"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts
- Thread starter Bibor
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Hmm I am dubious of this one unit per tile direction for CIV. Its unrealistic considering the area represented by tiles. You will only be able to have one unit in a city? So much for city defence, citys will be impossible to defend, historically the hardest tagets in war. Moving units around the map will be a PITA... navys undefendable, have to leave ships out in the open ocean because you cant put them into a city... games will turn into a block fest, I can see it now by mid game every single tile everywhere with a unit on it, total grid lock. Whats going to happen to air forces, none because there will be nowhere to put planes... defend your city with an infantry unit or an air unit tough choice, heh and if that city is on the coast, well you can put a land unit OR a air unit OR a sea unit... IMO unless there is something significant we dont know this blows.
IF map grids were cut down in scale so much that for example a city alone would contain 7 or more grid areas instead of one I could see this working... but on the scale we work with... I think CIV as we know it, is over. I really think they needed to address SOD but this isnt it, this is just taking it from one extreme to the next... I am getting the feeling CIV 5 is getting a huge simplification in gameplay, but itll look real purdy... ah well CIV4 forever if thats the case.
IF map grids were cut down in scale so much that for example a city alone would contain 7 or more grid areas instead of one I could see this working... but on the scale we work with... I think CIV as we know it, is over. I really think they needed to address SOD but this isnt it, this is just taking it from one extreme to the next... I am getting the feeling CIV 5 is getting a huge simplification in gameplay, but itll look real purdy... ah well CIV4 forever if thats the case.
KrikkitTwo
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'N' Maceman CAN defeat a Machinegun in Civ 2+4, if 'N' is large enough due the Health system (the problem was the Cost of Macemen it would take to kill a Machine gun was Way more than the cost of the Machine gun)
THe problem is that a Machinegun isn't "Strength 24" if Maceman are "Strength 8" because that Implies that 3 Macemen can take a Machine Gun.
No with the Civ 4 combat System, if a Maceman was "Strength 8" then a Marine (listed as Strength 24) was able to be taken down by approximately 80 Macemen so his 'real strength' was ~650 not 24
The way I would see it working is This
10 Strength Warrior (Cost=100) [each 1 production point buys a 0.1 Strength Warrior]
v.
8 Strength Swordsman (Cost=20) [each production point buys a 0.4 Strength Swordsman]
They Battle, assuming they continue to battle to the death
2 Strength Warrior +dead swordsman
This is as opposed to the
Stack of 10 Warriors (cost=100)
v.
1 Swordsman (cost=20)
Probable result
1 or 2 Warriors left
Extra tech would give
1. Better efficiency for cost
2. Better Special combat abilities...like Range
So with range a Strength 2 Rifleman (cost 1) could theoretically beat a Strength 1,000 Warrior (cost 10,000)
I don't think they will make it Quite like that (Range instead might Give the Rifleman some "Free shots" on a unit that had less range than they did)
The key thing is there MUST be a way to limit the "number of units" you are dealing with.
In Civ 4 this was done through the use of Stacks... you had 1 unit in you cities, and 1 or 2 Stacks that basically acted as a complex super unit.
You can come up with a similar mechanic that also allows both Very strong and very Weak "units" to exist with te same tech
OR
You MUST eliminate the possibility for large numbers of units.
I believe they are Probably going to go with the later strategy (but prefer they go with the former.. because it also helps with city management as well.)
So I wouldn't be surprised if having 5 units is a Masive Early Era Invasion force... A Dozen total units Could be a Mideval 'Blob of Death'*, and late game should have empires in control of maybe 30 units if they are heavily militarized.
* I'm proposing this as the replacement for Stack of Death if there is a limited military strength that an empire can put in a single tile, but no significantly hard limit to the Military strength an empire can have.
This is easily rectified: just make it so that units within the entire city radius suppress revolts.
I agree. The entire concept of unit strength is a simplification designed to make combat easier to manage. Once you introduce math to the concept, the entire thing breaks down and leads to ridiculous situations and far more complexity to correct them.
No, this is where intelligent "Go-To" pathfinding behaviour comes in. You tell all of your units to "Go-To" where you want them to go and the AI moves them all in the most efficient manner possible. You could even incorporate multiple-unit selection to greatly speed up the process.
If your entire concept is designed to alleviate this one problem, can't there be a simpler way? How about limiting the number of units by food production? Separate the silly abstraction that food production = population growth and let population grow on its own, independently of food. This frees up surplus food to feed your armies.
KrikkitTwo
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Note a good Idea if positioning is so important.. How I move My army through that maountain pass is important because of the formation I want them to have on the other side... and that formation will change as I move across the terrain.
That would be possibly simpler and something similar to that would be my second Idea (although the numbers would probably still be too high unless one unit cost multiple food to support... perhaps each unit would require population to support.) ie 1 military unit for every 5-10 population +extra units allowed for special buildings (ie 3-5 for a palace)
Perhaps if different units cost different amounts of food it could be kept balanced the whole game. (although some later game units might be constrained more by Other resources)
BUT
It would not have the advantage of
1. Making Unit production something that is a LOT easier work into the game (in my model every city set to unit production will use all of their production to produce 1 'unit' per turn, much simpler and less open to abuse)
2. Making Healing require production (meaning All loses require some contribution from your economy, and reducing the randomness in combat)
Unit strengths would work fine if
1. You 'expanded' those strengths ie Standard Warrior=2; Standard Tank=200
2. You make "damage" more significant.
Basically I would say make a combat model
Unit 1
Total Strength=Base Strength*Sum of Modifiers(Terrain, unit type)*"Advantage modifier" (a 50% chance of *2 or *1)
Unit 2
Total Strength=Base Strength*Sum of Modifiers(Terrain, unit type)*"Advantage modifier" (a 50% chance of *2 or *1)
Unit 1's
After Battle Base Strength= Unit 1 Base Strength * (Unit 1 Total Strength-Unit 2 Total Strength) / Unit 1 Total Strength
If the "New Base Strength" is zero or negative then the unit is eliminated.
To Increase Base Strength... build More of the unit and send it to the front.
(note, Attacking itself should not take a movement action to prevent just swarming so that the large unit cannot clear the smaller ones.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Your proposal does just the opposite of this; under your proposal you encourage the stack of Death even more. Why not just merge my entire army into one gigantically high strength unit, with maybe a handful of others as blockers? My super-stack can beat any lesser stack turn after turn, and then can just costlessly replenish its full strength by healing.
At least with the Stack of Doom, any units you lost in the stack were lost permanently. Under your Merge method, this is no longer the case, since I just have a single unit.
Unless you intend to remove unit healing from the game?
Also, to be workable, your model will have discreteness issues, and so to be workable will have to imply incredibly strength values. Keep in mind that Civ has at least 7 unit tiers (stone age, ancient, medieval, renaissance, napoleonic, WW1/2, cold war). If each tier is increasing in cost effectiveness by 4 times, and a single warrior has to be strength 1, then a tier7 unit has to be at least strength 4^6 = 4096. So a merged army of 8 tier7 units is strength 32,768.
Does that really seem like a good idea?
Your system will also remove all distinctiveness of the units. How fun is the game going to be if the only difference between a modern infantryman and an iron age swordsmen is that they have a differential cost efficiency per strength point?
Your proposal would make the game a spread-sheet style wargame, not a simple accessible game like civ.
Micromanagement is likely to be a PITA, I definitely worry about that. There will need to be some kind of formation movement, where I can take say a 4x4 tile block of units and issue a Formation move order where they will advance to a point in fixed formation.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Why are you assuming that?
Or just make it so that military force alone can't negate unhappiness, so you really do need buildings or resources or civics in order to grow large (while retaining happiness).
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
The problem is that strength is such an oversimplification of what is really going on in combat ... three macemen would beat a machine gun nest IF they got close enough to make it a melee combat. Technology increases weapons strength, or armour strength, or range, or fire rate, or accuracy ... etc. How does one capture all of this in a single "strength" number?
dV
KrikkitTwo
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Reasons.
1. Only one unit type allowed in the army (and single unit types having counters)... so a single mega Knight Army is a Bad idea (because it gets beaten by a cheaper pike army)
2. Positioning... the One unit Army Can't be two places at once.
So you would be controlling the positioning of your units.
Yes, unit healing would be removed. All combat damage is permanent.
So that single stack would slowly but surely get worn down by smaller stacks (unless reinforcements came)
So Armies would not Heal, Armies would get reinforced.
Why not?? That is an accurate reflection of what the "true combat effetiveness" is
A Modern Armor should not be Str 40 unless it is just as good as 20 str 2 Warriors.... It is not, it is Far Better (on Strength alone) It is roughly equivalent to a few thousand Str 2 Warriors (the number that would be required to defeat it), so a Modern Armors "True strength" should be about 4,000 not 40.
If My strength 10 unit can't be defeated by 2 units that are Strength 5 against it, then That is confusing and leads to spreadsheet wargames. (because I need a spreadsheet to calculate what will beat what)
NO
Different unit types would have different
Ranges
Movement
Bonuses against each other (pike army v. Knight army)
Bonuses for certain Terrains (Archers on hill)
other special abilities
(That would be the reason you couldn't combine different Types of units.)
But there would be no "Maximum Strength" a unit would have... You could build a Warrior that could beat a Tank, IF it could get in Range of the Tank without getting killed first.... and if somehow you were at low tech but could build a million hammer army.
Not reasonable... but Building a Warrior Army that is good as my opponents Spearman army IS quite reasonable... if I invested in expansion and production and he invested in tech.
And I can Know my army is as good as his, because when I set up for the attack I can see
Warrior Army=Str 5
Spearman Army=Str 3 (Str 2+50% for position)
Which means I know I will win with a Str 2 Warrior army (on average, there should be some random factor... but probably a simple one.)
Misleading Strength levels make it more of a spreadsheet style wargame.
Units having a cost that can be overflowed makes it more of a spreadsheet style wargame.
That won't help.. every time you move that 4x4 block you will want the units to change position to get to better terrain.
Those "Blobs of Death" are going to be a bad idea. (note: I was proposing "Blobs of death" for the new NAME for the 'stack of death' problem that will appear unless people are so sick of the MM required that they just quit the game once they get to the middle ages.)
KrikkitTwo
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double post delete
Can you make shorter posts please? You're clogging up the thread.
Except that a "blob of death" will actually require strategic and tactical skills to wield effectively and may even be defeated by a smaller and weaker but more skillfully commanded force. Stacks of doom, on the other hand, cannot be defeated by any clever means - they must be countered by an even greater stack.
All in all, I am not a fan of your "spreadsheet" concept. I think a Panzer General style Civ will be a much better game overall. It will push the series further forward than any of its predecessors.
KrikkitTwo
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A Civ3/4 "Stack of Deaths" most significant advantage is combined arms where the best defender defends. Combine this with thefact that the 'best defender' will then be damaged and heal
Location, in SoD battles, does matter.(For Bonuses)
The key to beating a SoD is beating the best unit in the stack in one on one battle. (or Collateral damage)
A "Blob of Death" can also fairly easily be defeated by Better one on one units. It forces you to work to position units so that you achieve the same effect as the SoD (having your best defender defend, but that is hard to do.
There is a bit more tactics in terms of how the Blob is arranged (frontline, rear support, flank units)... this replaces what units are in the stack
There is the problem that it is much more complicated to move (and the fact that it will need to rearange as it moves over Terrain for maximum effectiveness)
Blob of Death does have the difficulty of killing a single high tech unit, because you can only attack with so many units at a time... but that number looks to be almost 20 (depending on Terrain) because units can move 2
By having Single Unit Type Armies, you can still have the "Blob of Death" positioning advantages. (different types of units will need to protect each other against their counters, flanks may be needed to protect 'artillery', etc.)
However with Single Unit Type Armies you avoid the neccesity of repetition.
You get a major advantage in management of Production of units
You get a major advantage in the significance of combat damage
* other method is to Kill the blob of Death by limiting total Empire military size strongly, probably what they will choose, but I feel the cap won't be hard enough.
Are you suggesting the player should not know the combat mechanisms?
Or that the combat mechanisms, when known, require an advanced calculation to determine the result?
If that is the 'spread sheet' concept (a combat result is determined by a fairly simple calculation as opposed to a highly complex one with multiple dependent probabilities) that you object to then I really disagree.
(Even if it is a simple Unit has health points that repair, it should still use that combat model for strength that I listed... if it will take 100 healthy Warriors, in range, to kill a Tank, the tank Should have 100x the strength of a Warrior)
Other than that I don't see what is spreadsheet about it. You have your armies which need to be properly placed relative to each other and the Terrain for maximum effect/avoidance of damage
If you have large numbers of those 'armies' that are seperately moved and healed then it will push the series backwards to being a tactical battle game instead of a civilization game. War needs to be a part of Civilization but not the primary part.
No, the key to beating a SoD is to throw a collateral attack unit at it, and having that collateral attack unit die on the attack -- but you don't care, because it did more damage to the enemy stack than you lost from the unit.
Then repeat a bunch, driving down every unit that can be damaged by collateral damage to being weak.
Next, get the flanking units (that cause collateral on artillery, or are anti-artillery), and clean up the stack. With everything that isn't artillery beat down by mass collateral, and the rest of the attack being anti-artillery troops, the stack of death loses 1 unit for every unit you attack with.
Eventually you'll have beaten down the best defenders, and you can use less and less effective units to clean up -- in the end, attacking with pure-defence, or even artillery units, to prevent the counter-attack.
SoD works against other players when it is larger than the enemy SoD, because there is little defence against it if your SoD is sufficiently large (you end up killing at least as many enemy units as you lose, often). And if you don't defeat the SoD, the death:loss ratio of the enemy is worse (it is during the 'clean up' phase that the ratio of killed:lost swings over to the attacker).
SoD works against the AI because the AIs strategy of actually defending cities and not building anti-SoD SoDs is poor. SoD doesn't work so well for the AI because players know how to disassemble an enemy SoD that isn't ridiculously large through tactics like the above.
...
Or, another way of looking at it, SoD wins because you can rotate defenders. When a defender partially loses, it gets shielded by all of the other allies. When you have military dominance, this means that your kill:being killed ratio is better in a stack of doom than it is spread out (where the enemy could concentrate fire on one unit).
As you are conquering, you presumably have military dominance -- so you conquer via SoD to keep your losses minimal from enemy counter-attack.
tom2050
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So, now, with Lines of Attrition (LoA), you can never really achieve military dominance in any fashion, only if you are far ahead in tech (my guess). Send them in a single file line to their death until victory is achieved. Occasionally fire an arrow over a lake, and occasionally do a flank. It's like WW1 for the whole game.
Tom
Tom
KrikkitTwo
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Exactly. Which is why Removing
1. Unit healing
and
2. Multi unit type Stacks
Would solve all the problems with Stacks of death
If unit Healing is going to be removed and 'Single unit Stacks' are the way to move troops around.
Then you might as well have the ability to combine damaged units a 'full health' unit. (for simplifications sake)
You also might as well have the ability to combine smaller units into one Larger unit since that would be the same. (you would end up mass attacking/defending with them anyways)
So you significantly remove useless information (the stats on every individual tank in this tile) to have
The stats for the single Tank Army in this Tile
The stats for another Tank Army would only be seperate if it was in a Separate tile.
And I think Lines of Attrition works well as a name for the "limited military strength per tile" problem.(I Prefer Blobs of Attrition.. or perhaps Blocs of Attrition.)
You may be able to acheive military superiority through Tech or Superior production. But only Very slowly. (that is also a problem)
Ahriman
Tyrant
Fortunately, your conversion of military strength from discrete units into continuous Dollops of Strength isn't going to happen.
We're going to have a discrete Swordsman unit, not 173 Strength worth of swordsman on this tile and 212 Strength worth of Horsemen on that tile.
So the point is moot.
We're going to have a discrete Swordsman unit, not 173 Strength worth of swordsman on this tile and 212 Strength worth of Horsemen on that tile.
So the point is moot.
tom2050
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I think he was referring to damaged units combining back into a full healthy unit... not full healthy units becoming some kind of diablo uber invincible boss.
And that is true, you will have 1 Single Discrete Swordsman unit for probably half the game. The fun!
Tom
Ahriman
Tyrant
No, he is referring to his unit design, where his "solution" to 1 unit per tile is to be able to merge unlimited numbers of a given unit type together and just add their strengths.
So, Swordsman A might have 7 swordsmen merged together and be strength 42, while Swordsman B might have 5 swordsmen merged together and have taken some damage, for strength 26.
So under this system, the strength on an individual discrete swordsman unit becomes irrelevant (only the cost per strength point matters) and unit strength basically becomes a continuous variable.
3 riflemen might be identical to 6 musketmen, the only difference being that the former had a lower cost per strength point. But once you've built them, they're identical.
Which is just an all round Bad Idea because it minimizes the importances of technological improvements, which are core to any Civ game's military system, and it makes units into bland dollops of strength points.
