[IDEA] UnitStack in cities via special buildings

[dexters]

As noted, current military building upgrade path does not require any changes to the building system.

Barracks +1 Armory +1 Mil. Academy +1 plus base garrison of 1, you can foritfy 4 units in a city.

And yes, I do like my own idea of making them not cost maintenance while inside the city.

This also solves the problem of AIs not having any units once you blow away their attacking force. it won't cost them anything to fortify some in their core

Further idea, don't just bump up a city's defense if you fortify units. Increase HP by 1/2 the unit's HP.

For calculation's sake, so a city doesn't implode if a unit leaves it, units will always take damage and die before cities take damage. And yes, this may be overpowered if players can use a unit factory strategy to reinforce a city *may need to be adjusted* but I think the basic idea of units increasing a city's HP is a good one.


This avoids the situation of a unit leaving a city and putting the city at 0 health.

 

[poncratias]

The whole point of unit maintenance is for gold management.

If you could garrison your troops and eliminate the cost, everyone would have large armies.

You don't get it.

You would only have no costs for the units that are stationed in the city. All units outside have normal unit upkeep to be payed.

And you can only station as much units as you have enough space = buildings, which in return have to be payed and also be build in the first place.

So this doesn't lead to big large armies, unless you have really much money and can afford all this, which would be ok, wouldn't it?

 

[dexters]

It also makes military buildings worth it, and fixes a glaring problem in the game currently, and that is the AI builds an attacking force and is prostrate to the victorious army once that is gone. They dont fortify.

 

[poncratias]

I also think that this would greatly help the AI in many aspects.

It's

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

The buildings could increase the stacking limit anywhere within your borders perhaps?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Decent idea, although as someone said in another thread, the number of ranged units in a city would probably need to be capped more heavily. Otherwise you allow cities to get such a heavy volley of fire against approaching attackers that it'll be difficult to take any cities.

 

[Camikaze]

Every time I see an idea such as this, I can't help but think that the easiest and obvious solution would be to simply scrap the one unit per tile rule. But anyway...

This idea is a good one. Most ideas regarding exceptions to the 1upt rule propose arbitrary caps or something, but the limit placed under this idea would not at all be arbitrary. It would be clearly linked to buildings. Perhaps units stacked in a city could still be subject to some fairly intense collateral damage, just to make sure they don't become overpowered, but other than that, I fail to see a problem with this idea.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

If you add a size attribute to units, and a stack limit on tiles, then you can limit the stacking of certain units however you want. If you wanted certain units to have unlimited stacking, you could give them a size of 0.

 

[poncratias]

If you add a size attribute to units, and a stack limit on tiles, then you can limit the stacking of certain units however you want. If you wanted certain units to have unlimited stacking, you could give them a size of 0.

hmmm I don't think I understand you correctly.

What does this have to do with stacking units only in cities via garrison buildings?

 

[dexters]

Decent idea, although as someone said in another thread, the number of ranged units in a city would probably need to be capped more heavily. Otherwise you allow cities to get such a heavy volley of fire against approaching attackers that it'll be difficult to take any cities.

I would maintain ranged type units at 1.
Infantry/tank line units no cap

Every time I see an idea such as this, I can't help but think that the easiest and obvious solution would be to simply scrap the one unit per tile rule. But anyway...

This idea is a good one. Most ideas regarding exceptions to the 1upt rule propose arbitrary caps or something, but the limit placed under this idea would not at all be arbitrary. It would be clearly linked to buildings. Perhaps units stacked in a city could still be subject to some fairly intense collateral damage, just to make sure they don't become overpowered, but other than that, I fail to see a problem with this idea.

Most people like or at least understand the attempt at 1UPT. I don't think that is going away anyways, and it's going to be a stretch to even get them to listen to this.

The idea of allowing for multiple units in a city is to 'model' the idea of some cities being 'garrisons' where an army is based. You can't simulate that if you have 1 unit garrisons and 3 others standing outside. And it creates a lot of congestion too.

By tying it to your barracks>Armory>Mil. Academy line of buildings it allows you to buy extra slots for garrisons and in theory allows your cities to be specialized. Granted you can probably garrison 4 units in all your puppet cities given how the AI is.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Hmmm...another angle. You could have buildings that allow military specialists just you have buildings for scientists etc. Each pop in the city used as a miliarty specialist could enhance the defense of the city. This is a rather different approach from being able to shove specific units into the city I know.

 

[poncratias]

*bump*

 

[Johan de Witt]

While I applaud the fact that you come up with a suggestion, I do feel the need to reply.

There are also people who love the 1upt and would hate to see it go, so remember that you are seeking a solution to something that isn't a problem to everyone. If you have ideas like this, they belong in the modding forum in my opinion.

One of the reasons they implemented the 1upt rule was to move to combat away from cities and into the fields. This makes combat more fun in my opinion and makes it historicly accurate; wars were decided in the field rather than in sieges (yes, this even goes for Stalingrad). Remember in Civ IV where your stack of doom would either blast a city to smithereens or crumble on its walls? That was what they wanted to move away from.

 

[Camikaze]

While I applaud the fact that you come up with a suggestion, I do feel the need to reply.

There are also people who love the 1upt and would hate to see it go, so remember that you are seeking a solution to something that isn't a problem to everyone. If you have ideas like this, they belong in the modding forum in my opinion.

All ideas, regardless of the level of support, belong here. Being in the modding forum too could be useful for actual implementation, but there's no reason not to post this idea here.

One of the reasons they implemented the 1upt rule was to move to combat away from cities and into the fields. This makes combat more fun in my opinion and makes it historicly accurate; wars were decided in the field rather than in sieges (yes, this even goes for Stalingrad). Remember in Civ IV where your stack of doom would either blast a city to smithereens or crumble on its walls? That was what they wanted to move away from.

Ah yes, now that is a very good point that I hadn't considered. This idea would definitely have to be balanced with the need to keep combat out in the field. This could be fairly simply done by making the collateral damage penalties on city stacks pretty steep, though.

 

[poncratias]

One of the reasons they implemented the 1upt rule was to move to combat away from cities and into the fields. This makes combat more fun in my opinion and makes it historicly accurate; wars were decided in the field rather than in sieges (yes, this even goes for Stalingrad). Remember in Civ IV where your stack of doom would either blast a city to smithereens or crumble on its walls? That was what they wanted to move away from.

Simple solution:
Tell the AI to pillage once they have crossed the borders, and noone will let them enough time to reach their cities.

After all, this was also the main reason in reality why most battles were fought in open field: Because you don't want to let the enemy plunder your homeland!

And If I remember it right it was the same in CIv IV (at last for me): I never gave the big stacks enough time to reach my cities. Once they approached my borders, all hell broke loose.

I still rember great battles, when I broke the french big army by the river-border of our countries, it was an epic battle.

 

[Johan de Witt]

Simple solution:
Tell the AI to pillage once they have crossed the borders, and noone will let them enough time to reach their cities.

This was what they tried with Civ 4 and it didn't work. Defense out in the open was suicide. Think of it this way... If cities would have larger garrisons, the offender would have to be balanced around this meaning that fighting out in the open would become a liability again.

After all, this was also the main reason in reality why most battles were fought in open field: Because you don't want to let the enemy plunder your homeland!

The main reason to fight in the open is quite simple... Diseases.
If you station a large army in the field, there is quite the possibility of an outbreak. Within cities, the chance for an outbreak was already big and adding a large army to that was a bad idea for the army as well as the city.

City fortifications were designed for one thing, defending a spot with minimal manpower. Standing armies were rare before the time of Napoleon but you still wanted to hold your ground if someone suddenly attacked you. The fortification was great for this, you could hold off an army for weeks if not months while you raised a (new) army.

In Civ 4, defending a city was boring in my opinion... I pressed end of turn, praying that my city would still be standing the next turn. If it had, the war had been won, if it hadn't the war had been lost most of the time. In Civ 5, the defining moment is through consequtive turns. In my opinion, the problem is more that the AI does now know how to handle combat and the fact that building new units is so slow that your enemy has taken 5 cities before you build your first unit.

 

[Camikaze]

Well perhaps this is where a modified version of this idea could come in? That would allow for a certain level of stacking based on non-arbitrary criteria, and would take combat into the open field.

 

[poncratias]

Well perhaps this is where a modified version of this idea could come in? That would allow for a certain level of stacking based on non-arbitrary criteria, and would take combat into the open field.

Interesting, maybe both would be possible?

 

[dexters]

The idea of building based stacking though makes sense and isn't arbitrary.

It focuses your cities as garrisons and points of control where an entire army can project power.

This also means cities can't arbitrarily have 4 slots. It has 1 base slot and you specialize it by building military buildings.

Can be tied to walls>Castles path or the barracks>armoury path. or both. I initially favoured barracks>armoury but have revised to focus more on the underused walls/castles defensive buildings.

The former, from a gameplay perspective would allow to specialization that makes more sense, while the latter, may have the unintended consequence of focusing your large garrison cities in your core, where your most productive non puppet cities are. as those are where you produce military.

There's also an incongruency of going for barracks/armoury, which grants exp bonus for new units and 'rewards production'. Border cities, or newly acquired tracks of land are places where you want your local non puppet city to have more defensive works (walls/castles).

I'll also extend the idea of granting units stationed within cities with walls/castles a discount on maintenance.

 

[Camikaze]

Yeah, stacking in cities rather than on military camps would have the benefit of allowing for a more flexible scale (you either would have a military camp or not, but with a city, you could have 1 or 2 or 3 or more buildings that would allow for different levels of units). However, taking combat out into the field and diversifying strategy is really really important, so that has to be effectively allowed for.