"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts

[Luckystrike77]

One thing I can't understand. Why be against one unit per hex, and for 3 units per hex as a stacking limit? The units in Civ 5 will be like 3-4 units united compared to the old games. They will take at least so many attacks to die. Open your horizon lads, the new battle/army system has the potential to be the grandest the Civ series has ever seen. And for those of you who want more tactical battles this is excactly what you will get, it's just not an own tactical map, like in Total War, it all takes place on the strategical map. (Making it much more interesting then the Total War-series, especially for modern warfare).

 

[Yakk]

I vote for 7 units per hex.

Each hex is divided into 7 sub-hexes, and in each of those 7 sub-hexes we can have one unit each.

While we are at it, we increase the granularity of cities. Instead of huge cities that cover a 2 hex radius around them, we have smaller cities that cover a 2 sub-hex radius around them.

This makes the game far more fine grained.

(Note: this post is a scaling joke.)

 

[AlpsStranger]

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:

Prove it! I *seriously* doubt that there is any evidence that Civ5 will have no more than 10 cities on an average map.

 

[Yakk]

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

Cultural is boring because
(A) Mega-cultural cities actually have very little in-game relevance, outside of cultural victory. If they are anything except a border city, they simply hold your cultural borders -- and if they are a border city, the most they can do is flip one set of neighbours.

So the Cultural victory is a very "artificial" victory.

Change cultural victory so progressing towards it has impact on actual gameplay, and you can then have a competitive game that contains a Cultural victory race (or a race between Cultural victory and other kinds of victory).

(B) Diplomatic is boring, because you don't get "real" opposition. It ends up either behaving like cultural (where it comes out of left field), or like domination (where you destroy any non-friendly rivals, then vote to win).

(C) Space Race runs into a similar problem. It is basically "I have huge industrial/technological edge, so I win". I actually find the A-C version of space race (which was "get tech X, then build wonder Y" to be more interesting: I've had a game in which I was coming up from behind in A-C against an empire that covered more than half of the world, who got the "space race" tech first and was building it in a far-off city, and I actually rushed the city and took it out in order to change the fate of the game.

Military also runs into the problem that it snowballs. It isn't a sequence of hard-fought wars against challenging opponents -- but devolves into a series of diplomatic deferrals of war, with isolated wars against as-weak-as-possible opponents, ending with a snow-ball world conquest.

 

[Tlalynet]

@ Alps,
I think he means Panzer General only had 10 cities, and with 100's of cities strategic warfare would be much more of a pain.

 

[say1988]

One thing I can't understand. Why be against one unit per hex, and for 3 units per hex as a stacking limit? The units in Civ 5 will be like 3-4 units united compared to the old games. They will take at least so many attacks to die. Open your horizon lads, the new battle/army system has the potential to be the grandest the Civ series has ever seen. And for those of you who want more tactical battles this is excactly what you will get, it's just not an own tactical map, like in Total War, it all takes place on the strategical map. (Making it much more interesting then the Total War-series, especially for modern warfare).

It depends on how it and other aspects are implemented and what part of the game you really like. It could turn into a micromanagement nightmare for some who prefer the building aspect to war. Don't make the assumption that all people play the same as you and like the same aspects of the game.
Implemented the wrong way the new battle/army system has the potential to be the worst the Civ series has ever seen.

Diplomatic victory can be very interesting, if you don't use it as pseudo-conquest. Trying to get other civ to like you, while not angering third parties.
Space race is the same, if you are not a mile ahead.
People that like these, and use armies primarily to prevent invasions, may rightfully find these changes horrible.

 

[chongli]

@ Alps,
I think he means Panzer General only had 10 cities, and with 100's of cities strategic warfare would be much more of a pain.

This is speculation on his part. Panzer General battles begin with a full complement of units already deployed on the map. This will not be the case in most Civ V games (only in scenarios). Every unit will have to be trained/built, one at a time. Battles, especially earlier on, will be much smaller in scale than Panzer General.

 

[Ellestar]

@ Alps,
I think he means Panzer General only had 10 cities, and with 100's of cities strategic warfare would be much more of a pain.

Yeah, sounds about right for a map in wargames, but he forgets that there are but two sides in wargames. So, it translates to about 5 cities per empire. I can finish an average Fantasy General / Battle Isle 2 map in half an hour, maybe 40 minutes. So let's say a major war with another equally big empire will take an hour or maybe even two hours of combat management. Hardly a big problem for basically a game-deciding war (if you won you just doubled your land). After all, my average Civ 4 game takes about 6 hours, and most of it is boring micromanagement. So, i don't see what's his problem anyway, it's not a big commitement if you count it in percents of total game time.

It depends on how it and other aspects are implemented and what part of the game you really like. It could turn into a micromanagement nightmare for some who prefer the building aspect to war. Don't make the assumption that all people play the same as you and like the same aspects of the game.
Implemented the wrong way the new battle/army system has the potential to be the worst the Civ series has ever seen.

Nah, say i don't whine "remove *** workers from Civ, i'm bored out of my mind to waste 50%+ time playing Civ while mindlessly controlling workers in exactly the same way as in all my previous games". But i have the same right to whine about workers as half of the people here whines about possible combat changes (and THAT starts to annoy me already).

Instead, i'm saying, let's make it fair, we keep all that economical micro (which is mosly pattern matching), but balance the game by actually adding something, you know, smart, to a strategic game, like combat tactics or something.

 

[Earthling]

I seriously doubt that there is any evidence that Civ5 will have no more than 10 cities on an average map.

I'm not saying civ V will. I'm saying what other posters are suggesting (which I hope does NOT make it into civ V) would lead to something like that.

 

[Ellestar]

I'm not saying civ V will. I'm saying what other posters are suggesting (which I hope does NOT make it into civ V) would lead to something like that.

And we say that it will not lead to something like that. You're yet to answer our counter-arguments, or give your own arguments, for that matter.

 

[maglock]

A lot of people seem concerned that "one unit per tile" will cause some major problems with moving units around. Units will "block" others etc.

Yet this can all be easily solved by two abilities:
- Units can pass through friendly units to unoccupied hexes on the other side if they have more than 1 movement.
- Units can use a "switch tiles" ability whereby two units adjacent to each other that haven't moved yet can simply switch positions. This allows fairly easy "chaining" movements along peninsulas etc.

There. Problem solved.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Space race is fun if it's really a race, instead of opponents in medieval era.

Even if it's neck-to-neck, it's still waiting for stuff to get built. And then waiting some more when those launch.

 

[Ahriman]

Why be against one unit per hex, and for 3 units per hex as a stacking limit?

Micromanagement requirements and tactical implications. 3 tiles per hex means you can still move multiple units at a time, you can still shield damaged units, and you can still move units through your lines without a crazy reshuffling of formation.

I'll obviously have to wait and see how it works in practice, but I am skeptical that 1 unit per tile is really going to end up being "fun", unless the number of tiles is really huge or the number of units is really small.

I'm also really worried about tactical AI performance in such a system.

- Units can pass through friendly units to unoccupied hexes on the other side if they have more than 1 movement.

And... if they don't have more than 1 movement?

If every unit is highly mobile, then figuring out all the possible threat combinations will be irritating, very hard to plan sensibly.
And the attacker in a RPS system has a huge advantage, since they are the one with the initiative and easily have the scope to match their rock against the enemy scissors.

- Units can use a "switch tiles" ability whereby two units adjacent to each other that haven't moved yet can simply switch positions. This allows fairly easy "chaining" movements along peninsulas etc.

Sounds like a heavy and unnecessary micromanagement burden to me. Not fun.

 

[Bibor]

I can't see the big problem with managing 1 unit per tile. It has been done before.

- units can move through friendly units as long as there's empty space "beyond"
- units that are able to "withdraw" will do so if they are about to be annihilated.
- units that don't have any movement options are encircled, much like the 101th Airborne Division was in Carentan. When forced into "withdraw", the unit will be annihilated.

 

[Ahriman]

It has been done before.

In a game like civ? When?

In a game with low movement units?

Or in a game with narrow chokepoints? Look at the map screenshots, it doesn't seem like continents are any wider than they are in Civ4. In Panzer General your unit front isn't only 4 tiles wide.

http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2774&c=36
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2765&c=36

The map doesn't seem to be any bigger than in Civ4, look at the cities only 3 tiles apart. Seems like the same scale as we're used to. So upping the movement rate on infantry units seems like it would throw things badly out of whack (back to the old civ games, where you could rush into enemy territory and capture their cities on the first turn).

I dunno, I'll believe it works when I see it.

There's a lot of potential for improved tactical options with the system (if the AI can handle it), and I'm glad that they're trying *something* very different at least, and the Civ4 combat model isn't great. I'm just suspicious that they can pull it off and make it fun.

 

[Bibor]

Improved PG pathfinding:

http://www.nerdmodo.com/2009/11/panzer-general-moded-for-real-military-path-finding/


Plenty of bottlenecks here (tile-wide water is impassable terrain):

or here:

 

[Ahriman]

How do you possible cross bridges then, can't the enemy just hold you up indefinitely?

Especially with civ-style units that can heal?

 

[say1988]

Artillery.
The only place I really see this as a problem, is if you get an extended passage between two impassable mountain ranges. Which should be easily avoided by the mapscripts.

 

[Ahriman]

But... they have artillery too softening up your front units that you are trying to cross the choke with.

And you can still only attack with 1 unit per turn. So a relatively small enemy force can hold you up for ages, while they bring in reinforcements or while the rest of their army is off elsewhere.

 

[Bibor]

How do you possible cross bridges then, can't the enemy just hold you up indefinitely?

Especially with civ-style units that can heal?

No, units in PG can heal too, but only if there are no adjacent enemy units. Also, "field healing" reduces experience (i.e. overall effectiveness).