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

[timtofly]

Regardless of what the hex represents by ways of landsize, 1UPT is more historically correct. You had divisions of units with special abilities. They were not all stacked up ontop of each other. You had the defensive melee units. You had the ranged units behind them. And the cavalry to do the flanking. While some people enjoy spam, spam in the technological world is usually frowned upon. It gums up the resources and slows down progress. While Alaxander must have had pride looking down over the thousands of units that would be raging war all day, in modern times and the fast pace of the technological world that is impracticle. Is it possible yes, and after ten years (of spamming) or even (in-fighting to spam or not to spam) a war will take a toll on any economy. Even if you are not at war and spam troops it will still effect your economy.

Getting off the political stump, Change is good (sometimes). V will be a major change in a lot of areas. Look at a unit as being a division of the same unit. As it is attacked it will get smaller and will loose strength. It will be able to retreat or hold the line until re-inforcements arrive. It will be better strategy, because those re-inforcments better be close. I see the AI as being better also. No more kamikazi catapults, (hopefully zeros though). We will be able to see the battle before us just like Alexander would have.

There will be an attack value and a defense value, and you will have to "think" about troop placement, not just what is in a stack. Two units of the same strength will not come out equal. The attacker will get some advantage, but it will also loose some points in both attack and defense. Even with two ranged units against each other, the attacker will inflict more damage, but will also receive some, if the other unit is in a position to return fire. Veterens will be stronger against new units, making keeping a unit alive more important than throwing away spammed units.

 

[12agnar0k]

I dont think thier is attack and defence values Tim.

By the gameplay footage we see Strengths, so it lookslike they have gone down the 1 Strength Figure with modifiers route again. I.e A spearman has 4 Strength and +50% against horses.
And we dont see "4 attack strength and 2 defence strength on units, so I can safely assume thier is only the 1 Strength figure same as last time. But this time thier is also ranged strengths on ranged units.

 

[Schuesseled]

only 1 strength value timothy, but with terrain and unit based modifiers as well as promotions and experience, you still have to be careful with placement.

 

[12agnar0k]

not to mention the bonuses for having near by allies, not having your back turned to an enemy, or having a general nearby. Lots of bonuses. This game should be wicked

 

[Calouste]

It's also going to be interesting to see what kind of effect 1upt will have on scout units. In Panzer General scouting out your opponents position was pretty important to avoid having units end up within range of of enemy units that can easily take them out (and even worse, run into a tile occupied by an enemy unit you didn't know off and suffer an ambush penalty). It seems that all tiles in your own territory are always visible, but they might play a role on the attack. Would have been nice in Civ4 if scouts and explorers had the Sentry promotion build in, but scouting out enemy positions isn't important there.

 

[drsparnum]

I'm excited about 1UPT. I think the intention in Civ4 was to get rid of stacks of doom with seige units, but it's a system that didn't fully accomplish the goal.

Even if both systems are approximately equally good, then I will choose the new system because it is new.

I think Civ 5 will play a lot more like the board game Diplomacy. Diplomacy has 1UPT. In Diplomacy you never feel like you have enough units to guard your territory. You need to have your units support one another (or receive support from allies). Also, when you attack in one direction it leaves you mighty vulnerable than in the other. Finally, in Diplomacy units don't really die [they just get pushed out of cities and cities determine the number of units your country can have (so if you lose a city you have to lose a unit somewhere)].

There are some differences between Diplomacy and Civ 5 of course. Diplomacy only has two unit types (boats and armies) and Diplomacy has no terrain modifiers (just water and land). So it is possible to have much richer tactics in Civ 5. But I think the general theme of really valuing your individual units (especially if special resources only allow a limited number of certain units), and just not being able to cover every angle will increase the tension in war. It will also make it difficult to fight a two front war, but it probably should be difficult.

 

[RickInVA]

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

That sounds great, but my statement was in direct response to another poster's statement that the fact that 3 of his units (Civ 4 in a stack) could not successfully attack an opposing stack of 3 units. I was pointing out that the situation as he presented it was not a probelm, but a great example of reality.

 

[RickInVA]

Regardless of what the hex represents by ways of landsize, 1UPT is more historically correct. You had divisions of units with special abilities. They were not all stacked up ontop of each other. You had the defensive melee units. You had the ranged units behind them. And the cavalry to do the flanking.

Tim,

The reality of the situation is that you are incorrect. In researching over 25 important land battles from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars I was not able to find even 1 (one) battle that was fought over an area exceeding 5x5 miles. Most ancient battles were fought with 50,000 to 100,000 or 200,000 men in an area of 2 to 3 miles wide and less than a mile deep. Not until the American Civil War were battles fought over (slightly) larger battle fields. Not untill WWI was there a "Line of Battle" that exended for miles.

Civ 4's Stacks of Doom exactally represented the state of battle up to 1900 (or so). I will agree completely that after that point the combat system falls apart as being historically accurate. No argument, agree completely (as I have always done). But most of Civ is not played in the 1900+ time frame.

What I am being asked to do is "the willing suspension of disbelief" that stringing my units across half of Europe in 1000 BC is somehow realistic. Well, as Black Adder said, "I'm not having anyone staring in disbelief at my willie suspension!" It doesn't do it for me. You want tactical combat? Have a battle map system like Total War. That I would be 200% in favor of. But not this.

 

[RickInVA]

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.

Aziantuntija,

Perhaps I don't understand what your base argument is, bacause from my seat it seems you think 1upt is a pancea for all ills. My objections to it are easily sumarized:

1) It is not historical untill the 1900 or so time frame. This one should probably be # 1,2,3,4 and 5 because it is by far my largest complaint.
2) Supporters believe it will increase "tactical combat". While I disagree with that it will do that, my larger objection is that I do not want increased tactical combat. personally I want less. I want a Civ that de-emphasizes player controlled combat, not increases it. When I want a war game I'll play one.

All my objection can basically be summed up in those two points.

None of your or anyone elses arguments have ever addressed either of those. From my perspective you ignore #1 because you want #2 and think 1upt will get you there. I believe sacrificing #1 just shoots the game in the foot, and that it should surrender the Civilization name.

 

[RickInVA]

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...

I'll confess to not making my question clearer and specifing board games. So, chess, checkers and GO. 7 more?

KOEI games are heavily console games with PC ports, hardly what I would think makes a good comparison (you may disagree of course).

IMHO having to stretch to those horrid (IMO) KOEI games only makes my point all the stronger.

 

[mtxdevil]

So ciV will have less units than cIV and the battle system has been changed due to 1UPT. That's all fine and good and I'm excited to try the new system. But, will there still be a representation of more industrial civs being able to produce and support more troops? A civ that has a much stronger industrial capacity than one of its rivals should be able to "throw" many more troops at it.

If the number of units are going to be much less now, will this still be accurately represented? War is not all about tactics in the field - industrial capacity is important also.

 

[Schuesseled]

Tim,

The reality of the situation is that you are incorrect. In researching over 25 important land battles from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars I was not able to find even 1 (one) battle that was fought over an area exceeding 5x5 miles. Most ancient battles were fought with 50,000 to 100,000 or 200,000 men in an area of 2 to 3 miles wide and less than a mile deep. Not until the American Civil War were battles fought over (slightly) larger battle fields. Not untill WWI was there a "Line of Battle" that exended for miles.

Civ 4's Stacks of Doom exactally represented the state of battle up to 1900 (or so). I will agree completely that after that point the combat system falls apart as being historically accurate. No argument, agree completely (as I have always done). But most of Civ is not played in the 1900+ time frame.

What I am being asked to do is "the willing suspension of disbelief" that stringing my units across half of Europe in 1000 BC is somehow realistic. Well, as Black Adder said, "I'm not having anyone staring in disbelief at my willie suspension!" It doesn't do it for me. You want tactical combat? Have a battle map system like Total War. That I would be 200% in favor of. But not this.

Its all about scale and perspective, when i look at 3 spearmen forming a line across 3 tiles, i don't see a dozen spearman congerating on one litle piece of lands miles from the next in line, i see a huge battlefront, not streching across miles, but extending up over that hill 200m away.

Tiles are not fixed in what they represent, till you realise that, civ games will always appear to be unrealistic.

 

[RickInVA]

Its all about scale and perspective, when i look at 3 spearmen forming a line across 3 tiles, i don't see a dozen spearman congerating on one litle piece of lands miles from the next in line, i see a huge battlefront, not streching across miles, but extending up over that hill 200m away.

Tiles are not fixed in what they represent, till you realise that, civ games will always appear to be unrealistic.

With all due respect, that is your personal opinion. I have played and enjoyed all Civs from 1 to now and nothing in them requires me to "resize" or "redefine" a tile. Nor should there be, IMHO. I do understand that what you are saying is the "idea", that the same hex grid will be both the strategic and tactical maps, at the same time, and that the player is just supposed to accept that. IMHO that is a bunch of %&@$*, and I don't buy into it.

 

[Schuesseled]

and your opinion is your opinion.

i think civ is good the way it is.

i like that the strate and tactical maps are combined.

other games out there that offer a difference, total war and hommm for example.

---

you don't need to resize or redefine a tile, you simply need to stop trying to define it, accept its fluidic nature.

 

[Calouste]

So ciV will have less units than cIV and the battle system has been changed due to 1UPT. That's all fine and good and I'm excited to try the new system. But, will there still be a representation of more industrial civs being able to produce and support more troops? A civ that has a much stronger industrial capacity than one of its rivals should be able to "throw" many more troops at it.

If the number of units are going to be much less now, will this still be accurately represented? War is not all about tactics in the field - industrial capacity is important also.

Units are going to be far more expensive to build, so if you have more industrial capacity, you will still be able to build more, and maybe also strongerones, of them.

And industrial capacity in Civ is not only modeled in hammers, it is also modelled in strategic resources, and we already know that certain units will be limited to the available number of strategic resources. And it might cost more resources/hammers to upgrade or promote units. Having high quality units is probably going to be more important than having many of them. Or in another perspective, units are comparable to divisions or brigades, which do have variable numbers of soldiers (roughly 10-15,000 for a modern day division and 3-5,000 for a brigade). Having a higher industrial capacity means you can equip more soldiers, so you can have more of them in each brigade, and that will be stronger than your opponent. Of course this requires some mechanism in Civ5 to convert hammers into additional unit strength (besides building more technologically advanced units), and we don't know if that really exists. But mechanisms like that have existed in other games.

Say for example you have a unit that costs 200 hammers to build and has a base strength of 100. Now you can decide to upgrade it to a strength of 110 by "building" another 25 or 30 hammers into it.

 

[gruther4]

With all due respect, that is your personal opinion. I have played and enjoyed all Civs from 1 to now and nothing in them requires me to "resize" or "redefine" a tile. Nor should there be, IMHO. I do understand that what you are saying is the "idea", that the same hex grid will be both the strategic and tactical maps, at the same time, and that the player is just supposed to accept that. IMHO that is a bunch of %&@$*, and I don't buy into it.

I have made similar arguments to this in the past, with regard to the time scale. Didn't Alexander conquer most of the known world in the space of one or two civ turns? So I can see where you are coming from about the ludicrousness of a classical battle spread out over an entire continent. Over time, I've come to change my mind about these objections, though.

Civ has always struggled (suffered?) from a juxtaposition of scale and detail. This is a game that tries to represent the entirety of world history with a level of detail that includes building specific buildings in specific cities, moving individual military units around, and managing civilian tasks. The only way to accomplish this in any sort of playable way has always been a certain amount of abstraction.

That is, a Civ "city" represents an entire region which would probably contain many cities, a Civ "unit" is an abstraction for an army of some size and composition, a Civ "turn" is some difficult-to-define unit of time, and a Civ "tile" is a different size depending on whether you are talking about city resource gathering, realistic world sizes (on world maps, at least), or military unit movement/battles.

Most Civ players, like me, have probably noticed these problems and realized that if you think about them too hard, they are ridiculous. However, I still like the game... even though I know that it isn't a good simulation, it feels fun, and for me that is what is important. Spreading battles out over the map seems, to me, like it would be fun, so I'm okay with ignoring the fact that it isn't realistic. However, I can understand and partially relate to the fact that you perhaps are not okay with ignoring this.

 

[Peng Qi]

With all due respect, that is your personal opinion. I have played and enjoyed all Civs from 1 to now and nothing in them requires me to "resize" or "redefine" a tile. Nor should there be, IMHO. I do understand that what you are saying is the "idea", that the same hex grid will be both the strategic and tactical maps, at the same time, and that the player is just supposed to accept that. IMHO that is a bunch of %&@$*, and I don't buy into it.

So it taking a warrior thousands of years to walk across a continent the size of Europe doesn't require you to "redefine" a tile? The fact that, on a large Civ map, it would have taken Christopher Columbus decades to reach the new world doesn't require you to "redefine" a tile?

I mean, feel free to make the argument that you think it's MORE realistic to have big stacks or something, but don't even pretend that Civilization hasn't, from its inception, been an exercise in abstraction.

 

[12agnar0k]

So ciV will have less units than cIV and the battle system has been changed due to 1UPT. That's all fine and good and I'm excited to try the new system. But, will there still be a representation of more industrial civs being able to produce and support more troops? A civ that has a much stronger industrial capacity than one of its rivals should be able to "throw" many more troops at it.

If the number of units are going to be much less now, will this still be accurately represented? War is not all about tactics in the field - industrial capacity is important also.

It is true that thier will be a limit of how many units you can build and this limit depends on your strategic resources, this limit is not the case when you do not need to a strategic resource to build them, warriors archers and later on riflemen (unless salt pepper is brought back) are good examples. But for the strategic demanded units say a swordsman, yes a limit is in place. But your question will a more industrial civilisation still have an advantage, the answer is yes.

I will explain.
Assume that both you and your new enemy have the same amount of strategic resources, that being 10 Iron. You can both build 10 swordsman, and over the years of peace you have indeed reached the limit and both have 10 units in defensive position. You however have eyed up his land and resources and declared war, greedily trying to achieve your goals you attack his better defended positions and you loose all 10 of your swords where as he only looses 8. Now it's time for both sides to rebuild to continue the war, he is not the industrial giant you are, you have twice his industry and by the time he rebuilds 5 swords you have built 10 and are marching on his 7 swords. This time you have the advantage and you win the battle and eventually with your more powerful industry push to much military into his borders and he looses and capitulates. Your industry while now limited by game mechanics making it hard to build 100's of Swords all at once to Steamroll through an enemy in a few turns still plays a big part in your military conquests all be it a slightly more strung out process than it could have been before.

Hope this lightens any concerns you have. And look foward brother, you will crush many a civ's dreams with your Industrious Militaristic approach.

.......................

With tile's and turns you can't make realism, this 1UpT system will be no more realistic, or atleast not enough to satisfy any picky people. To make realistic like war's with in scale units moving across a scale map you need to do just that, a total war like game but not just in the combats, a RTS throughout building and fighting like CNC or AOE. But this wouldnt be CIV. We like CIV because its not realistic, because its fun. My best advice is try not to think about "Why havent my men died they have lived for 2,000 years, are they immortal" or such questions and just have fun with the ficticious world that is Civ.

 

[Dunkah]

I absolutely love the idea of 1upt. However I think that limited stacks in some way shape of form within the 1upt system would be awesome. Let me explain.

Now I am not talking about having Stacks Of Dooms running wild all over the place, I am talking about having special circumstances where units are allowed to stack.

During certain times in history armies were able to employ tactics both offensive and defensive that massed groups of combatants into a very small area (relatively speaking) to either attack or defend en masse to propagate a breakthrough or last stand kind of tactic that had great bearing on the campaign that was currently being waged.

For instance the wedge or square formations from ancient times, Blitzkrieg or the defenses at Stalingrad, Dunkirk or Tobruk. Some of those may be better examples than others but the point I am trying to make is that there should be special circumstances that allow more than 1upt during certain times and in certain locations. (Even if it ends up only being a 2upt instance).

The best examples that I can think of to allow this are some kind of tile improvement. Perhaps an expanded fortress that would cost more in upkeep, building materials, time etc to create, possibly even only a limited amount of them are allowed, perhaps only even 1. Designed for that spot where there is only one hex between you and the masses of the opposing army. I can image a type of one time “Tile Improvement Wonder” called “Massive Fortress” that is only allowed to be built once but can be interactive with the forces in the countryside. (Personally I would like to see all wonders in tiles rather than cities so that they can be captured, but that’s for another thread).

I can imagine a hapless country putting its last 4 units into two improved fortresses in dire hope that they will hold out long enough to build a couple more units to send into the front lines or for that sorely needed technological breakthrough to finally arrive.

Another example would be a front line type of improvement. (Something that actually changes the tile under it and requires a worker/ warrior worker of some type to construct), like the Maginot or Siegfried Lines, Fortress Europe or any of the trench lines in WWI. This would allow, at the cost of usable land some defensive preparations to be made but allow possibly 2 units per tile improvement and perhaps a defensive bonus as well. (Ask me about my idea of captured workers/warriors becoming slaves).

I can imagine a scenario where workers and riflemen converge on a line to dig in to enemy held territory creating a WWI trench warfare across your lands. Awesome! Maybe this doesn’t even allow more than 1upt but simply allows a defensive bonus and possibly a side slip type of bonus movement within connected trenches.

The last idea is similar to what has been said earlier in this thread about army units, is a Blitzkrieg army. This would be a leader ability where he could take a particular type of unit like armored car or tank if he has the Blitzkrieg promotion/ special ability that allows him to stack a unit with another unit or two of that type. Taking the Blitzkrieg promotion would preclude taking another promotion that may help in other ways so it would represent a training path and/or chosen strategy and would only be available to certain leaders or during a certain time frame.

Ultimately with the limited army sizes you would still have the same number of troops on the “board”, only they would be able to concentrate on breaking through a defensive position if teamed up with this particular leader. Perfect for crossing a trench line or “Massive Fortress” improvement.

So as you can see. They would be very special circumstances and would only allow limited stacking in very limited instances. I think that it would allow a country to take on more of a “Total Defensive” posture while working on another type of victory condition.

 

[timtofly]

Aziantuntija,

Perhaps I don't understand what your base argument is, bacause from my seat it seems you think 1upt is a pancea for all ills. My objections to it are easily sumarized:

1) It is not historical untill the 1900 or so time frame. This one should probably be # 1,2,3,4 and 5 because it is by far my largest complaint.
2) Supporters believe it will increase "tactical combat". While I disagree with that it will do that, my larger objection is that I do not want increased tactical combat. personally I want less. I want a Civ that de-emphasizes player controlled combat, not increases it. When I want a war game I'll play one.

All my objection can basically be summed up in those two points.

None of your or anyone elses arguments have ever addressed either of those. From my perspective you ignore #1 because you want #2 and think 1upt will get you there. I believe sacrificing #1 just shoots the game in the foot, and that it should surrender the Civilization name.

I for one do not play Civ as a war game, and if Civ4 could only be played with SOD's then I would not play it either. I can agree with you on the fact that the game may be too militaristic, but you cannot avoid war historically. At least V is trying to get away from spamming units. I do not want to play Civ as a "series of scenarios", where every map is historically correct and there may or not be any conflicts with the right amount of troops. I do want it to take hundreds of years to get across Asia in the BC eras. So if anything, make the maps bigger and the eras longer. I also like the fact that a unit would represent a division of men, and you do not have to "stack" them to get your point across. If I see a one cavalry unit on the map, I know that it is not all there like it would be if it was a five calvary unit. I think this is a small step in the right direction.

BTW, do you think an "automated" SOD would make the game more fun, because it is historically correct?