"One unit per one tile" strategy thoughts

[r_rolo1]

And also of course in the Homeric epic.

Well, in the homeric epic there is never battle inside the town or even a attack to the city walls Illiad only shows combat when the Trojans try to push the Greeks to the sea in a sortie and the Odyssey happens far after the fall of Troy...

But yeah, nothing even close of a trojan army camped in front of the city walls

 

[Ahriman]

But yeah, nothing even close of a trojan army camped in front of the city walls

Never said they *camped* in front of the walls. But all the fighting took place outside.

 

[r_rolo1]

In there I was refering not to you, Ahriman , but to the context the Troy example was brought in here... sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

[Jabba]

Folks, the Illiad is poetry, not history. The gods decided most of the battles - should we include them?

In real history, Troy was probably sacked round about 1200 BC. That's about all we know - we can't even be sure it was the Greeks who attacked it. It is, however, hard to sack a city without fighting inside the city!

 

[Ahriman]

Folks, the Illiad is poetry, not history.

Absolutely.

It is, however, hard to sack a city without fighting inside the city!

Not really true.

Plenty of historic examples of an field battle where one army wins, another loses, the loser retreats/flees/routs and then the victor sacks nearby towns/cities basically at will, without any significant fighting/resistance inside the city. (Well, except the individual poorly armed civilians trying and failing to protect themselves.)

Most of the 30 years war, for eg.
City assaults are basically gone after the medieval period.
And a high proportion of siege warfare/assaults are about taking castles, not cities. Very hard to effectively protect/defend a large city.

 

[Chris Stalis]

Forgive me, but I am joining this discussion rather late and don't feel like diving through 22 pages of posts just to see if someone else has made this point yet. If someone else has already pointed this out, then I guess I'm casting my vote with them

I know there's a lot of concern about the "1-unit per tile" mechanic. The notion of moving from Stacks o' Death to individual troop concentrations is a little jarring, but not entirely crazy to me. After all, I grew up on Civil War Generals for turn based strategy LONG before I tried Civ 2, and it was actually really jarring that now I could suddenly pile on as many troops as needed into one square. Now having played Civ 4 for a few years, I've come to realize that you can't actually wage a war without a stack of death. And the maxim that explains why is simple: unit damage rotation.

With multiple units on one tile, there is no possibility for concentration of fire by either side. Civ 4 warfare currently consists of suicidal artillery assaults in an effort to weaken the entire stack before sending in the main attack force. Then, the first maceman/rifleman/infantry attacks. If successful, the opposing unit is destroyed. If NOT successful, the opposing unit gets dropped to the bottom of the stack, and you still need just as many troops to take the tile after the attack as you did at the start of the attack. You can't even guarantee efficient eradication of the troops you're attacking because each unit damaged will potentially get thrown on the bottom of the stack (if the attack actually did anything and didn't just waste itself), which means that you could, if the enemy had enough troops, throw your entire stack of doom at their stack, and ultimately accomplish nothing besides giving their units a metric crap ton of experience.

It strikes me that this is a very one-dimensional combat system, something that I think 2k and Firaxis have realized.

So, logically, people would call for a unit cap on the tiles. Say 10, or maybe even 5 units per tile max, right? The problem with this approach is that shielding mechanic I mentioned is still going to come into play. Only this time, the advantage of a unit cap goes directly to the defender. Appropriate stacks of death required to take out 1 tile at a 5-unit cap would be roughly 3 5 unit tiles attacking the defender. If we removed shielding, though, advantage would clearly go to the attacker, who would then be able to pick and choose the best possible unit to attack the weakest link in the defensive line. Defenders would essentially get one volley off at full strength, and then be decimated by the second attack because the fresh troops would tear into the guys at 65% or less health.

Anyway, I know that it is jarring as hell to suddenly see ONE unit being the total of your military presence in a tile, but it will actually allow for more dynamic battles. Part and parcel with the one unit rule, though, is that combat doesn't result in slaughtering the other force. More likely there will be a maximum percentage of damage done or possibly even a morale/organization stat in addition to military strength to determine which units are in a condition to fight. Though, it might also ironically be the death of low tech combat wins... the Civ 4 game I'm playing right now has me pitting riflemen against infantry. I lose troops at a horrendous rate with each attack, but I'm out producing the other empire 3:1 on the troops, so it's actually possible to win this war. With single unit arrangements like this, I'm not sure that would any longer be possible as the army sizes should be roughly equal between me and the empire I'm attacking, and that would destroy any advantage I might have.

 

[Cashew]

Forgive me, but I am joining this discussion rather late and don't feel like diving through 22 pages of posts just to see if someone else has made this point yet. If someone else has already pointed this out, then I guess I'm casting my vote with them

I know there's a lot of concern about the "1-unit per tile" mechanic. The notion of moving from Stacks o' Death to individual troop concentrations is a little jarring, but not entirely crazy to me. After all, I grew up on Civil War Generals for turn based strategy LONG before I tried Civ 2, and it was actually really jarring that now I could suddenly pile on as many troops as needed into one square. Now having played Civ 4 for a few years, I've come to realize that you can't actually wage a war without a stack of death. And the maxim that explains why is simple: unit damage rotation.

With multiple units on one tile, there is no possibility for concentration of fire by either side. Civ 4 warfare currently consists of suicidal artillery assaults in an effort to weaken the entire stack before sending in the main attack force. Then, the first maceman/rifleman/infantry attacks. If successful, the opposing unit is destroyed. If NOT successful, the opposing unit gets dropped to the bottom of the stack, and you still need just as many troops to take the tile after the attack as you did at the start of the attack. You can't even guarantee efficient eradication of the troops you're attacking because each unit damaged will potentially get thrown on the bottom of the stack (if the attack actually did anything and didn't just waste itself), which means that you could, if the enemy had enough troops, throw your entire stack of doom at their stack, and ultimately accomplish nothing besides giving their units a metric crap ton of experience.

It strikes me that this is a very one-dimensional combat system, something that I think 2k and Firaxis have realized.

So, logically, people would call for a unit cap on the tiles. Say 10, or maybe even 5 units per tile max, right? The problem with this approach is that shielding mechanic I mentioned is still going to come into play. Only this time, the advantage of a unit cap goes directly to the defender. Appropriate stacks of death required to take out 1 tile at a 5-unit cap would be roughly 3 5 unit tiles attacking the defender. If we removed shielding, though, advantage would clearly go to the attacker, who would then be able to pick and choose the best possible unit to attack the weakest link in the defensive line. Defenders would essentially get one volley off at full strength, and then be decimated by the second attack because the fresh troops would tear into the guys at 65% or less health.

Anyway, I know that it is jarring as hell to suddenly see ONE unit being the total of your military presence in a tile, but it will actually allow for more dynamic battles. Part and parcel with the one unit rule, though, is that combat doesn't result in slaughtering the other force. More likely there will be a maximum percentage of damage done or possibly even a morale/organization stat in addition to military strength to determine which units are in a condition to fight. Though, it might also ironically be the death of low tech combat wins... the Civ 4 game I'm playing right now has me pitting riflemen against infantry. I lose troops at a horrendous rate with each attack, but I'm out producing the other empire 3:1 on the troops, so it's actually possible to win this war. With single unit arrangements like this, I'm not sure that would any longer be possible as the army sizes should be roughly equal between me and the empire I'm attacking, and that would destroy any advantage I might have.

I think the difference though (in your last example) would be that you would have the units earlier. Even with a hypothetical 5 unit cap, I might be able to get that in the time someone else is only able to build 2. I sort of see it (building wise) as being similar to building wonders in that you're not worried so much about how many you can build you're just worried if someone else will build it before you.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Though, it might also ironically be the death of low tech combat wins... the Civ 4 game I'm playing right now has me pitting riflemen against infantry. I lose troops at a horrendous rate with each attack, but I'm out producing the other empire 3:1 on the troops, so it's actually possible to win this war. With single unit arrangements like this, I'm not sure that would any longer be possible as the army sizes should be roughly equal between me and the empire I'm attacking, and that would destroy any advantage I might have.

The army sizes might not be equal, if you can outproduce 3:1 you should be able to outmaintain 3:1, and out "repair" 3:1.
Eventually he would not be able to keep reparing his troops, as your more numerous Riflemen rotate in and out of attacking. (essentially a Bloc, rather than a Stack.. rotating to the back rather than the bottom)

 

[tom2050]

They made it sound in a way, that larger empires won't have some massive benefit over smaller civ's. So it's likely that there are some factors involved that may act like corruption, even though corruption is not in the game. I suppose this is done so that small civ's can't just get steamrolled by larger civs.

They may have added the antithesis of corruption, and now the less cities you have, the larger bonus those cities get to research, production, etc.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They may have added the antithesis of corruption, and now the less cities you have, the larger bonus those cities get to research, production, etc.

That actually sounds particuarly interesting....

Especially if they separate it ie

Production/Gold->Big civ (almost proportional to size)

Research/Culture->Little civ (diminishing returns)

 

[Chris Stalis]

The army sizes might not be equal, if you can outproduce 3:1 you should be able to outmaintain 3:1, and out "repair" 3:1.
Eventually he would not be able to keep reparing his troops, as your more numerous Riflemen rotate in and out of attacking. (essentially a Bloc, rather than a Stack.. rotating to the back rather than the bottom)

Globally, I am outproducing at 3:1. However, each individual battle is organized according to individual unit stats. The prime question would be "how many Civ 5 riflemen could I bring into the fight against Civ 5 infantry, and how does this affect my skirmish line?" I'm presently able to exercise my 3:1 production advantage by overwhelming 4 defenders with a 3 line stack of doom. Artillery is the key to this fight, because it has an odd quirk in that it never seems to fire blanks. I can send a rifleman with Combat 3 and Pinch against an infantry with City Defender 1, and the infantry will end the combat without even having been hit. A cannon with city attack 2, though, routinely tears the infantry down to at least 60% health, if not doing even MORE damage. So, I'm actually using more than 3:1 in the field (maybe 4.5:1).

Now, this is all made possible by the concentration of force afforded by the stack o death mechanic. Lets just assume, for the sake of argument, that a strict 3:1 mechanic is going to be designed for a similar rifleman/infantry combat. First, on a hex system, direct combat would require me to collapse an entire "pouch" line onto one "thrust" tile (for those unfamiliar with hex combat, the combat line I am describing are two "^" characters on top of each other. The "pouch" is the entire ^ on top collapsing to the upper point on the "thrust" of the character below it). This would provide clear victory, but it would leave the first two attackers vulnerable to instant slaughter (if they aren't already dead), and the capturing attacker no longer has support to continue the push. So, we need to have a second line ready to rush ahead and make use of the "swap" mechanic. This seems fine on the surface, as it lets us rush fresh troops to the fore, but now we're requiring 3 COMPLETE lines of low tech troops to counter 1 line of high tech troops. Given how smaller armies are also likely to be encountered, fields of battle with this magnitude of units seems implausible to expect. I could certainly be proven wrong, but you understand my gut reaction that low tech nations will be at an even more pronounced disadvantage than higher teched nations.

Not that there's a problem with rewarding high tech nations for their technical prowess, mind you. I just worry that exacerbating the tech advantage as it sits right now will inflate tech supremacy to the point of being second to none. And since you can't trade/buy techs...

*shrugs* I'm speculating a lot further than my initial post or the available preview material, though. It's something to think about, though.

 

[Jabba]

Most of the 30 years war, for eg.
City assaults are basically gone after the medieval period.
And a high proportion of siege warfare/assaults are about taking castles, not cities. Very hard to effectively protect/defend a large city.

Sieges of cities, both successful and unsuccessful, were very common after the medieval period. These usually involved assaulting the city's defences at some point, and often ended with the city being stormed.

You may wish to read up on some of the following:

The Sack of Magdeburg in the 30 Years War.

The storming of Bristol, Birmingham, or Leicester in the English Civil War.

The sack of Drogheda and Wexford by Cromwell.

The storming of Badajoz and Cuidad Rodrigo by Wellington.

The Battle of Stalingrad. The Siege of Leningrad. The battle for Berlin.

These are all very famous examples, though there are many more.

Siege warfare against major towns and cities was the normal way of conducting war in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was the Golden Age of city fortification. Look up Vauban and see when he lived.

Castles, on the other hand, were largely obsolete after the middle ages because artillery could blow down their walls.

 

[pi-r8]

Not that there's a problem with rewarding high tech nations for their technical prowess, mind you. I just worry that exacerbating the tech advantage as it sits right now will inflate tech supremacy to the point of being second to none. And since you can't trade/buy techs...

*shrugs* I'm speculating a lot further than my initial post or the available preview material, though. It's something to think about, though.

I'm worried about this too. But if most of your army has a ranged attack you can still concentrate multiple attacks on to the same defender, especially with artillery. Hopefully they're able to balance a fast-tech strategy with a production-heavy strategy, I think they did this pretty well in Civ 4.

I think a lot of people here are overestimating the "deep strategic options" that this change will bring. A lot of it is going to be "oh that tile has a spearmen, so I attack with an axemen, which he then attacks with his chariot..." rock paper scissors isn't a very fun game to me. Whereas, comparing two roughly equal stacks and deciding which has the advantage (so that you know if you should attack) was an extremely difficult problem in Civ 4.

 

[Chris Stalis]

I think a lot of people here are overestimating the "deep strategic options" that this change will bring. A lot of it is going to be "oh that tile has a spearmen, so I attack with an axemen, which he then attacks with his chariot..." rock paper scissors isn't a very fun game to me. Whereas, comparing two roughly equal stacks and deciding which has the advantage (so that you know if you should attack) was an extremely difficult problem in Civ 4.

Mmm, I will point you back to the initial post that started this thread because:

- units are more "generic", technologies increase or add stats not unique bonuses (i.e. no more +50% vs.)

Now, the developers could change their minds and add minor bonuses for axemen vs spearmen, or spears vs cavalry (think +5% or +10%), they would appear to have already recognized the R-P-S syndrome that one UPT can threaten with, and are going to be more flexible in what a single tile's worth of units actually symbolizes.

Actually, I'm most curious about how they're going to handle artillery. If archers are getting indirect fire from the get go, simply upping the range of a catapult's throw is going to be kinda boring. I wonder if they're actually going to bother representing it in the game, because I can't figure out what else to do with them

 

[Danielos]

I think the new unit graphics is a little confusing. I would have prefered if they kept it to three individuals in each unit instead of a large group as it is now. When the map is filled with units, it would get cluttered with all these small individuals.

 

[frekk]

Well, if units are able to move 2 per turn, then couldn't you attack with 18 ... 6 inner ring, and 12 outer ring? Seems like a lot for ONE defender to handle, regardless of fortification bonuses.

If you're down to one unit, you're down to one unit; the defense of the approaches failed and you lost most of your forces. If the enemy is able to smash his way past your forts and garrisons and annihilate your army, you lose. He's still going to have to concentrate lots of force just to reach your city, because he's going to have to clear the way. If he doesn't, you might cut off his forward units and surround them, right?

So there isn't much difference; if he has sufficient force to annihilate most of your forces and still have 18 units left over, you would've lost to the SOD anyhow. The difference is just that you can't completely abandon everything except your cities anymore. Position and terrain become important.

 

[frekk]

The Sack of Magdeburg in the 30 Years War.

The storming of Bristol, Birmingham, or Leicester in the English Civil War.

The sack of Drogheda and Wexford by Cromwell.

The storming of Badajoz and Cuidad Rodrigo by Wellington.

None of these were really prolonged sieges, though. Most of them were small garrison forces overrun by much larger armies, because somebody lost the advantage of position or was defeated in a field battle.

The Battle of Stalingrad. The Siege of Leningrad. The battle for Berlin.

All of these centered on cities, however, fighting took place across a vast area.

Here's a Russian map of operations during the Siege of Leningrad:

There's no scale, but as you see, Leningrad is just a dot.

A map of the Siege of Stalingrad:

And a map of the Battle of Berlin:

In all of these cases, a great deal of the fighting took place outside of the city itself, often quite far away. The Battle of Berlin opens with fighting against fortifications all along the Oder, for instance.

In civ as things stand, there's never any reason for a hard-pressed defender to make a stand anywhere but in the city itself. None of this stuff ever happens in civ. The defender packs up all his forces and puts them all in the city, and the attacker races directly for the city itself (unless he's just raiding and pillaging, and doesn't intend to capture the city at all).

 

[Jabba]

None of these were really prolonged sieges, though. Most of them were small garrison forces overrun by much larger armies, because somebody lost the advantage of position or was defeated in a field battle.

Sigh. The OP stated that "city assaults are basically gone after the medieval period", which is so untrue it is frankly bizarre.

Give an example of a violent storming of a city and the reply is: aha, there was no prolonged siege so it doesn't count. Give an example of a prolonged siege and it is: aha, there was no fighting inside the city so it doesn't count.

In the English Civil War there were prolonged sieges of Oxford, York, Plymouth, Newark...

In the 30 Years War there were prolonged sieges of Prague, Nuremburg, Stralsund, Magdeburg etc. (The famous sacking of the last city followed seven months of siege).∟

The Siege of La Rochelle in 1628-9 lasted two years.

The two sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683 both lasted for several months.

And this is even before you go back to medieval sieges such as Jerusalem, Constantinople, Orleans etc.

In fact you can find examples of every way, shape or form of fighting that is centred on a city. Some cities surrendered quickly, some slowly. Some were assaulted, some were slowly starved. Many were starved AND assaulted. Some fell to the enemy. Some held out.

What does all this prove? Lots of different things. But one thing it shows is that during many periods of history, cities were vital strongpoints and hence the focus of military activity.

I have no objection to changes in the Civ combat system to bring part of combat out of the cities, but these should be based on real arguments, not Homeric legend or alternative history.

 

[tom2050]

Agreed with Jabba.

Battle of Stalingrad; Germany had full advantage of position, held 90% of the city itself at times, and still got beaten. <--- extreme over-simplification here.

"city assaults are basically gone after the medieval period"

I agree, completely untrue. That statement doesn't even make sense, it is saying: no city was basically ever attacked in the history of the universe after the medieval period. Perhaps smoking a bit too much happy backy.

 

[Ahriman]

which is so untrue it is frankly bizarre.

But one thing it shows is that during many periods of history, cities were vital strongpoints and hence the focus of military activity.

I think Jabba has a fair enough point. Despite the relative increased importance of field battles as opposed to sieges post-medieval, it is untrue to say that there were no more city assaults. I retract my claim.

However, I will stick with the general tenor of my claim, which is that after medieval periods, it is relatively rare to be assaulting a city which has an entire enemy army in it. If nothing else, this is because more modern armies were *big* and took up a lot of space, and because they tended to require more manuever.

Also, because preservation of the army was very important (partly because it was harder to raise a new one), and so it was often seen to be wiser to abandon the city to preserve the army, rather than fight a losing defensive battle.

Many of the examples you quote (eg Bristol) are basically overruns of a weak garrison force, not an attacking stack assaulting a city with a large number of defenders.

Large armies fought in the field, not in cities. City attacks generally occurred when defenders were grossly outnumbered, and so had no choice but to retreat to a city.

So previous Civ games are inaccurate in their almost sole focus on city attack/defense.

Most war has been in the field, rather than in cities, particularly in post-medieval eras, and so it is reasonable for civ5 to try to model this.

I hardly think I need to reel off a long list of historic field battles to prove this (it is obviously easy to do from basically any war in any era).