Some suggestions related to 1upt issue

[ShadowWarrior]

I recommend the following suggestions.

Operating on the whole is greater than the sum of its part principle, I recommend that Great General has the ability to improve the collective strength of all units under its command. But this strength improvement can only be achieved if the all units are located on the same hex as the Great General.

The Great General's ability to enhance the overall fighting strength of an army, comprising all units under its command located in the same hex, faces a diminishing return. If an archer as a hit point of 4, two archers led by a Great General has a collective hit point of 10, not 8. That's 5 hit points, not just 4 for each archer. The archers, in another word, gains 1 extra hit point when they are incorporated into a Great General's army. But the diminishing return effect kicks in, and the third archer that is added into the army might gain an extra hit point of just .8, not the entire 1.

The diminishing return effect can be counteracted by technology, Great General experiences, etc.

Rival civilizations' units can share the same hex. If my unit moves into a hex already occupied by another civ's unit, I will be asked if I want to co-occupy that hex or attack that rival civ's unit. On the next turn, if the rival civ's unit has not moved, I can 1) move my unit out of the shared hex, 2) attack that rival civ's unit, or 3) simply stay in the same hex but do nothing.

Two opposing armies can also share the same hex in the exact same manner as described above. Obviously, civilian units and military units from the same or different civ can share the same hex.

 

[MistroPain]

I might be reading this wrong, but it sounds like your suggestion for improving 1UPT is to have multiple units on a single tile?? Unless you mean you can only do this with Great Generals? In which case Civ already has this weird great general race going and this would amplify it, it would need a non-great variant or this would make things worse. Also sharing hexes just sounds bad to me...

 

[ShadowWarrior]

I might be reading this wrong, but it sounds like your suggestion for improving 1UPT is to have multiple units on a single tile?? Unless you mean you can only do this with Great Generals? In which case Civ already has this weird great general race going and this would amplify it, it would need a non-great variant or this would make things worse. Also sharing hexes just sounds bad to me...

That was a horribly written title and I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Scratch that title. I meant to eliminate 1upt completely from Civ series.

 

[jsciv69]

Here's a suggestion

have a Great General transform into a troop transport unit. The load capacity increases per age. The transport can load up to 6- 8units. Then carry them to a designated area or battle. The same can apply to a Great Admiral who could transform into a sea transport for amphibious operations.

 

[Zegangani]

Yep, it sounds like you're suggesting a different version of Stacks of Doom. But the increased Strength of a Unit Type the more Units of the same Type are in a Stack is too OP and would make Warfare an easy Game against the AI. The opposite should be the case, the more Units of the same Type are in a Stack the less Strength they should have (2 Archers wih 15 CS each = 20-25 Strength instead of 30 or more). We want to be able to move Units more freely, which requires some kind of stacking system, but discourage SoD not encourage it.

Anyway, I personally wouldn't approve of that, though you're making some good suggestion regarding Civilian Units sharing the same tile as other Civ's Civilians, but for Military Units it should only be the case with freinds, vassals and allies (or temporary allies, like in emergencies).

 

[Marla_Singer]

Yep, it sounds like you're suggesting a different version of Stacks of Doom. But the increased Strength of a Unit Type the more Units of the same Type are in a Stack is too OP and would make Warfare an easy Game against the AI.

Out of my Civ4 vs Civ5 experience, I would say it's the exact opposite. AI handles better stacks than carpets.

The only thing is that if you can build attacking stacks, then you should be able able to build defensive stacks to counter them efficiently.

 

[GeneralZIft]

You talking like 1UPT is an issue and not just your personal preferences

 

[Zegangani]

Out of my Civ4 vs Civ5 experience, I would say it's the exact opposite. AI handles better stacks than carpets.

I parcially agree with that and partially not.

On one hand (I haven't played Civ4, so take this with a grain of salt), In Civ4 AI seemed to handle Unit management/Combat and warfare in general pretty good, and I often read that AI in Civ4 offered quite a challenge for the Player, so I can see that the Idea suggested by OP could perhaps make Warfare against AI even more challenging here.

But on the other hand, 1UPT in Civ5/6 introduced many new Movement and Combat Rules, which affected Warfare at least to the same degree as the 1UPT Rule itself, so IMO 1UPT is just one half of AI's Issue with Unit Management, and the other half are the new Combat/Movement Rules. So, even if Civ7 would get rid of 1UPT and reintroduce Unit Stacks, I don't think the devs would abandon the new combat rules introduces with Civ5/6's 1UPT (at least not most of them), like the increased and different types of Combat Strength, the more refined Rock/Paper/Scissor system, tile/terrain modifiers, the new movement rules...etc. In Civ4 all of that was simplified, hence easier for AI to understand and use (and not there for the human player to utilise), but in Civ5/6 they got more important/dominant to the point where a normal regular player who knows the combat rules can easily utilise them and beat even a more powerful and advanced AI Player.

Therefore, what I see with Civ5/6 Combat Rules + Stacks in place of 1UPT, is human player completely dominating AI, because now it's not just about number of Units in a Stack, but also tactics, which any human player has the upper hand over the AI. The only difference to that and 1UPT as it is now in Civ6, is that it would make Unit movement easier, but also drag wars for even longer, which isn't challenging: just more Units to kill instead of AI that knows how to strategically stack and position its Units.

IMHO, 1UPT is not an Issue. not properly training AI to use it is. Same as AI War Strategy in general. We often see in Civ6 AI declaring War on someone, then sending a couple of randomly picked Units to attack a City, but then fail to send more Units for reinforcement, or propperly use Siege Units or protect its Cities with AA Units, even having Garissoned Units in some cases...and so on and so on. All of that isn't because of 1UPT, that's an AI issue, that's because the AI wasn't trained enough to be good at warfare, and I suspect that it wasn't even trained to use some of the new rules, such as the terrian modifiers and the reworked strategic resources in GS. When I see an AI Unit on a hill attacking my Unit on a lower ground, I always assume that it's just a coincidence/luck and not because the AI decided to be tactical. And it's those kinds of challanging situations that players find nice and fun, like AI suddenly using its Air Units or properly using Siege Units, that's what makes warfare against AI fun, and not SoD (even if it makes the Player lose sometimes) or having a wave of Enemy Units to deal with that you know it's just a question of time till you defeat them and not of how (no big strategical decisions necessary), and both don't sound like fun to me.

I'm neither pro 1UPT nor against Stacks, I'm open for any new solutions to make Unit Combat/Managment easier for AI and challenging for the human Player, be it limited Stacks, different Unit Classes per tile or just improving Civ6's 1UPT while introducing new rules (like moving through friendly City Centers, having a Unit on the same tile as a friend's/ally's Unit, civilian Unit stacks...etc) that make it easier to handle for both human and AI, all could turn out to be good, only the execution and AI training need to be put more efforts/resources into.

 

[Marla_Singer]

There's been an interesting discussion here about Old World using 1UPT and why it works better there than in Civ:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/soren-johnson-on-1upt-in-old-world.672317/

I haven't played Old World but the discussion remains interesting. In Old World, cities are far more distant of one another than in Civilization. As a result, there's a lot more open space on the map and a much smaller density of units, making it possible to move them freely and avoid trafic jams. This post made the point perfectly:

I really didn't like the 1upt implementation in Civ5. I believe the issue is related to that Jon was trying to implement the fun of "on the ground tactics" like you see in Panzer General, with the World encompassing scale of Civ. PG was able to do this really well as space on the map was huge. But in Civ it failed due to the limits of space on the map. This resulted in traffic jams, or shuffling, or carpet of doom whatever you call it.

This was partly fixed for Civ6 but ultimately due to map scale it still suffers the same problem. An AI or city state left alone for most of the game literally carpets the map with units and it's a horror to navigate. Ed tried to resolve this with more complicated movement rules, but that just led to movement confusion.

1upt works in Old World due to the wide spaces on the map, plus Orders and large movement / attack ranges. We return to the PG principle of wide open spaces and long ranged attacks which as we can see works.

Stacks / 1upt has always been about scale. If your tile represent 10 sq kms it's illogical to stack units. If your tile represents 100 sq kms then 1upt comes across as illogical. And at 10 sq kms your blocked tiles (think mountain ranges) are 15-20 tiles apart. At 100 sq kms they may only be 5 tiles apart. Huge difference in play experiences.