"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts

[chongli]

In a similar vein, horse archers cannot be killed by any infantry except archer/longbowmen and gunpowder units. It's just impossible that horse archers would sit still and let spearmen strab them.

Speaking of horse archers, they should be very interesting with the extra moves & ranged bombardment!

Yes, unless the spearmen managed to surround all 6 hexes of the horse archer. Then he would be toast.

The disparity between ranged units and melee units will be pretty extreme. Historically, archery was far more difficult to learn than basic melee combat (horseback archery being even more insanely difficult). I hope this will be reflected in the units' relative training time/costs.

Even muskets were inferior to longbows in that era. The big advantage muskets had was that they were much simpler and easier to use than longbows (typical longbows used in warfare had draw weights exceeding 150lbs!!!). Thus it was much faster and infinitely more feasible to build an army of musketmen than it ever was for longbowmen.

 

[beestar]

I apologize if it's been mentioned earlier, has there been any discussion of combat timing?

With fewer units (no stacks), I assume war will be more finely-grained. A unit might inflict 50 units of damage and receive 25 units of damage, and the battle will not be resolved until the next turn. In between turns, either side might retreat or reinforce.

In other words, battles might take more than 1 turn to resolve.

This would make war more complex, and compensate a bit for the simplicity of '1 unit per tile'.


Actually, when fighting, there might be a 'combat mode' where multiple battles can be fought (i.e. a single turn will be divided into sub-turns when warring). This enables lots of complex strategy during the sub-turns, overcoming the manoeuvering limitations of '1 unit per tile', while at the same time not making a war last 200 years.

In fact, I believe one of the magazine articles says something to the effect of 'Most units will be able to move 2 hexes during battle' (emphasis added).

​

 

[KrikkitTwo]

If units of the same type can combine to make a "bigger" unit
ie small Archer+small Archer=big Archer
AND
you can reduce the size of a unit by doing damage to it
big Archer survives combat but now it is a small Archer

Then it is a Good change opening up flanking and other possibilities
Your army will not consist of more than several units (not counting city Garrisons). A few of each unit type, arranged to avoid flanking /benefit from range.

Otherwise there is the problem of Moving large numbers of units in a puzzle type fashion.







The other Thing they might be doing is having a very hard "cap" on the number of units. 1 Oil=1 Tank.

I wouldn't be surprised if this applied to ALL military units,

1 "Barracks" is required for each Military Unit that you have...each city can only have 1 Barracks.

I can see a 'supply cap' that is Very hard.

Enhanced Industry will Not let you build a bigger army, it will let you replace Losing that army faster.

That way they could avoid the problem of Puzzle units... if 30 units is a massive late game army, then it is not as bad. If 5 units is a good early game military, then one unit per tile is not bad.

If Forts+Cities, when unoccupied can Act like units then it works OK.

 

[chongli]

If units of the same type can combine to make a "bigger" unit
ie small Archer+small Archer=big Archer
AND
you can reduce the size of a unit by doing damage to it
big Archer survives combat but now it is a small Archer

Then it is a Good change opening up flanking and other possibilities
Your army will not consist of more than several units (not counting city Garrisons). A few of each unit type, arranged to avoid flanking /benefit from range.

The problem with this is that it eliminates an important (and challenging) component of strategy: hiding/retreating your damaged units. If all you need to do to fix a damaged unit is to move another of its type onto it, you change the whole complexion of the game and greatly reduce the challenge level.

By the way, how does this work with non-human units?

Small Tank + Small Tank = Big Tank?

Otherwise there is the problem of Moving large numbers of units in a puzzle type fashion.

My understanding is that all basic units will have a movement speed of at least 2 and have the ability to move through friendly units as long as there is an open hex on the other side. Couple this with moderately intelligent "Go-To" pathfinding behaviour and the whole "sliding block puzzle" issue disappears almost completely.

 

[weltraeumer]

sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I was just wondering what sid said about units and cities, that units immediatly leave cities cause of the one unit per tile rule... so how is a city actually be captured and if it is the usual move your troops in, how does the game mechanics respond to a massive sea invasion? if the cities itself are undefended, the enemy can unload troops in every coastal city and capture everything in one turn... ??

 

[De Begerac]

Yes, unless the spearmen managed to surround all 6 hexes of the horse archer. Then he would be toast.

The disparity between ranged units and melee units will be pretty extreme. Historically, archery was far more difficult to learn than basic melee combat (horseback archery being even more insanely difficult). I hope this will be reflected in the units' relative training time/costs.

Even muskets were inferior to longbows in that era. The big advantage muskets had was that they were much simpler and easier to use than longbows (typical longbows used in warfare had draw weights exceeding 150lbs!!!). Thus it was much faster and infinitely more feasible to build an army of musketmen than it ever was for longbowmen.

Exactly right. Peversely while longer to train Longbows could have gone toe to toe with say your Napoleonic era troops. Wellington with a several regiments of longbows would have been interesting to see. The lack of armour worn by troops and the rank and file way of fighting would have enabled longbow saturation fire to anihalate the massed columns of troops. They really were the machine guns of the middle ages. If they did replicate that in training times though it could make for some interesting armies, small highly trained forces verses the mass produced ill trained masses.....

Cyrano

 

[V. Soma]

sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I was just wondering what sid said about units and cities, that units immediatly leave cities cause of the one unit per tile rule... so how is a city actually be captured and if it is the usual move your troops in, how does the game mechanics respond to a massive sea invasion? if the cities itself are undefended, the enemy can unload troops in every coastal city and capture everything in one turn... ??

Well, there could many things to round this problem of sea invasion, I am sure Firaxis will see to it...

What if you can build harbor to the seatile next to your city and put ship in it, and also lighthouse or modern thing to "watch out" - so that one defending unit has much advantage...?

Also, you probably cannot simly do amphi attack easily on a city with walls and such...

And if you land troops, maybe after the action of landing the attacking unit automatically suffers heavy damage if landing is next to city - if city has watchtower/wall/etc

We'll see...

 

[Ituralde]

I just realized a whole other area the one unit/one tile approach will have on the game. It will completely change the way Repression/Happiness from garrisons work now.
How do you supress revolts in newly-conquered cities if you can't push massive amounts of units in there to keep the peace. That's a whole game mechanic that's gonna change.

Can't believe I haven't thought of this before. I'm looking forward to see what Firaxis comes up with to cover these areas.

 

[Dragonlord]

I apologize if it's been mentioned earlier, has there been any discussion of combat timing?

With fewer units (no stacks), I assume war will be more finely-grained. A unit might inflict 50 units of damage and receive 25 units of damage, and the battle will not be resolved until the next turn. In between turns, either side might retreat or reinforce.

In other words, battles might take more than 1 turn to resolve.

This would make war more complex, and compensate a bit for the simplicity of '1 unit per tile'.


Actually, when fighting, there might be a 'combat mode' where multiple battles can be fought (i.e. a single turn will be divided into sub-turns when warring). This enables lots of complex strategy during the sub-turns, overcoming the manoeuvering limitations of '1 unit per tile', while at the same time not making a war last 200 years.

In fact, I believe one of the magazine articles says something to the effect of 'Most units will be able to move 2 hexes during battle' (emphasis added).

​

Since Panzer General is quoted as the inspiration for the new combat system, it will probably work something like this: unit A attacks entrenched unit B. Cannot destroy the entrenched unit and breaks off the attack in a severely weakened state. Unit B has taken some damage and maybe loses a point of entrenchment. Attacker now attacks B with a new unit C from an adjoining tile. B is weakened enough to overcome, now, and retreats in a severely weakened state from the defended tile. To completely destroy it, the attacker needs yet another unit, a fast-mover, say.

In other words, the old system of fights-to-the-death as standard is likely out - to completely destroy a unit, you will likely have to cut off its' retreat or whittle it down in successive combats.

I don't see any necessity for sub-turns though. The mechanics are all pretty simple - where the complexity (and the fun!) comes in is deciding which units to use where and in what order. No more taking out elite units with waves of cheap recruits...

I love it already...

 

[Spoonwood]

If we truly have one unit per tile, and workers get counted as a unit, then either workers will have a defense value, you can't defend workers, or workers won't exist in the game. Workers having a defense value doesn't make sense to me, as someone bending over to dig a road comes as more vulnerable to attack than a guy looking out with an axe. Not having the ability to defend workers makes it risky to develop your territory. Not having workers didn't work so well in Civ Rev, at least in my opinion.

 

[Decimatus]

Since Panzer General is quoted as the inspiration for the new combat system, it will probably work something like this: unit A attacks entrenched unit B. Cannot destroy the entrenched unit and breaks off the attack in a severely weakened state. Unit B has taken some damage and maybe loses a point of entrenchment. Attacker now attacks B with a new unit C from an adjoining tile. B is weakened enough to overcome, now, and retreats in a severely weakened state from the defended tile. To completely destroy it, the attacker needs yet another unit, a fast-mover, say.

In other words, the old system of fights-to-the-death as standard is likely out - to completely destroy a unit, you will likely have to cut off its' retreat or whittle it down in successive combats.

I don't see any necessity for sub-turns though. The mechanics are all pretty simple - where the complexity (and the fun!) comes in is deciding which units to use where and in what order. No more taking out elite units with waves of cheap recruits...

I love it already...

Where will an injured unit retreat to if he is on the front line?

Also, if you attack and loose, it sounds like you now have a low health unit on your front line blocking the rest of your army from moving in to cover the front.

Curious as to how such retreat mechanics will work, because even if it isn't panzer general standard retreat, there will at least be certain times of units and promotions that allow units to retreat from battle.

With stacks that wasn't a problem, but now it is.

 

[say1988]

sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I was just wondering what sid said about units and cities, that units immediatly leave cities cause of the one unit per tile rule... so how is a city actually be captured and if it is the usual move your troops in, how does the game mechanics respond to a massive sea invasion? if the cities itself are undefended, the enemy can unload troops in every coastal city and capture everything in one turn... ??

You can have one unit is a city.

Workers are not counted.

 

[Yakk]

Suppose we don't want units to be able to field repair to full strength.

Units can have two health bars -- a count and a wounds.

Units lose count (deaths) when damaged, as well as being beat up. So you want to pull your wounded troops out of harms way so they can heal up, while at the same time you need to refresh their count (which involves resupply from back home).

If you are a stack of archers, you can resupply an adjacent stack of archers by moving into it. Your "count" gets reduced, and their "count" gets refreshed. Presumably, your unwounded troops move first, then your wounded troops (but that could be an option).

The XP level of the various troops could be averaged (this does, however, prevent a complex promotion system -- or, if it exists, forces it to be more complex. Ie, your troops are 25% guerrilla 1, 17% city defence 2 and 8% combat 3).

 

[Ahriman]

Chongli:

Because you could unload 6 units onto a single stack in one turn in previous Civ games.

Wow. Dumbest argument ever. They're entirely shaking up the combat system, and yet you assume that a particular aspect of it must be the same because "that's how it was in previous civ games"?

* * *

Its definitely hard to really evaluate 1UpT without knowing whether or not combat still means 1 winner, 1 loser with losing unit destroyed entirely. If they change *that*, then who knows what might happen.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The problem with this is that it eliminates an important (and challenging) component of strategy: hiding/retreating your damaged units. If all you need to do to fix a damaged unit is to move another of its type onto it, you change the whole complexion of the game and greatly reduce the challenge level.

By the way, how does this work with non-human units?

Small Tank + Small Tank = Big Tank?



My understanding is that all basic units will have a movement speed of at least 2 and have the ability to move through friendly units as long as there is an open hex on the other side. Couple this with moderately intelligent "Go-To" pathfinding behaviour and the whole "sliding block puzzle" issue disappears almost completely.

Only if there is also a reasonable limit on the number of units... if there are 50 units in my invasion force the "sliding block" problem reemerges.

Hence
1. Multiple units need be be combined into one unit
Small Tank+Small Tank=Big Tank
Big Tank+Small Tank=Bigger Tank
Massive Tank +Super Massive Tank= Mega Massive Tank
etc.
(I'm not proposing those as words more like)
Strength 5 Tank+ Strength 6 Tank= Strength 11 Tank
Unit Strength would then be modified for Attack/Defense. There would be no limit.

So you could have a Strength 10 Warrior easily beating v. a Strength 2 Heavy Samurai (not using tank because that would outrange the Warrior and so probably kill it anyways.) The Strength 10 Warrior would be more expensive to build than a Strength 10 Samurai would be though.

And you could build a Strength X Tank with 1 production point. (So when building Tanks, You would always build 1 "Tank" per turn. More production would just have you build a Stronger tank that turn.)


Retreating a unit to let it heal is LESS complex than having to move a reinforcement unit ALL the way up to the front from your city that produced it.

(so if you can cut off the flow of reinforcements their SoD will slowly dwindle down since it can't heal)

In this model you would eliminate the Experience/Promotion system, instead focusing on Types of units. If you want "City Siege Archers"...get the tech for them and build them, they are literally a Different unit than "Guerilla Archers".




2. The other possible solution is a relatively hard cap on the number of units... Since cities (and forts) can apparently defend themselves without units, perhaps 3 units for your capital and 1 per Barracks and 1 per Military Base (expensive, Industrial Era building) would work. So an early game army of 5 units is actually quite large and an empire's total military never gets to more than ~30 units.

3. Or add on expensive costs...ie tanks (using Civ 4 terms) cost ~50 gold per turn to maintain, Battleships cost 200, etc. So there is a 'soft' cap (gold might not be the best for that but something like that.)

 

[Thormodr]

If we truly have one unit per tile, and workers get counted as a unit, then either workers will have a defense value, you can't defend workers, or workers won't exist in the game. Workers having a defense value doesn't make sense to me, as someone bending over to dig a road comes as more vulnerable to attack than a guy looking out with an axe. Not having the ability to defend workers makes it risky to develop your territory. Not having workers didn't work so well in Civ Rev, at least in my opinion.

It's one military unit per hex. I'd be willing to bet that workers (if they are in the game and I'm betting they are out) and settlers will not be classified as military units.

 

[da_Vinci]

I vaguely remember some US civil war games that had one unit per tile combat (and maybe ranged artillery, memory is foggy) ... key was concentrating fire from two or more hexes on to one hex, there were damage bonuses from flanking fire (appropriate for musket era linear warfare, maybe not for all of civ), units were reduced but not necessarily destroyed by a round of combat. Melee combat involved a charge into the enemy, otherwise it was short range (compared to artillery) musketry. Consider each unit to be a regiment. This of course was on a battlefield scale map, not a strategy map ... how much of that translates to Civ on a strategy map?

My prior example each unit is of a relatively fixed maximum size, but can be less from attrition. If we are instead talking about one "operational unit" per tile, where that unit might be (in US Civil War terms) a regiment, a brigade, a division, or a corps, it is really not much different from stacking in terms of the concentration of strength. What is different is how that combat strength is applied in the combat mechanics, if the mega unit (which replaces a stack) is not fighting one piece at a time. Now imagine that you build units regiment by regiment, and then assemble them into these various larger entities (or think Roman century, cohort, legion)

In a division vs brigade combat, need to account for both the greater firepower, and the maneuver opportunities provided by having three brigades in the division (flanking, etc.). Or whether terrain could neutralize the advantage of the massive army (Thermopylae, anyone?) How much of this can be accounted for in a system that is not going to be a Total War style game within a game?

dV

 

[Ahriman]

(I'm not proposing those as words more like)
Strength 5 Tank+ Strength 6 Tank= Strength 11 Tank
Unit Strength would then be modified for Attack/Defense. There would be no limit.

I think this is a weak idea. In Civ, in order to get higher strength units, you have to research tech. Why bother doing so, if you can do just as well by merging lower level units? So, 3 macemen can beat a machinegun?

 

[Yakk]

A thought: if archers have range 2, won't musketmen/riflemen/tanks?

There could be a no-mans land between the lines, where if you advance into it, the 2nd rank of your opposition can join in the assault...

Of course, with 2 move, maybe troops could advance, then fire. Which means the side with numerical superiority could shove troops into the "no-mans land meatgrinder" in order to advance.

 

[NBAfan]

I wonder if this means workers are out?