No More Stacks of Doom

[DMOC]

I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, no SoD's might make the game longer to play because of the increased focus on tactics. And I did like to see my civs and others get HUGE stack of dooms. But on the other hand, it gives me a change in my military paradigm for Civ IV. Ambivalent.

 

[Tholish]

Two, two two.
Not one. Not hidden formula complicated soft cap. Two.
Warrior and Settler, Two Warriors, Archer and Spear, Two Archers, Two Spears, Chariot and Spear, Chariot and Archer...Two Infantry, Two Tanks, Infantry and Tank...etc...

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Never say "Never" Andrew. However, what I meant was that battles might take place in a separate, tactical screen. Other Empire building games have taken that approach, so I don't see why Civ couldn't take that path!

 

[Roller123]

With 1 unit per tile it should become pretty hard to keep units alive(worth keeping). consider:

ab
__<X
ab


ab vs X

the X unit can be attacked by 4 units per turn. Slim chances of survival. Especially if its not full health.

Im against 1. Two/tile is good imho. Keeps tactical depth too. Also realistic. For example tanks+infantry, as it is in real-life.

 

[azzaman333]

Again, you're entirely missing the point. Firaxis isn't getting rid of SoDs because they were overpowered or too hard to defend against, but SoDs slow the game down, get redundant, and take away from the fun and strategy of the game. Nobody has ever argued that SoDs are too hard to defend against -- all you need is a larger SoD, but that's not fun.

SoD's significantly decrease the time wasted on troop movement.

 

[NA00]

I use SoDs simply because it is the only way, I have found, of dis-lodging stubborn AI SoDs. However, admittedly, I have taken advantage of the AIs weaknesses with them. For instance, a game I recently played as America I was sending SEALS over in transports and having them wait right outside of Paris (which was a coastal city on this map). The AI just let me pile more and more SEALS just outside their borders without raising an eye-brow.

I would be much less inclined to use SoDs if there was a reasonable alternative.

I like the idea of having strategic hexes with tactical hexes at a zoomed in level for combat.

 

[kiwitt]

I may have solved the "SoD" issue in my mod by the AI. The player can still create them though.

What I did was set a -1 happiness for military units in a city. I have not yet encountered a stack of Doom created by the A.I. I am assuming the A.I. wants to keep the city happy, so will avoid putting too many units in the city.

I am still "playtesting", but hopefully it will make for more realistic battles.

 

[AriochIV]

Tactically, 1upt is the best thing they've added to Civilization since unit health (that is, allowing a unit to be damaged but not destroyed). The tactical possibilities are enormous.

It's the single best feature I've heard of in Civ V.

In my opinion, of course.

 

[mjs0]

I may have solved the "SoD" issue in my mod by the AI. The player can still create them though.

What I did was set a -1 happiness for military units in a city. I have not yet encountered a stack of Doom created by the A.I. I am assuming the A.I. wants to keep the city happy, so will avoid putting too many units in the city.

I am still "playtesting", but hopefully it will make for more realistic battles.

Interesting idea...but doesn't it nerf hereditary rule?

 

[kiwitt]

True: but no "Hereditary rule" in my mod

 

[civ_king]

Interesting idea...but doesn't it nerf hereditary rule?

He has a WWII mod so heredity rule is non-existant

also it wouldn't nerf heredity rule because it effectively gives +1 in every city with a unit and it allows you to stack unlimited amounts without penalty

 

[Calouste]

How would you defend your City with only one troop unit?
Here is another thought, you have 50 units & you only have 40 Hexes of territory?

In real life, countries don't defend their cities as much as they defend their borders, or at least good defensive terrain behind their borders. Corrolary of that is that a lot of historically grown borders are along good defensive terrain (rivers, mountian ranges) partially because holding the terrain on the wrong side of the natural defensive line was too difficult.

 

[12agnar0k]

given the size of the tiles, only allowing one unit per tile is just as unrealistic.

So what is the size of the tile, and have you not factored in the fact that all the units in civ are giananormus.

Obviously you don't quite grasp the "un-realism" that is civ, its no more realistic to say that you can have infinite number of troops of X space of land, than it is to say only Y amount of troops can exist on X amount of land. In 1UpT Y=1, but given that X is a totally variable amount, which is completly a matter of opinion, X could well equal 10 squared meters, in which case 1 Unit per turn is relalistic.

 

[Zhahz]

Bye bye silly and ridiculous stacks of doom and hello to far more tactical combat with far more strategic depth.

I've never really liked ANY iteration of Civ's combat model - there is always something cheesey about it. So here's to hoping the new system both knocks the cheese out of the picture AND the AI kicks butt.

I can think of all kinds of ways you could include stacking units and keep it more reasonable but ultimately, for GAMING purposes, I think 1UPT is by far the better option to what we have now and in the past with stacks.

There is zero point in discussing which is more realistic since this is about a game and gameplay > all.

A system where quality of unit, using units correctly, where unit placement is important, where resource limits make you pick and choose units carefully, etc, is going to be vastly superior to endless unit spam and stacking in cities and for attacking cities with few units anywhere else (mostly in transit to stacks).

You can kinda get a combined arms feel in Civ IV stacks for defending...but it's not *really* combined arms, it's just the magical always defending with the most ideal unit vs the attacking unit, which is not strategic in any way, because it's automatic and very silly...Ok...I attack your stack of 20 units with a horseman and by chance your defending unit is your 1 spearman instead of your 18. Ok, I'll attack with an axeman...doh, now your chariot is magically defending the other 19 units.

Try Wesnoth - easy game to pick up. Lotsa similarities to what's going to be going on in Civ5. Limits on units, types of units, importance of terrain, movement, and placement, ZoC.

In a game like Wesnoth you have to make your units work together, cover for each other, blend a mix of troops right for the situation, etc - there is no magic of the stack pulling out the ideal defender when the whuppings start.

 

[tom2050]

Perhaps Civ 5 should become an RTS as well. The Fellowship of the Civ now think Sliders are just the 'worst thing on Earth' along with stacks.

Is there anything else on the horrible list? Perhaps something that hasn't been mentioned yet for Civ 5 (still an unknown)? Or do certain things magically become either great or horrible depending on how Civ 5 has them in?

-------

I hope you all realize that hype over games often is more exciting than playing it. Thinking that 1upt will be a mastermind of a challenge of tactical, and strategic depth with broad ranging consequences to your every move; with a focus on intelligent decision making needed turns ahead of time to gain the maximum advantage needed... BLAH.

Like everything, too much hype about something will make you believe the above is probably the way it's going to be; when in reality it will be more like:
"Damn it, I need to move all 90 units 1 at a time, the micromanagement hell!"
"Okay, take city, so I use the only real working method, I'll do this - this - and this to take advantage of dumb AI"
"Rinse and Repeat"
"I now have 5 cities instead of 4 on a Large Map in the 3rd era"

So in the end, I will have more fun playing, because I didn't set my expectations abnormally high.

 

[Shurdus]

Perhaps Civ 5 should become an RTS as well. The Fellowship of the Civ now think Sliders are just the 'worst thing on Earth' along with stacks.

Is there anything else on the horrible list? Perhaps something that hasn't been mentioned yet for Civ 5 (still an unknown)? Or do certain things magically become either great or horrible depending on how Civ 5 has them in?

-------

I hope you all realize that hype over games often is more exciting than playing it. Thinking that 1upt will be a mastermind of a challenge of tactical, and strategic depth with broad ranging consequences to your every move; with a focus on intelligent decision making needed turns ahead of time to gain the maximum advantage needed... BLAH.

Like everything, too much hype about something will make you believe the above is probably the way it's going to be; when in reality it will be more like:
"Damn it, I need to move all 90 units 1 at a time, the micromanagement hell!"
"Okay, take city, so I use the only real working method, I'll do this - this - and this to take advantage of dumb AI"
"Rinse and Repeat"
"I now have 5 cities instead of 4 on a Large Map in the 3rd era"

So in the end, I will have more fun playing, because I didn't set my expectations abnormally high.

Keep in mind that 90 units with 1upt is absolutely rediculous. And it is not that people disliked stacks per se, it is that the stack system made it impossible to defend against larger armies if the larger army brings enough siege. With the stacks, a larger army is always in the advantage. You cannot even slow the stack down that much, and even if you succeed it is merely stalling the execution.

With 1upt, combat becomes more of a thinking game rather than stacking and smashing your stack into another. This makes combat more interesting than it was before, so that is somehting that I very much applaud. I disliked warring in each and every civ, just because it was so bland and uninteresting. With civ5, I really feel that combat is rewarding all in itself, while they still actively tried to keep the micromanagement down.

 

[Commander Bello]

Ambivalent. The fact that there was no real cap to civ III and IV SoD allowed some monstruosities to happen and had to be corrected somehow. But I can see the proposed solution creating a whole new set of issues and it might be a little too extreme for my taste ( i always defended some kind of soft cap to the SoD sizes ... meaning that you could do them if you wanted, but there would be good reasons to not increase them to the infinite ... a interesting choice , like a certain well known game developer said once .... Put it in any way you want, but one unit per tile does not let you choose how many units you put in a tile )

I completely agree to this posting.

Firaxis isn't getting rid of SoDs because they were overpowered or too hard to defend against, but SoDs slow the game down,

Unfortunately, this is just not true.

What slows down late-game turns is the fact that
a) numbers are bigger than in the beginning
b) the AI doesn't make proper use of stacks, when moving units

Both can apply to 1upt as well.

The SoD is the main flaw in civ, it's battle mechanics have always been the weakness in the game, since day one. I'm glad to see they are finally addressing it, the 1 unit per tile and hex grid looks to be a simple and elegant solution; should also make the whole strategic depth of war far more deep and interesting on nearly all levels.

Don't forget that the AI has to deal with these added tactical options, too.
I am not concerned about human players (and even there we will see major stupidities in the future), but about the AI.

The real solution is not to disable stacking, but to make stacks behave more like united armies.

Correct.

Yes, because I'd rather deal with 30 different units on individual hexes (most of which would be fortified anyway) than have to deal with 5 tiles consisting of 50 units each. Each time I click on a SoD, it doesn't bring up the unit I want either, so I have to find the unit I need, which slows the game down as well. This is why the end game is unbearable to me in Civ IV -- there are just way too many units to deal with and slows the game down. Getting rid of the stack of death means there will be less units to deal with, which means a faster and more enjoyable game.

Once again, stacks or 1upt doesn't mean automatically more or less units.
"Finding" the appropriate unit in a 1upt system may be tedious as well, it all depends on in which way it will be presented graphics-wise.

Edit:
What really baffles me, though, is the fact that now we are expecting the developers to do everything right - although we are talking about a completely new system.
In the past, with 15 years of experience, they have not been able to do things right and according to many of the voices here in this thread actually they seem to have messed up to a major degree.
But for Civ5 everything will be right and good? Unlikely, I would assume

 

[tom2050]

It seems everyone equates Stacks with high unit counts. It seems the real complaint from everyone is high unit counts, and not stacks. They just add 'SoD' into the argument which is actually about not liking high unit counts. It's true that Stacks are completely seperate issue from unit numbers. I won't bother quoting to show this, because it would fill up the whole page.

I guess this is the next thing to be added onto the 'Suddenly Horrible List': stacks, sliders, and unit counts.

 

[Aramel]

Here's the thing: without stacks, you don't need ridiculously high unit counts. You just need enough to defend your borders. In Civ4, you needed as many as possible, because the AI could send as many units as he could produce at you by putting them in a stack. However in Civ5 there's a limit to the number of units you can fit in a certain area, based on the number of tiles in that area. So, for instance, if you can limit combat to a choke point one or two tiles wide, you might be able to hold off an entire army with 6 or 7 strong units.

The fact that one unit per tile imposes a hard cap on the number of units that can fit in an area makes it intrinsically related to reducing the number of units. There are plenty of other problems with stacks, but needing an ever increasing number of units to compete is definitely one of them.

 

[Commander Bello]

Here's the thing: without stacks, you don't need ridiculously high unit counts. You just need enough to defend your borders. In Civ4, you needed as many as possible, because the AI could send as many units as he could produce at you by putting them in a stack. However in Civ5 there's a limit to the number of units you can fit in a certain area, based on the number of tiles in that area. So, for instance, if you can limit combat to a choke point one or two tiles wide, you might be able to hold off an entire army with 6 or 7 strong units.

The fact that one unit per tile imposes a hard cap on the number of units that can fit in an area makes it intrinsically related to reducing the number of units. There are plenty of other problems with stacks, but needing an ever increasing number of units to compete is definitely one of them.

I have to completely disagree.
You just need enough units to break the defender's positions - that's the point. Typically, and I haven't seen any indication that this might have changed, the attacker will need more units than the defender, due to fortification of units, fortifications as tile improvements and defense modifiers of the terrain by itself.

If somehow the game design would limit you to the number of units needed for defense, then warfare would become a stalmate in later areas as everybody would have the (assumed) six units to defend any city.

About the second point: if 1upt imposes a maximum number of units anyway, where is the point in having additional design elements to further impose such a limit?
The game design should allow for as many decisions and options as possible, not for less.

Unfortunately, I fear that your assumption is correct and that we will face double design elements to reduce the number of units and keep it below certain thresholds.