Get rid of SODs

[Trias]

I'm working under the assumption that bombardment by siege will be reintroduced. I guess it would make siege weapons very powerful, but this could be countered by simply raising the production cost of them. As opposed to making them obsolete through giving their abilities to other units, which would be harder to rectify.

They wouldn't become obsolete, their use would just shift to something slightly more realistic. Having a unit with you army that can damage enemies from a distance is a very big tactical advantage, and siege units would be the only units that can provide that. You also still need siege units to bring down city defenses (if that feature is kept.) So, pretty much any army will still contain some amount of siege weapons. Just not in the obscene amounts we see now in civ4 (where more than half of the units in a stack can be siege weapons.)

 

[Camikaze]

Hmm. I see what you mean. Siege would provide collateral damage on bombardment, and other units would provide it on attack. I still prefer my siege idea, but that is quite feasible, and is a pretty good idea.

 

[techathon]

Spies could possibly cause enemy units in stacks due to miserable conditions or something of that nature..

 

[Tholish]

Stacks of doom represent the strategic reality that concentration of force is a good idea. However, you can concentrate force without concentrating yourself as a target. Disperse your guns and all shoot at the same thing from different places. Concentration and dispersion are in tension, increasing the value of mobility to concentrate and disperse where desired.

Enough theory. Current collateral damage encourages spreading stacks over several tiles, as long as they can all attack a target together. The main reason (other than that simply taking the shortest distance between two points puts all units at the same place) not to is so you can stack defensive units on top of other units to protect them. If you have one maceman on top of each catapult on separate hills you are more likely to lose catapults than if you have three macemen on top of three catapults. You may lose all your Macemen, but the catapults will survive. Sequential combat makes stacks a good idea. The problem with the SOD is the sequential nature of combat. One unit after another fight a duel until one is dead. There are several possible ways to solve this:

1. Allow players to select which unit to take one "shot," ie take a chance to do some damage to the other side while be exposed to a chance of being damaged. But after each shot allow players to switch units out, rather than having to wait until somebody is dead and the other wounded. This would be tedious and hard to teach the AI

2. Battle maps. When one stack attacks another, both are placed on a new sceen like a city screen that allows the units to maneuvar and fight out the battle on a grid of subtiles of the individual tile where the battle takes place. This does the same thing as above but in a more interesting manner. I suggest 7 by 7 since it has an almost equal number of interior and perimeter squares (perimeter squares could represent adjacent tiles). Battles would last maybe 7 turns, long enough for even the slowest attackers to have a chance of attacking any defending unit unless blocked, or for even the slowest defenders to flee. In battle, each hit point of a strategic unit would be represented by a single battle unit. Thus hit points and combat strength would have to be separated. If the seven turns were used up and one side had not cleared the field of the other, the tile would have a battle icon placed on it rather than the graphics for the units present there, and the battle would resume the next turn.

3. Synergy groupings. There could be some kind of formula to allow combinations of units to be grouped together as a single unit, something like unloadable civ3 armies to produce a unit with totally new characteristics. This would reduce the number of single units to be fighting duels.

4. Logistics. In fact concentrating units together makes logistics easier, unless you are living off the land.

 

[rysmiel]

Spies could possibly cause enemy units in stacks due to miserable conditions or something of that nature..

I think there might be a word missing here; I can't figure out what you mean.

 

[techathon]

I think there might be a word missing here; I can't figure out what you mean.

Yeah I meant to say that spies could cause units in an SoD to rebel and join your side due to miserable conditions... sorry

 

[Camikaze]

Stacks of doom represent the strategic reality that concentration of force is a good idea. However, you can concentrate force without concentrating yourself as a target. Disperse your guns and all shoot at the same thing from different places. Concentration and dispersion are in tension, increasing the value of mobility to concentrate and disperse where desired.

I think it's important to note that whilst concentration is a good idea, in that it allows for more power in a particular area, it is a bad idea, as it means that there is a lower power-unit ratio. Each extra unit will add strength to the stack as a whole, but will do so in decreasing amounts as more units are added. This is why exponential penalties are necessary.

 

[Hans Lemurson]

I hope this isn't too much thread-necromancy, but after spending the last hour reading the entire gosh darned thing I shall not be denied in my right to post!!!

Ahem, anyways, on to the meat of my post:

MY IDEA: The simplest way to deal with Stacks of Doom is to apply a strength penalty for all units in a stack for every unit above a certain threshold, let's say...3. If you have 4 units in a square, they will suffer a -10% strength penalty, if you have 5; -20%. Stacks all of a sudden become prohibitively dangerous. (Don't criticize my numbers though, for they are pure and innocent. If you don't like mine/I] then go pick your own damn numbers!)

The SoD's strength lies in 2 key areas:
1. It will always be able to bring to bear the best counter to your attacker.
2. Units that have been injured are protected from further attack.

If units in a large stack get a "overcrowding" or "disorganization" or "supply problems" or "stack limit" penalty, then these advantages begin to be eclipsed by the dangers of the penalty(duh).

If units in a stack are weakened, then it won't simply start accumulating wounded units from fighting, the enemy is going to be able to start picking off units one by one. It now becomes a trade-off: "I need to protect my wounded and counter my enemy, but I can't risk losing prime combat units." No hard limits (aside from "when does the penalty kick in"), just diminishing returns for stack size to the point where a sufficiently large stack could actually be suicidal. All of this is fairly obvious. The more relevent question would be: "So what's gonna happen instead?"

I'm so glad you asked! Basicly, it forces you to fight in mini-stacks, to try to get as much stack-advantage as you can without suffering the penalty. However, with these small sizes, you can no longer have "jack of all trades" stacks where everything you could ever possibly want is all contained in one group. You simply can't do everything anymore, you can try to get as many counter-units into a stack as possible(axeman, spearman...), but then you won't be able to fit in specialty ones (Artillery, city-raiders).
You will have to make careful decisions about what goes where and protect your vulnerable units. Medic II suddenly becomes your bestest friend EVER!!! It can provide the healing support your army needs without taking up valuable space in a stack. However, that means that it will be sitting in the rear all by its lonesome self (unless you protected it, of course, but you see the point I'm trying to make).
Also, let's say your axeman gets crippled in combat and there's some really mean looking melee units out there. You are suddenly quite vulnerable. In a Stack of DOOOM, you'd just say "ok, bring in the next one!", but now you have to retreat and replace the unit, or retreat your entire group, or...horror of horrors: fight a disadvantageous battle!

SO IN SUMMARY: Adding stacking penalties would be both simple and effective. You can use whatever numbers you want (except 17) and use whatever excuse you want to justify the penalty (didn't eat his vegetables), and in my own unbiased judgment of my own ideas, I think this'll work right good.

ps (Hard stack-limits suck, just look at Call to Power 2 where you couldn't move a 4-unit army through a square containing 9 units)
(The stack limit in CtP2 is 12)
(...4 + 9 = 13)
(And 13 is greater than 12!)
(Math is fun!!! What was I talking about?)

 

[sebsone]

Introduce a limit of units that can be placed on each tile. straightforward, simple, and somewhat realistic.

 

[ScribJellydonut]

Just as a note, and I've only skimmed the thread, a SoD does represent the reality that a concentration of forces can be a good thing. What it does not accurately represent is say you have a defending line on a ridge(adjacent tiles of hills) and the enemy's SOD can obviously just push through your line if you have your forces spread across the hills so you have maybe 2 units per tile and he has 20 units in his SOD. The SOD can then move straight to your city and capture it. The realism is still there in so far that a concentration of forces can be good, the unrealistic part is that an undersupplied and overflanked army can enter enemy territory and not be severely disadvantaged. If this were the case, there would be no such thing as a frontline, but history has shown us time and time again(especially with the advent of motorized vehicles to close the gap of distance and time) that any military commander who ignores the concept is doomed to failure.

I try to make the wars a little more interesting by spreading my units around, and promoting them accordingly(Woodsman III can really kick some ass lol), but sadly when I want to get the job done, I usually find myself falling back on a SoD

 

[rysmiel]

Introduce a limit of units that can be placed on each tile. straightforward, simple, and somewhat realistic.

The number of tanks you can fit on a square ten miles on a side is not going to hit a "realistic" limit within any nnumber of units anyone wants to actually play a game with.

 

[Camikaze]

Just as a note, and I've only skimmed the thread, a SoD does represent the reality that a concentration of forces can be a good thing.

Limiting SoDs still allows them to realistically represent that x+1 units are more powerful than x units. However, SoDs currently have the effect of making each unit within a stack increasingly powerful with the number of units in a stack. So the more units you have in a stack, the more disproportionate its power becomes. So for starters, this advantage needs to be cut off for units in a stack. And then additionally, the realistic disadvantage that each unit within a stack has with an increasing number of units accompanying it (i.e. with each extra unit, each individual unit should be weaker, although the overall force grows) needs to be reduced. Because sure, as you say, more units means more powerful. But. More units certainly doesn't mean power for every given unit within the stack, which is the effect stacks have.

Think of it in terms of graphs. Currently, it works kinda like an exponential function. It should be more like a logarithmic one.

 

[rysmiel]

Limiting SoDs still allows them to realistically represent that x+1 units are more powerful than x units. However, SoDs currently have the effect of making each unit within a stack increasingly powerful with the number of units in a stack. So the more units you have in a stack, the more disproportionate its power becomes.

How do you reckon this ?

 

[Camikaze]

How do you reckon this ?

Well, if you have more units in a stack, there are more full strength units to fall back on when a unit suffers battle damage/collateral damage. So, it has the effect of greatly increasing the defence around units. If a unit is on its own, if it attacks, it will be weak in defence, due to the damage done to it. If there is another unit, it will have defensive protection. And so on and so forth. And due to collateral damage limits (only 5 units at a time), units in a stack are less vulnerable to siege.

 

[jst666]

Spies could possibly cause enemy units in stacks due to miserable conditions or something of that nature..

I accidentally the whole stack.

 

[jst666]

Sorry about the multi-post-necro, but my 5 cents are:

SOD or spread:

If you have overwhelming force, it doesn't matter. You will win.
If the opponent has reasonable force, it depends. If the opponent has a lot of arty, spread. If not, SOD. This does leave you with the tactical choice of assessing the opponent.