I just a tried single city challenge on a diety pangea game because I understand that setup is the most challenging and I am wanting to see if Civ V can offer a challenge to an experienced civer like myself. With an easier setup, the game is fun; though it is only a matter of going through the motions of any Civ-type game and victory can be had almost certainly without any real plan or strategy. So when I try a challenge, I have to figure out how to stretch every bit of my ability to win. When I aimed for the "moon", I discovered that the moon is just a big piece of cheese.
"Oh my favorite city-state has just gone to war; time to send my workers in to defend." I don't like the smell of stinky cheese; but it is that kind of mentality that is required to win. You can say, "Well just don't do it." It is like saying I should develop rules to limit myself. I should develop my own game. Hey why do we even have rules? We could just have units with unlimited movement points; if you think that it is cheesy to explore the entire map on your first turn, "Well just don't do it."
So about this idea of having only one civ's units per tile, it doesn't really make sense in any concept of the real world. I mean, when we have stacking units, we are saying that the units are small enough and the tiles are big enough so that more units can fit on a tile. So when units can stack so long as they are not belonging to the same civ, what does that mean? Do the same civ's army and marines get into some kind of fight so that they cannot be close to each other?
It doesn't matter, the 1UPCPT isn't a solution anyway as pointed out earlier, multiple countries at war with a single country get a far superior and unfair advantage. So the discussion goes on about making a second arriving unit to become civilian and not be able to defend. Okay fine, in the real world, they are out of formation as they are passing through another troops' formation. But the civilian thingy, although a good brainstorm sugesstion, still doesn't solve any problem. If they are civilian then they cannot attack. So still they are blocked from attacking a city for example when the city is encircled by a ring of non-active units. If they are allowed to attack, then although they may be greatly weakened by the attack, the defender of the tile they likely remain in can be a full-strength unit of an ally or other nation at war; still there is far superior unfair aadvantage.
Okay so what about if the AI declares war if it thinks you are blocking. So now the exploit changes to one where my goal is to get the AI to DOW me. Signed research agreement, check. Sold 30 turns worth of all my resources for cash, check. Used that gold to bribe his allied city states to be allied to me instead, check. Formed my defensive pacts, check. Okay, now buddy I am driving you mad with blocking. Don't like it, just DoW me. C'mon, I dare you. It is just like culture bomb without using up a great artist.
Maybe units at war can exert some kind of force to push non-active units out of the way. Or maybe there can be collateral damage from nearby fighting causing loss of some hit points making you to want to move. Maybe the pushing can cause some collateral damage too. Anyway, I'm sure those soldiers in real life are not going to be detered from reaching a city because of some wimpy boys building a pasture.
Maybe this or maybe that, what I know for sure is that the 1UPT in Civ 5 has not been fully developed. So we pay developers for a game and then have to suggest to them how it might be developed. Either that or we develop our own rules about what is fair play without any way to enforce the rules other than the honor system. I really don't like heavy dependence on the honor system in multi-player gaming.
). Even at immortal, the AI sometimes allies City states, but does not do so consistently.