Not excited...... not one bit

[Pepo]

So basically, domination wins should just be scientific or economic wins in disguise? That still contributes greatly in Civ V but at least there is some sense of strategy with 1UPT. Even with a tech lead or greater force, you can still lose if you use inferior tactics, like not softening targets with ranged and not protecting siege weapons with melee.

With 1UPT you can't just smash your troops against each other like you essentially did in previous Civ's.

if the ai was better and there was MUCH more space to manuevre,you will be rigth.however civ V (and hopelly civ :Be will solve this)have a horrible ai,and there is not enougth space to manuver, most figths end with many staltmates in the front will your range attack troopers just kill everything in the front

 

[Commander Bello]

(...) with 1UPT. Even with a tech lead or greater force, you can still lose if you use inferior tactics, like not softening targets with ranged and not protecting siege weapons with melee.

Excuse me, but you call this tactics? If so, then Civ4's SoD system was as much deep tactical combat as C5's 1upt system is.

 

[Arrowstorm]

Military tactics: the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield.

If everything is piled up, there's no tactics using this definition.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Even if we credited Civ4's system as abstractly representing tactics, the only tactic was to mix up your stack so the unit they attack with will be met with the unit that can counter it. Far too many of my battles involved hitting the w key until I found a unit that wasn't going up against its counter. When that didn't work, it was about weakening a couple units in suicide charges of siege units so as to open up an opening without a counter. That was the pinnacle of strategy in Civ4.

Yes, in Civ4, marshaling resources was the number one priority. But resources still give you an advantage in Civ5. Units, as a whole, are more expensive and you still need to plan ahead to bring a variety. In that sense, it's the same. But it also allows you to have true front lines and use genuinely good strategy and tactics to give an advantage even when you have a numerically inferior (but roughly comparable) army.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The problem with civs combat system is that it has always been 1upt... Each battle is 1 unit v. 1 other unit.

SoD would be great if it was stack v. stack instead of a series of unit v. Unit battles

 

[Bandobras Took]

This sounds strange.
Because in former versions the AI was weak, too, it is ok that the unevitable weakness is made even more obvious?

Well, we all know that there are technical restrictions to the level an AI theoretically could reach, I give you that.
Nevertheless, knowing that there are such restrictions, I for my part would prefer game concepts making such restrictions less obvious.
But to each his own...

I would point out that this kind of thinking meant saying goodbye to the Unit Workshop from Alpha Centauri. I don't think limiting game mechanics by what an AI can do with them is the best design philosophy, especially if said game has a multiplayer component.

 

[Aeson]

The depth of tactics in Civ V are roughly comparable to the depth of tactics in Civ IV. That's pretty sad considering Civ V's biggest change was pointed at trying to make Civ V a tactical war game and sacrificed so much to do it.

In Civ V there's extremely basic rules that are very obvious. Protect your ranged units. Plink targets down with ranged. Mop up the leftovers.

It's very similar to Civ IV stack/city warfare. Protect your siege. Collateral damage everything down with siege. Mop up the leftovers.

The difference is Civ IV didn't sacrifice anything with economics or ergonomics to achieve that. It allowed a much wider range of options since stack warfare wasn't the only way to go. You could rush early, rush late, rush with lots of cheaper units, rush with fewer expensive ones, flood units, focus them, maneuver using fast units, use misdirection to pull enemy units out of position. Or stack if you were a sledge player or had a tough nut to crack. Which was best was situational.

Civ V doesn't care about what's best, you get some options, but they're all pretty much the same outside periods where you can rush with a big tech advantage. (You can never really have a numbers advantage unless you drop down below your skill level.) Plink with ranged, mop up. That's about all it boils down to.

 

[Lord Shadow]

As it stands, you have one system in which units are expensive and you can't pile them up in a single tile, versus one in which your cheap units call all be consolidated in one spot. But the actual fighting remains 1vs1. I can't see how the latter's possibly richer than the former. As I implied earlier, maneuvering is important, and there's no need for such if your forces can all occupy a single spot.

Put a mega stack in hilly terrain and just like that you've set up a strong defense for a whole army. Catch an enemy stack when it's crossing plains and you can easily determine the fate of dozens of units in a single turn, with little care for tactics. In Civ5, you can't abuse terrain like that, and have to think more thoroughly about the placing of your various units, and how to maneuver to get the best out of each.

I understand Civ's a strategic scale game, but there's little strategy about stacks of doom. Now, if the stacks were actually able to fight as a single unit, with considerations like unit limits, organization, support elements and possibly supply (a la Paradox games), then you'd have a system worth defending. It doesn't have to be as complex as Hearts of Iron, but as it stands, the SoD mechanic is little more than a compromise for the AI's sake.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: A lot of these posts have absolutely nothing to do with CivBE. This is the CivBE forum, so please make sure your posts are actually about that. You can discuss e.g. 1upt to the extent that you are doing so in relation to CivBE.

 

[Aeson]

SODs were something players could play themselves into, but definitely didn't have to. SODs were rarely optimal gameplay. The fact is, to put together a SOD, your first units have to wait for your last units. Usually a waste of unit turns.

I realize I haven't posted here much in the last decade, but I did win many medals in the GOTMs ... had lots of HOF games ... was selected to spend a couple years breaking Soren's AI over and over again before Civ IV's release. And usually I didn't stack at all. If units happened to be on the same tile on their way to their objective, so be it. But unless I had been constrained in the early game with geography or a really bad start, no need for stacking. Because that first unit (and the second, and the third ... and the nth) should be out doing something useful ASAP.

 

[householder]

I am curious about Beyond Earth's orbital layer, and how that will affect combat. Will satellites somehow resemble 2upt, or will it simply provide a bonus to the unit?

I am also wondering if perhaps a 2upt might work. One unit could be the primary, while the second unit could be a complement. The second unit would add to defense, but not to attack. e.g. pikes helping to defend swordsmen. The two units couldn't of the same type, and if the primary unit were defeated, the defending unit would rout.

 

[Commander Bello]

I am curious about Beyond Earth's orbital layer, and how that will affect combat. Will satellites somehow resemble 2upt, or will it simply provide a bonus to the unit?

From what I've read so far, the satellites will only provide some bonusses.

I am also wondering if perhaps a 2upt might work. One unit could be the primary, while the second unit could be a complement. The second unit would add to defense, but not to attack. e.g. pikes helping to defend swordsmen. The two units couldn't of the same type, and if the primary unit were defeated, the defending unit would rout.

"n"upt systems share the same problems as 1upt.
The lower the "n", the earlies will have your traffic jams.

Under the assumption that BE will share C5's crude rules, a foreign unit will block your units, even in your own territory. Having a 2upt system almost doesn't help anything, as "n" is too low.
The bigger the "n" value, the less often you will face the traffic jam, but when it hits, it will hit you really.

To your idea: how often does it happen that the not defending unit (in other words: the attacking one) is killed in a fight?
As far as I remember, it was next to impossible to lose an attacker in an attack - if you weren't just attacking a much, much stronger unit.

So, killing the "attacker" would only happen if the 2upt group were on defence ... but then it should be the defender who defends, no?

 

[householder]

"n"upt systems share the same problems as 1upt.
The lower the "n", the earlies will have your traffic jams. Under the assumption that BE will share C5's crude rules, a foreign unit will block your units, even in your own territory. Having a 2upt system almost doesn't help anything, as "n" is too low.

You make a good point. On the other hand, the more upt, the closer we come to SOD. I guess finding a good balance may be difficult.

What should the maximum number of upt be? I think someone suggested four, although I am not sure of the rationale of picking that number.

 

[Harald B]

Instead of limiting the amount of units per stack, how about limiting the amount of combatants per stack to one instead? I'm thinking of a system where the player can rearrange the order of the stack during their turn, and only the unit on top can attack using only its own strength. (No putting someone else on top after attacking.) Then when the stack gets attacked in the opponent's turn, the attack is versus only the unit on top as well. (If the unit on top gets killed, another unit gets put on top and may be attacked. Advanced players may wish to rearrange the rest of the stack to ensure the right unit floats up.)
This would have all the travel convenience of stacks, with the following nice features:

• The amount of damage dealt per turn is on the same level as with 1upt.
• You are encouraged to split stacks so as to increase your number of attacks per turn.
• Stacking cannot replace tactical positioning for ranged units. You may escort them by putting a melee unit in their stack for relocation purposes, but as soon as you start using them they are exposed. (Between this point and the previous one, the battlefield will look much like with 1upt, except that excess units can/will be put into the appropriate stacks ahead of time as reinforcements.)
• More generally, you cannot largely ignore type advantages merely by putting rock, paper and scissors into the same stack.

 

[Sharples]

In the real world, stacking units (people) in fights were extremely common, it peppers the pages in wars. However in Civiilization V it has 1upt I would assume because of balance issues. There really would not be any other solution. To have about 50 units in one hex which can just smash the lines of the enemy is a bit silly in a game, even if realism denys that, I think the 1upt is great, although I can fully understand anyone criticizing me for this, feel free to do so.

 

[Kid R]

Unit /ˈjuːnɪt/
noun
"an individual thing or person regarded as single and complete but which can also form an individual component of a larger or more complex whole"

NUPT discussions are kind of moot because a "unit" is already an abstraction for many guys on the tile. The Civ 5 system really is just enforcing only guys of the same type on the tile. A standard mixed stack is just another bunch of guys but made up various different types. Just different rules - arbitrary and set up to define the flavour of combat.

I'm OK With 1UPT even if (IMO) Civ 5 didn't really nail it, and I hope it gets shaken up a bit. Stacking on the main map (fix manoeverability) but zooming in for battles as 1UPT on a finer grid (retain tactical flavour) would be what I'd try.

At least that's what I'd try for Civ 6! CivBE is sci-fi - what would be cooler is if this "combat" on an alien planet didn't just resemble standard Earth battles and formations but with funny-looking soldiers. I would like to see the devs let their imaginations go a bit and not just obsess about 1UPT vs stacks blah blah. I want them to change the terms of the whole debate

 

[Wodan]

1upt really only works in tile/wargames (which CiV is based upon) when you have a very high tile to unit ratio. That is, when the number of hexes on the map is very large compared to the number of units. All the problems with CiV, (whether real or perceived), are due to CiV not having a high tile:unit ratio.

There's nothing wrong with 1upt as a concept or a mechanic. We just need much bigger maps. Of course, then we run into memory and graphic rendering constraints. Which could possibly be solved by having only visible elements rendered and not allowing as much screen zoom flexibility.

But all this is probably moot as I fully expect BE to not change such fundamentals of the game. I daresay it'll be a new tech tree, new buildings, new civs, new units, new terrain graphics... all based upon the current CiV:BNW engine.

 

[MountainTiger]

Unfortunately, 1UPT is here for the current generation of Civ games, and I doubt the BE team put much work into improving the core AI (though at least it is improved over the launch AI). The main thing that could be implemented in BE is increased mobility to alleviate the traffic jam problems, though there are limitations on how much this could help.

In the big picture, I am convinced that most of the SoD complaints from Civ IV were about there being too many units total, not too many units in a stack. Stacking didn't help, especially since there weren't many options for weakening a stack as a whole, but the basic problem was that mid-game and later combat was made mind-numbingly tedious by the need to grind through dozens of units to make any progress. This is tedious for both carpets and stacks. Because of this, while I hope that 1UPT isn't a permanent addition to the series, I also hope that the inevitable Civ VI holds onto the model of fewer, more expensive units.

 

[boghog]

The main thing that could be implemented in BE is increased mobility to alleviate the traffic jam problems.

In CiV traffic jams are really a thing of the past after the appearance of XCOM troops as they can for all practical purposes just teleport wherever on the map they please. Since XCOMs come before the Space Victory (if we assume that BE and CiV live in the same universe) that kind of technology should be present at the start in BE.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

In CiV traffic jams are really a thing of the past after the appearance of XCOM troops as they can for all practical purposes just teleport wherever on the map they please. Since XCOMs come before the Space Victory (if we assume that BE and CiV live in the same universe) that kind of technology should be present at the start in BE.

Unfortunately, CiV and BE don't exist in the same universe. Devs have said they've taken it as the future of real life, rather than the post game of CiV.

So no Xcom's yet, but there's still 250 years right?