RFC players' first impression of Civ 5

[Úmarth]

Yeah I think my #1 priority tweak for Civ 5 would be to have somewhere -- cities, forts, anything -- where stacks were allowed for 'storage'. It's such a pain finding somewhere to put your troops when you're not at war: cities and choke points make sense from a strategic point of view, but leads to traffic jams, but even if you can find an "out of the way" spot it means longer marches when the fighting begins.

 

[Mxzs]

Some tweaks are absolutely necessary to get the vanilla game to work, and I'd put a "store room" for demobilized units at the top of it.

But after reading the modder's guide I'm willing to cut the game a lot more slack. I get the strong impression they intended the vanilla release to be a basic platform/engine for modders. That is all to the good in the long run, because it means we can get tons of interesting, fun, ingenious variations (which apparently can be plugged into each other). The price they/we pay is that the engine itself has to be stripped down to near nothing on first release, and that makes for a bland and personality-free initial impression.

 

[Elenhil]

Or rather increase peacetime maintenance costs to discourage having more troops than you can handle.

 

[LuKo]

I think that removing 1UPT is the best solution Of course most of units should have massive collateral damage to prevent stacking during wartime.

 

[Mxzs]

I think that removing 1UPT is the best solution Of course most of units should have massive collateral damage to prevent stacking during wartime.

It's been a long time, but wasn't that the way Civ I worked? I seem to recall that stacking was possible, but you never did it for fear that you'd lose everything in one foul swoop.

 

[KMRblue1027]

It's been a long time, but wasn't that the way Civ I worked? I seem to recall that stacking was possible, but you never did it for fear that you'd lose everything in one foul swoop.

I've been suggesting a Civ2 style stacking for like 2 weeks but everyone ignores my posts.
Civ2 style worked well and allowed settler stacking. In fact I'm playing a ToT game right now.

Spoiler :

 

[Mxzs]

Am I the only one who keeps winding up with the 1upt rule suspended on Mod maps? I noted earlier that I was able to stack units on the TSL Huge Earth map. Well, tonight I imported the RFC map into CiV, did a few tweaks of it in World Builder, and saved it. I didn't do any modding, only WBing. I launched it to play, and I and all the other players are able to stack.

I guess I'm just going to keep inventing new ways of being stupid until I exhaust myself. I shouldn't assume others are as dumb as I am, but on the off chance someone else is thick like I am ...

Be careful with mods. When they are "enabled" it means they interact with games that are launched through the mod section. For instance, I loaded the new RFC CiV map through the Mods section so that I would get correct starting locations. (Loading it thru Single Player >> Set Up kept pitching me into non-historical starting locations.) And I found that my units would stack. After playing around and thinking about it, I realized it was because I had downloaded, installed, and enabled the Legions mod, which turns stacking on. After un-enabling the Legions mod, stacking went away in a newly launched RFC-map game.

How-to background: Under Mods >> Browse Mods you will get a list of mods that you have downloaded. Next to each one is a green checkmark button. If you have the Legions mod and check it on, your units will stack, even in an RFC-map game launched thru the Mods section. If you uncheck it, you will get the standard 1upt.

@ KMRblue: Boy, that takes me back. I'd have earned my degree a year earlier if it hadn't been for Civ2 ...

 

[SalmonSoil]

I think having storerooms is the best idea. Cities and fortresses /citadels should both be storerooms. Of course we need to ensure that doesn't just mean it's impossible to capture cities ebcause of stacks...

 

[Elenhil]

Isn't it logical for a country not to have more troops than it can station? This is not cIV, fewer units will work fine. Playing Greece and dreaming of the largest army on Earth? Conquer Persia first!
Seriously, I do not think the civs to be present in RFCV would suffer from lack of space. England would be the smallest country landwise. But it will compensate the lack of troops with navy which will support its continental ambitions just fine for a small army to establish a foothold in France.

 

[Leoreth]

I agree that a large army should be difficult to maintain for small nations, but shouldn't that be for more logical reasons like lacking supplies and manpower and not because their country is too small to fit their army in?

 

[Úmarth]

I think having storerooms is the best idea. Cities and fortresses /citadels should both be storerooms. Of course we need to ensure that doesn't just mean it's impossible to capture cities ebcause of stacks...

You could say that in battles only the strongest unit in a stack counts. Or alternatively maybe stacked units get their strengths added together but in diminishing amounts, so the total strength of the stack would be the strength of the first unit + half the strength of the second unit + a quarter of the strength of the third unit, and so on. It would be pretty punishing to lose an entire stack to one unit, but I don't see how you can get around being punishing without defeating the entire purpose of 1upt.

Also it would probably be a good idea to limit the amount of units that can be "stored" (like 3 in a fort, 5 in a city, etc.) to keep some of the lag-busting aspects of 1upt.

 

[Elenhil]

Aren't supplies and manpower usually correlated with territorial extent? It seems tiny countries with abundant natural resources enough to support an oversized army are at best exception to the rule.

Anyway, it does not put too much of a strain on RFCV's future playability to have small countries unable to produce armies it cannot station. What's the point? Surplus manpower? Go conquer more territories. At war? Send them to the front line. Nothing to loaf about for back in the rear.

 

[Úmarth]

Isn't it logical for a country not to have more troops than it can station? This is not cIV, fewer units will work fine. Playing Greece and dreaming of the largest army on Earth? Conquer Persia first!
Seriously, I do not think the civs to be present in RFCV would suffer from lack of space. England would be the smallest country landwise. But it will compensate the lack of troops with navy which will support its continental ambitions just fine for a small army to establish a foothold in France.

As Leoreth said it's not that logical. But the core of the problem is not that there is a restriction on the amount of civs but just how large restriction is, and how annoyingly it's enforced. A civ like Greece would probably be limited to less then ten troops, and even if they had five it would be an absolute nightmare to move them around.

Aren't supplies and manpower usually correlated with territorial extent? It seems tiny countries with abundant natural resources enough to support an oversized army are at best exception to the rule.

Anyway, it does not put too much of a strain on RFCV's future playability to have small countries unable to produce armies it cannot station. What's the point? Surplus manpower? Go conquer more territories. At war? Send them to the front line. Nothing to loaf about for back in the rear.

Very weakly, I would say. Case in point: England vs. Russia between 1500 and 1900.

Have you actually played Civ 5, btw? You don't seem to be grasping how restricting 1upt can be with regard to "storage". It's not that it stops you from having oversized armies: just having the bare minimum number of troops to defend yourself is a hassle.

 

[Elenhil]

A civ like Greece would probably be limited to less then ten troops, and even if they had five it would be an absolute nightmare to move them around.

Would it, indeed? Why do you really need to move troops around Greece, first of all? It is not usually besieged from anywhere except the Balkans to station them deep inside your borders. Put them in the North, for God's sake, and train them on the Brutes. Or march them across the Bosporus - that's where they really belong. They can come back on vacation to heal up, but hardy all at the same time (bad generalship, then!).

Case in point: England vs. Russia between 1500 and 1900.

Technological differences, to my mind. A civ capable of extracting Coal and building Factories vs. a civ stuck without a Civil Service, in CiV terms accounts for the overall hammer output.

Have you actually played Civ 5, btw? You don't seem to be grasping how restricting 1upt can be with regard to "storage". It's not that it stops you from having oversized armies: just having the bare minimum number of troops to defend yourself is a hassle.

I confess, I've only played the demo so far. What I do not grasp is what number of units you are speaking of. My BC Egypt has enough space to "store" up to 2 dozens of units, should I need them. They posed no problem for my civilian unit to move around. It seems the problem is with the logistics of moving them out, not with storing them, and that's quite another problem, isn't it?

 

[Leoreth]

Technological differences, to my mind. A civ capable of extracting Coal and building Factories vs. a civ stuck without a Civil Service, in CiV terms accounts for the overall hammer output.

Then why not let these factors decide about the size of an army they can field, as opposed to available land?

 

[Elenhil]

I think the ideal balance would be to supply England and Greece, to name the smallest nations, with just enough resources to build the first small army to start grabbing larger territories. Great Britain itself should not be as full of pre-industrial resources as, say, Russia is. But if research modifiers are timed right, it will begin exploiting them well before Russia does.

 

[Baldyr]

Instead of figuring out how/where to station a standing army, perhaps it doesn't make perfect sense to have a mobilized standing army in peacetime? So you'd demobilize those units and store the unit data in the mod. Then once you need to mobilize, and only then, you get to place those units on the map.

Makes sense? Or cities could hold demobilized unit data that gets displayed in the city screen - and counts to your overall power rating. But there would be no actual units in the city - since they aren't mobilized. Perhaps forts would make better military bases in peacetime?

 

[Leoreth]

Possible, but isn't simply allowing unit stacking in cities a less cumbersome solution?

 

[Baldyr]

Yeah, probably. But there wouldn't be any maintenance for demobilized units...

If unit stacking can be achieved in cities just like that, then it would pretty much solve the problem, not? (Units might not be able to defend the city however, but they would be considered demobilized anyway.)

 

[Elenhil]

Hey, demobilization - great idea! Though some maintenance must still remain - otherwise there will be almost no downside to it. Perhaps a slow degradation in experience?