I would love to see this as an option in FfH or any modmod...
I believe that, according to my preferences, I would set limit at 10, but flexibility of this option is great. At least I would set it at 99 in order to avoid mega stacks
Is the game fun again?
- Thread starter WCH
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I would love to see this as an option in FfH or any modmod...
I believe that, according to my preferences, I would set limit at 10, but flexibility of this option is great. At least I would set it at 99 in order to avoid mega stacks
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I would too. The best part is the flexibility. Since most units in Civ and its mods have a movement range of 1, the very least one would set the limit to is 2 (many want more for flexibility).
I would make the modmod (or, since I like Rise of Erebus, a modmodmod) but I'm utterly illiterate in all things modding except basic XML.
Best part was that you can set the limit in-game and tweak it to you see fit so you can try playing 3UPT or 10UPT for a few turns, see how you like it, then change or turn it off. Very flexible and you don't have to start a new game every time you want to change the limit.
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If I recall, he's working on his own stand-alone game right now so he's probably busy.
Should be noted that the mod had surround and destroy which gives a bonus to surrounding a unit and attacking it from multiple angles. Originally, the AI could not use this to save their life and the player didn't need to use it since SoDs were all the rage. However, with xUPT turned on to a modest limit of 3 (but can be much higher), the AI will use it and will absolutely murder you with it.
And I mean it. If you're not careful and the AI has a large force and cavalry, they will storm across your probably undefended borders and pillage the entire countryside instead of one tile at a time. I had one game where I put 3UPT all along the border between me and another civilization. What ended up happening is that the AI hit a weak spot in the middle so I had to start sending troops there from somewhere else on the line and slowly, I was surrounded by enemy units and for the first time in a long time in a Civ game, my force was utterly destroyed in a war and not through one battle but several.
I had about 50 troops all along the border. At some point, I was sending any range weapon I had and a defender for that unit to hills and forests to take pot shots at the advancing army. Instead of using the Shock and Combat promos, I was forced to using Woodsman and Guerrilla.
The creator of the modmod didn't give any support to the AI in using xUPT but it didn't break down and weaken either. Instead of one big stack, the AI easily created several smaller ones and used them to good effect, especially cavalry and the occasional siege unit whenever there was a tough defender.
Nikis-Knight
Deity
There's probably someone around who could merge it. It would be worth a try.
esvath
Apprentice of Erebus
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If it's just XML/Py, I'll be glad to merge it. But if it's SDK, well, it is beyond my league
Master of Magic had a nine unit limit per square. And of course, this restriction was a criticism of MoM! The key to winning at MoM was to build a force of super elite units that could kill any army 9 on 9 at a time.
This restriction was necessary since MoM had real tactical combat, so larger forces woudl simply bring the game to a halt.
You can never please everybody!
Best wishes,
Breunor
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I've played rief_s's unitCannotMoveInto modmod provided by rief_s in post #35 and so far i'm happy to say this is a game-changer for me....wow, what a difference! Gone are the mega-SoD's and combat is so much more satisfying. Use of terrain, maintaining front lines and managing your stacks are all now meaningful...can't just dump everything in a giant SoD and trundle forth. This also has implications for use of fortifications along frontiers, which were of limited value before. In short, this change opens up a whole new tactical vista. Old-style wargamers and role-players will really appreciate this change. Others probably not so much.
I upped the limits from 8 in-culture and 6 out-of-culture, so it is possible to assemble a small combined-arms team within a single stack (casters, healers, defenders, attackers, etc.). This is easily done by simply changing the 'CvGameUtils.py' 'iLimit' values:
pPlot = CyMap().plot(iPlotX, iPlotY)
iLimit = 6
if pPlot.getCulture(ePlayer) > 0:
iLimit = 8
As others have reported with this type of modmod, the Civ AI handles the change quite well. I personally am more afraid of 30-40 stacks of 6 units than 1 SoD of 200 units (which I can bypass, confuse or hold up with spells quite easily in most situations). With a stack limit the AI is much less likely to mix fast and slow units, thereby totally throwing away the speed advantage of the fast units. Got to watch them carefully now, where before you could be assured the AI was going to move that SoD only 1-square per turn due to presence of catapults, archers, etc.
One key thing to remember is that units built or summoned into a city or summoned into a square don't count against the limit...until they move out of the city at which point they can't get back in. So cities effectively can contain an unlimited amount of units as long as they are built or summoned in that city and don't ever move out. Otherwise the limit is = to the city population. This has all kinds of implications. The AI tends to move units in and out of their cities so are always hitting the city stacking limit. Huge cities can now have an equivalent huge number of defenders - imagine a size 30 elf city with 30 defenders. Small cities can only be weakly defended, or at least can only exceed their stacking limit through their own limited production (and any summons).
Stacks will block roads, squares and cities, so plan carefully. If you are attacking up a road, you have to assemble your task-oriented stacks in march-order, with scouts in front, troops in the middle, casters in back, etc etc. Or just have every stack be it's own little combined arms force. The only way to transfer units from the rear to the front is to have all the intervening stacks at 1 less than the stacking limit. A lot of interesting approaches...
The relative power of summoners is now increased since summons can expand the stack limited only by the number of summoners in the stack to begin with. So with a 6 limit, 6 summoner spellcasters could conceivably summon 12 units if all had twincast...hardly likely, but the point is summoners can now provide that extra 'punch' by allowing you to exceed the stacking limit temporarily.
Fireballs are perhaps slightly less effective because the AI won't be stacking everything together, particularly if you set iLimit less than 4-6.
Area damage spells are potentially more valuable since they can hit many stacks at once, but also much more dangerous to your own stacks - a serious consideration for maelstrom which is probably now best used from aboard fast ships or on land with fast mages that can dart out away from your stacks, hit the enemy, and run back. To bad there are no mounted mage units! (unless you have Govannon of course...hehe).
I'm playing as Sheaim and the usefullness of summoning is enhanced - mages that can summon their own defense saves my butt continuously. But using fire zombies is much more tricky - I suspect that a Sheaim AI would destroy or at least seriously damage it's stacks with fire zombies due to this.
Regarding performance, no problems noted so far, but no civ has giant numbers of units yet. Based on how the path calculation has been described, an increased number of seperate stacks will increase the processing requires by (x * #-of-additional-stacks), since this is calculated once per stack (not once per unit). So I expect to see slowdowns later. I suspect it could be pretty bad if a AI civ which had 200 units in 1 stack before now has 30-40 seperate stacks. The work-around here will be to play at easier levels, smaller games, etc.
The next big improvement would be the AI regaining ability to mount raids with seaborne troops. Right now you can leave cities almost completely undefended if there's no land route between you and the enemy AI. Before the new AI, the threat of even uncoordinated sea raids from the AI forced you to maintain some kind of garrison or quick-reaction-force. Now I just put a scout or archer in those cities and forget about it.
I upped the limits from 8 in-culture and 6 out-of-culture, so it is possible to assemble a small combined-arms team within a single stack (casters, healers, defenders, attackers, etc.). This is easily done by simply changing the 'CvGameUtils.py' 'iLimit' values:
pPlot = CyMap().plot(iPlotX, iPlotY)
iLimit = 6
if pPlot.getCulture(ePlayer) > 0:
iLimit = 8
As others have reported with this type of modmod, the Civ AI handles the change quite well. I personally am more afraid of 30-40 stacks of 6 units than 1 SoD of 200 units (which I can bypass, confuse or hold up with spells quite easily in most situations). With a stack limit the AI is much less likely to mix fast and slow units, thereby totally throwing away the speed advantage of the fast units. Got to watch them carefully now, where before you could be assured the AI was going to move that SoD only 1-square per turn due to presence of catapults, archers, etc.
One key thing to remember is that units built or summoned into a city or summoned into a square don't count against the limit...until they move out of the city at which point they can't get back in. So cities effectively can contain an unlimited amount of units as long as they are built or summoned in that city and don't ever move out. Otherwise the limit is = to the city population. This has all kinds of implications. The AI tends to move units in and out of their cities so are always hitting the city stacking limit. Huge cities can now have an equivalent huge number of defenders - imagine a size 30 elf city with 30 defenders. Small cities can only be weakly defended, or at least can only exceed their stacking limit through their own limited production (and any summons).
Stacks will block roads, squares and cities, so plan carefully. If you are attacking up a road, you have to assemble your task-oriented stacks in march-order, with scouts in front, troops in the middle, casters in back, etc etc. Or just have every stack be it's own little combined arms force. The only way to transfer units from the rear to the front is to have all the intervening stacks at 1 less than the stacking limit. A lot of interesting approaches...
The relative power of summoners is now increased since summons can expand the stack limited only by the number of summoners in the stack to begin with. So with a 6 limit, 6 summoner spellcasters could conceivably summon 12 units if all had twincast...hardly likely, but the point is summoners can now provide that extra 'punch' by allowing you to exceed the stacking limit temporarily.
Fireballs are perhaps slightly less effective because the AI won't be stacking everything together, particularly if you set iLimit less than 4-6.
Area damage spells are potentially more valuable since they can hit many stacks at once, but also much more dangerous to your own stacks - a serious consideration for maelstrom which is probably now best used from aboard fast ships or on land with fast mages that can dart out away from your stacks, hit the enemy, and run back. To bad there are no mounted mage units! (unless you have Govannon of course...hehe).
I'm playing as Sheaim and the usefullness of summoning is enhanced - mages that can summon their own defense saves my butt continuously. But using fire zombies is much more tricky - I suspect that a Sheaim AI would destroy or at least seriously damage it's stacks with fire zombies due to this.
Regarding performance, no problems noted so far, but no civ has giant numbers of units yet. Based on how the path calculation has been described, an increased number of seperate stacks will increase the processing requires by (x * #-of-additional-stacks), since this is calculated once per stack (not once per unit). So I expect to see slowdowns later. I suspect it could be pretty bad if a AI civ which had 200 units in 1 stack before now has 30-40 seperate stacks. The work-around here will be to play at easier levels, smaller games, etc.
The next big improvement would be the AI regaining ability to mount raids with seaborne troops. Right now you can leave cities almost completely undefended if there's no land route between you and the enemy AI. Before the new AI, the threat of even uncoordinated sea raids from the AI forced you to maintain some kind of garrison or quick-reaction-force. Now I just put a scout or archer in those cities and forget about it.
I prefer the 5 units each method - every unit that has a max of four stays at four - all others except warriors and adepts get a limit of 5 - warriors and adepts get a limit of 8.
that said, I play mostly on small-normal maps, because bigger maps are to slow on my system.
it's easy to implement (very important for all the mods and updates
) - in the unit_class.xml I replace ALL <iMaxPlayerInstances>-1</iMaxPlayerInstances> with <iMaxPlayerInstances>5</iMaxPlayerInstances> and then I search for warrior and adept to put them to 8. the heroes still have a <iMaxGlobalInstances>1</iMaxGlobalInstances>, so that's no problem. afterwards I have to change the Warrens so they produce +100% military instead of double units.
for me it works, and there's also a signficant increase in speed. that's how I came to this method: once in an end game, it was quite slow, so I opened the world builder and deleted, I don't know, about 40 units per city (?). afterwards it was faster...
but be warned: this change forces the AI somehow to build EVERY unit it can! that means 5 catapults, 5 horseman etc. and I *think* the AI goes for the unit techs first, at least Doviello for sure did. they try to build huge stacks, but at least those stacks are not only 50 axeman.
the problem with this method: the Rosier-Rush is still possible. could be a sign that I should improve difficulty with this change enabled. another problem: mercenaries, angels, etc. they can be built infinitely.
with "unmodded" FFH I always play on the second difficulty level, because I prefer building few units of each kind myself. (hm, few, but diverse!). If this method is something for you, depends a bit on your play style. If you like to build huge armies, "my way" wouldn't be the thing you are looking for.
but it has other nice "features" as well: you have to THINK where your newly built axeman should stay, i.e. at the border or in a war. they "mean" something. also heroes get a much more important role. (which isn't really a good thing, because exploitable by a human player, but still: that was the idea of heroes somehow).
well - just some thoughts. sorry if I have missed the theme of the thread or something.
that said, I play mostly on small-normal maps, because bigger maps are to slow on my system.
it's easy to implement (very important for all the mods and updates
) - in the unit_class.xml I replace ALL <iMaxPlayerInstances>-1</iMaxPlayerInstances> with <iMaxPlayerInstances>5</iMaxPlayerInstances> and then I search for warrior and adept to put them to 8. the heroes still have a <iMaxGlobalInstances>1</iMaxGlobalInstances>, so that's no problem. afterwards I have to change the Warrens so they produce +100% military instead of double units. for me it works, and there's also a signficant increase in speed. that's how I came to this method: once in an end game, it was quite slow, so I opened the world builder and deleted, I don't know, about 40 units per city (?). afterwards it was faster...
but be warned: this change forces the AI somehow to build EVERY unit it can! that means 5 catapults, 5 horseman etc. and I *think* the AI goes for the unit techs first, at least Doviello for sure did. they try to build huge stacks, but at least those stacks are not only 50 axeman.
the problem with this method: the Rosier-Rush is still possible. could be a sign that I should improve difficulty with this change enabled. another problem: mercenaries, angels, etc. they can be built infinitely.
with "unmodded" FFH I always play on the second difficulty level, because I prefer building few units of each kind myself. (hm, few, but diverse!). If this method is something for you, depends a bit on your play style. If you like to build huge armies, "my way" wouldn't be the thing you are looking for.
but it has other nice "features" as well: you have to THINK where your newly built axeman should stay, i.e. at the border or in a war. they "mean" something. also heroes get a much more important role. (which isn't really a good thing, because exploitable by a human player, but still: that was the idea of heroes somehow).
well - just some thoughts.
sorry if I have missed the theme of the thread or something.Similar threads
