One Unit per Tile Debate

[Noble Zarkon]

I think you mean V (not IV) there

No I meant IV - that was the whole point!! V abandoned much of the collective wisdom that had built up over 20 years e.g. cities cost money but infrastructure doesn't, happiness and health are localised

Your analogy fails on a couple levels, not the least of which is that leeches were state of the art at one point. Your argument can understood as you saying that you think the world medicine should not have abandon leeches!

Your analysis again misses the point - yes leeches were state of the art once but no one would go back to them now as an "innovation"!!

 

[Makavcio]

I was in favor of 1upt for the very beginning of this system. As it was said before, huge stacks of armies were killjoys. A large blob constructed from a bunch of units that was simply rolling over the land... Damage it enough with suicidal tebuchets and the war is won after 1 turn.

I'd allow stacking in certain situations:
- different types of units and special rules for air units (just like we have it now);
- civilian units (up to 3 units);
- forts (2 units);
- cities (depending on size; 1 for 1-5, +1 unit at 6, 16, etc.)

I'd also love to see armies once again but frankly, I cannot come up with any working mechanism for them.


@guys right above me
Dudes, modern Western medicine did not abandon leeches. They are still extremely useful in certain circumstances.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Man I hate 1UPT. Not the principle itself, but the way it was executed in Civ 5.

Look at how 4X games have dealt with combat in the past.

On the one hand, you've got games like Civ I-IV, Europa Universalis, Dominions, GalCiv, etc, where combat is abstracted. You send your guys into battle and some sort of representation of combat takes place,

On the other hand, you've got games like Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Age of Wonders, Total War, Heroes of Might and Magic, where combat is fully represented. You send your guys into battle and it takes you to the battle screen where suddenly your stacks have been split up into a 1UPT battlefield.

Civ V tried to be both at the same time. And honestly? It didn't really work.

Games that abstract combat generally do so because combat is only a portion of what the game is about. You need to construct buildings, develop new technology, manage your population, conduct espionage, balance your budget, and negotiate with other nations. I don't want to spend half an hour on the battlefield, I want to take care of this situation and get back to running my empire. Civ V's system is too clunky and micro-heavy for this. Repelling even a couple of barbs is far more tedious than it should be.

Games that don't abstract combat generally do so because combat is a significant part of those games. While Master of Orion, Total War, and even AoW and HoMM all have empire-building elements, the emphasis of the game is quite markedly on the combat. Master of Orion 2 and Master of Magic are kind of grey areas here, as they kind of have an equal emphasis on both, but hey. And the thing is, even though some of those games have fairly simplistic combat (at least compared to wargames, or even something like Panzer General), it's still far more robust and has a lot more depth, excitement, and functionality than Civ 5's combat, which is fairly lackluster.


tl;dr: Combat in 4X games can either be abstract or fully realized. Civ 5 tried to do a compromise and ended up with the worst of both worlds.

 

[beetle]

No I meant IV - that was the whole point!

Okay, I understood your meaning either way.

V abandoned much of the collective wisdom that had built up over 20 years e.g. cities cost money but infrastructure doesn't, happiness and health are localised

Why should either of those be set in stone? How about resources being numbered instead of binary? Hexes instead of parallelograms? People complain when too much stays the same, and they complain when minor game mechanics on changed. I am happy to have the developers experiment.

Your analysis again misses the point - yes leeches were state of the art once but no one would go back to them now as an "innovation"!!

Okay, so what retrograde behavior did 5 resuscitate from the past? I thought you were complaining about 5 trying new things?

 

[Mustakrakish]

I want a hybrid. It's not best of both worlds, but it's a good compromise.

Here's the idea in short: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13136975&postcount=1

 

[Camikaze]

I've not experienced this and I have both expansion packs - how do you turn this on?

Just to answer this question, because others seem to have missed it - the limitations on units per tile are not something that can be turned on or off, and as far as I can recall, have not significantly changed since the game was released. Stacking a military land unit with a civilian unit (e.g. in order to escort a settler) has always been just as much part of the game as the existence of cities. There are some confusing aspects to the various rules at play, such as Great Generals counting as 'civilian', because they can't be used in combat. But it's certainly not the case that 1upt is an absolute, hard and fast rule. I'm a bit rusty on this, but assuming only one air unit on a tile (and there can be more per tile!) IIRC the maximum number of units on a tile can be 5 in a city, 3 on water, and 2 on a non-city land tile.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Stacking a military land unit with a civilian unit (e.g. in order to escort a settler) has always been just as much part of the game as the existence of cities. ...... the maximum number of units on a tile can be 5 in a city, 3 on water, and 2 on a non-city land tile.

Interesting - not what I find in my games, not being able to escort Settlers and having to move a military unit out a city in order to even be able to queue another build are two of my biggest frustrations with the game. Wonder why our experiences are different??

 

[Camikaze]

You can build a military unit build whilst there's another military unit in the city, too (same thing for building a civilian unit). Once the unit is built, one of the units will simply have to be moved out of the city before your turn is over. The restriction does mean, though, that you cannot purchase a military unit with another military unit in the city. When you purchase a unit, it cannot move until the following turn, so you must move the first unit out instead.

The only thing I can think of to explain what you've described is that it's a bug, though it's not one that I've heard of before. It's certainly not how the game is intended to work, and the flexibility of 1upt definitely does make a big difference.

 

[beetle]

not being able to escort Settlers

You have never been able to have a melee unit stacked with a worker or settler?

 

[Whiterussian]

While i just don't have the time to read trough all the posts, i really like to give my comment on this issue.

It took me a while to get used to the concept. But i like it now (after 1500+ hours...) since the warfare is just that much more interesting.
BUT it is also my nummer 1 reason to quit a game! Very often when i play warmonger, i finish off my first couple of enemys, and my hole army ends up in a corner. Now i have to move them all over the hole continent... this is so bloody anoying and boring that i rather quit the game.

There has got to be a better solution. May it be a limited stack, or bigger maps, or just a better "auto route finder script thingy" when you want to move many units, i don't know.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

You have never been able to have a melee unit stacked with a worker or settler?

That's right, one of the reasons I hate 1UPT.

 

[Camikaze]

Just as a quick random example of stacking, see Rome's warrior & worker at 16:20 or Poland's archer & settler at 25:16 here.

 

[UncleJJ]

Sulla nailed the main problems with Civ 5 back in 2011. An empire and city building game like the civilisation series is not well served by 1upt. It spoils everything and most problems can be traced back to inability of the AI to move its units competently and to fight wars except against other incompetent AI forces.

It makes it far too easy for the human player to defeat superior AI forces. A semi competent player is never under any serious military threat and kill ratios of 10 to 1 are common, which is why it is so popular perhaps?. Good players can easily get 30 to 1 kill ratios on deity and spam GG like there is no tomorrow. It seems players that can win on emperor difficulty in Civ 4 can beat deity in Civ 5.

That is why many Civ 4 players (myself included) tried the new game back in 2011 and came away disgusted by the lack of any real strategy and moved on to other things. I can see (from watching a few of Marbozir's videos on deity) that BNW has fixed some of the problems with AI behaviour and the game can be fun but still the AI is horribly incompetent with its military. Whatever you say about the SoD at least the AI posed a serious military threat on Civ 4 deity and very few players can win consistently. Deity really is difficult in Civ 4 and not in Civ 5.

JJ

 

[Sorinth]

Sulla nailed the main problems with Civ 5 back in 2011. An empire and city building game like the civilisation series is not well served by 1upt. It spoils everything and most problems can be traced back to inability of the AI to move its units competently and to fight wars except against other incompetent AI forces.

It makes it far too easy for the human player to defeat superior AI forces. A semi competent player is never under any serious military threat and kill ratios of 10 to 1 are common, which is why it is so popular perhaps?. Good players can easily get 30 to 1 kill ratios on deity and spam GG like there is no tomorrow. It seems players that can win on emperor difficulty in Civ 4 can beat deity in Civ 5.

That is why many Civ 4 players (myself included) tried the new game back in 2011 and came away disgusted by the lack of any real strategy and moved on to other things. I can see (from watching a few of Marbozir's videos on deity) that BNW has fixed some of the problems with AI behaviour and the game can be fun but still the AI is horribly incompetent with its military. Whatever you say about the SoD at least the AI posed a serious military threat on Civ 4 deity and very few players can win consistently. Deity really is difficult in Civ 4 and not in Civ 5.

JJ

A bad AI doesn't mean the game isn't suited for 1UPT.

The biggest thing making the AI bad is that Ranged is overpowered and the AI doesn't mass Ranged like a human does. Force yourself to build an AI style army where it's 70% melee units and see if you can still get your 10:1 kill ratios.

 

[Mustakrakish]

The biggest thing making the AI bad is that Ranged is overpowered and the AI doesn't mass Ranged like a human does. Force yourself to build an AI style army where it's 70% melee units and see if you can still get your 10:1 kill ratios.

It's all nice and all, but why would one force himself to do that? Any reasonable reason for that? There are plenty things with 1upt that could make a good argument in support of it. Make stupid choices yourself so the AI can match you is not a good argument at all.

 

[Babri]

It's all nice and all, but why would one force himself to do that? Any reasonable reason for that? There are plenty things with 1upt that could make a good argument in support of it. Make stupid choices yourself so the AI can match you is not a good argument at all.

What he is trying to say is that bad AI is not solely due to 1UPT. Overpowered ranged units have a significant impact on this issue as human mind is generally more capable for abusing balance issues.

BTW the BtS was pretty bad too, it is just that many people don't realise it & love to watch the past through rose tinted glasses. 1UPT makes those weaknesses more apparent. That doesn't mean we need to bring back SoDs. It is just like saying that since I can't program a capable chess AI, it means that chess is a crappy game & everyone should play 3X3 Tic tac toe instead.

Edit:-
In civ 4 I remember seeing invasions of almost pure siege units, keeping obsolete units forever instead of upgrading them or disbanding them etc.

Civ 5 has its issues, but so did civ 4. We should consider both games in an unbiased manner instead of picking one side & bashing the other one.

Sent from my One V using Tapatalk

 

[Vohbo]

I love 1 unit per tile, and I think it is the greatest improvement in the history of the series.
That said, I see no reason why civilian units should not be able to stack, and there is virtually no abuse possible for this either.
It just leads to stupid things like multiple great people surrounding your capital waiting to be popped, great generals that prevent workers from moving through etcetera.

An additional and interesting option would be the ability then to convert a military unit to a civilian one until it is "deployed", so that it can move (in a vulnerable state) through other units.

 

[Avatan]

1UPT all the way.
Sure it's no realistic, but civ always had different scales collides for gameplay reasons, wether it's time or space scale.
450 years to build a granary or to travel accross France is not realistic, sure shooting arrows over the english channel is a bit strange, it's just a suspension of disbelief to allow different scales to cohabit into one screen.

Limited stacking seems intersting, but if you can put warrioris on your archers a whole tactic dimension disapear, such as flanking with moutend units, or breakung the enemy line. Maybe to allow moving large armies, but I'm not sure how...

 

[Mustakrakish]

What he is trying to say is that bad AI is not solely due to 1UPT. Overpowered ranged units have a significant impact on this issue as human mind is generally more capable for abusing balance issues.

BTW the BtS was pretty bad too, it is just that many people don't realise it & love to watch the past through rose tinted glasses. 1UPT makes those weaknesses more apparent. That doesn't mean we need to bring back SoDs. It is just like saying that since I can't program a capable chess AI, it means that chess is a crappy game & everyone should play 3X3 Tic tac toe instead.

Edit:-
In civ 4 I remember seeing invasions of almost pure siege units, keeping obsolete units forever instead of upgrading them or disbanding them etc.

Civ 5 has its issues, but so did civ 4. We should consider both games in an unbiased manner instead of picking one side & bashing the other one.

I obviously pointed a flawed reasoning is all. No, bad AI is not solely due to 1upt - you are right, as is he if that is what he tried to say - but it does make it more obvious / hurts AI more, is anyone seriously going to deny that?
I don't want SoDs back, never, what I want is hybrid with limited stacks. Like I mentioned before, making logistics run smoother, with range bonuses against the stacks (more units in a tile, easier to hit) and prevent range OPism by making penalties to range attack the less health attacked unit has (less people in a tile, harder to hit), making them do what they supposed to > soften ranks before battle and clean up with melee instead of concentrated kills.

 

[beetle]

I love 1 unit per tile, and I think it is the greatest improvement in the history of the series.

I agree.

That said, I see no reason why civilian units should not be able to stack, and there is virtually no abuse possible for this either.

I disagree. With pillage/repair already being OP, multiple workers in a stack would be crazy. Also, instant rails and oil wells. All kinds of abuse that would give the human player too much advantage over the AI. It’s annoying, but it is better for balance and game play that improvements take a few turns.

It just leads to stupid things like multiple great people surrounding your capital waiting to be popped, great generals that prevent workers from moving through etcetera.

You are having to make choices about saving GP, and which GP to have at the ready. It’s a good kind of pain, and if anything, there should more pressure to use GP rather than save them. For your other point, it can be a little tedious, but civilian units can move through each other, so not too painful. The auto-route algorithm is lame, but that is a whole different issue.

An additional and interesting option would be the ability then to convert a military unit to a civilian one until it is "deployed", so that it can move (in a vulnerable state) through other units.

That is an interesting idea!