"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts

[Takhisis]

But then you'd have to get some sort of flanking bonus, and define which way the unit is pointing, etc. etc.

 

[say1988]

Not really, archers and siege will likely be easily cut down by mounted units, if it can get around the defensive forces.

 

[strollen]

I am looking forward to fighting a war with one unit per hex in the panzer general style combat.

What I am dreading is the micromanagement of garrison one unit per hex, during the 80% of the game where I am at peace. I hope they really think this through.

In Civ 4, I produce my first longbow. I send him garrison City A with an archer, axe, and spear. When the longbow arrives I send the archer in City A to act as the 3rd defender in City B. I repeat this process with Maces replacing Axeman etc. and finally by the time rifleman arrive, I start scrapping my archers. Not a lot of micromanagement required.

However, with one unit/hex. The decision is lot more complex. When my first longbow is produced I have to decide which one of the say 10 archer should he replace, and which one of the say 4 warriors should the archer replace. I can easily envision each military unit being produced requiring 4 or 5 separate movements. Without some good automation tools this could easily be micromanagement hell.

 

[Calm_Blue_Sea]

Forgive me if this has been said before, I'm sure it has, but there's a little too much to read in this thread.

What if stacking was linked to maintainance costs? For instance, a unit that does not share a tile with another unit costs only one coin per turn to maintain. A unit which shares a tile with one other unit costs two coins per turn to maintain; a unit which shares a tile with two other units costs four coins per turn to maintain; a unit which shares a tile with three other units costs eight coins per turn to maintain, etc, etc. This would make it very expensive to stack units, yet not enforce an absolute limit. It would also do away with some of the problems resulting from a one unit per tile limit (i.e. units can pass by each other through the same tile without concern - there is only a cost involved if they end their turn on the same tile).

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, I'm still against one-unit-per tile. Even likely with "armies." Ahriman for instance makes some good points.

But I really wonder, since this suggestion has popped up so many times: I've played Panzer General series games and similar wargames. What in the world makes all you people think that gameplay translates remotely well to civ? Maps in Civilization games are orders of magnitude larger with many times more cities, varied terrain, more nations/players, etc... And you have other things to do besides combat - if you're complaining the SoD makes the game take too long, I wonder if you've even played those other games you mention? If civ V combat really was to become like these various tactical wargames it would come at the cost of a ton of everything else that civ is about. Scale, gamespeed, a huge new focus on military are only some of the first casualties.

 

[chongli]

Scale, gamespeed, a huge new focus on military are only some of the first casualties.

Scale and game speed (time scale) have always been completely out to lunch in the Civ series.

Units in Civ tower over their cities like titans. They move at a glacial pace, taking centuries to travel between neighbouring cities.

Casualty? This horse has been dead for decades.

 

[Earthling]

I wasn't talking in the sense of realism. Obviously that's the case. But in terms of gameplay, those who think it'd suddenly be good to have civ V like various wargames mentioned don't seem to either understand or share that concern.

What I mean by "scale" is that a game of civilization shouldn't have just like 10 cities. You want to play a tactical wargame like that then go ahead. In fact if there are even mods or scenarios like some Roman army campaign where people want to use the civ V engine for tactical wargame-like battles, go ahead, that's cool in my book. But the main game should not play out on such a small scale, with a handful of units moving slowly and limited to one per hex and whatnot.

What I mean by gamespeed is the time required for both the human and AI to play a turn. This I can almost guarantee -if any of the various people have EVER played any of the wargames being mentioned, I don't see how they can think moving units around individually without stacking will take less time to manage battles.

Combine these, along with other changes that may be made, and the result is a civ game that's much less like its predecessors and has way too much emphasis on war, or a broken war system, or something along those lines.

In short, the idea of making civ like various wargames is especially wrong. Merging units into "armies" and adding some mechanism of supplying armies or so on could still work in civ; I'd give the developers a chance. But tactical wargame rules like people are saying will not work - not to be picking on anyone in particular, there's dozens of folks around anyway with like 50 threads on this topic already and that keeps on getting said.

 

[chongli]

I wasn't talking in the sense of realism. Obviously that's the case. But in terms of gameplay, those who think it'd suddenly be good to have civ V like various wargames mentioned don't seem to either understand or share that concern.

What I mean by "scale" is that a game of civilization shouldn't have just like 10 cities. You want to play a tactical wargame like that then go ahead. In fact if there are even mods or scenarios like some Roman army campaign where people want to use the civ V engine for tactical wargame-like battles, go ahead, that's cool in my book. But the main game should not play out on such a small scale, with a handful of units moving slowly and limited to one per hex and whatnot.

What I mean by gamespeed is the time required for both the human and AI to play a turn. This I can almost guarantee -if any of the various people have EVER played any of the wargames being mentioned, I don't see how they can think moving units around individually without stacking will take less time to manage battles.

Combine these, along with other changes that may be made, and the result is a civ game that's much less like its predecessors and has way too much emphasis on war, or a broken war system, or something along those lines.

In short, the idea of making civ like various wargames is especially wrong. Merging units into "armies" and adding some mechanism of supplying armies or so on could still work in civ; I'd give the developers a chance. But tactical wargame rules like people are saying will not work - not to be picking on anyone in particular, there's dozens of folks around anyway with like 50 threads on this topic already and that keeps on getting said.

OK, but how is it wrong? How will tactical wargame rules "not work"? From what I gather, you list 2 main concerns in your post:

1. length of game turns (time it takes to move all units)
2. small scale (small number of cities)

Number 1 may be a valid concern, then again it may not. From my experience, managing all of my cities (setting build queues, re-arranging citizens' tiles/specialists, irrigating/mining/improving the land with workers) took by far the lion's share of my time. Moving my military units, exploring and engaging in combat took so little time as to be nearly insignificant.

If Civ 5 greatly expands on the tactical warfare aspect, causing it to take a lot more time, while doing nothing to reduce the amount of time required to manage all of the other stuff (mentioned above), we might have a problem. I hold out some hope that they will not do this, however, as they probably have a few more ideas up their sleeves.

I don't think number 2 is a valid concern. There is nothing about "wargame style" rules that place any kind of limit on the number of cities or the size of the map.

 

[Danielos]

I REALLY hope that it will be possible to have MORE than just one unit per hex when IN TRANSIT!! It would make an absolute mess if you can´t say transport a tank through a hex with an infantry in it!

 

[Ellestar]

Trying to penetrate through a natural land bottleneck would be virtually impossible if limited to one unit per tile. Amphibious assaults would be severely limited because of the limited areas where you can land troops. Movement of troops is also faulty--if a soldier in the front of your army wins a battle and there are no open tiles, you're essentially stuck.

It's easy to fix map scripts so they'll make bottlenecks a little wider.

Amphibious assaults will be fine. Given that units will be busy on the front, and that there expected to be less units overall, deep raids will probably be more efficient than before. You'll not be slaughtered in an instant by SoD, units will be wounded instead of killed (1 unit per hex makes sense only with that rule, even if it wasn't confirmed) so you have a chance to retreat if your amphibious assault will be twarted, and even if you can't raize any cities, i'm sure your cavalry will be able to pillage the land, and it can be devastating enough.

And i don't unrestand the last one. Where exactly are no open tiles? And so what?

 

[Ellestar]

I attack, I win, I have an injured unit. End turn.
Remind me how I'm supposed to stop the enemy from killing my now damaged unit, before it is my turn again and I have a chance to rotate it back through my ranks, by wasting the movement of every unit behind it as they shuffle around in order to make way for the injured guy?

Nah, i guess even slowest units will have a speed of 2 or 3. And you should think if an attack is worth the risk of losing your unit. Probably it's better to soften down a defender with your ranged units so your melee ones will not recieve as much damage. If you kill the enemy unit or it retreats then you can cover your damaged unit. Besides, even if the enemy kills your unit in retalliation then he'll also have some damaged units on the front so it will be your chance to kill him in return. So, instead of boring automatic auto-protection of damaged units in your stack, you need to actually think about it. That's what tactics is all about.

So, we will have no more 1-move units?
That's going to make cavalry vs infantry much less interesting.

Cavalry is working fine in fantasy wargames - say, Fantasy General, Fantasy Wars, The Battle For Wesnoth etc.

 

[Tlalynet]

I've heard a lot of talk about bottlenecks in this thread. How exactly do they think such a bottleneck will occur? Unless they bring back impassible terrain (which I hope they don't) every tile has the same number of tiles surrounding it unless its a flat map, and the edges of a flat map can't become a bottleneck.

Even if there is only one direction you can attack from land you still are allowed to build a navy and attack from the sea tiles, not to mention you have ranged bombardment which means you can hit that 'bottleneck' tile multiple times from non-adjacent hexes.

Unless you believe that there will be impassible terrain, and lots of it, there's no way to have a bottleneck on a flat map.

 

[Danielos]

In short, the idea of making civ like various wargames is especially wrong. Merging units into "armies" and adding some mechanism of supplying armies or so on could still work in civ; I'd give the developers a chance. But tactical wargame rules like people are saying will not work - not to be picking on anyone in particular, there's dozens of folks around anyway with like 50 threads on this topic already and that keeps on getting said.

Well, a game like Hearts of Iron 2 manages to combine a grand strategic overview with the tactical control of a large number of military units. Finally we will have some real tactics involved where you have to carefully plan how to organize your units and take full advantage of terrain features. And I suppose forts will finally be a useful improvement!

 

[Ellestar]

But I really wonder, since this suggestion has popped up so many times: I've played Panzer General series games and similar wargames. What in the world makes all you people think that gameplay translates remotely well to civ? Maps in Civilization games are orders of magnitude larger with many times more cities, varied terrain, more nations/players, etc... And you have other things to do besides combat - if you're complaining the SoD makes the game take too long, I wonder if you've even played those other games you mention? If civ V combat really was to become like these various tactical wargames it would come at the cost of a ton of everything else that civ is about. Scale, gamespeed, a huge new focus on military are only some of the first casualties.

Military was the worst part of Civ series so far, so maybe finally it's time to change it to something that is actually fun - like, wargame combat system. I actually thought about making such mod for Civ 4 myself, but it's too much work (especially considering that combat AI should be completely rewritten).

Gamespeed in Civ 4 is more like "gamecrawl", and it may become slower when you wage wars, but that war will be so much more fun. It's better to be a little slower with a fun gameplay than a little faster with that boring SoD crap. I'll take that kind of change any day.

So, what exactly is a casulaty for you? It doesn't make sense for me, from my point of view it seems lke you're complaining about improvements.

I wasn't talking in the sense of realism. Obviously that's the case. But in terms of gameplay, those who think it'd suddenly be good to have civ V like various wargames mentioned don't seem to either understand or share that concern.

What I mean by "scale" is that a game of civilization shouldn't have just like 10 cities. You want to play a tactical wargame like that then go ahead. In fact if there are even mods or scenarios like some Roman army campaign where people want to use the civ V engine for tactical wargame-like battles, go ahead, that's cool in my book. But the main game should not play out on such a small scale, with a handful of units moving slowly and limited to one per hex and whatnot.

It doesn't matter how many citites an entire game has. 30 cities in Civ 4 becomes a boring micromanagement nighmare anyway. I'll be more happy with something like 10 cities per civilization, with a better combat. That may be like 100+ cities total in the world, epic enough in my opinion. And if you want to conquer the world and so you'll have more cities, you'll benefit from a new combat system during your conquests. So it's a win-win anyway.

And yes, i played wargames. More so, after i heard Civ 5 will have wargame-like combat, i started playing Fantasy General once again to refresh the feeling.

 

[AlpsStranger]

What I mean by "scale" is that a game of civilization shouldn't have just like 10 cities.

10 In the whole world? That *would* be too small.

10 for an average empire on a normal sized map? Sounds perfect!

 

[pi-r8]

I've heard a lot of talk about bottlenecks in this thread. How exactly do they think such a bottleneck will occur? Unless they bring back impassible terrain (which I hope they don't) every tile has the same number of tiles surrounding it unless its a flat map, and the edges of a flat map can't become a bottleneck.

Even if there is only one direction you can attack from land you still are allowed to build a navy and attack from the sea tiles, not to mention you have ranged bombardment which means you can hit that 'bottleneck' tile multiple times from non-adjacent hexes.

Unless you believe that there will be impassible terrain, and lots of it, there's no way to have a bottleneck on a flat map.

I guess if you don't have any impassible terrain that will help a lot. Although, if some terrain has large enough defensive bonuses it could still become effectively impassable.

More likely, you'd get a bottleneck any time two countries have a small border and an ocean, with not enough of a navy to go around. I guess in such a situation the navy would become a lot more important, but it would be very frustrating to have an army 30x larger that's unable to advance.

Even on a landlocked map, you could have a bottleneck if the other civs didn't want to open their borders to let you through.

 

[Tlalynet]

I can see the case for a bottleneck created by a lack of open borders, that would be a problem, but it would be an interesting problem rather than an arbitrary frustrating one (though it could be frustrating too)

If it was a smaller civ vs a larger civ and the bottleneck was holding up the invaders it would be not too bad for balance, but you're right that if any tile defence bonuses are too high it would crate a big problem with one unit per tile. I can see cities as having very large defense bonuses, but none of this +100% on mountains nonsense, even +75% on forested hills in IV was very bad. A 25% bonus for sitting on a tile is a lot, and 50% is tonnes. I agree if we saw one unit per tile with tiles giving high defense bonuses the game would stagnate badly and bottlenecks would abound.

I would like to see navy as being more important, but that's kind of another mater.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Military was the worst part of Civ series so far, so maybe finally it's time to change it to something that is actually fun

You're joking, right? Do you know boring cultural, diplomatic, and space race victories are?

 

[Ellestar]

I guess if you don't have any impassible terrain that will help a lot. Although, if some terrain has large enough defensive bonuses it could still become effectively impassable.

More likely, you'd get a bottleneck any time two countries have a small border and an ocean, with not enough of a navy to go around. I guess in such a situation the navy would become a lot more important, but it would be very frustrating to have an army 30x larger that's unable to advance.

Ocean is fine, and it's a good thing that naval supremacy is essential. Small lakes may be a problem but that means that it will be important to plan in advance and settle a lakeside city if that lake may be adjacent to a choke point.

Even on a landlocked map, you could have a bottleneck if the other civs didn't want to open their borders to let you through.

There are two solutions here - either attack them instead or convice them with diplomacy, nothing new here.

You're joking, right? Do you know boring cultural, diplomatic, and space race victories are?

Space race is fun if it's really a race, instead of opponents in medieval era.
But my point was that builder's part of Civ 4 is more interesting with all these cities, city improvements, techs, buildings, wonders, religions, corporations, resources etc. Military part is mostly about SoD, there aren't many fun game mechanics, or SoD makes them obsolete.

 

[Earthling]

10 In the whole world? That *would* be too small.

And suddenly the lights turn on and someone new realizes the problem and understands where some of us are coming from.

Yes, 10 for the whole world. The next question is along these lines:

Cavalry is working fine in fantasy wargames - say, Fantasy General, Fantasy Wars, The Battle For Wesnoth etc.

Has anyone else ever played such a tactical game with the equivalent of a Civ-sized map? 100 cities? Do you think that's even feasible for a civ game where you do stuff other than purely maneuver and fight? How long do you think it'd take to move units around?

I think it's fairly obvious the huge increase (waste, for many players) in time that would be required. Or else, other aspects of the civ game would be reduced or eliminated to make more room for military tactics - all for the sake of "one unit per tile tactical wargame aspect" which doesn't even make much sense that it has to be in the game.