Not excited...... not one bit

[householder]

The combat system for Endless Legend is going to work similar to both of these suggestions. You have a limited stack (which can grow via techs) possibly with an assigned leader and when you initiate combat you deploy your troops on the existent terrain (which includes terrain elevation with advantages!) and give them tactical orders, after which the combat plays simultaneously in AI control. IIRC, there are three rounds of combat. Oh and yes, you can autoresolve if desired.

This sounds quite interesting. I generally do not care for science fiction, but with Beyond Earth in mind, I will check out Endless Legend.

 

[manu-fan]

......I agree with the original post though in a sense that I don't like the game because I love the CIV franchise overall, but I don't like Sci-FI games

That's a pretty valid point. Every single Civ game has had the same theme. Work as real historical leaders, build historical buildings and units, build historical Wonders, and rule the world.

Civ in Space just won't have the traditional feel to it at all, and is a break with this.

 

[Seek]

This sounds quite interesting. I generally do not care for science fiction, but with Beyond Earth in mind, I will check out Endless Legend.

The game as a whole looks very interesting and holds a lot of promise; it has taken many of the typical 4x tropes and rethought them. Since the game is not out yet, this may be for better or worse (said to be available on Steam Early Access "soon"). Endless Legend is more "fantasy" than sci-fi, but here again, it's nontraditional and not a Tolkienesque fantasy at all.

 

[CanaDutch]

The problem with that is that it'd be a lot of micromanagement when it comes to war. This can be fun for the more hardcore audience (I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore civ gamer, but I'm almost there ), but others may find it rather tedious. That and it'd considerably drag out the time it'd take to wage wars (although Iupt sort of already does that).

Personally, I'd like to try a system like the one you proposed but only if it's a toggleable option. Also if it doesn't hit hard on performance (I only recently upgraded, but my comp is still outdated )

I agree that it's probably best to keep it simple, so what if you just divide up every hex tile into 4 just parts for units. This means there are 4 more tiles for units to maneuver which by itself will make the map far less crowded. The movement points then probably will have to be doubled.

Biggest problem is that dividing up hexes into 4 pieces makes for awkward looking squares, but would allow units to move into 8 directions instead of 6, just like in the classic Civilization 4.

A better looking solution would be a smaller hex grid overlapping the main one just for military units. But that will mean that more often than not military units are right in between a grassland tile and a hills tile for example. And then there's the problem of besieging cities. Maybe Firaxis should've just stuck with squares instead of hexes.

Just some thoughts .

On a different note, it would be nice if the AI in civilization was as good as or better than the AI of Nintendo's Advance Wars.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

The combat system for Endless Legend is going to work similar to both of these suggestions. You have a limited stack (which can grow via techs) possibly with an assigned leader and when you initiate combat you deploy your troops on the existent terrain (which includes terrain elevation with advantages!) and give them tactical orders, after which the combat plays simultaneously in AI control. IIRC, there are three rounds of combat. Oh and yes, you can autoresolve if desired.

So:

• battles move a good clip
• there are tactical decisions
• where you battle on the world map is important
• there isn't too much of an advantage for humans vs AI (one of Civ 5's biggest downfalls)

I'm looking forward to trying it out - hopefully it will be fun.

Interesting, I should check it out. I disliked Endless Space's tactical combat because it seemed completely nonsensical. It looked pretty but I had zero idea if I was making the correct tactical decision or even why I was making my troops make a decision. A zoom in from the strategic layer to the tactical terrain layer is going to be more intuitive.

 

[Santa Maria]

So - I am very disapointed with this.

I was hoping they will tune civ5 and give more dlc, and expansions and scenarios, and rebalance civ5 - for example Honor and piety need to be more competitive - I feel civ 5 is unfinished, left in a bad shape.
And now they just abandoned civ5 and create BE - which will probably be in a bad shape as well cause of time preassure. I think BE can be a great game, but I was hoping they will finish civ5 first. Develop it more. Add more depth, more content.

Whatever, I am staying with civ5 and really am not looking forward to BE.


To OP - 1UPT and hexes are both great and very appreciated ideas at least by me. Like it a lot - it adds strategic depth, although the map is kind of small. but that is ok.

But yeah I would welcome a better combat - like archery units get destroyed by melee units, and so on - they should work more on civ5. But yeah whatever - they made their choice.

 

[Venger]

Good to see some decent back and forth on possible solutions to the problems presented by the odd binary choice between infinite units per hex and one unit, both demonstrating that extremes rarely yield the best living arrangement.

I'd argue strongly against having both a tactical and strategic view a la Total War. That is what that series is about - a tactical war game with a strategic element strapped on. I think I would really dislike it in Civ.

Allowing something like 4 UPT with collateral damage on defend combat allows for far superior unit movement management, the concept of unit cover, force balance, without creating obnoxious stacks that create tedious battles. And it avoids the tedium of trying to move a unit around on a map - moving around units late in the game on a 1 UPT system has all the appeal of this:

I've long found it odd that Civ has never tried a hybrid system, only infinite or one - nothing in between. Of course, Civ CTP did have an interesting mix that I think has never been considered out of sheer spite...

I was hoping BE was less of a Colonization-like reskinning and more of a bottoms up development, it sure looks like Space Colonization at this point.

 

[reddishrecue]

This is starting to look like an upset again. Civilization 5 also used to be considered an upset.

 

[Civrules]

That's a pretty valid point. Every single Civ game has had the same theme. Work as real historical leaders, build historical buildings and units, build historical Wonders, and rule the world.

Civ in Space just won't have the traditional feel to it at all, and is a break with this.

To an extent this is true. But how many Civ games do you have to make along the same story-line? At a certain level it makes sense to stop and perfect the series for what it is with expansion packs, etc. But that won't happen because people always want what's new new new.

After five Civ series, it makes sense in a way to have a breath of fresh air. And with the success of the games, I doubt even this will be the last one.

If anything, this might be the best Civ yet. It seems we have a pretty inspired development team working on it.

 

[Babri]

Well this title seems like another debate about 1UPT Vs SoDs.
My personal opinion after playing both systems is that each has its own pros & cons. While stacks are massive on scale in terms of number of units, the huge number of units makes it tedious as you need to spam units all the time because they get killed all the time. Also loosing a very valuable unit in a single unlucky dice roll is seriously stupid. In short the one who spams more units generally wins.
1UPT on the other hand provides tactical maneuvering & more enjoyable war experience most of the time but the problem is that it limits the size of armies you control, adversely effects AI, increases turn times & makes late game overseas invasions very frustrating, some odd cases where exploration can be affected & sometimes you need to baby sit your units because of overly strict 1UPT.

Some people here suggested 2UPT, I would disagree with that. In fact it would be worse than 1UPT because you'll just need to spam twice as units & you'll loose the tactical depth.

My take on this is to merge both systems in a way that we have best of both worlds! Just like we had in Sid Meir's Pirates or in the lately released Age of Wonders 3. The point is that you engage armies in stacks. Then the battlefield is decided depending upon the terrain you are at. There on the battlefield units would have to follow the 1UPT and it's rules & regulations.

Sent from my One V using Tapatalk

 

[Trias]

I've long found it odd that Civ has never tried a hybrid system, only infinite or one - nothing in between. Of course, Civ CTP did have an interesting mix that I think has never been considered out of sheer spite...

This has a simple answer: nUPT with n a small number will always play out as 1UPT. The reason is that you will always want maxed out stacks. These maxed out stacks will then just behave as 1UPT.

The logistical problems just become worse, because it is hard to visually see where there are maxed out and non-maxed out stacks.

 

[Antilogic]

Regarding 1UPT (too many posts to quote):

There are so many ways designers could have worked in a "natural" limitation to the stack size problem, but they chose a ham-handed and arbitrary limit like 1UPT. Instead of keeping with the idea of strategic and operational depth (and simulating away the tactics with the battle system), the designers copped out.

More specifically...

To make the game manageable, they could have made the Civ3 army unit An Ordinary Thing you produced so that you always merged units together to reduce the load on the system. Bonus points would have been given if they made a real OOB system where the army HQ could draw on neighboring corps for support and for having new technology enable these advanced organizations.

They could have imposed a natural limit on stack sizes through supply. A tile could have supported a raw number of troops, with a supply unit adding more. But beyond that, your guys would starve. Break them up or face brutal attrition.

They could have used stack combat and some sort of frontage system where only a limited number of troops could fight in any given battle at a time. If you had more units than the frontage limit, they would just sit on the sidelines and wait for future turns. Thus, you'd naturally want to break them up to get the flanking bonuses and avoid inefficient super-stacks, except in specific cases where you needed to hold a particular position.

Posters like Sonereal and LM have the right idea. Throwing in cheap TAKTIKZ!!! was the wrong way to go. Making Civ into a Total War clone is just a shockingly horrible idea that should be killed with fire.

 

[VSorceress]

Sadly I missed out on previous Civ games before Civ Rev/ Civ V; I don't know much about the multiple stacks other than what I have gleaned from this and other discussion posts.

I did play Civ Rev and while I am aware it was a very stripped down version of the Sid Genre, they allowed for stacking units up to 3 and grouping them together as legions... That type of grouping and renaming I think would be a possibly good compromise .. . They would have to be the same type of unit, if there are two, name it a squad, if there are three call it a legion.


Sure it's not 100X units and you won't give the opponent the element of surprise of spam attack of 1000 men, but if you can group them together and get a bonus stats I think would be an interesting game during a war.

 

[Venger]

This has a simple answer: nUPT with n a small number will always play out as 1UPT. The reason is that you will always want maxed out stacks.

Disagree. Depends on how stacks are treated. In Civ1, stacks had a huge disadvantage of being fate bound - if the defending unit in a stack lost, all was lost. I believe an xUPT system that gives collateral damage during defense combat is a solid tradeoff between stack advantage and disadvantage, along with being coherent in concept. You can with such a system gain the convenience of generally avoiding roadblock during movement, along with the option of unit cover for aiding a wounded unit, as well as creating a coherent defense by utilizing multiple unit types. But, units in the stack not defending will still take some damage when the stack is attacked, discouraging overstacking and creating an associated cost along with the perceived advantage of stacking.

 

[Antilogic]

Sadly I missed out on previous Civ games before Civ Rev/ Civ V; I don't know much about the multiple stacks other than what I have gleaned from this and other discussion posts.

I did play Civ Rev and while I am aware it was a very stripped down version of the Sid Genre, they allowed for stacking units up to 3 and grouping them together as legions... That type of grouping and renaming I think would be a possibly good compromise .. . They would have to be the same type of unit, if there are two, name it a squad, if there are three call it a legion.


Sure it's not 100X units and you won't give the opponent the element of surprise of spam attack of 1000 men, but if you can group them together and get a bonus stats I think would be an interesting game during a war.

Here's a brief history from an player: Civ1 had stacks and maybe the same mechanism as in Civ2, I don't quite remember. In Civ2 you could have stacks, but if your stack was not in a fort or in a city, the moment one unit lost the entire stack would be destroyed. In Civ3, and you had ranged artillery and bombers to soften up stacks and they were limited to at most 5 HP. Civ4 introduced collateral damage from siege weapons and some UUs (although arguably SMAC did collateral damage as well, but it's not part of the core series). Civ5 went to 1UPT.

Also, in Civ3, there was an army system similar to what you describe for CivRev, but they could only be formed by great generals. Not sure how the CivRev system works, I've never played it.

I never used to be a fan of merging units into a single one for stack combat (and if you are patient enough to trudge back through my old posts in the I&S forums years ago you can still find them), but after playing some other games that use similar mechanisms I'm a convert.

 

[Trias]

Disagree. Depends on how stacks are treated. In Civ1, stacks had a huge disadvantage of being fate bound - if the defending unit in a stack lost, all was lost. I believe an xUPT system that gives collateral damage during defense combat is a solid tradeoff between stack advantage and disadvantage, along with being coherent in concept. You can with such a system gain the convenience of generally avoiding roadblock during movement, along with the option of unit cover for aiding a wounded unit, as well as creating a coherent defense by utilizing multiple unit types. But, units in the stack not defending will still take some damage when the stack is attacked, discouraging overstacking and creating an associated cost along with the perceived advantage of stacking.

Yes, but then your are better off with no particular stacking limit. (Otherwise you still end up of the logistical nightmare of moving not being able to move stacks through each other)

 

[Blitzscream]

I never understood why Firaxis got rid of the army unit from civ 3. I believe the concept for creating 1upt was just for the sake of avoiding large stacks of units. I think that was a lazy approach to solve the problem. But anyway I see no reason for all these complex ideas of dividing the tile into more subtiles. Just either limit the number of units per tile or put units in a army. But as a improvement from civ 3, players should be able to load and unload units into the army unit in much the same as a general in Total War games.

I think it would be better just name the "army" unit a general and you could create them in a military academy which I would prefer, but their needs to be restraints for the AI and Player from spamming them. Or generals could be created through victories in battle like great generals.

 

[Quintillus]

Y'know, Dale, I don't always agree with you, but there's nothing in your opening post I disagree with. 1 UPT and the switch to tactical vs. strategic (while still trying to be kinda strategic) was one of two things that ruined Civ5 for me, the other being global happiness, which I hear is less onerous with BNW. I'm still somewhat excited, since (a) the concept sounds good, (b) I'm not totally jaded about Civ5 since I only spent $7.50 on it and wasn't expecting it to be the bee's knees going in, and (c) I thought Civ4 sucked at launch, too, but by BTS it was actually pretty good, so it's possible that by Beyond Earth, the Civ5 base game will similarly have improved to the "good" category. But of all the news I've seen since the announcement, 1 UPT is the most disheartening. It would seem like a logical time to break with it since Beyond Earth isn't a Civ5 expansion.

Antilogic's posts have some good alternative ideas for limiting stacks of doom without killing the strategic nature of the game. And Blitzscream's right that if the Civ3 Army were re-introduced, being able to load/unload would be needed. I'm really hoping that with Civ6, Firaxis strikes a better balance to the stack of doom problem than the complete-opposite, with all its own flaws, 1 UPT system.

And yeah, a real Sim City 4 successor would be great. Sometime I have to get around to trying Cities XL - based on the reviews my expectations aren't great, but they're higher than my expectations for Sim City 5, even now that EA did get rid of the always-on DRM.

Oh, and VSorceress, Civ3 Complete goes on sale for $1.24 every couple months on Steam/Gamersgate, so if you're curious, it's pretty inexpensive to pick it up and try. Civ4 Complete tends to be a bit more expensive, but still not bad, occasionally hitting somewhere around $7.50. Next time Civ3 goes on sale for that price I plan to pick up a few copies to give away, so if you want on the list, send me a PM (I might not see a response in this thread).

 

[Lord Tirian]

Yes, but then your are better off with no particular stacking limit. (Otherwise you still end up of the logistical nightmare of moving not being able to move stacks through each other)

Yeah, that's the issue. There is no middle ground between 1UPT and infinite size: once you have a finite sized stack, it becomes equivalent to 1UPT (since a full stack becomes the best thing you can have). And the logistics is the main problem with 1UPT (unless people just really like the feeling of having many units?).

If you want to make stack combat sub-optimal, whether with a finite stack or infinite stack, you have to introduce penalties (collateral damage, damage goes to entire stack, pick worst defender, cumulative combat penalty). But then, you're creating a micro-management nightmare: if you penalise stacks sufficiently to make the Stack of Doom suboptimal, people will start spreading out units akin to 1UPT... with the catch that if you stack by accident, you might lose that stack.

You basically get the same logistical nightmare as 1UPT - but instead of the game saying "nope, can't go there" it becomes a trap in the manner of "do it and you take heavy losses!"

At the same time, using "pop-up" battles (akin to Endless Space, MoO 2 etc.) means you detract from the main map - something Civ is very focussed on (almost everything is a "main map gamepiece" - something that makes Civ very approachable compared to, say, Paradox games).

If solving the SoD problem was trivial, it would've been solved a while ago.

 

[Lancor]

I see your argument and kinda agree that 1upt is problematic. It is no deal breaker for me though. I would love to have the global tiles support up to like 6 units and a separate tactical map like AoW3 uses for fights with 1upt.