Eddie Verdde
Chieftain
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Well, one might also ask: how can you focus a cavalry against enemy archers if they stay behind a line of spearman?
Poll: Stack of Doom, Carpet of Doom or something in between?
- Thread starter Eddie Verdde
- Start date
Well, one might also ask: how can you focus a cavalry against enemy archers if they stay behind a line of spearman?
Bactrian
Chieftain
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- Apr 18, 2014
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Personally, I think that kind of tactical control is out of place in a game like Civ. I understand that people don't want to just hurl stacks at each other, but I honestly see that as being better than 1UPT in that it privileges long-term strategic decisions over tactical skill. Does this make it harder to model the effects of someone like Hannibal or Alexander in the game? Yes, but right now the human player is basically always playing with the advantage of being Hannibal or Alexander and it shows in how uninteresting the strategic game has become.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
The problem is scale. Hexes represent dozens or even hundreds of miles depending on map size. In the space of 1 hex, ancient militaries were certainly "stacked". And battles happened inside 1 hex. The battles were not spread out over dozens or hundreds of miles. That's the problem with 1upt as currently implemented: it takes the tactics and spreads it out over a strategic map.
Now if you really wanted to do stacks but also keep the 1upt tactics, one way would be for the game to "zoom" in on a single hex and open a separate tactical map for battles. Then on the tactical map, units could fight 1upt style.
But personally, I am fine with abstracting the tactics. Civ is a strategic game, not a tactical commander game. I don't think players need to get bogged down with fighting individual battles at the tactical level.
civilizationfanatic2000
Prince
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carpet of doom
SupremacyKing2
Deity
I just don't think that 1upt makes sense for the strategic scale of the map in a civ game. Imagine if 1upt were a thing in the real world. A group of tanks have to go all the way around a group of infantry because they can't coexist in the same 50 mile hex. That's silly. If a hex represents dozens or more miles, then a group of infantry and a group of tanks should be able to occupy the same space.
General_Sahib
Chieftain
I get your point, however, if we continue with this particular example of the tactical paradigm (and I fully recognise that other posters have pointed to a dislike for tactical combat and/or a sense that tactical combat would create a disconnect with the rest of the game, so my points are notwithstanding such subjective preferences), in genuine warfare, while the archer may hide behind the phalanx or spearmen, a theoretical route to that archer - via a defender in the example cited - should be traceable on the battlefield, and (this is the key..) other units should not be able to impede that route by simple virtue of being brought to the battlefield together with the other stacked units. Now I would postulate that a "stack" can and indeed should apply during transit e.g. in naval transport and this would be a realistic situation of vulnerability for the stacked units, well represented by Civ 2's infuriating troop transports, where a couple of cruise missiles sank the whole transport and everything inside it. As soon as a battle group is disembarked though, I regard the tactical elements of "carpets" to have the edge in terms of realism over "stacks".
Having said all that, I do get what a lot of you are saying in that the question of stack vs carpet actually comes down to the very identity of Civ itself as a strategic vs tactical iteration of 4x, and that this is perhaps always going to be a matter of personal preference. It is interesting then that the series has swayed between the two polar states, sometimes wildly and drastically (Civ 4 to Civ 5 was a tectonic shift from my recollections).
civilizationfanatic2000
Prince
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go around the spearmen
General_Sahib
Chieftain
I like this comment because it very neatly illustrates one of the two different approaches to "realism" adopted by stackers vs carpet layers.
We have among Civ players a group who desire physical realism in temporal and spatial terms, giving greater weight to these elements, wanting to tweak the game to bring times and distances into a more consistent and realistic manifestation, as opposed to another group who prefer the realism of the qualitative mechanics of warfare while happily sacrificing any sense of scale.
dagriggstar
King
Unlimited stacking, with various anti-stack mechanics. Stuff like light cavalry units get to pick which unit in a stack they attack, ranged units deal full damage to every unit in a stack, heavy cavalry can split stacks up etc etc
Given the time scale of civ, I think battles should be over in a turn or so. I also want just a few units on the map, at least until armies were professionalised. Like triple the gold maintenance from 6 or something.
Given the time scale of civ, I think battles should be over in a turn or so. I also want just a few units on the map, at least until armies were professionalised. Like triple the gold maintenance from 6 or something.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Given the time scale of Civ, a battle that takes up an entire turn is a Campaign or a War, since the minimum turn length is 1 year.
This is the essence of the Time Scale problem with tactical battles in Civ. No individual battle is playable as an individual battle at the Civ game time scale - it has to be an abstraction for an entire war or campaign, or a purely fantasy construction.
To be fair, this kind of 'telescoping time scale' (Battle = Campaign, War or Generational Conflict) is not unique to Civ, or even to Computer games. The old Europa series of boardgames had 2-week turns and attempted to be an 'operational' wargame at that time scale. That meant that the entire Battle of Kursk (5 - 15 July 1943) had to take place within a single turn, even though it involved over 3 million men and hundreds of air and ground combat units, and the entire battle of France (10 May - 15 June) would have to take place in 3 turns of the game. Both of these were completely impossible even within the game's rules, so despite an enormous amount of research and work developing that game (and numerous versions that covered just about every part of Europe from 1939 to 1945) it was a complete failure at depicting what it was supposed to depict.
There definitely needs to be a change to the combat system in Civ 7 in my opinion. There is no real strategy, just pump out military units and you win, the attack bonuses you can get are so small they barely make a difference. To stack units would be nice, so you can mix a couple of units to one big army. If you are looking to colonize another island you can mix in a scout with your melee and ranged to get some all-in-one with extra sight for example, 'armies' could have a slower movement speed.
I want the defensive and offensive parts to have more to them, more ways to approach offense and more ways to defend. To approach maybe there could be an 'all-in' attack for melee where you fight until you or the enemy are dead which can be very good or very bad. An attack useful when flanking maybe. Ranged could be able to retreat to get +1 in movement but a penalty to defense and attack for a few rounds. Maybe ranged could also hide in forest/jungle. The Encampment should be able to both build the Barracks and Stable, then give out attack bonuses to military units trained in that city, more so with each building so if I invest in my military with more encampments & buildings throughout my empire it will be worth it. Rather than to get some Great General points and a few production yields.
I want the defensive and offensive parts to have more to them, more ways to approach offense and more ways to defend. To approach maybe there could be an 'all-in' attack for melee where you fight until you or the enemy are dead which can be very good or very bad. An attack useful when flanking maybe. Ranged could be able to retreat to get +1 in movement but a penalty to defense and attack for a few rounds. Maybe ranged could also hide in forest/jungle. The Encampment should be able to both build the Barracks and Stable, then give out attack bonuses to military units trained in that city, more so with each building so if I invest in my military with more encampments & buildings throughout my empire it will be worth it. Rather than to get some Great General points and a few production yields.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
I think one way to inject some tactics into stacked combat, make stacked combat more interesting and give a player some influence on the outcome, would be to have different "tactical options" that the attacker and defender would pick from before the battle starts. So for example, the attacker could choose between "cautious advance", "flanking maneuver", "cavalry charge", "full frontal assault", "retreat" etc... The defender would get options like "stand your ground", "fake retreat", "ranged attack", "frontal assault", "full retreat" etc... Some options might be unavailable based on the composition of your stack. For example, you can't do a "cavalry charge" if you don't have any cavalry units in your stack. The options would modify the combat numbers. You could also have a paper-rock-scissors model where some options would be better against other options. Also, great generals could give the player extra options or add special options. Maybe a great general has a special option that is great with cavalry so it would make sense to stack more cavalry with that great general and use this special cavalry attack to win battles. Giving the player these different options would spice up stacked combat so that it is not just a clash of stacks with a predetermined outcome. And the player's decisions would have some effect on the battle outcome, just like how in the real world some battles were won or lost because of choices the generals made. Lastly, this would add some tactics without bogging the game down in a full tactical combat mini-game.
This is what Endless Space and its sequel do; so did Birth of the Federation way back in 1999.
Interesting suggestions. I like the ideas of sperate battle scenes and HOI mechanics. First off, I remember the time when everybody was crying about doom Stacks, similar to doom carpets now. For me the essential difference ist micro vs. mechanics. Microing a large army around the map to win domination on a large map is suprt tedious. Even so much, that I abandon games where I know I would win, because it's just work and not fun. On the other side, the doomstack was very annoying. Remember those atillery stacks with splash damage? It was a matter of who gets the first shot. Nothing else. Thats super shallow and not fun too. So in between is it. The seperate battle scene may not be directly influenced by the Player, the danger of AI sucking at it would imply the danger of shifting the game even more twoards war. The idea of combat with, supply and combined arms boni is appealing. Maybe even gererals may become another layer by giving them special attributes in combat instead of flat CS and movement buffs. After all, it is already kind of a war game, its important for (for me) to not even emphazie this more. Remember HOI, is a pure war game.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
I remember those games. You would give orders and watch the ships carry out your orders in 3D. The battle would pause at regular intervals to allow you to give new orders.
Civ could do the same thing where we watch the battle in 3D and give orders at regular intervals. That could be very cool and immersive. I know I loved the immersive feel of the 3D battles in Endless Space. But I was also thinking of something simpler where you just give orders once at the beginning of the battle, there would be some animations of the stacks fighting on the main map and then the game would give you the results. Basically, the same as civ4 battles where you resolve the battle for the entire stack except you are picking a "tactic card" at the start of the battle.
I recall that with BotF, but I didn't actually know ES let you issue new orders at intervals--I always autoresolve battles.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
I recall that with BotF, but I didn't actually know ES let you issue new orders at intervals--I always autoresolve battles.
Yeah. You should do manual battles a few times. The graphics were great. Watching your fleet fly in and see the enemy fleet fly in and then see the ships shooting at each other in 3D space. It added a lot of immersion IMO.
As said, army compositions can be taken into account during the battle's simulation, up to any level of realism.
check Boris thread for some examples.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Well, that implies that the army containing archers and spearmen is strictly in a Defense Posture. IF the other army/stack is Attacking, then it depends on who they are and how they are attacking. If they are not attacking, then there is No Battle: both sides stared at each other and then slowly sidled away to wait for a better chance, better odds of succeeding.
IF there is a battle, then an attacker with more mobility (or a Great General) may make a Mobile Attack, in which they 'go around' the spearmen, scatter the archers, and mount flank or rear attacks with massive bonuses in combat. IF the attacker is heavily protected troops - like Hoplites or early Imperial Roman Legions for Historical examples - they can simply charge through a minute or so of arrow fire without serious casualties and engage the spearmen - and if Hoplites or Legionaries against ordinary spearmen, they will mop the floor with the spearmen and then massacre any Archers that aren't already running for home. - See the actual results of battles like Marathon or Plataea or look for any historical battle that shows Roman infantry being even mildly upset by enemy archers on foot on an open field, regardless of who was in front of them.
