"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts

[MrBanana]

If the OP is right, then maybe it has to do with population size. Maybe your troops will actually have to come from somewhere, not just made from thin air. That'd be really cool, as well as adding a lot of strategy. No longer can a city of 1,000 people churn out 10,000 chariots.

Also, it looks like making war more strategic will make the game more streched out, as in you're in the classical era for longer, and war take longer.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Imagine the awkward silence at the office when the designer who thought this up decided to say that they should remove the ability to have multiple units in the same tile. It's not every day you get a game company willing to completely redesign a major feature that's been in every single one of their main series' games.

This is the kind of courage game developers require unless they want to make Madden 2525 someday. Civilization should not just be some Madden style roster update. Civilization should be a wildly experimental ongoing attempt to nail the epitome of this style of 4x.

 

[Woodreaux]

If they do decide to go with a 1 unit per tile rule it might be something like the old school Romance of the 3 Kingdoms for the NES. You have a small number cohorts you move around the tactical maps each of which are composed of x number of dudes armed w/weapon-x, y number of dudes slinging weapon-y, z number etc, etc. The "units" are actually like armies and the overall strengths could vary with number of men assigned, armament, armor, logistical support etc.

A cool thing about this setup is, with one unit per tile logistics and supply lines could become a part of the game. With SODs, it would be entirely too tedious, hence it is abstracted and represented through support costs.

Another cool thing about this setup is you can customize it by adding and removing troops and equipment... sort of like the Civ IV Colonization model. In addition to buildings, , , and cities could train various numbers of troops or produce various numbers of pieces of equipment (e.g.: spears, axes, rifles, tanks) and they could produce each and every turn based the amount of and excess .

Initially, the 1 "unit" per tile idea horrified me, but when I started thinking of them as armies and the precedent set by other games, the more I warmed up to the idea. I don't know how Firaxis is actually going to implement units for Civ V, but I'm sure it'll be awesome.

 

[gunnergoz]

I'm liking what I see of Civ V so far. In particular, the one unit per hex will be a truly refreshing breath of fresh air to the game, requiring new strategies and posing new challenges. Since I always took Civ to be mostly about abstract concepts, I'm not stuck with the "one unit of swordsmen = 1000 men or one regiment" paradigm. Civ V should capitalize on the abstraction by allowing our units to become more and more individualistic over time, with experience and war trophies factored in. Imagine your unit of archers is in a battle where they defeat longbowmen (I said imagine!); at the end of the combat, your archers might upgrade automatically to the new technology that they picked up on the battlefield and learned from prisoners.
However they go about it, I think they potentially have a winner here, for they look to be on a nice, new tack for a change. It's a heck of a legacy these designers have to keep up - they can't be seen as falling on their swords with Civ V if they ever expect to work in this industry for long.

 

[Trev]

Large numbers of military units involved in recent civ games means the military have become allimportant. This change could means it becomes more of a builder game with a military component, I can be happy with that, I have always liked to develop and build my cities infrastructure, but civ4 has required priority on units at the highest levels to the detriment of the economy. Hopefully this will be rebalanced a bit.

 

[Panzeh]

I suspect if they go with 1 unit per tile, the number of units in general will be reduced, which is a positive change for the game, especially if they can make alliances more useful militarily. It's much more elegant than proposed 'logistic' systems, too, and I think will make warfare more granular, allowing you to take territory outside the city and making terrain more useful.

 

[Takhisis]

So we get ever more tactical. Camikaze will have a fit.

 

[darkedone02]

It will be sad that I could no longer be able to do a stack attack like I always do when playing civilization 4, I just spam lots of knights or horseman since they got better movement speed then infantry, mass promote them, group them and send them to a enemy city and hear the victory sound and the screams. it will sucks because I like the stack attack.

 

[Takhisis]

You mean, you like just sending so many units that you'll just overrun them. Zero tactics at all, and zero combat experience.

 

[Loki130]

personally, I'm really freaking tired of the old cycle of going to the closest enemy city bombarding a city to hell, sending your SoD against the enemy SoD, and then moving on to the next closest city. I hope there's some kind of siege-type thing, like if you cut all roads into a city or surround a unit, it eventually begins to starve and die off.

also, has anyone considered air units? or ships in harbor? perhaps there will be something special fo cities

 

[darkedone02]

You mean, you like just sending so many units that you'll just overrun them. Zero tactics at all, and zero combat experience.

my enemy never use much tactics and spam the weak units, as they hardly advance, I can be like in middle renaissance and they still be in early medieval. I use some tactics, as to where to raid first, what to get rid of first, develop my settlers so that the other country start building cities at my enemy area was at, and gain there resources that I was trying to fight for. I spam knights or higher, and raze there cities, and settle there lands, that the only tactic I use. If you want to use a hellavu lot of tactics, then you go right ahead. I just like my own tactics.

 

[Takhisis]

You're not using tactics at all. What you're talking about is strategy.
For further reading i'd recommend the Wikipedia articles on strategy and tactics.

 

[l3illyl3ob]

It will be sad that I could no longer be able to do a stack attack like I always do when playing civilization 4, I just spam lots of knights or horseman since they got better movement speed then infantry, mass promote them, group them and send them to a enemy city and hear the victory sound and the screams. it will sucks because I like the stack attack.

Well, yes, everyone likes it when things are easy for them, I suppose. There's not as much thought involved when you're capable of outproducing enemies and spamming massive amounts of your best units. Actually having to think about tactics and such will make warfare a much bigger challenge than it was before. This is going to take a lot of players out of their comfort zone, and thus you'll see a lot of opposition to this. But in the end, I think this could possibly prove to be the better system. I relish the challenge.

 

[Bibor]

My guess is that the designers of CIV5 want warfare to become more CIV-like. Units and armies that represent a "military situation" rather than a bunch of "mobile means of destruction". Having strategically placed units all around your empire sounds more CIV-like than having a mobile stack of 50 units killing everything in their path. What a Panzer General stlye of combat offers is just that, regardless of whether the terrain represents a world or a peninsula. Think of it as a landscape - hills and mountains represent larger concentration of units, whearas flatlands represent no presence of military. Do you pile up military presence at the eastern borders or spread them? Do you build up a naval force to be your main spearhead?

People might be fooled that "in the good old times" (medieval, rennaisance) armies weren't spread. They were. The Mongol empire, spreading over a million square kilometers, wasn't just built by utilizing Keshiks stacked up. There were vast garrisons across the mighty empire, engineering units, infantry, recruited population in the times of need... The same goes for the Roman, Ottoman, Egyptian, Sumeran Empire... heck, any empire that had a sizeable amount of land. Sure, a large concentration of military power was always needed to conquer. But it wasn't like in CIV4, where (if you have 10 cities), you'd have 10 garrison units and 80 units on the front. Sending away all that you have was always a bad idea and ended in a disaster.

This is why I think that more fluid combat system, one that represents a nation's military situation, is far more adequate for a game like CIV.

 

[grandad1982]

One unit per tile isn't all bad. When I first heard it I thought it was a terrible idea. Now I'm thinking of armies.

So what if they give us a revamped version of the army function from CIV3?

In the ancient times a unit might be a good representation of what a civ can field give the limited resourses the early techs and infrastucture can provide. This means the low number of units one per tile suggests works well in this part of the game.
As your civ increases in size and moves up the tech tree you could start have acces to an army building unit, lets just call them officers, that allow you to stack an increasing number of units in them based on tech or resourses or what ever offers the best balance. In this way by the modern era you can still concentate forces AND maitain the concept of a front and all the exciting tactical options that will entail.

Ultimatly we won't know how this issue is resolved untill Firaxis tells us. Just saying there are possiblilties that have already been explored by the series and countless others that peole have mentioned here already.

Come on autumn!

 

[CiverDan1]

My guess is they are thinking of MP a lot when it comes to modifying came mechanics like this. Ancient MP wars which came down to "who can build a bigger stack of elephants/any other unit" got tiring. Big stacks also=lag.

 

[Seventh Child]

This is why I think that more fluid combat system, one that represents a nation's military situation, is far more adequate for a game like CIV.

I see it this way too. I also hope that they rethink some of the slight bonuses like needing 1 Garrison unit in a city or get an unhappy citizen. It doesn't really work like that unless they're counting that unit as a standing militia of sorts. I'd rather have garrisons near the borders of my civ rather than fighting 90% of my battles in sieges.

 

[r_rolo1]

People might be fooled that "in the good old times" (medieval, rennaisance) armies weren't spread. They were. The Mongol empire, spreading over a million square kilometers, wasn't just built by utilizing Keshiks stacked up. There were vast garrisons across the mighty empire, engineering units, infantry, recruited population in the times of need... The same goes for the Roman, Ottoman, Egyptian, Sumeran Empire... heck, any empire that had a sizeable amount of land. Sure, a large concentration of military power was always needed to conquer. But it wasn't like in CIV4, where (if you have 10 cities), you'd have 10 garrison units and 80 units on the front. Sending away all that you have was always a bad idea and ended in a disaster.

You are definitely not talking of the same game than Shaefer did to the Danish magazine that Sian was kind enough to translate ( I already linked it twice to this thread, so forgive for my laziness ). Shaefer explecitely talked about wide fronts of units side by side. You can twist history in the any way you like, but there was simply no huge fronts wars until maybe the American Civil war ( the napoleonic wars were definitely more SoD type than front type , for a example ). This has nothing to do with leaving troops behind for garrisons and such, because , if they had made a more refined mechanism in Civ IV, this could had been acheived even with the SoD system ( say, any combat troop would need x auxiliary regiments for the logistics, that would need to be in the cities or atleast in controled territory ).

To be honest, you are simply stating your distaste for the Civ IV SoD tendency. I can agree with that, but that is not the same that saying that a unit per tile is a better system or even anything remotely resembling historical examples until maybe 2 centuries ago.And, as far as we know, the game might allow a huge front of troops ( say , Barbarossa wide ) in classical ages or some other nonsense equivalent to the Civ IV SoD ....

 

[Bibor]

You are definitely not talking of the same game than Shaefer did to the Danish magazine that Sian was kind enough to translate ( I already linked it twice to this thread, so forgive for my laziness ). Shaefer explecitely talked about wide fronts of units side by side.

To be honest, you are simply stating your distaste for the Civ IV SoD tendency. I can agree with that, but that is not the same that saying that a unit per tile is a better system or even anything remotely resembling historical examples until maybe 2 centuries ago.And, as far as we know, the game might allow a huge front of troops ( say , Barbarossa wide ) in classical ages or some other nonsense equivalent to the Civ IV SoD ....

I'm sorry, but I cannot find it explicitly stated that there will be exclusively fronts. Actually, I don't even see if the original post (translation of the review by Sian) says anything about them.

I do not have a distaste for SoDs. Heck, I've been playing with them for a very long time now. I'm just saying that PG style is attractive too!

 

[r_rolo1]

Sure, not exclusively fronts, but it is stated specifically that the objective is to create fronts:

"one of the first changes we made was to remove the possability to 'stack' units. Now that you can only place one Military unit at each tile, there would be created large fronts between the players that battle each other"

From here

Obviously this can be acheived with or without logistics behind, as the SoD model ( my fear is that it will be simply with no logistics attached ). That is why I responded to your earlier post... Not mentioning that encouraging fronts is historically stupid in a game that spans for 6000 years , given that front wars are only common in the last 200 years. But as I was already acused of having Asperger just because I pointed this ...