No stack of doom ! good or bad?

[Taygeta]

Strict 1UPT and huge Stacks of Doom are BOTH bad game design concepts.
I would suggest 2-3 units per hex - *MAX*

btw, anyone here who have played SPWAW or SPWW2?
In Steel Panthers, having too many units in one hex blocked the road..
Dont remember the limit per hex though.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Strict 1UPT and huge Stacks of Doom are BOTH bad game design concepts.

Exactly. this is what I was trying to explain. SOD is bad, 1UPT is awuful.. why not mix the two? (example: up to 10 units per tile)

Disadvantages of stacks:

1- favor defense over attack , making it easier to defend than to attack (if no colleteral damage was included)
2- no brainer.. requires little thinking and thus boring
3- unbalanced when colleteral damage is included (the battle initiator will always win regardless of being in defense or offense position)

Disadvantages of 1UPT:

1- the AI is dumber with it than with SOD
2- you cant protect exposed units effectively (ex: transports in open sea)
3- you cant make combos of units to protect against their counters-units (ex: horseman, spearman, swrodsman combo)
4- your cities are exposed
5- messy on the map , tedious and slow.

so I find that 1UPT have more disadvantages than SODs, especially on AI effectivness. What we need is mix between the two, or just make a seperate display map for battles as "Strategy Master" suggested in a previous post.

 

[PawelS]

Good.

Limited stacking would make sense only with tactical battles. When there are no tactical battles, it's best to keep things simple. An additional advantage of 1upt is that you can easily overview the situation without checking "what's inside that stack" - what you see is what you get.

 

[DagHammarskjol]

I never understood what was supposed to be wrong with SoD's, to be honest.

You field the largest, best-composed army you can, and send it to the spot where it can do the most damage of the best kind.

What's wrong with that?

 

[Deep_Blue]

What was wrong with SOD was not SOD itsefl but colleteral damage.. where you can wipe out entire SOD by bombarding first then finish low health units one by one in a signle turn.

Thats what I didnt like with SODs no startegy no thiking no fun. SOD with no colleteral damage can work but it is still way too simple tactitcally.

 

[JamesBonedOO7]

What you call "thinking and planning" , i call puzzling. With a carpet of doom it's all a matter of where to start, what to hit and where to go and that multiple times, puzzling your units around to make it possible. It's one big jig-saw puzzle. In the early stages it's easy; you see that spear, take him out with your horse and archer in no time....NEXT!
Nice, one pieced meals. When you puzzle it right, they are going down, one by one. Every single time.

The difference with CIV 3/4 is Luck. Plain and simple luck. sometimes you ran into a brick wall, when that p#sky spear/rifleman whatever just kept beating your horses.
now, with the advisor, telling you exactly what the win/loss ratio will be; it's a pretty sure thing. Negative ? forget it. Good ratio ? GO GO GO. And that's makes ALL the difference, it's too predictable.

You enjoy winning and losing based on luck?

I love the 1 upt because it allows you to put your strong melee units on your frontline and your ranged/siege units behind the line to protect them and you can actually fend off invasions (if you set up well) where youre outnumbered or push your lines ahead (more like a real war)

 

[avakki]

What was wrong with SOD was not SOD itsefl but colleteral damage.. where you can wipe out entire SOD by bombarding first then finish low health units one by one in a signle turn.

Thats what I didnt like with SODs no startegy no thiking no fun. SOD with no colleteral damage can work but it is still way too simple tactitcally.

Collateral damage was designed to counter SOD.

A huge stack of mixed units diminished the importance of unit countering. It was no longer necessary in tactical thinking to consider using spearmen against cavalry, cavalry against and siege weapons and so on. The stack itself could have been considered as one insanely strong unit able to do anything and the counter was just a larger stack or collateral damage.

In 1UPT, using terrain and numbers (2v4 f.ex) is a lot more important to create chokepoints and it creates many more opportunities in defense, offense and using counterunits for better effect.

 

[PawelS]

I never understood what was supposed to be wrong with SoD's, to be honest.

You field the largest, best-composed army you can, and send it to the spot where it can do the most damage of the best kind.

What's wrong with that?

It's just boring. I prefer wars that take place in a larger area, which creates fronts, and makes terrain where you place your units matter.

 

[Deep_Blue]

How to optimize SODs to be better than 1UPT:

Although collateral damage was supposed to counter stacks (which it really did effectively) but it turned out to be a great unbalance as it favors who attacks first regardless of being in defence or attack position, the SOD that attacks first always win with almost zero losses (except the losses in siege units). Flanking was supposed to balance this by making seige units flankable by some units, but flanking sometimes was considered OP and was not the perfect solution (it was nerfed as I remember).

I believe that people started to hate SODs after collateral damage was introduced, because it made the game easier for human player with little competition from the AI which looked dumber with SODs+Colleteral Damage. while in CIV3 almost no one considered SOD as bad thing, you know why? because it was more balanced without collateral damage.

there are many other variables that affects the mechanism of stacks, like for example stacks always favor defense where the defender stack has the priority to pop up the counter unit each time (ex: each time you attack with a horseman a spearman will defend) with no collateral damage the defender will have up to 100% advantage against the attacker.

the question is how to make SOD balanced without 1UPT, without collateral damage and witout "counter-unit pop up first"?

I dont have the answer to this but I think about few changes that can make this more balanced:

1- collateral damage cannot damage more than 25% of the combined health of all stack units

2- no more than 2 consecutive counter units can pop up from the defender side, that means 2:1 ratio , 2 counter units from defender then 1 random unit then 2 counter units and so on.

3- defensive bonus in 1v1 attacks should be relative to the difference between the two stacks sizes, that is the outcome of [a single unit] Vs [a single unit] fight should favor the unit that belongs to the bigger stack. The bonus/penalty must be balanced so that when a stack is much smaller that the other stack it will always lose (and the much bigger stack should have minimal losses!).

I am sue that there are many other things that can be changed to make tactics much deeper and more balanced with SODs.

 

[777]

Good.

One giant army in one hex moving from city to another is just goofy.

 

[avakki]

Just to throw it out here, Europa Universalis III handles the stack of doom problem by limited unit support on tiles.

Each tile (or province) can support certain number of units, which varies and can be improved by technology. If the number of supported units is exceeded, unit loses strength (varies by conditions, 5%-15% usually) after a while or when moving units to that tile.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Just to throw it out here, Europa Universalis III handles the stack of doom problem by limited unit support on tiles.

Each tile (or province) can support certain number of units, which varies and can be improved by technology. If the number of supported units is exceeded, unit loses strength (varies by conditions, 5%-15% usually) after a while or when moving units to that tile.

In my first post I suggested limiting stacks to up to 10 units per tile.

so yes I find this approach appropriate.

 

[Camikaze]

No SODs- definitely good.
No stacks- not so good.

I'm happy enough with the idea of 1upt, but there were better solutions to the SOD problem available, which left the player with possibilities, rather than limiting to one unit per tile.

 

[PAnz3r]

Sod wasnt funny nor inteligent, when you move around your steam roll monstah unit you never think, you never plan, you never use the terrain type....

With 1UPT you must think about movement , sometimes you must retire (when you know your weakened unit can be assault in the next turn for esample) , sometime you use a river like a strategic barrier...i don't know how much here have a historycal strategical moving culture, but when you must move an huge army i can assure that you must move it occuping a great ammount of space...you cant move a napoleonic "grand Armee" in a single hex! Thousand of battles were lost by a uncarefully movement plan and other thousand were win with it...
Example: when the Armee ( counting hundred thousand man or some) leave Boulogne camp to reach Ulm in south Germany it occupied ,during it's movement, half (circa) of the actually germany territory...becausa napoleon think how and when he want strike and planned with attention his movement...onto this he organized his army for react at any enemy movement at any time and in the worst situations...

Finally i like hexes, i like 1UPT because they bring a new dimension in Civ combats......if some one take care about the Ai...

 

[Deep_Blue]

but 1UPT makes no sense, what to do if you are limited with hexes? If you play england on a world map does it make sense to be limited in troops because england is only few hexes on the map???

The tactical concept behind 1UPT is ok, but the logical concept is not. In real life you can stack all your empire army in one village, USA stacked 300'000 soldiers in a small part in Kuwait prior to the war agianst Iraq.

We need stacks back, please Firaxis make seperate tactical map , or just change stacks mechanisim , or limit stacks or do whatever appropriate .. but stacks must be back !!

 

[PAnz3r]

prolly the best solution is the thing said before...the hex with limitated stacks option like the Steel panther series...causing the capability to create a sort of army corps that can be balanced against all the menaces and can move much freely on the map...or perhaps a return to the Civ3 armys...with a limited stacks can be usefull....

the unlimited stacks it's too silly and boring....in the modern age, in civ 4 , i usually prepare a lot of guided missile that i used to bombard the AI "city stacks", after i must only use my stacks to conquer the ruin of an empire......c'mon...i want a challange better that this :|

 

[Horizons]

Um, if Civ4 had had ranged bombardment like Civ3 then the stack of doom would have been a much less viable strategy. I often say that Civ4 BTS + ranged bombard = no reason for Civ5 to exist

 

[PAnz3r]

yeah i've never understood how they dismiss the ranged bombardament in Civ4...i really like to create a shore defences with the arty in civ 3

 

[Jediron]

You enjoy winning and losing based on luck?

Please, do not simplify my argument. All i am trying to say is, there is too little randomness anymore and that's boring. It is also not realisctic, while in history, there were numbers of occasions that a lesser force "crushed" the stronger opponent. While in Civ III randomness was a little too much, with CIV 5 you have the opposite.
What is more "exiting": knowing all the times that your unit A will 100% crush unit B or knowing, that you never can be 100% sure; you will succeed ?
I know what i choose

I love the 1 upt because it allows you to put your strong melee units on your frontline and your ranged/siege units behind the line to protect them and you can actually fend off invasions (if you set up well) where youre outnumbered or push your lines ahead (more like a real war)

Same can be done with the other CIV's. I see no advantage. Ow wel, one. Archers that range 2 hexes away. Hexes, that in contrast to the map; must be dozens of miles. Funny? Maybe. Realistic ? Hell no. You are playing a tactical gamestyle on a Strategic Map. It doesn't make sence.

Like the whole idea of making tactical warfare 1upt on a strategic map lvl is dumb.
A hex represents dozens of square miles, yet; you can defend it only with 1 "army" (i rather call it regiment, whatever) of one type of unit.
It is so unrealistic, it makes me cry.

the hex with limitated stacks option like the Steel panther series

Ehmm, you can stack unlimited in SP. Atleast the last SP:WOW i played. They understand concepts of Blitzkrieg, chokepoints etc.
It's all about building up spearheads, from which to launch a "blitz" for example. They took that option away in CIV 5, with 1 upt.
You are mostly forces in a "wide fronline" warfare type (later on in the game/with enough units). If the space is there, afcource.

Anyway:
On a strategic level 1upt is crippled (see examples above)
On a tactical level 1upt is FUN for the mass, but very unrealistic and a meagre substitute of games like PG.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Um, if Civ4 had had ranged bombardment like Civ3 then the stack of doom would have been a much less viable strategy. I often say that Civ4 BTS + ranged bombard = no reason for Civ5 to exist

unusual conclusion you have here.. but ya civ3 ranged bombardment .. good old civ3