Proposal workshop: unit stacking ideas

[Tekamthi]

It's inevitable that late game needs additional restrictions on supply. For the sake of discussion, let's say late game supply availability was reduced by as much as 50% in a relatively flat manner ie everything gives half as much supply as it did before -- this number is not so much the focus here, but is selected for implying a stark reduction to number of units and corresponding improvement to movement logjams etc. In other words we make some significant improvements on problem 3 in the current 'military scaling discussion' thread.

The current balance paradigm seems to be to allow every civ, big and small, to maintain a quasi-permanent standing army that exceeds the "big enough" threshold to discourage larger, tech equal invaders. If the supply reduction were 50%, we'd have significantly fewer units, possibly the smaller civ's would no longer be able to maintain the threshold indefinitely; we'd benefit from some kind of ability to dynamically increase supply to meet emergency needs.

Can the supply system be converted into a strategic resource? The cap could still function as it does now, just as tradeable commodity, much like iron, horses, etc. For added thematic value (and a personal fave), we might revisit the notion of restricting trade of supply only between civs that have active trade routes...

Thoughts?

edit: Please discuss supply-related ideas in @myclan's thread -- both were created simultaneously, and the discussion here has evolved into unit stacking topics. The other thread contains more detail re: supply concepts

 

[usadefcon1]

Hopefully this isn't too far off topic, but I always thought Paper should be tradable too.
If I don't need Diplomatic Units I don't need Paper and it would be nice to get something for it.

 

[Bryan317]

Hopefully this isn't too far off topic, but I always thought Paper should be tradable too.
If I don't need Diplomatic Units I don't need Paper and it would be nice to get something for it.

Paper was tradable originally. I don't know of the exact consensus, but I think it's a bit exploitable. Since you can simply Annex CS if you like.

It's similar how they tried to limit how many early resources you could trade such as horses. It was a perfectly viable strategy to ignore these units entirely and sell the horses for gold.

 

[Tekamthi]

Paper was tradable originally. I don't know of the exact consensus, but I think it's a bit exploitable. Since you can simply Annex CS if you like.

yeah thats what i remember as well, though not all the particulars. I wonder if it would still be exploitable in same way, hasn't AI trade decision-making been overhauled somewhat since?

i don't think a tradeable version of supply would be exploitable in the same way. I'd be more concerned that AI may be unable to find the right amount to keep on hand

 

[pineappledan]

We already have units that consume strategic resources. Now some units would consume 2 different ones. I’m not sure if that’s possible. The penalty for being past the strategic limit is pretty harsh; I don’t think it would be any more fun than the penalties for going over the supply limit now.

If you can trade war supply then you can simply buy more with gold. We already have unit maintenance, so what this might do is make army size simply a matter of gold economy. You could have accomplished the same end goal by scrapping war supply entirely and adjusting unit maintenance.

 

[myclan]

I haven't read this thread when posting mine, are we proposing two very similar ideas?

I think it may be better to work like a currency like faith or gold or strategy resources in Civ6, instead of the strategy resources in Civ5

Reducing military units brainstorm

I have seen many players complaining about late game war tedious and too many units to control. I think the main reasons for too many units are: 1. They are too easy to be killed or severely injured, thus we need extra units to continue the war. We have to build more. 2. They just cost one-time...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[CppMaster]

You could have accomplished the same end goal by scrapping war supply entirely and adjusting unit maintenance.

Cool idea! It would be just XML changes, right?
Set supply cap to a big number like 69420666, so effectivily no limit and increase units maintenance.

 

[nekokon]

Problem with the doom carpet isn't about the number of units (which of course can be solved by increasing unit maintenance or reducing supply) but the high density of units in one specific area that causes congestion and micromanagement (as non-in-combat units can be ordered to just move over turns or stay on-guard and be ignored/hand-off otherwise). Reducing the number of units overall would make warmonger much less fun since your high maintenance handful of troops would get out-maneuvered/out-pillaged by armies of low cost horsemen spreading all over the map.

The better solution would be increasing ways to quickly remove those congestions, which include, but not limited to, more AoE/range/dmg to kill units faster; high mobility to go around the choke points; or terrain destruction/alternation, as they're the kind of micromanagement that actually fun/engaging to player instead of trying to play traffic police or hit and run chirping at 1 target for 10000 years.

 

[Tekamthi]

We already have units that consume strategic resources. Now some units would consume 2 different ones. I’m not sure if that’s possible. The penalty for being past the strategic limit is pretty harsh; I don’t think it would be any more fun than the penalties for going over the supply limit now.

If you can trade war supply then you can simply buy more with gold. We already have unit maintenance, so what this might do is make army size simply a matter of gold economy. You could have accomplished the same end goal by scrapping war supply entirely and adjusting unit maintenance.

Yup, very valid concerns. On the former, I suppose we'd want only the tradeable attribute of the resource system, without the extra penalty. Wades us further into theory craft and away from existing mechanisms.

On the latter issue, presumably you'd have to also acquire the trading partner's approval, and your access to supply could additionally be contained via Congress sanctions enactment -- I am not so sure that being able to spend your way around the limitations of a much more supply-constrained ruleset would be such a bad thing, this is effectively a mechanism available irl to some extent.

I haven't read this thread when posting mine, are we proposing two very similar ideas?

It's fine, I was intending this to be a relatively focused discussion on one possible solution, I take it that your thread is a broader effort attempting to address same underlying issue. I'll keep an eye on both

The better solution would be increasing ways to quickly remove those congestions, which include, but not limited to, more AoE/range/dmg to kill units faster; high mobility to go around the choke points; or terrain destruction/alternation, as they're the kind of micromanagement that actually fun/engaging to player instead of trying to play traffic police or hit and run chirping at 1 target for 10000 years.

Makes sense, let's discuss these in @myclan thread

 

[pineappledan]

Problem with the doom carpet isn't about the number of units (which of course can be solved by increasing unit maintenance or reducing supply) but the high density of units in one specific area that causes congestion and micromanagement (as non-in-combat units can be ordered to just move over turns or stay on-guard and be ignored/hand-off otherwise). Reducing the number of units overall would make warmonger much less fun since your high maintenance handful of troops would get out-maneuvered/out-pillaged by armies of low cost horsemen spreading all over the map.

The better solution would be increasing ways to quickly remove those congestions, which include, but not limited to, more AoE/range/dmg to kill units faster; high mobility to go around the choke points; or terrain destruction/alternation, as they're the kind of micromanagement that actually fun/engaging to player instead of trying to play traffic police or hit and run chirping at 1 target for 10000 years.

If the traffic jam is the only concern then the most elegant solution is limited unit stacking, like the army system in civ 6. Allows for 2+ military supply of units to occupy a single tile.

 

[Tekamthi]

If the traffic jam is the only concern then the most elegant solution is limited unit stacking, like the army system in civ 6. Allows for 2+ military supply of units to occupy a single tile.

As a longtime fan of the series I am not offended by stacking necessarily, but the 1UPT paradigm has been a foundational rule of VP and civ 5 both for so long, i'd be awfully reluctant to change course on it now.

From my point of view, the traffic jams are the main concern in all this recent discussion; perhaps a really smart and appropriately subtle exception to the 1UPT might work, but I don't have a grasp of the particulars. Elsewhere I've made suggestions that, in limited circumstances, a player might be allowed to stack a unit on top of an ally unit, but really for transit purposes-only.

Let's say you allowed stacking, but as soon as combat occured in the plot, best defender was selected via some unspecified criteria, and all stacked units underneath were bounced out of the plot, similar to how this occurs currently the odd time a unit ends up somewhere its not allowed to be. We'd still have 1UPT for combat; something like this might be okay, I'm not sure how it will play though (I had envisioned something like this for situation of foreign units in open borders lands only) -- applied broadly it might get chaotic.

 

[pineappledan]

Idea for how a limited armies mechanic could be implemented without getting out of hand:

• Only the spear/infantry line can form armies. Swords and longswords can't form armies, but will be able to once they upgrade to tercio.
• Discipline promo still exists (+10 HP and +10% ranged defense), but no upgrade to fieldworks/entrenchment/DFP for later units
• Can combine 2 units of the same type into a single Army. Armies have +50 HP and +5 CS over their base unit
• The two units must be full HP.
• The highest promo/XP unit is kept and the lower XP unit is essentially liquidated.
• Armies have a flat +2 maintenance cost and +1 supply compared to a regular unit.

Could increase the CS of armies via tech unlocks or policies so their CS boost doesn't become overshadowed. Could also enable different unit types to form armies as a unique ability. France's UA could allow them to form siege units into armies, for example.

 

[Tekamthi]

• Only the spear/infantry line can form armies. Swords and longswords can't form armies, but will be able to once they upgrade to tercio.
• Discipline promo still exists (+10 HP and +10% ranged defense), but no upgrade to fieldworks/entrenchment/DFP for later units
• Can combine 2 units of the same type into a single Army. Armies have +50 HP and +5 CS over their base unit
• The two units must be full HP.
• The highest promo/XP unit is kept and the lower XP unit is essentially liquidated.
• Armies have a flat +2 maintenance cost and +1 supply compared to a regular unit.

Sounds like a reasonable starting point to me. Couple questions this would raise:

1. what does an army upgrade to?
   • my gut reaction here is it should upgrade into the base unit, and not another army -- this would help serve the role of garbage collector, reducing unit numbers over time/requiring player to make new ones
2. What is the logic the AI would follow for forming army?
   • in the mod you linked in the other thread, the "AI" always upgrades eligible units when they are adjacent -- ie mod presumes it is always better to have an army over 2 separate units. Here the suggestion is that an army won't be the sum of its parts for HP and CS, ie it might be preferable to sometimes make an army, sometimes keep separate units.
   • that other mod did very frequent checks for merging, using the UnitSetXY lua hook -- this is necessary to capture all opportunities for the AI to combine 2 units into an army, and to piggy-back sufficiently on existing mechanisms that AI forms armies frequently; but I suspect this would be too heavy, resource-wise, for general-play. I think we could eliminate the per-move adjacency check if we also require both units have full movement... but we get into some design issues the more we add constraints, mainly that existing AI will only be able to blindly stumble into this mechanism, and not plan for it. Frequent opportunities (ie a per-move basis) allow for AI to stumble into most available opportunities, fewer opportunities (ie turn start only) will result in it missing many. I think we'd need buy in from DLL dev willing/confident in making a more sophisticated decision-tree for any of this army stuff

 

[Rekk]

Isn't there an option in CP that allows 2unit stacking?

 

[Tekamthi]

Isn't there an option in CP that allows 2unit stacking?

yes but afaik its rather flat effect -- there's also option in VP tables that allows any unit type to be given a stacking value. Its been a while since I last tested, assume it still works. I've put a request on git in the hopes that we might be able to modify stacking rule on-the-fly, on per-unit basis. Then we can maybe create some more interesting/appropriate rules

 

[azum4roll]

The better solution would be increasing ways to quickly remove those congestions, which include, but not limited to, more AoE/range/dmg to kill units faster; high mobility to go around the choke points; or terrain destruction/alternation, as they're the kind of micromanagement that actually fun/engaging to player instead of trying to play traffic police or hit and run chirping at 1 target for 10000 years.

These exist lategame in the form of Indirect Fire, planes, and nukes.

Let's say you allowed stacking, but as soon as combat occured in the plot, best defender was selected via some unspecified criteria, and all stacked units underneath were bounced out of the plot, similar to how this occurs currently the odd time a unit ends up somewhere its not allowed to be.

This is how AI often ends up with their units embarked. (Human) players will complain if that happens to them.

 

[usadefcon1]

Let's say you allowed stacking, but as soon as combat occured in the plot, best defender was selected via some unspecified criteria, and all stacked units underneath were bounced out of the plot, similar to how this occurs currently the odd time a unit ends up somewhere its not allowed to be. We'd still have 1UPT for combat; something like this might be okay, I'm not sure how it will play though (I had envisioned something like this for situation of foreign units in open borders lands only) -- applied broadly it might get chaotic.

No, you pick the worst defender to defend and bounce the others. You also make a rule that you cannot attack from a stack.
The idea is to make these units operate similar to the way workers operate now: they can stack but they can't do anything useful when stacked.

 

[azum4roll]

You also make a rule that you cannot attack from a stack.

That creates another problem where you can't attack because your "ally" keeps stacking their units on yours.

 

[Tekamthi]

No, you pick the worst defender to defend and bounce the others. You also make a rule that you cannot attack from a stack.

That creates another problem where you can't attack because your "ally" keeps stacking their units on yours.

I think the only option is to have BOTH defense and attack result in other units getting bounced out of the plot -- any combat bounces the stacked units. Will be a little chaotic, possibly

 

[azum4roll]

I think the only option is to have BOTH defense and attack result in other units getting bounced out of the plot -- any combat bounces the stacked units. Will be a little chaotic, possibly

Sounds great bouncing units into the water