"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts

[Bibor]

I might be wrong, so don't shoot me, but looking at the screenshots and the still scarce information, my best guess is that the CIV5 is moving in direction of Panzer General and Battle Isle series, under the presumption that they indeed introduce the one unit per one tile doctrine. If you want to look up some aspects of these fantastic games, here are some titles to look up:

Battle Isle 1, 2 and 3(Amiga)
History Line 1914-1918 (Amiga)
Panzer General 1, 2 and 3, Allied General, Pacific General (PC).

Now, before your crucify me for looking 20 years into the past, I'd like to explain why I did so. The Civ V screenies give me the exactly same feeling as was present in the stated games:
- limited amount of units
- units are more "generic", technologies increase or add stats not unique bonuses (i.e. no more +50% vs.)
- each unit takes more than one attack to destroy it (3-4 attacks are a good guess)
- it becomes quite possible to form a "battle line" or "fortifications along borders"
- ranged units can and must be able to attack from distant squares
- unit movement or attacks are limited by fuel and/or ammo, thus, yes, one artillery might shoot units from 4 hexes away, but can shoot only 5 out of 7 turns (2 turns for full restock)
- units gain experience and can be upgraded, "healed", but at cost of some sort
- all units, their type and their placement are needed to either successfully defend or attack: two entrenched infantry in the forests guarding your left flank need to stay alive and hold their position, while your other units advance.

So why would we want to look forward to this type of combat? Well, numerous reasons; I'll just state the least obvious one -- no more "oh gosh, do I build units or buildings" dilemma. Armies will be similar in size and acquiring allies will be required to significantly tip the balance in one's favor. For example, your Rome has 13 units and the Babylon has 10, but that city state of Marsillia has 4. If it joins the Babylonian cause, you might loose the war. You might ask the Persians for help and their 8 units will be a boon, but they might be distracted if Babylon bribes the two other city-states into locking those 8 units in local conflicts. Since no civ would be able to mass-produce units and units would take more than one turn to kill, 3-4 entrenched units might hold off an army even twice its size for a very long period (of turns).

I find it more than compelling that my navy can be as big as the number of coastal Hexes I control, rather than if my single coastal city has many hills and/or a heroic epic and a drydock. It may very well be that cities don't produce units anymore but you build them at designated spots by spending resources. So, for example, you have 3cities and each city enables you to recruit a single unit. An iron mine, if you have it, grants you extra 2 infantry unit slots. Thus, your civ can have a total of 5 units, of which 2 can be only infantry. Some other civ may have only one city (1 unit), but 2 horse tiles, enabling him to have 5 units too, 4 cavalry units and 1 of other type.

Far fetched, all this, I know.

 

[VladDrakken]

Mmm yes, this is quite concerning. I may need to play a demo of this game before I buy. One unit per tile? I barely put any faith in just one unit to conquer a entire empire. I mean what if this is a island invasion? Wouldn't that mean defenders would have a far better defensive capability if the enemy can only send one unit in one spot?

 

[Nook]

I loved Panzer General, although I played with infinite fuel/amo quite a bit. Hopefully there would be an infinite option here too, if they do allow that dimension.

As for resources limiting simultaneous possession of same-type units, I hope its just an option or no true. I would much rather resources limited simultaneous production and definitely not one to one.

HOWEVER, Panzer was a combat only game and managing the army was all-consuming. In Civ, there are also cities and lands to manage, so it might be too much to demand such "chessiness" from battles. I always wanted some more sophisticated battle formation mechanic in Civ than SoD. I dont necessarily want Panzer though.

As for border protection ideas you have, that sounds very interesting. It may explain why there are no units in the cities in the screenshots. I cant imagine how that will work with giant empires. Maybe it will limit the size of empire until ranged units (helicopters, planes) are available.

 

[Bibor]

Mmm yes, this is quite concerning. I may need to play a demo of this game before I buy. One unit per tile? I barely put any faith in just one unit to conquer a entire empire. I mean what if this is a island invasion? Wouldn't that mean defenders would have a far better defensive capability if the enemy can only send one unit in one spot?

An island invasion is quite possible.
Lets say its a 2-hex island, one is a city, one is hills. Both tiles have entrenched infantry units. Any unit attempting to land on those tiles will probably be annihilated.

But, the islands can be surrounded by a total number of 8 naval units. Lets say 6 battleships, 2 transports. Not to mention that battleships have probably a bombardment range larger than 1 hex.
Bombardment doesn't only reduce only city protection anymore, but really damage units, but cannot kill them (i.e. cannot "cap the tile"). Enough turns of bombardment, and your marines stashed in the transports have greater odds to add the final push to annihilate the entrenched infantry.

It all basically a matter of two questions:
"How many turns and units are you willing to spend on capping a single tile?" and
"Can you avoid certain tiles with certain units?"

Lets say there's a 2-hex wide, 3-hex deep peninsula.

XX
00
12
34
56

Your melee units are at 00, your artillery at XX, 1 and 3 are entrenched enemy units in a forest, 6 is an enemy capital and also a 3-hex range artillery. Attacking entrenched units will take a lot of turns. But you can't ignore them either, because if you move your melee units to tiles 2 and 4 and your artillery into hexes 00, the enemy will shell your unit on hex 4, the unit in hex 3 can annihilate it, and the unit in hex 1 can attack your "now vunerable" artillery in hexes 0 and 0.

 

[Bibor]

HOWEVER, Panzer was a combat only game and managing the army was all-consuming. In Civ, there are also cities and lands to manage, so it might be too much to demand such "chessiness" from battles. I always wanted some more sophisticated battle formation mechanic in Civ than SoD. I dont necessarily want Panzer though.

As for border protection ideas you have, that sounds very interesting. It may explain why there are no units in the cities in the screenshots. I cant imagine how that will work with giant empires. Maybe it will limit the size of empire until ranged units (helicopters, planes) are available.

That depends. Being attacked by Montezuma on a marathon/huge by a 100-unit stack is also time-consuming

This will be, my guess, more like Panzer 2, with less units per map.

 

[Lord Parkin]

An island invasion is quite possible.
Lets say its a 2-hex island, one is a city, one is hills. Both tiles have entrenched infantry units. Any unit attempting to land on those tiles will probably be annihilated.

What about more of a continent-sized island? That would be practically impossible to take by military force, if 1 unit per tile is enforced.

But I'm not really concerned. While there are some nice ideas here, I highly doubt that we will be limited to just one unit per tile. A few, perhaps, but not one. Otherwise, we'd effectively be going backwards from all the changes in Civ4 to allow units of different civs on the same tile. What if you sit 1 unit on a chokepoint and a friendly civ has no ability to get past? That doesn't seem sensible.

 

[Bibor]

What about more of a continent-sized island? That would be practically impossible to take by military force, if 1 unit per tile is enforced.

That's why a world war is the only way to attack another continent. D-day could've never happened if it would've been the only front. There were at least 3 major fronts the Nazis had to fight on, that's what made the D-day possible at all. Considering the Allied firepower, the (counter)intelligence, the french resistance and Nazi command being completely out of its mind, the casaulties were still massive.

The current (Civ4) "build 30 destroyers and 30 marines and cap an enemy continent" is Sci-fi.

 

[Afforess]

It opens up possibilities. Perhaps GG's will be special units that can be on a tile with another unit? That would be very powerful...

 

[Commander Bello]

My personal favorite always has been to have a cap for units allowed on a given tile (maybe 10 per tile in the open countries, 15 in the cities).
Nevertheless, the PG combat system was quite fun - although the PG AI was very weak.

And this is one of the big question marks by now.
Will the AI be able to cope with only one unit per tile? This means, will the AI be able to identify the significance of certain tile (I am thinking of bottle neck landscapes here).
The human player will immediately identify such areas and put all his efforts to gain and keep control.
If the AI will not be able to compete in this area, combat will become a problem.

To what I agree is to abandon the current system of killing a unit in one turn.
Give units a limited firepower per turn and make them that strong that they will survive a 1-turn-battle (except of course, if fighting against a multitude of opponents).

 

[Souron]

- ranged units can and must be able to attack from distant squares

All that is promised is "ranged bombardment". This suggests ranged artillery, not archers. Much like Civ3 artillery.
This screen proves me wrong

 

[Commander Bello]

All that is promised is "ranged bombardment". This suggests ranged artillery, not archers. Much like Civ3 artillery.
This screen proves me wrong

The screenshots indicate archers to fire across an inland lake. Therefore, it seems that even archers (and most probably, any "projectile"-type unit like muscateers, riflemen etc.) will be able to fire at a distance of at least 2 tiles.

Edit: too late

 

[ScottUK]

Great. A definitely step in the right direction. No more annoying stacks landing on my border.

 

[Shurdus]

The one unit per tile doctrine annoys me to no end. I even prefer stacks over it. Keep in mind that a tile represents an enourmous amount of land. Why can an archer then fire across a lake then? Note that any lake worth of representation on the map would indeed be quite a big pond, not just some recreational swinning pool. Firing arrows across some major lake would be ********. Also firing into the hex next to the one where you are standing would be wacky since archers really need to take the fight to the enemy, you cannot shoot several miles as modern artillery can.

 

[Bibor]

The one unit per tile doctrine annoys me to no end. I even prefer stacks over it. Keep in mind that a tile represents an enourmous amount of land. Why can an archer then fire across a lake then? Note that any lake worth of representation on the map would indeed be quite a big pond, not just some recreational swinning pool. Firing arrows across some major lake would be ********. Also firing into the hex next to the one where you are standing would be wacky since archers really need to take the fight to the enemy, you cannot shoot several miles as modern artillery can.

Civilization is a tactical board game ported to a computer. Its not a real life simulation. America didn't exist for 6000 years, for units it did not take 10.000 years to cross 20 tiles and courthoses don't enable spy specialists. Just to name a few things
Porting CIV combat to Panzer General style of play is a very, very logical thing to do. Not because it's something "more realistic", but because its better.

I'm not really afraid about the AI handling it. PG's AI was crap, but Battle Isle AI was quite good.

 

[Luckystrike77]

These are very interesting ideas. With some new twists to make it work well within the Civilization tradition I really think this is the way to go. Since I tried Panzer Generals fom the first time I'm been thinking how huge it would have been with a simular combat system in a CIV game.

My only complaint must be it simulates modern warfare better then ancient warfare, but then again, think of the strategy map more like a tactical battlefield and it's OK.

If a hex is sorrunded I really hope the unit(s) there should get some maluses, perhaps increasing over a few turns.

Naval battles will finally be interesting again, they killed alot of the good ideas from CIV 3 with CIV 4 in that area, the same with adding suicide siege weapons just to make multiplayer games faster.... It did'nt make that much difference on the speed there, and made warfare too much straight forward.....

NB! God damn I'm glad for these news of a CIV 5, I almost gave up hoping for it.

 

[Shurdus]

Let us hope that they do not leave the Civ traditions too much. If they simplify things then I am out. Civ IV was pretty much the first Civ that was smooth and deep enough to get me hooked. If they now simplify things to make it more mainstream I would be sorely disappointed. The combat could use an overhaul, sure, but I am unsure if this is the way to go.

Then again, it would be amazing if this meant that warfare would take place with less units overall. One thing I always disliked was having to manage large numbers of units since it would get real tedious real soon. If this means that you now have to manage less units and that even in the modern era the combat would be managable real well, it would be a huge plus in my book.

 

[Yakk]

So, "one unit per tile" makes sense when you expand what "one unit" means.

"One unit" becomes "what your civilisation can support in the field in a given unit of battle area".

At low-tech levels, "one unit" would be what can forage off that terrain (read: kill/tax peasants and take their stuff), plus what you can supply remotely. If you concentrate your troops more densely, they end up starving, or even just running into disease problems.

As economic, transportation and agriculture tech advances, your ability to provide supply to armies in the field improves -- which means "one unit" becomes more troops.

By the modern day, the "one unit" max size might be enough infantry to saturate the entire tile with trenchwork.

...

I also like the idea of "your army size is determined by your resource supply". If you have X oil resources, you can field X oil using units. If you have X iron resources, you can field X iron using units. One could even imagine city improvements like "improved mines" which mean that your iron mine produces twice as much iron -- so instead of directly building military units in your cities over centuries, you'd build up the infrastructure in your cities.

Actually building a unit could be relatively cheap. Maintaining a unit in the field might be modestly expensive. So a civilisation in peace time might disband all but their elite units, and then rebuild them (at a rate of 1/turn/city) using the existing infrastructure as "unseasoned troops" in the event of war.

Sort of like the Colonisation game, where you build military units by handing muskets and horses to your citizens. Except instead of having an explicit musket resource, you'd have raw material resources and an industrial base, and the size of your industrial base determines how many units you can field...

But this is pie in the sky.

 

[Takhisis]

A cap would be useful, so you can't get any more SODs. Maybe they could make it moddable as well, so that it can be set in the editor/script. But one unit per tile is ridiculous. The game's reminding me of Rise of Nations.

 

[kochman]

Is there evidence other than screenshots that this will be one unit per hex?
There could be other units under those units... perhaps they just don't use the banners like they do now.

Personally, I would love to see SoD tactics, if you can even call that crap tactics, gone. The worst part of Civ4 is the combat in my book... almost any reasonable change is an improvement.

 

[paradigmx]

One unit per tile sounds like a great idea for military units, but I hope non-military units stack more.

The reason I like 1 unit per tile is that there as a far greater emphasis on having the right army, not just the most armies, having ranged combat means that you could have spearmen in the front, archers in back, which a mounted unit would find a very intimidating target. If there are bonuses for having reinforcements on bordering tiles, then that increases the tactical level even more, now having your mounted units sitting in the nearby forest to flank your opponent when it gets close is a tactically sound move. In civ 4 it would be a waste of a mounted unit...