Stack Crowding

[Iceciro]

Yeah, I do have to say, watching out for some arbitrary number based on how many guys I have in an army is a little bit irritating of an idea. As in, if it was put in the game I'd go to extra lengths to mod it out.

You may not like it, but in cases of equal strength, the guy who brought the most stuff wins. And in many cases, bringing a lot of stuff can beat technical or training advantages. Works that way in real war too.

 

[xienwolf]

Mods can't just aim to reduce micromanagement, they have to seek to make micromanagement fun/worthwhile/integral. I mean, if you want a game with no micromanagement, you would flip a coin. The entire reason to play a strategy game is BECAUSE you like to micromanage. But the main catch is for there to be strategic reasons behind all possible choices (which tech do I go for right now? Should this city pump out units, or get some buildings?), rather than to just be there for the sake of being there (Oh, I have to assign all my citizens to specific tiles each turn now? Um... Hand me an FPS game...)

 

[Honor]

What you are referring to is not micromanagement xienwolf, it is simply management. Micro happens when you have to manually do stuff because the game is too dumb to automatically do it for you. So unless you code in a magical button that will create effective attacking stacks of 20 units for me, it will be utterly frustrating micromanagement of each individual stack, which I'd rather not do.

Edit: OK, I'll give an example. Say you have 100 units - 20 melee attackers, 20 archers, 20 mages, 20 mounted units and 20 priests. You have a strategy as well - you want to break this attack force into 5 "divisions" of 4 of each unit type so that they will not suffer from the crowding penalty. At this point you are done with the "management". As soon as you begin manually selecting units from that stack of 100 to make smaller stacks, "micromanagement" begins. That is what I have a problem with. It is not strategy, it is not playing, it is simply doing repetitive, boring menial labor in order to get to where you want to be.

 

[WarKirby]

What do you need 100 units for o.0

I usually conquer the world with a stack of 20 or so highly promoted heroes/immortals/phalanxes/knights/archmages. that's in total, not 20 of each.

I can't understand what you would need that many soldiers for. AoE spells make fighting huge stacks pretty easy, without the necessity to have one of your own.

 

[Aroldo]

Thanks Honor, made a very good point. I think micro gets often out of hand in FFH/FF/CivIV.

 

[Honor]

What do you need 100 units for o.0

I usually conquer the world with a stack of 20 or so highly promoted heroes/immortals/phalanxes/knights/archmages. that's in total, not 20 of each.

I can't understand what you would need that many soldiers for. AoE spells make fighting huge stacks pretty easy, without the necessity to have one of your own.

Here's a counter question for you then: Why would you even propose a stack crowding feature even though it isn't strategically relevant anyway? I usually play huge marathon maps that take around 2000 turns to conquer with my army of mages/heroes/disciples/berserkers/phalanx/shadows/beastmasters/paladins/high priests and an assortment of other lower value units (and if I didn't get Guild of the Nine, it is worse as I have to carry my Champions everywhere I go), so I'd really feel that Crowded promo

(By the way I used to play Total Realism as well - I think it is the second best Civ IV mod ever made. I even thought the Crowded promo was kinda cool back then.)

 

[Honor]

Thanks Honor, made a very good point. I think micro gets often out of hand in FFH/FF/CivIV.

Why, thank you for thanking me Aroldo. Always a pleasure

 

[zup]

Oh I can pretty easily win with just one unit on noble. And it does not have to be Brigit. Hyborem, Eurabatres, Losha Valas, random vampire gone knight...

 

[TheJopa]

Here's a counter question for you then: Why would you even propose a stack crowding feature even though it isn't strategically relevant anyway?

Good answer. If stacks are easy to kill with collateral and AoE spells, and you do not need big stacks, why complicate with crowding?

That being said, I do not like SoD's, and they are boring to fight.

About crowding, it'd hurt AI the most. There are better solutions:

Remove max number of units you can affect with collateral damage. That alone will make SoD's less attractive. Back when civ4 was not yet released, collateral was presented as genial answer to SoD's but limit on max number of units you can get with collateral actually rewards you for having much more units than enemy's collateral max.

Add hard limit on how many troops you can field, based on population, and possibly civics like military state and buildings like barracks. Troops produced above limit would be extremely expensive to upkeep and long to produce (+200% hammer cost)

 

[zbelg]

e: wrong thread

 

[Tarquelne]

There are better solutions:...

I'd like to see Civ4's UI and/or combat engine overhauled. Ideally to the point where we've got something an old-school wargamer would recognized as a wargame. More practically, cut down on the # of "counters" on the map via unit merge/split abilities.

 

[WarKirby]

why complicate with crowding?

Good answer. If stacks are easy to kill with collateral and AoE spells,

You have answered your own question here.

If the AI were taught that big stacks are vulnerable, they would spread out their army in a somewhat more intelligent fashion, and make it harder for you to AoE them into oblivion

Multiple smaller stacks also require you to divide your forces to deal with them.

I can understand not wanting more micromanagement, but micro in the area of military strategy is pretty much a given. Why SHOULDN'T you have to put some thought into commanding your troops? If you're really so intent on not having micromanagement, you could collect everything into one big stack and point it at the enemy capital. Depending on the difficulty, that might actually work, but it hardly requires much forethought or decision making.

FFH provides many more tools than base CivIV, for countering huge stacks. But the AI doesn't seem to realise that you have 50 ritualists with ring of flames ready to go, and they'll march up to you in one single formation anyways. This idea would solve that problem.

Do bear in mind, the figure of 20 was just a suggestion. It's open for discussion of course.

 

[Honor]

I'd like to see Civ4's UI and/or combat engine overhauled. Ideally to the point where we've got something an old-school wargamer would recognized as a wargame. More practically, cut down on the # of "counters" on the map via unit merge/split abilities.

Oh yes, that would make managing units so much easier if implemented correctly. Instead of having a "stack" of 20 warriors we could have only 1 instance of a warrior object that would represent 20 warriors (probably with a number on top of it or something). XP would not be calculated individually for each unit used to form the new object, but rather an average value would be taken for each unit that was merged. Attacking and defending mechanics would remain the same as if you were attacking/defending with a stack. That would be very cool and really help people manage their troops more effectively as well as speeding up the game.

We could even have a crowding feature with virtually no micro issues that way