Instead of 1UPT (one unit per tile) why not just make armies?

[Suspiria]

I dare say somebody will mod CIV5 to allow SOD's.

Personally I think you should still have SOD in movement but when it comes to combat the map should zoom in to allow 1UPT battle. Im not thinking as big and interactive as Total War, more like CIV5 1 UPT but set upon a vast battlefield representing the tile space being attacked.

 

[migkillertwo]

It might possibly be more fun, but again its too complicated. The 1UPT simulates real warfare just fine. A total war style combat mechanic would needlessly overcomplicate things and will not accurately represent battles after the Napoleonic era.

 

[TheNiceOne]

I don't get your point.
Actually, I don't see why moving single units around is interesting tactical combat preparation, whilst maintaining SSODs would be boring micro-management?
In terms of tactical considerations, both seem to require the same amount of considerations.

Personally, having experience with tactical board war games when positioning, terrain and flanks matter, I think it will be a great improvement to get this into CIV, instead of just adding enough units of each necessary type to the SSOD.

Yet, and now I come back to the "later" from above, the 1upt requires (due to limited space on the map) limited number of units.
This is good at first glance. Yet, under the assumption of random combat results, it makes the loss of even 1 of your units (especially in the early game) very dangerous.

That's a good point. I remember back to the CIV3 random combat result discussions where I argued that the random chance of losing to a weaker unit was fine most of the game, but a bit too important in the early stages of the game where there were much less units...

(Note, that here I make use of two assumptions which both can be true or false:
a - That the RNG will present you the same awful results as in Civ4, where you could easily lose even 99.x % fights

I apologize if I just misunderstand what you mean here, but it seems that you don't fully understand how probability works. If your attack has a 99% chance of winning, it means per definition that you will lose 1 in 100 times, so the RNG is correct in coming up with losses now and then. If you want to win 100% of the times under those odds, the probability must be 100%, not 99% (or 99.x)

And all tests have proven that CIV's combat results work as intended, i.e. a 99% attack will win 99% of the time. So saying that the RNG give awful results is simply wrong. If you instead meant that the way combat in CIV works make it too hard for a superior unit to reach 100% victory chance, then that's a subjective view which is neither wrong or right, so I will not challenge that, except to mention that CIV makes it much easier than CIV3 to get muuch higher victory chances.

 

[Johnny Be]

That's a good point. I remember back to the CIV3 random combat result discussions where I argued that the random chance of losing to a weaker unit was fine most of the game, but a bit too important in the early stages of the game where there were much less units...

I think it has been said that units won't die from just one defeat in combat. We'll have to see how combat damage is going to be applied, but if it's anything like Panzer Gen. (were CiV combat system was inspired) then you will need to make a combined effort with several units to completely annihilate a single unit.

This way, in the beginning, if your single unit finds another isolated unit, it can always retreat and run away if combat results are bad for you side.

 

[Schuesseled]

its been said and seen that units won't necessarily die from one comabt. That doesn't mean that all won't in fact quite a lot will.

 

[Peng Qi]

its been said and seen that units won't necessarily die from one comabt. That doesn't mean that all won't in fact quite a lot will.

But I imagine it will be very rare if not impossible to lose your unit in a fight that has close to even odds or one that you're favored to win. This fact alone will severely reduce the irritation of "losing" a 99% battle when "losing" just means "my guy took slightly more damage than his" instead of "now my guy is dead and his unit is more powerful than it was before I attacked."

 

[Schuesseled]

the video i saw with a stalemate, rather than a victory predicted ended with one of the units dying. It might be that there is less chance, but who knows.

 

[DalekDavros]

I mean they could have simply backtracked and made it similar to Civ III.

I can see the interviews: "Yeah, we thought that Civ IV was absolutely perfect as it was, and we didn't want to make Civ 4.5, so we thought we'd backtrack and remake Civ III instead."

Anyway, looking at the available video, it seems that making armies is exactly what they did: each unit is representing significantly more troops than an equivalent unit in any previous Civ game did.

 

[Peng Qi]

the video i saw with a stalemate, rather than a victory predicted ended with one of the units dying. It might be that there is less chance, but who knows.

In the same video, I could swear I saw both units survive.

 

[gillen]

the video i saw with a stalemate, rather than a victory predicted ended with one of the units dying. It might be that there is less chance, but who knows.

That's probably just for the promotional videos. One unit dying looks a lot cooler than both units surviving. I think that both units surviving will be a lot more common than one unit dying.

 

[Schuesseled]

In the same video, I could swear I saw both units survive.

maybe kinda hard to remember.

 

[RickInVA]

And it means that well established AI routines for 1upt -- which is the standard in practically every wargame ever -- can be used instead of whatever it is they cooked up for the earlier games.

I have 50+ Avalon Hill, Victory Games, and other publishers board wargames, and maybe 2 of them have a 1upt rule. If you can list 10 games that use 1upt I would be impressed. It is NOT the gaming standard by any measure.

 

[RickInVA]

Commander Bello, the funny thing is that i had to explain this same thing to RickInVA about a month ago so ill just copy paste my answers from "Unit Stacking" thread to you and make a couple of ajustments to it

So here we go:


"1) In 1upt i build a unit and occupy a hex with it, if i build another one, then i can occupy another hex. You dont need to think about adding units to those particular hexes anymore, because they are now full and thats it, also, you cannot change that units advanteges or disadvantages by adding some other type of troops to the same hex because it is not possible, pretty simple eh. To FULLY occupy a one hex in 3upt, i build a unit, then i build another one but it propably should be a different unit from the first one i builded, yet i build one more unit wich propably should also be different from the once that i builded before this one, and after that, i can FULLY occupy a hex. Thats just a one hex tough.. So there is MUCH more MM in 3upt to get to the same result wich is, making a full (unit) fighting force/fully occupy a hex. AND as i will tell you in my point 3, there is NOTHING added to the strategy in something like 3upt.


2) If we forget the stack combat for a moment, 3upt is basicly just 1upt with much added Micromanagement. When you are at war, and you are doing some battles and loosing some units, Its not fun to go trough your stacks to look for what units do you need to build next to this particular stack, so that it wouldnt be an easy target for the enemy stack just because you dont have certain kind of unit in it. Remember that because you CAN stack units you MUST stack units so you BETTER build at least one SAM Infantry to EVERY STACK if your enemy is using lots of Gunships. Thats just MM.


3) But dont forget the stack warfare problem! Because for example something like 3upt will also bring back the frustation like when you are attacking an enemy stack that has for example one Marine and two Gunships in it, and your attacking them with your stack of two Modern Armour and one SAM Infantry. When you attack with Modern Armour, then the Gunship will defend, and when you attack with SAM Infantry, then the Marine will defend. And it doesnt get much better if your having the Marine+Gunship stack and the enemy has the Modern Armour+SAM Infantry stack. So its civ4 all over again.


And as ive allready told you once, big stack limit basicly means SODs again.


So, in something like 3upt system, there is HUGE amount of micromanagement but not that much of tactical warfare. I really dont understand why somebody would want to have something like that in a game? Firaxis certainly didnt want it so they made it 1upt, wich is good, most people here seem to like it because there are only few people here saying that its bad thing."



So there you have it, do you now understand my point?

Your point is no better now than it was then.

Just two counterarguments today.

1) If I have a 5 hex front and the limit is 1upt and I have 5 units I can bar the enemy from advancing. If one of my units dies I now have 4 to cover 5 hexes. I cannot any longer prevent the enemy from entering my country. The other 4 units are virtually worthless at this point. If there is a 3 upt rule, and I originally have 15 units for my 5 hex front, and I loose all 3 in one hex, I still have 12 units to cover 5 hexes. Not all hexes will be well supported, but the loss of one hex's units will not cause my line to loose all cohesion like it will with 1upt.

2) To your point #3. Exactally! That perfectly demonstrates the historical, well known, well researched, and factual military maxim that you can't attack with equal forces and expect to win! Does "Get there the firstest with the mostest" ring a bell? How about the Powell Doctrine? It has always been that the attacker needs 2, 3, 5 to 1 or more attacking to offset the advantages of the defender. Why should Civ be any different? You want 1 unit to be able to successfully attack 1 unit. From a military standpoint that is not normal. Did it happen? Sure, sometimes you had no choice but to attack, and you got lucky. But to make 1 to 1 unit combat the norm, to say that this is the right way to conduct battle is to turn 5000 years of military history on its head.

I still maintain that there is no argument to be made that 1upt is superior. That you and other have some facination with it is obvious. You are entitled to your opinions as well as your likes and dislikes. So are those that oppose 1upt with all their being, like myself. It is not historical, nor is is a normal feature in wargaming. As I said to Aeon221, I will be surprised if you can list 10 wargames that use 1upt. Some games, like Struggle of Nations for example, only allow 1 "unit" per hex, but the "unit" is a leadership unit that can represent from 1000 to 50,000 or so men (changeable at will), so it is not really 1upt.

 

[12agnar0k]

@1), if you want to make a flimsy line across your front and let an enemy puncture it, thats up to you, personally I would have 2 lines of troops this way if an enemy takes out a unit on a hex, they will have 2 units either side of thier "hole" and 2 more units infront of them, and they will have no back up accept behind them, in other words thats one dead hole puncturer.
If you let your line faulter then you will be compromised, this is strategy, if you let them get behind you and flank you, your done for, strategy, if you can't hack playing tactically with 1UPT and are afraid to do anything unless all your troops are stacked into one tile, then perhaps this game isnt for you.

@2) if you want to attack someone you will need more troops than them, thats easy, but what you don't need is stacks, you can fight against defensive advantages on open countryside just as well as throwing a stack into another stack.

1 upt isn't superior per say, however it is a change, and that is what they were after with Civ5 they wanted to make ciV and not cIV.5
1 UpT will need us to utilise competely different combat strategies, will demand us to spread our troops out across the battle fields, even during times of peace, no longer will we be holding our arsenals in cities waiting for war. They will already be out on the front holding defensive positions or ready to strike. Doing away with stacks allows for unit verse unit combat, if one unit has been damaged out on the field you can have your troops pick on this fellow and perhaps make a way for your army to move into thier territory and flank your enemy, before with stacks the combat was simplified, two giant armies whacking away at each other, strongest fighting before damaged troops till one side looses. With 1UpT if a unit is damaged while holding up a defensive position you will need to move it out of thier and replace it, very different to simply relying on the stronger units in the stack to keep it safe.

Is 1UpT superior? In some aspects, but SOD do also have thier own appeals. But I do think moving to 1UpT is a good idea, because if nothing else it will give us a very different game to that of cIV which is always a good thing.

 

[aziantuntija]

I understand perfectly what you are saying RickInVA but the problem is that i really dont agree with you at all. There is also one little thing, i personally think that you dont understand what im saying here about limited stacking, you dont understand or you just dont want to understand, or perhaps my english isnt good enough


I also belive we are not talking about wich one (1upt or limited stacking) is superior overall or wich of these are used the most in gaming industry, but we are talking about wich one would be better for new Civilization game. You want to stick with stacks altough smaller stacks but still, well thats fine by me, i personally want a bigger change after 20 years of stacks. I write this because you seem to think that limited stacking would be better than 1upt in Civ5, wich it certainly isnt if you ask from me, why? Heres why:


IMO the biggest flaw in limited stacking is that then you no longer would be building full units, you would only build a part of a full unit, and then you must combine these units to make this one full unit (stack), 3upt, 4upt or whatever. That means that you can fill the weaknesses of this full unit (stack) by adding certain kind of units into it, wich means that some of these combinations would be better than others, or worst case scenario, maybe there would be this one unit combination that would be superior to others, regardless of era it would always be possible to build a superior unit combination one for attacking and one for defence. This would mean that you should only build two kinds of different stacks. Even tough it would be impossible to build "superior stack" there would most likely be one combination that would be the best, not necessarily superior but somewhat the best combination. This basicly means that you should build only the best type of combination, wich basicly means that you dont after all have any or just a little freedom in combining these units to one big unit (stack). This would make me ask this kind of question: "Why, just why cant the cities build unit so big that i wouldnt have to build three units in one hex!?"


If you were to have limited stacking and you would have three units and the enemy would also have three units, enemy puts them all in one stack but you would put your units each in their own hex to make a line (or something), lets also say that you both would have the same type of three units. Now as everyone can see, if you dont use stack tactic you are going to loose because the enemy can attack each and everyone of your unit individually but when you attack, you attack against a stack. This basicly means that you MUST use stacks. Always. So almost like 1upt, in 3upt you should NEVER dissemble your 3upt and in 1upt you should also never dissemble your unit and you even CANT dissemble it.


So the point is that with limited stacking you can and you also MUST patch every units weaknesses. What is the fun in that? What is the point of individual units, or their weaknesses if you can and you basicly must always patch it? What is the point of first building three or four units (depending on the stack limit) so that you can just patch things up? If you must patch your units to survive, why wouldnt the game just make that kind of units straight away that wouldnt have any weaknesses or the weaknsses would be much smaller? And so that their production times would be (almost?) the same as three or four units production times in limited stacking game? And that you could only put one of these kinds of units in a single hex because it would represent 3 or 4 units? Wouldnt that be alot easier? Yes it would be alot easier and its called 1upt.


If you look it like this then everyone can see that limited stacking (in Civilization) would basicly just be 1upt with reduced/deleted tactical decision (importance of troop positionin because of stacks and--->), deleted unit weaknesses (stacks) and added mm (building of stacks).


I mean what is so fun about graphically seeing 3 units inside a hex?


I mean think even just a moment what are you asking here RickInVA. Limited stacking isnt a good answer to anything if you want to make a improvement from SODs. 1upt sounds much better.

 

[qwerty25]

1) If I have a 5 hex front and the limit is 1upt and I have 5 units I can bar the enemy from advancing. If one of my units dies I now have 4 to cover 5 hexes. I cannot any longer prevent the enemy from entering my country. The other 4 units are virtually worthless at this point. If there is a 3 upt rule, and I originally have 15 units for my 5 hex front, and I loose all 3 in one hex, I still have 12 units to cover 5 hexes. Not all hexes will be well supported, but the loss of one hex's units will not cause my line to loose all cohesion like it will with 1upt.

There is zone of control in Civ5, so no walking around the enemy any more! (well you can still walk around of course, you'll just need to walk a bigger circle.)

2) To your point #3. Exactally! That perfectly demonstrates the historical, well known, well researched, and factual military maxim that you can't attack with equal forces and expect to win! Does "Get there the firstest with the mostest" ring a bell? How about the Powell Doctrine? It has always been that the attacker needs 2, 3, 5 to 1 or more attacking to offset the advantages of the defender. Why should Civ be any different? You want 1 unit to be able to successfully attack 1 unit. From a military standpoint that is not normal. Did it happen? Sure, sometimes you had no choice but to attack, and you got lucky. But to make 1 to 1 unit combat the norm, to say that this is the right way to conduct battle is to turn 5000 years of military history on its head.

How does surrounding the attacker from more than 1 side sound???

 

[Songkok]

I have 50+ Avalon Hill, Victory Games, and other publishers board wargames, and maybe 2 of them have a 1upt rule. If you can list 10 games that use 1upt I would be impressed. It is NOT the gaming standard by any measure.

You must have not play any KOEI games. almost all KOEI games are 1UPT.
so just for the Romance of Three Kingdoms Series, that is 1~11
haha... thats already 11 games...

oh yes... and all chess games are 1UPT...

 

[12agnar0k]

Chess lol, good example, if you were struggling to yourself what games are 1UpT and didnt think of chess or one of the similar popular board game alternatives you should slap yourself. Slap's himself.

Imagine how crap Chess would be with Stacks. So take this into consideration, we have been playing civ (chess) all this time with Stacks.... how much better will it be with 1UpT.

Nice point songkok.

I dare say somebody will mod CIV5 to allow SOD's.

Personally I think you should still have SOD in movement but when it comes to combat the map should zoom in to allow 1UPT battle. Im not thinking as big and interactive as Total War, more like CIV5 1 UPT but set upon a vast battlefield representing the tile space being attacked.

Now this isn't per say a bad idea, infact thier are many games like this, for instance Heroes of Might and Magic, stacks walk around the adventure map, and when they come across another army or "stack" same thing, they go into a battle with hexs and tiles (thiers been versions with both I think) where you move in turns and fight. Not quite like civ, but this is exactly what your concept is. So its not particularly Original but thats not a bad thing, it works and is a good Mechanic. But if it was Implemented, I do believe we could safely say this game would no longer be Civ. Going to 1UpT is already a big step away from Original Concepts. If you completely change it to the Mechanics of the games Competition all the way through its existence, then it ceases to be what it was.

There is zone of control in Civ5, so no walking around the enemy any more! (well you can still walk around of course, you'll just need to walk a bigger circle.)

Is this confirmed, or is it an assumption? Certainly makes protecting your flanks easier. You can space troops out and still have a complete blockade of tiles in a row to stop flanking. I think I heard this too Zone Of Control, but I guess I forgot

 

[Thyrwyn]

ZOC has been confirmed - it only affects enemies.

 

[Jakob Safa]

IMO the biggest flaw in limited stacking is that then you no longer would be building full units, you would only build a part of a full unit, and then you must combine these units to make this one full unit (stack), 3upt, 4upt or whatever.

This would create new tactical options, because you could garrison tiles with good defense (hills with forests, forests...) with only 1 or 2 units and use the rest to overwhelm the enemy in another part of the front line.

That means that you can fill the weaknesses of this full unit (stack) by adding certain kind of units into it

It is called combined arms and has been used since Alexander the great. The game would be very unrealistic without it. Why would you create a large army of modern armor that can be easily destroyed by gunships if you can make a unit of half modern armor and half Mobil sams.

which means that some of these combinations would be better than others, or worst case scenario, maybe there would be this one unit combination that would be superior to others, regardless of era

The best combination would depend on the combination of units your opponent has. Because of the upgrade paths, somebody who had lots of wars in ancient era would at the end of the game (without disbanding units) have a lot of mechanized infantry, so you would have to add more modern armor to the stack.

If you were to have limited stacking and you would have three units and the enemy would also have three units, enemy puts them all in one stack but you would put your units each in their own hex to make a line (or something), lets also say that you both would have the same type of three units. Now as everyone can see, if you don't use stack tactic you are going to loose because the enemy can attack each and everyone of your unit individually but when you attack, you attack against a stack. This basically means that you MUST use stacks. Always. So almost like 1upt, in 3upt you should NEVER dissemble your 3upt and in 1upt you should also never dissemble your unit and you even CANT dissemble it.

Unless you introduce stack attacks, the outcome of the battle would be determent only by luck (each unit would have 50% chance of winning and 50% of loosing).