How would you improve combat in Civ7?

[aieeegrunt]

1 UPT is terrible from both a gameplay and a “historical roleplay” perspective

Having a carpet of units means solving a sliding tile puzzle every time you move your units. It’s tedious and frustrating. It is also completely beyond the AI.

It is also terrible history feel. For most of human history you did NOT have contiguous fronts and congestion like this, especially at the scale Civ represents. You had small stacks seeking to outmanouver each other often with the goal of cutting supply.

The only time you had carpet of doom frustration was northwestern France during WW1

Limited stacking of one unit per class and keeping the unit density low (which Civ6 already does) Gordian Knots this problem nicely.

Units provide their bonuses to the entire stack

Attacker picks which unit he attacks with. Defense is whichever unit in the stack is strongest.

You don’t get the “pre battle odds screen” unless you have a scout and the enemy does not. Scouts only fight other scouts unless alone in the hex.

Bam. Simple. Clean. Effective. Also Hot damn look an actual reason to build anti-cav and more than one scout!!!

I’ve tested this system (except the scout thing) with mods and it is redonkulous how much better combat, movement, and the AI is

 

[Marla_Singer]

Therefore: All other things being equal, a smaller group moves faster than a larger group, and to move really fast, you move a bunch of smaller groups separately rather than one massive group all on one route. Concentration/Stacking, therefore, is for Fighting, not Moving.

The question is how to implement that at grand strategy game's scale efficiently without relying to SoD's mechanics which are very limitative for the player's experience.

As I see it, your point about concentration for combat mostly applies for melee units: the more you have the stronger you are. Yet as you mentioned it, that should be limited by the logistics issues you described, that could be represented in the game as an attrition penalty. For instance, if you stack more than a certain number units (for instance 5 but this is really a matter of game balance), then they start self-damaging one another. Maybe also a limit in the number of melee units actually able to engage combat in the stack could be explored. Therefore stacking few melee units would improve your attacking ability, but only untill a certain point. Then ranged and mounted units would also weaken such small stacks in inflicting damages on all of its units and/or in dividing it through flank attacks pushing back a part of it, inciting the player to deploy its troops instead in order to encircle its target so that the defender would be overwhelmed.

When it goes about maneuvering, the important point to me is that units are weaker when in maneuver than when prepared for fight. And the fact moves would be made more free by the ability to stack, even if that makes units weaker and more exposed represents that decently to me.

On the other hand, Humankind's army system has still shown had great it feels to send your army across the world map quickly and effortlessly, in small stacks 'unpacking' only in battle and avoiding logistical micro nightmare, and just how much wonders it does for turn loading times and AI's ability to besiege player's cities, so I'd love for civ to somehow go in this direction. Humankind's system, which makes stacks 'unpack' only for battle but they still fight on the main map, also partially solves the issue of AoW style combat 'taking you out' from one unified campaign map.

Indeed, I see multiple advantage in going in that direction, maneuvering being made easier when stacked and units having to deploy in combat. If we take the approach that stacks make units easier to move but weaker to defend, you could even simulate new things such as ambushes. Ambush would be the ability for a unit to hide in a tile (not being seen by the opponent), and when the ennemy moves to that tile, then it would get surprizingly attacked, all units suffering damages in the stack.

Not sure how easy that would be to program this for an AI (as it requires to anticipate the opponents move), but really that would be fun for the player as a defensive tactic!

 

[Kili]

I'd make there be more changes to combat strength due to terrain, I was originally going to say make damage random but then I realized how annoying that would be

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The question is how to implement that at grand strategy game's scale efficiently without relying to SoD's mechanics which are very limitative for the player's experience.

As I see it, your point about concentration for combat mostly applies for melee units: the more you have the stronger you are. Yet as you mentioned it, that should be limited by the logistics issues you described, that could be represented in the game as an attrition penalty. For instance, if you stack more than a certain number units (for instance 5 but this is really a matter of game balance), then they start self-damaging one another. Maybe also a limit in the number of melee units actually able to engage combat in the stack could be explored. Therefore stacking few melee units would improve your attacking ability, but only untill a certain point. Then ranged and mounted units would also weaken such small stacks in inflicting damages on all of its units and/or in dividing it through flank attacks pushing back a part of it, inciting the player to deploy its troops instead in order to encircle its target so that the defender would be overwhelmed.

When it goes about maneuvering, the important point to me is that units are weaker when in maneuver than when prepared for fight. And the fact moves would be made more free by the ability to stack, even if that makes units weaker and more exposed represents that decently to me.

At the Grand Strategy level - specifically, at Civilization's minimum 1 year turn intervals and estimated 25 - 50 kilometer-wide 'tiles', any differences in formation, concentration, movement or fighting at the operational (moving into contact at an advantageous time and place) and tactical (fighting) level HAVE to be extremely stylized. The game simply is not designed to show the detail inherent at those lower levels.
1UPT tried expanding the Tactical level onto the Grand Strategy game map, and the result was inevitably, inexorably, insufferably, insanely Bad. Bad beyond all previous examples of Badness in gaming.
- Well, maybe not that Bad, but it certainly wasn't Good.

What I think we will have to limit ourselves to is much simpler: for movement 'stacks' at or less than half the allowed maximum can move 'faster'. That might be only that for them all movement fractions are Rounded Up so that they can sometimes get to one extra tile, rather than a Grand Movement of an extra tile or more all the time.

Likewise, the differences caused by moving, deploying, type of deployment, etc are all, frankly, well below the Civilization time and distance scale. Not to mention that their effects change with changing military technologies, so implementing them would be a nightmare for both the gamer and the programmer - think Special Modifiers for almost every type of unit throughout the game, applying in differing circumstances for most of the game and changing for almost every battle on different terrain in different Eras. See comment above "beyond all previous examples . . ."

I think all of that should be Generalized. Otherwise we run the risk of trying to shove a Tactical Game into Civilization's Grand Strategy scale, and wind up back where Humankind went: a single game turn taking an hour or more to play as you trudge through gaming a half-dozen tactical battles. If I want to play tactical battles, I'll dig out my miniatures or tactical board games and play them, but Please, not as part of Civilization.

I have played games in which Over Stacking caused 'attrition'. They are nicely historically accurate in depicting what really happened to armies who overwhelmed the ability of the local area to feed them, but such rules have to be used carefully. Gamers do not like 'automatic' Negatives, no matter how 'accurate' they are. On the other hand, the rule could be implemented such that it always takes a specific decision on the gamer's part to Overstack - so he has no one to blame but himself for making such a decision.

In the spirit of Civilization's personalization of everything, Great Generals should, I think, be Key to any bonuses or avoiding any penalties. Have a Great General with the 'stack' and you could, for instance, stack an extra Unit, or move an extra tile, or otherwise avoid unpleasentness while maneuvering across the map. Of course, the other side of that should be that if the stack goes into battle with a Great General, there is a chance of getting Great General killed in battle and losing all his effects.

 

[historix69]

One of the major problems with 1upt is that the (strategic) map in Civ usually is too small for the many (tactical) units an empire may produce and want to field to secure borders and wage war against rivals. So as long as the (tactical) map is not significantly increased, I would prefer at least some kind of unit stacking to reduce dealing with traffic jams. (At least cities and maybe forts should allow significant stacking.)
Increasing movement rate (or building roads/railroads to increase movement) also helps a bit dealing with the traffic jams.

"Stacks of Doom" would probably be less a problem if friendly/enemy units in neighbouring tiles would have a stronger impact on combat results.
(Example :
Get +10% combat strength per each friendly hex, -10% per each enemy hex.
A single SoD surrounded by enemy units would suffer -50% penalty. So securing the flanks (neighbouring tiles) would be important.)

Best solution would probably be to implement combat in a way that it is highly moddable in the full range from 1upt to "stack of doom" so that players can continue to experiment or simply adjust combat to their personal preferences.

When 1upt was introduced in Civ5 there were a lot of discussions about the implications of 1upt on the whole game, not only combat.

Spoiler Sulla :

https://sullla.com/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

"1) One Unit Per Tile:
Yes, the largest change in Civilization 5 is ultimately its largest design flaw. This will be a controversial point, as I know a lot of people really enjoy the new combat system, but it has to be said: the One Unit Per Tile restriction is the core problem with Civ5's design. Everything is based around this restriction. Everything. It determines how city production works, it determines the pace of research, it explains why tile yields are so low. Civilization was completely rewritten from the ground up to make use of the One Unit Per Tile limit on gameplay. Luddite has written the best summary of how and why this system doesn't work, so I'm going to let him explain further before I continue:

"I believe that these problems stem directly from the decision to make civ V a one-unit-per-tile (1UPT) game. 1UPT allows a lot of flexibility in how you arrange your army; however, it only works if your army has empty space to move in. It requires an army smaller than the map. 1UPT led to small army sizes, which led to lower production and faster science, which led to the broken economy system that this game has now. The combat in civ V was based on panzer general, but that doesn't work well in a civ style game. I tried to explain why that is in this post: (In PG, England is about 500 hexes. That's enough room for very large armies to maneuver around in (and even so, things get pretty congested when you're fighting over london). In Civ V, England is only 6 hexes! What am I supposed to do there? That's not even enough room to build a proper city! The English channel is only 4 hexes and one hex wide, so you can shoot across it with archers. Poor Italy has it worst though- only 2 hexes for the Italian peninsula! And the mediterranean is only 1 tile wide! Now that's an earth map, but the same sort of problems happen on any map I play. Tight spaces, bottlenecks, absolutely no room to maneuver. Civ V warfare is just a traffic jam.)

Clearly this was a decision made early on, since it's such an important part of the game. At the same time, they wanted to keep the "civ" feel to the game, where you settle new cities, build improvements and city buildings, and go in to the city screen to adjust your citizens. Combined, this meant that they had to limit the total number of tiles in the game, and so they tried to force army sizes to be very small. A typical civ 4 army of ~50 units would be incredibly annoying to manage in the Civ V style, so they wanted to encourage armies of only 5~10 units. I hope this succession game showed how clunky warfare becomes in this game when the army sizes get large (I enjoy the early wars with small army sizes). The AI can't handle it, and the player doesn't enjoy it.

In order to do that, they had to limit production. You can see that in the decreased yields- production and food yield have been decreased compared to civ 4, whereas the food required to grow a city was greatly increased. The early units like warriors don't take very long to build, but the cost of units quickly increases. The high upkeep costs for units, buildings, and roads factor in to this as well (see my sig: Civ5 is the first Civ game that is about NOT building instead of building. Don't build troops since support is so high, don't build buildings because support is too high, don't build roads because.... yada yada yada). The idea was, I think, that every new military unit would take about 10~20 turns to build, just enough to replace your losses while you continually upgraded your original army. As a result, your army size would stay almost constant throughout the game.

Also, it's worth pointing out that there's two ways of effectively decreasing production. Either decrease hammer yields while increasing costs- which they did- or to make science go faster- which they also did. The beaker cost of techs decreased, great scientists became more powerful, and research agreements were added. All of these accelerated the tech pace, giving less time to build the units/buildings for each technology, which effectively decreased production.

So now the developers are stuck with a game that has greatly reduced production values. That's fine, except for one thing- what do they do in the early game? They can't expect us to just sit around clicking "next turn" for 40 turns waiting for our worker to finish, or 100 turns for a library to finish. It's bad enough that it already takes up to 15 turns to finish that first worker. So, they had to make the early stuff a bit cheaper. You can build a warrior in ~6 turns, and you can build a horseman or a library in ~10. Even a coloseum only takes ~20. The idea was that a small city was efficient enough to produce the early game stuff in a reasonable amount of time, and as the city grew, it would produce the later stuff in the same amount of time- keeping army size constant while the cities grew and built infrastructure. There would be no massive increases in the power of a city with its size (like civ 4 had) because if a city became really powerful, it could create huge armies which would break the 1UPT system. If large cities were only modestly more powerful than small cities, the army sizes would stay small. That's pretty much what I discovered when I tried a game limited to just 3 large cities.

What the developers overlooked was that we're not limited to just a few large cities- we can build as many small cities as we want! Granted, we're limited a bit by happiness, but there's a lot of ways to solve that little problem (like keeping the city size small). And since small cities are so efficient at building the early game stuff, and large cities never become vastly more powerful, the many small cities with their trading posts (even without any multipliers) will quickly outproduce the large cities with their mines, despite their forges and workshops.

The game is in an awkward situation where large cities can't be too good because it would imbalance the middle and late game, but small cities have to be good or else the early game would be boring. And of course science is shared between all cities, so the more cities you have, the faster science goes, without any corresponding increase in city production. The result is what we've got now- a large number of small, undeveloped cities can produce a collossal amount of gold and science, which allows us to outtech even a large deity AI, while producing anything we want.

I know a lot of people will suggest balance tweaks to fix this. But I don't think this can be solved adequately without somehow addressing the issue of 1UPT at civ scale. You can't give an incentive to make large, developed cities better because that will just make that late game even faster and more unit-clogged than it is now. You can't make small, undeveloped cities weaker because than the early game will just be excruciatingly slow and boring.

So what do we have now? Thanks to 1UPT, we've got a game that tries hard to limit production because large armies break the 1UPT system. To limit production as the game goes on, large cities increase their production very slowly relative to science. This means that small cities remain competative throughout the entire game. This, combined with the many loopholes in the happiness system, allow an empire of many small cities to massively outproduce and outtech an empire of a few large cities, so the 1UPT is broken anyway with a massive clog of advanced units, early in the game. In my opinion, this is not fixable without severe changes to the game, such as bringing back stacks or greatly increasing the minimum distance between cities."

This is such a devastatingly effective critique of Civ5's problems, I just had to use it here. Very well said, luddite! As he said, Civ5 absolutely has to limit the number of units on the map, or else they begin to clump up together and form traffic jams, getting in one another's way uselessly. When this system breaks down in the lategame, or when playing on high difficulty level, the result is the infamous "Carpet of Doom" scenario (pictured at the top of this section), with a unit on every tile and 90% of them standing around in the back completely uselessly. So the game must limit production, therefore crippling tile yields compared to Civ4 and making all units/buildings vastly more expensive than in prior versions. But this isn't fun either, because it takes forever for the player to build anything, and anyone who is not going to war is going to be bored out of their minds. It also creates the problematic dynamic between small and large cities that luddite pointed out, with small cities much too good compared to large cities. The design team is trying to fix this with patches, but they aren't having more than modest success, because these problems are inherent to the design of Civ5's One Unit Per Tile restrictions.


Of course, I also need to make the obvious and most important criticism of the One Unit Per Tile system: the AI in Civ5 has absolutely no idea how to play the game under these rules. This sort of tactical combat requires more calculations on the AI's part in order to maneuver intelligently, and the combat AI has proven to be a dismal failure at meeting this test. Killing AI units at a rate of 10:1 is routine in Civ5, and I achieved a 37:0 kill ratio on one of my succession game turnsets (against Deity AIs!) Clearly, when the AI is unable to wage wars effectively and present a credible threat to the player, it undercuts the goals that Civ5 is trying to achieve. Game reviewer Tom Chick of 1UP (the only professional reviewer who had the balls to write on release that Civ5 had significant flaws) pointed to the game's AI in naming Civ5 as his most disappointing game of 2010: "This was the most disappointing game of the year because it brought to the Civilization series a really cool new feature -- tactical combat -- and then utterly neglected the AI needed to make it work. From there, the game fell apart entirely. Imagine a shooter where the AI enemies can't aim their guns or a racing game where the other drivers can't steer. The other questionable decisions -- watered down diplomacy, no religion, that strained policy tree -- all take a back seat to the very simple fact that Civilization V simply didn't work as it was designed."


That raises a very good question: why can't the AI handle this tactical combat system better? Yes, it's more involved that past Civ games, but it's not *THAT* much more complicated. I have read innumerable apologetics for the Civ5 AI, arguing that we shouldn't expect too much from it as it strides into this bold new frontier. However, that's simply not true! AI for tactical wargames has been around for decades; I remember some hexagon map PC games based around older tabletop board games that were released back in the 1980s. This system is supposed to be based around the Panzer General games, and the first one in that series was released back in 1994. Seriously, how hard can it be to program an AI that doesn't mindlessly walk its ranged units right into entrenched defenses? I saw better AI stuff in Advance Wars for the Gameboy Advance, and I'm not even kidding about that. This isn't a good system, but that's no excuse for how poorly the design team did.


The Civilzation series had to give up so many things to put the One Unit Per Tile system in place. It meant giving up the ability to stack workers, which was a staple of early game play and created many interesting decisions. (Do I pair up two workers together to get one improvement done faster, or split them up to improve two different cities at once?) It took away the question of stack composition, balancing melee against mounted against siege to get the proper proportions to take down an enemy city. (What units is the enemy building and can you counter them? Do you have enough spears to prevent flanking? And so on.) Speaker has argued that combat in Civ5 is significantly less intelligent than in Civ4, because in the former game all you have to worry about is what unit to put on each tile. In the latter game, with stacking, you have to consider how many units, and in what combination, to place on each tile. Personally, I don't think that Civ5 has improved combat at all over Civ4. Anyone who believes that Civ4 combat consists of "walking all of your units together in one big invincible stack" is a fool who has never played against other humans. Try reading this page on India's defense in the Pitboss #2 game to see just how shortsighted that opinion truly is.


Civ had to give up a lot to get One Unit Per Tile, and what did it get in return? An AI that can't play its own game. Crippled production and ridiculously long build times. Traffic jams and the Carpet of Doom phenomenon. Human-controlled units that never die. It's especially hilarious how the developers have tried to "solve" these problems in the patches. Horsemen too powerful, and the AI cannot use them effectively? They get nerfed into the ground. AI doesn't understand how to use Great Generals? Their bonus gets nerfed. AI can't use Flanking bonus? Nerfed. AI can't make use of Discipline combat bonus? Nerfed. AI can't defend its cities? They get their defenses massively boosted. For all of the talk about how Civ5 was going to bring us this awesome tactical combat system, it sure looks like the patches are doing everything possible to water down or remove those very tactical elements. Yeah, let's do everything possible to cripple the human player to make up for the fact that the AI has no f-ing clue how to play this game. Gee, that sure sounds like fun, doesn't it?


The fact of the matter is that Civ5 is trying to masquerade as a tactical combat game. But it isn't a tactical combat game; the Civilization games are empire-building games, and combat has never been more than one element among many. The designers of Civ5 tried to turn the game into something that it isn't, and they ended up breaking the game in the process. We ended up with a very mediocre wargame mashed together with a subpar empire-builder. I give them credit for trying - they had good intentions, and they were going for something genuinely new. It just didn't work, and we're left with a messy game that plays rather poorly. They would have done better to rework the stacking system than create the ugly blob of units pictured above."

Spoiler Jon Shafer :

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/revisiting-the-design-of-civ-5

"Combat


By far the most significant change I made with Civ 5 was to way in which wars were fought. Instead of large stacks of units crashing into one another as had always been the case in the previous Civ games, there was now 1UPT (one unit per tile). This forced players to spread out their armies across the landscape, instead of piling everything into a single tile.


This was a model very much inspired by the old wargame Panzer General. On the whole, I would say that the combat mechanics are indeed better in Civ 5 than in any other entry in the series. But as is the theme of this article, there’s a downside to consider as well.


One of the biggest challenges unearthed by 1UPT was writing a competent combat AI. I wasn’t the one who developed this particular AI subsystem, and the member of the team who was tasked with this did a great job of making lemonade out of the design lemons I’d given him. Needless to say, programming an AI which can effectively maneuver dozens of units around in extremely tactically-confined spaces is incredibly difficult.


The reason why this wasn’t an issue in Panzer General was that their AI didn’t actually need to do anything. It was always on the defensive, and a large part of that game was simply solving the “puzzle” of how to best crack open enemy strongholds. It was plenty sufficient if your opponents simply ordered a single tank to stir up some trouble every so often.


What made Panzer General fun was you blitzkrieg-ing through Europe while your enemies quickly and dramatically fell before your might. However, in a Civ game, the AI has to be capable of launching full-scale invasions, sometimes on different landmasses. Needless to say, we’re talking about a challenge on completely different scale.


Speaking of scale, another significant issue with 1UPT was that the maps wasn’t really suited for it. The joy of Panzer General was pulling off clever maneuvers and secretly encircling your helpless enemies. Unfortunately, in Civ 5 nasty bottlenecks aren’t uncommon and this tempers much of the natural value added by 1UPT. Ultimately, there just wasn’t enough room to do the fun part.


To address this, I could have done something crazy like added sub-tiles to the existing grid. I really don’t think this would have been a good idea though, as the whole point in having a tiles is that everything happens on the same playing field, which makes it very easy to tell what’s going on. Once you start muddying the waters of what goes where, you lose that clarity and mechanical chunkiness tiles offer. And at that point, you might as well just get rid of them entirely.


Speculation aside, the reality was that the congestion caused by 1UPT also impacted other parts of the game. In every prior Civ title it was no problem to have ten, fifty or even a thousand units under your control. Sure, larger numbers meant more to manage, but hotkeys and UI conveniences could alleviate much of the problem. But in Civ 5, every unit needed its own tile, and that meant the map filled up pretty quickly.


To address this, I slowed the rate of production, which in turn led to more waiting around for buckets to fill up. For pacing reasons, in the early game I might have wanted players to be training new units every 4 turns. But this was impossible, because the map would have then become covered in Warriors by the end of the classical era. And once the map fills up too much, even warfare stops being fun.


So is there a way to make 1UPT really work in a Civ game? Perhaps. The key is the map. Is there enough of room to stash units freely and slide them around each other? If so, then yes, you can do it. For this to be possible, I’d think you would have to increase the maximum map size by at least four times. You’d probably also want to alter the map generation logic to make bottlenecks larger and less common. Of course, making the world that much bigger would introduce a whole new set of challenges!


In fact, there were technical reasons this wasn’t really feasible – our engine was already pushing up against the capabilities of modern computer hardware. Drawing that many small doo-dads on a screen is really expensive, trust me. Well, unless you make your game 2D, like ATG!


Speaking of which, what about combat in ATG? Well, for one thing the game will allow for stacks of units!


The main reason for this is one of my high-level goals for the game. As I touched upon earlier, ATG is designed to be a strategy title which takes place primarily at the strategic level, rather than the tactical. The region of the map where you’ve stationed your armies, how well you’ve prepared your supply network, etc. is ultimately more important than if you were able to wheel one of your infantry around the flank of another enemy infantry unit.


A major factor in this decision was ensuring all of ATG’s features integrate with its most important one: map evolution. My objective is really to play this up in every way possible. With combat, this is done through the supply system. Units which lack sufficient supply rapidly become useless, similar to Unity of Command.


Every tile has a certain amount of supply available for units stationed there. The largest fraction of this comes from the tile’s terrain type which, of course, changes radically with the seasons. The remaining fraction comes from the effect of nearby supply camps and settlements.


And supply is what the entire military side of the game is geared around – Planning ahead to make sure you have enough of it. Fighting in areas which have a lot of it. Ensuring that your supply nodes are safe, and so on.


In fact, the units themselves are almost a secondary concern. ATG is not a game where you follow the epic tale of a single warrior as he levels up and upgrades through the various technological eras. Instead, it’s more like a late-game chess match, when nearly any move can settle the battle, and a pawn in the right situation can be just as powerful as a queen.


No doubt, this is a very different approach from the one taken in Civ 5. However, by now it should be obvious that ATG is in no way Civ 5, but instead stands on its own as a unique and innovative new member of the 4X family!"

 

[pineappledan]

I would very much support the enlarging of the default map. that will make true earth maps more rich and interesting as well.

Shafer cites technical limitations, which have now been considerably loosened in the 13 years since civ 5 was developed. The interview alludes to how expanding the map would have knock-on effects for city and tile management. The introduction of a district system already goes partway into solving this; I would love if the district system was pared back a bit so that larger cities still grow to occupy several tiles, but so there is also enough room on the map for villages and towns, which were dropped in civ 5 and 6. You could also create more multi-tile improvements in the vein of civ 6's national parks. Pastures, for instance, could occupy >1 tile.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I would very much support the enlarging of the default map. that will make true earth maps more rich and interesting as well.

Shafer cites technical limitations, which have now been considerably loosened in the 13 years since civ 5 was developed. The interview alludes to how expanding the map would have knock-on effects for city and tile management. The introduction of a district system already goes partway into solving this; I would love if the district system was pared back a bit so that larger cities still grow to occupy several tiles, but so there is also enough room on the map for villages and towns, which were dropped in civ 5 and 6. You could also create more multi-tile improvements in the vein of civ 6's national parks. Pastures, for instance, could occupy >1 tile.

I confess, I compare Civ (both V and VI) to some of the newer games like Anno 1800 or Farthest Frontier (which is still in Early Access), both of which have virtually ubiquitous animations everywhere and astounding detail of terrain, landscape, buildings, etc - and both play fine on my computer, which is now about 3 - 4 years behind State of the Art.

Now, I have no particular technical knowledge of modern computing - as I've often said, the last computer languages I studied officially were FORTRAN and COBOL, which count as Neolithic Era computing, I'm sure.

But I have to wonder just how much more difficult Civ is to render compared to those other games, and why, - also to compare - even Humankind could put far more animation and detail into every tile and still run on my old Mac PC-emulation system better than the contemporary Civ VI did.

AND, especially when they have specifically identified Size of Map as a problem which led them to give us the garbage 1UPT system as it stands with all its (unresolved) problems, they haven't been working mightily to solve the 'technical problems' that kept us from having maps sizable enough to actually play a world-spanning 4X historical game on them.

 

[pineappledan]

Now, I have no particular technical knowledge of modern computing - as I've often said, the last computer languages I studied officially were FORTRAN and COBOL, which count as Neolithic Era computing, I'm sure.

In the context of civ 5, which is the game that Shafer is talking about, the big limitation is that it is 64-bit 32 bit. This means the game's memory caps out at 4 GB of RAM, which you could get in a phone these days.

And yeah, the game is generally very poorly optimized and does a lot of things that don't make much sense. The DLL for civ 5 was released and it's a clown-show. Makes me wonder if the reason they never gave modders access to the DLL for civ 6 is because they're too embarrassed.

 

[historix69]

the big limitation is that it is 64-bit. This means the game's memory caps out at 4 GB of RAM,

you mean 32-bit ... 4 GB = 2^32
64-bit should be less a problem IF the PC has enough RAM, eg 32 GB or 64 GB or ...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

you mean 32-bit ... 4 GB = 2^32
64-bit should be less a problem IF the PC has enough RAM, eg 32 GB or 64 GB or ...

My gaming is pretty narrowly focused: I don't even try to play first-person shooters or much fantasy-based games, so I don't pretend to be very knowledgeable on what the 'best practices' and acceptable configurations and requirements for gaming computers are these days.
But
The games I do play are all very similar in their requirements: 16 - 32 GB of RAM, GPUs and CPUs from the past 4 - 5 years but not by any means Top of the Line. Anno 1800 is notoriously RAM-heavy, requiring at least 20 GB and preferably 30+ to run smoothly, while Farthest Frontier, a graphic-heavy city-builder/survival game still in Early Access, starts to press my 3070 Ti GPU when my town population in-game hits 900 + (with all 900+ villagers in detailed animation all the time - but more optimization is planned before Final Release, I understand). Civ VI, Humankind, Old World have none of them stressed even my previous system, which dated from 2015 and, again, was not Top of the Line even back then.

Which means, from my Blithely Ignorant viewpoint, there is great room for improvement in Civ VII graphics and gaming compared to Civ VI without overwhelming the run-of-the-mill computers being used for gaming out there in 2022 - 2023. If they cannot do better, as stated I suspect it means they are lacking in competence rather than available computer resources.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Civ6 runs smoothly with low/medium details on my 2010 computer, even if I never activated leader animations. I never tried Humankind, because i'm not attracted to it and mainly because Amplitude previous games bored me (endless legend...), but I tried Old World and it was a disaster : each scout put 30 seconds to uncover a couple tiles of fog of war ! Other than that, it was ugly, unlike Civ6.

So now that I have a Playstation 5 (foolish move ?) on the arms, I guess I hope Civ7 to be released on it.

I'm sure devs can do better, it was just a matter of highest compatibility here. Isn't Civ6 on phones ? Nintendo Switch ? Old computers like mine ? (and even older, or at least weaker) Trust me, for such an old PC like mine, they did a great job of optimization : it's nice, and it runs well. Only the loadings are a little bit annoying. (but i think they improved it lately, or is it just me)

Therefore, I have no worries about Firaxis ability to deliver something really amazing. Now, will they ? Only with respect to Clarity you know... maybe they think Civ series doesn't need more power. Map size augmentation will only happen with a massive overhaul of UI, with zooms/zoom out at the core of it for example. (and the problem of clarity again, I personnally dislike a lot how Humankind managed the zoom out) Not counting with all the increased facilities needed to move troops from a point to another, etc. so only map size increase would involve some tweaks to 1UPT... maybe they are working on it right now who knows. Working to tweak 1UPT for largers maps to allow current 1UPT seems legit.

 

[historix69]

After all, the grid system was first imagined by Sid Meier taking inspiration from SimCity, but nowadays city builders such as Cities: Skylines no longer work this way. Worked tiles would be generated by the city all around it. Cities would grow naturally in size with population and districts. And units would each have its own zone of control in which it would engage combat. The game would remain turn-based though, with units all having their own max distance per turn. That would emancipate the game from many constraints, and everything would physically feel more natural and make better sense. That would also allow the map to be an actual globe.

AfaIk the combat part of Civ 1 was inspired by an older turn based strategy game "Empire". Empire is quite simple but can be addictive. It is mostly about exploring the map, conquering cities, building units to explore more and conquer more cities, ...

Empire (1977 video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Civilization (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

While Empire allows unlimited stacks in cities (which get destroyed when the city is conquered), it also features the typical 1upt traffic jams for the cheap land units (armies/infantry) which have only 1 movement point.

In 1994, MicroProse published "Master of Magic" which was heavily inspired by Civ and featured armies, heroes and a separate battle screen for tactical battles.

Master of Magic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[historix69]

As I see it, your point about concentration for combat mostly applies for melee units: the more you have the stronger you are. Yet as you mentioned it, that should be limited by the logistics issues you described, that could be represented in the game as an attrition penalty.

Attrition in Civ games is difficult due to often insane self heal abilities of units (and neighbouring units) with promotions. Unless you loose a unit, it always can heal back to full strength with no extra costs, so no soldiers killed or equipment destroyed if the unit keeps at least 1 HP.

Besides the attrition and logistical reasons there can be also economic reasons to limit number of troops for a certain region. An attacker may deploy just enough troops to savely achieve his objectives since every mobilized unit comes with economic costs : supply, upkeep, resources, mobilized manpower cannot contribute to economy as workforce, ...
By significantly increasing unit upkeep for mobilized units, the number of units in a SoD should decrease ...

 

[pineappledan]

Besides the attrition and logistical reasons there can be also economic reasons to limit number of troops for a certain region. An attacker may deploy just enough troops to savely achieve his objectives since every mobilized unit comes with economic costs : supply, upkeep, resources, mobilized manpower cannot contribute to economy as workforce, ...
By significantly increasing unit upkeep for mobilized units, the number of units in a SoD should decrease ...

This gives me an idea for a mechanic, actually.

Civ units should be able to heal each turn etc, as they do now. They're abstracted armies that can recruit, replace, and re-arm on the game's 1+ year per turn time scale, after all, but damaged units cost 2x gold maintenance, and healing units cost 3x gold maintenance per turn. This would allow for some extra depth and more dependence on gold economies that differentiate them from production economies. It would also allow for the creation of "paper tiger" forces, where players (and AI) can create military buildups, but might only find out after a war has started that they don't have the economy to sustain troops in the field. This could be compounded by war weariness that could decrease gold efficiency on empire over time.

 

[historix69]

A realistic change would be to have upkeep per turn probably at around 10% of a unit's costs, so that modern expensive units would cost a lot more upkeep and demobilizing most units after a war would be a necessity. Still nations should have the ability to stockpile not mobilized units at low upkeep costs, eg in cities with baracks or arsenal.

Increased gold upkeep for repairing damaged units is a problem because quite often the options to earn gold in the game are limited and the exchange rate from production to gold is usually bad like 4:1, so a city uses 4 production to get an extra gold. Nations in wartime usually switch to wartime production and part of that production would go into support, supply and repair of existing units while some production would go into new units. So there could be a new "currency" like "supply" produced in cities to support, supply and repair units ... Still this would ignore all the logistical problems of supplying military units at the end of the world far away from the centers of production.

For more realistic supply, cities would have to produce supply "items" which then would have to be transported by transport units to the military units to keep them working and repair them while the transport units would eat up some of the supply, too. Then the transport units would have to go back to fetch more supply items ...

------

"Damage" in the sense of lost HP is also an ambiguous theme :
- there are permanent losses like killed or heavily wounded soldiers or destroyed equipment which have to be replaced
- there are temporary losses like lightly injured or sick soldiers which can be healed, damaged equipment which can be repaired, units in disorder which can organize again
- there are also other (temporary) reductions in combat strength due to lack of ammo, fuel, etc
So some "damage" may heal over time, some may require some supplies and some may require more expensive full replacements from home.
(WW2 example : a tank unit of 10 tanks goes into battle and "looses" 8 tanks, but can repair 7 of the damaged tanks, so only one is completely lost. So the unit strength goes from 10/10 to 2/7/10 to 9/10.)

I remember the detail to count injured soldiers from Fantasy General.

Fantasy General - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Imperialism series also distinguishes between disorder and casualties. A general may restore order on the battlefield while casualties take several turns to refill.

Imperialism (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Imperialism II: Age of Exploration - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[aieeegrunt]

Attrition in Civ games is difficult due to often insane self heal abilities of units (and neighbouring units) with promotions. Unless you loose a unit, it always can heal back to full strength with no extra costs, so no soldiers killed or equipment destroyed if the unit keeps at least 1 HP.

Besides the attrition and logistical reasons there can be also economic reasons to limit number of troops for a certain region. An attacker may deploy just enough troops to savely achieve his objectives since every mobilized unit comes with economic costs : supply, upkeep, resources, mobilized manpower cannot contribute to economy as workforce, ...
By significantly increasing unit upkeep for mobilized units, the number of units in a SoD should decrease ...

A unit sitting out multiple turns to fully heal is already a pretty significant cost just in the lost time where it cannot be used.

A lot of the suggestions here are well beyond the scope of what Civ games are.

The health bar is already a fairly good abstraction of “hard” losses, disorganization, and need to resupply without adding more busywork to the game.

You’d get a far better return in looking at a simple abstracted supply system; where units have to be within a certain number of movement points to a friendly city in order to be able to heal. The number of movement points will change with certain techs.

Units in a ZOC cannot heal. Only Cavalry and scout units have ZOC. Enemy cav cancels out each other’s ZOC

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A unit sitting out multiple turns to fully heal is already a pretty significant cost just in the lost time where it cannot be used.

A lot of the suggestions here are well beyond the scope of what Civ games are.

The health bar is already a fairly good abstraction of “hard” losses, disorganization, and need to resupply without adding more busywork to the game.

You’d get a far better return in looking at a simple abstracted supply system; where units have to be within a certain number of movement points to a friendly city in order to be able to heal. The number of movement points will change with certain techs.

Units in a ZOC cannot heal. Only Cavalry and scout units have ZOC. Enemy cav cancels out each other’s ZOC

IF you must have Supply Lines in a game, keep them as absolutely simple as possible. Try to introduce anything 'realistic' and it becomes a nightmare almost immediately.
X tiles to a Friendly City. X variable with Terrain (roads, railroads, etc) and Technology.
No Supply Line either because enemy ZOC/Unit is sitting on it or you moved too far away or the city revolted, and your Unsupplied Units start losing both Combat Factors ("Health') AND Mobility (horses unfed, motor vehicles out of fuel)
Some units/armies could have 'looser' supply rules: Scouts or Barbarians Don' Need No Stinking Supply and nomad horse archers or Light Cavalry in plains/grasslands might be 'immune' or partially immune to supply effects. This would, in fact, make a neat provision for some Unique Units

 

[aieeegrunt]

IF you must have Supply Lines in a game, keep them as absolutely simple as possible. Try to introduce anything 'realistic' and it becomes a nightmare almost immediately.
X tiles to a Friendly City. X variable with Terrain (roads, railroads, etc) and Technology.
No Supply Line either because enemy ZOC/Unit is sitting on it or you moved too far away or the city revolted, and your Unsupplied Units start losing both Combat Factors ("Health') AND Mobility (horses unfed, motor vehicles out of fuel)
Some units/armies could have 'looser' supply rules: Scouts or Barbarians Don' Need No Stinking Supply and nomad horse archers or Light Cavalry in plains/grasslands might be 'immune' or partially immune to supply effects. This would, in fact, make a neat provision for some Unique

Oh totally agree.

 

[VGhost]

I much prefer 1 UPT to trying to juggle stacks. On the other hand the map feels scaled for early to mid-game combat on those conditions, and city density late-game exacerbates that.

I think the corps idea is a good one, but there's some working out to be done especially late-game with regard to "combined arms". Also seems to me like a corps should be stronger than its individual parts (rather than weaker as iirc it is currently) but move slower.

 

[Naokaukodem]

In warfare (see Sun Tzu's Art of War, current reading), moving troops and deploying them fast is as important as actually fighting. General rule : your column has to have no holes in it. (in terms of Civ : there mustn't be any empty tile between your moving units) Also, you have to send scouts/spies to see what's around you.
Those two are so vital that I think they should be kind of automatic. (at least with the required techs or civics) I always thought there should be two modes for moving your troops : march and fight. March should make your army look like a snake, and act as so. (easier troops moving)
With scouts you could know where the enemy is before it reaches you, and start to deploy near it. In march mode your troops would be faster than in combat mode, especially on roads/railroads or with modern land transports.
All your army doesn't have to be in the same column. You can try to take the enemy on the flanks or isolate him with multiple armies.
There should be a way to kill enemy scouts undetected (I think more like nowadays Civs, Civ6 or Civ5), to avoid direct declaration of war. Because let's face it, a scout in/near your territory is always a threat. Some tribes killed at view any intruders. The other tribe would simply wait for them forever, or try to guess who/what killed them. (this could also be animals)
Etc.