units you can have, which just be stupid.

The point wasn't to reduce the number of cities, the point was to reduce the number of junk cities like one tile islands and tundra towns and in otherwise unviable locations.