Stacking Limits

[Chazcon]

A lot of talk about 1 unit per tile - versus the Stack of Doom.

SOD has always been odd to me, and unrealistic. I have played around with stacking limits in mods, where I limit 1 unit of each class that can stack together. Also tried 4 units of each class, which starts to be both more flexible and realistic. I have used 10 units of any type also, to limit the SOD effect. Even just that is better than original imho.

I've made a naval stacking limit so that only 1 naval unit per tile is allowed, but transports and landing craft don't count toward this limit. (or invisible submarines of course). I think that feels more realistic.

Air units - 1 unit per tile per original Civ 4 code. Just seems right.

I wouldn't worry so much about 1 unit per tile - I know they will get it right.

 

[Tholish]

A hard one unit per hex system would make any kind of combined arms concepts have to be blown way out of scale to work, thus the archer shooting over a sea. Going to just two per hex allows combined arms and a shrinking to rationalizable scales, ie shooting into the adjacent hex.
Please.

 

[largedarryl]

The only advantage that SOD adds is ease of use. I had already found the army management in CivIV to approach the over micro-management realm.

So the only way I can see 1 unit (or limited units) per tile mechanic working is by making drastic changes to battle mechanics and unit costs. If military units cost more money and require more than 1 turn to be destroyed, hence limiting the micro-management issues.

I also don't want to run into a mental chinese finger trap trying to move armies.

 

[Chazcon]

There are many tools for organizing, grouping, and moving large stacks in Civ 4, both as part of the original game and mods (like PLE).

 

[deanej]

Really? I don't know of any other than the SOD.

 

[largedarryl]

There are many tools for organizing, grouping, and moving large stacks in Civ 4, both as part of the original game and mods (like PLE).

And all of these would be pointless when dealing with the mental chinese finger trap problem encountered when building large armies.

I also couldn't imagine the logistical problems moving an army through a choke point. Imagine a stack of 10 archers moving to defend another city, and all having to move through a 1 hex choke point.

 

[cyther]

Assigning a "Size" to units could be an interesting system. Say that different units have different sizes and a certain max size for a hex could be assigned as well.

Say that warriors have a size of 1 and Catapults have a size of something like 3. You move a small stack into a tile such as grassland (5 max) but it has a forest (-1 to the max). That could fit a catapult and a warrior or four warriors. You try to attack a hex that is another grassland but it has a fort so there that would increase the max by something like 2. Anyways, if later units are larger we could have a line system in the late game and a stack system in the early game.

 

[morss_4]

I also couldn't imagine the logistical problems moving an army through a choke point. Imagine a stack of 10 archers moving to defend another city, and all having to move through a 1 hex choke point.

First of all, the hassle involved would depend greatly on the movement rate of the archers. There is no reason to assume it must be 1. It could easily be 4 or 5.

Second of all, one could argue this is a "feature" not a flaw. One should perhaps be expected to plan around not being able to move huge armies through tiny choke points easily, or, alternatively, around forcing your enemies to do so.

 

[Chazcon]

The logical way to do this would be to add some supply system and allow units to live off the land.
Here is a possible way it could work:

You are allowed 1 + (amount of food produced on this tile) units per tile. This means that you can move an army through fertile farm land much faster than through barren peaks - which makes sense.

If a stack is in a city, the amount of food said to be produced by that city is its food surplus (the bit that goes towards making the city grow.

Do not have a hard cap for the number of units, but for each unit above the limit in the tile every unit suffers a 2% health hit.


You can boost the number of units allowed on a tile by having a "supply line". Supply lines are a direct link from your stack back to one of your cities, and a stack with a supply line is allowed 50% more units. A supply line can be obtained by having either:
a) A road which goes through friendly/allied/neutral territory from the stack to a friendly city
b) Having a series of "supply depots" running from the tile where the stack is to either a friendly city of a friendly/allied/neutral road. Supply depots would be built automatically at the end of every turn by a "caravan" unit and would cost nothing, but would be automatically destroyed if an enemy unit moves unto it.


I know that this is a somewhat complicated system but it is both historically accurate and provides a much greater level of strategic depth to war.

Sounds like a good idea for a mod

 

[Suspiria]

No limits please. One unit per tile is a terrible, terrible idea.

 

[CTH]

The only bad and unrealistic thing with 1 unit per hex is that it will be much harder to defend a certain hex. I cant see a realistic reason why the number of defenders would be exact the same as the number of attackers (1 warrior attackin another warrior). I think that limit the number of units is great but I would like to see that you could have two units per hex, that would force you to make strategic choices (should I stack 1 horse archer + 1 spearman or 2 horse archers or 1 horse and 1 axman?) but still wont make you loose the control over a hex on just bad luck. As we all know, 99% is sometimes not enough
I would even argue that two units per hex gives a more strategic game than 1 unit per hex due to that you more or less would make new units depending on what combi of units you put together.

 

[hrman]

No limits please. One unit per tile is a terrible, terrible idea.

Agreed...this concept would totally destroy the scale of the game. It's exactly what happened to other games (I'm thinking of the Heroes of Might & Magic series) when graphics concerns were allowed to trump gameplay considerations and "reality". Instead of feeling vast, the game world started to feel like the cities were right next to each other.

Think about previous versions of Civ...If the scale of one tile is 100-500 miles (depending on game settings) for example, there is more than enough room for several units in a tile and the maps we have been looking at in the previous iterations of Civ make sense. There's no problem there to be fixed - SODs just represent a concentration of units in one area, which happens in any real world battle. This scale also makes most of the maps in the series reasonably accurate

However, if Civ5 is going to introduce one unit per tile, and ranged combat over multiple hexes as many suppose, this would mean that the scale of the tiles has to be measured in yards, rather than miles. Does this mean that there will be millions (maybe even billions) of tiles even in a map just of France, let alone a entire continent or the whole world? Obviously, that's not reasonable for system resources and wouldn't make a fun game that anyone wants to play even it was. To me, this means that a straight one unit per tile Civ 5 would be doomed to failure before it even got off the ground - it would be fatally unrealistic, totally lose it's sense of scale, or it would be a nightmare of tedium.

The only way I see to make one unit per tile work would be to introduce the concept of a tactical map. The strategic (main) map would remain on the same scale as it is now, with unlimited stacking in each tile being perfectly acceptable. Then, when two different warring armies (one or more units) occupy the same hex, the game would change to tactical mode, which would feature scales less than 1000 yards per hex and could incorporate one unit per hex rules as well as ranged combat. Players would arrange all of their forces in the strategic tile at the beginning of the battle into tiles on the tactical map, and the battle would proceed with movement and attacks from there.

The best example of this in practice is the HOMM series I mentioned before - the system works very well, but requires much more attention to combat than the CIV series historically has featured, and I'm not sure it would go over well with the Civ community (picture the game as it is now, but with each individual battle taking several minutes or even hours). In addition, the HOMM model was fatally flawed (in my opinion) by the decision in later games to have graphical concerns dominate decisions on the layout of the strategic map. This is what destroyed the sense of scale in HOMM 4 and HOMM 5 and made these games less than they should have been.

Long explanation, for a short bottom line point that I repeat from your post above - one unit per tile is a terrible, terrible idea.

 

[Thormodr]

SODs are a terrible, terrible idea. Having 30 units camped out near your city for years and not starving to death or totally devastating the environment is ridiculous.

Perhaps the scale thing might be a problem for some people but many things have to be abstracted in the game anyway. Like your leader living 6,000 years for example. Not a big deal.

I trust Firaxis' two years of development over any opinion on these boards where we only have vague details about the game so far.

It's a good thing.

 

[hrman]

The only bad and unrealistic thing with 1 unit per hex is that it will be much harder to defend a certain hex. I cant see a realistic reason why the number of defenders would be exact the same as the number of attackers (1 warrior attackin another warrior). I think that limit the number of units is great but I would like to see that you could have two units per hex, that would force you to make strategic choices (should I stack 1 horse archer + 1 spearman or 2 horse archers or 1 horse and 1 axman?) but still wont make you loose the control over a hex on just bad luck. As we all know, 99% is sometimes not enough
I would even argue that two units per hex gives a more strategic game than 1 unit per hex due to that you more or less would make new units depending on what combi of units you put together.

Two is better than one, but there's just no logical reason for any limit on the number of units in a stack.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Now we will have a country (which is preparing to war) with units on all hexes.

 

[Cashew]

The only bad and unrealistic thing with 1 unit per hex is that it will be much harder to defend a certain hex. I cant see a realistic reason why the number of defenders would be exact the same as the number of attackers (1 warrior attackin another warrior). I think that limit the number of units is great but I would like to see that you could have two units per hex, that would force you to make strategic choices (should I stack 1 horse archer + 1 spearman or 2 horse archers or 1 horse and 1 axman?) but still wont make you loose the control over a hex on just bad luck. As we all know, 99% is sometimes not enough
I would even argue that two units per hex gives a more strategic game than 1 unit per hex due to that you more or less would make new units depending on what combi of units you put together.

Who said percents would be in the game? Maybe odds are gonna be taken out. No one knows.

Too much damned speculation in these threads.

 

[Bob1475]

I think hrman's proposal is brilliant. It addresses both issues but certainly will add time as we will need to deploy our units in the tactical map when a battle ensues.

Unfortunately I don't think this is what the developers have in mind. They clearly are looking for an extended (German invasion of Russia in WWII) front line with emphasis on issues relating to hills and rivers. I am just not sure how that works out but I am willing to try. I find the CIV 4 SOD complex with use of artillery,etc. I like the idea of ranged units.

We will have to wait and see but I hope they maintain a balance between economic and military issues.

 

[NukeAJS]

One unit per tile but some units having range (that increases on hills) would make the game feel more like chess. For example, many chess players have their pawns out in front (melee units), while they have their bishops behind the pawns attacking diagonals (artillery) and knights right behind pawns to either threaten the opponent's pawn-line from afar (archers) or threaten other-similar pieces behind the front line (other archers).

One problem I see is that if units are not destroyed immediately during combat and it takes several turns to resolve a battle, you'd get one specific battle taking 200+ years in ancient times (assuming the time-system will remain the same).

 

[hrman]

SODs are a terrible, terrible idea. Having 30 units camped out near your city for years and not starving to death or totally devastating the environment is ridiculous.

Perhaps the scale thing might be a problem for some people but many things have to be abstracted in the game anyway. Like your leader living 6,000 years for example. Not a big deal.

I trust Firaxis' two years of development over any opinion on these boards where we only have vague details about the game so far.

It's a good thing.

First, I'll start by agreeing with you. The developers of CIV have consistently put out a quality product in all iterations, and deserve a little bit of trust. You're also right that we don't have a lot of details and are commenting on information that may be wrong or incomplete - that's what this type of board is for. By working together as a community, we can try to logically figure out things based on the information that is out there, and also figure out what info might be bogus or misreported. In addition, I think we all hope (obviously, almost certainly unrealistically) that these boards are constantly being read by the game designers who are just waiting to take in all of our ideas.

My post was actually meant to be part of that process - by pointing out the problems inherent to a one unit per tile game, I was pointing out the fact that I've yet to see it really work in any strategy game and maintain the sense of historical realism (sometimes faint, but almost always there) that has grounded CIV so well in the past. In doing so, I'm both giving reasons why I believe the one unit per tile report/rumor might be false and, if it is true, also trying to (almost certainly uselessly, I know) give a nudge to the game designers to create a product that is true to what makes CIV special.

P.S. Comparing the leader issue and the scale issue is like comparing apples and bowling balls. They have very little to do with each other. The name and picture of the leader issue is purely cosmetic and has no real impact on game play. The sense of scale, however, hits you in the face every time you play.

 

[Thormodr]

First, I'll start by agreeing with you. The developers of CIV have consistently put out a quality product in all iterations, and deserve a little bit of trust. You're also right that we don't have a lot of details and are commenting on information that may be wrong or incomplete - that's what this type of board is for. By working together as a community, we can try to logically figure out things based on the information that is out there, and also figure out what info might be bogus or misreported. In addition, I think we all hope (obviously, almost certainly unrealistically) that these boards are constantly being read by the game designers who are just waiting to take in all of our ideas.

My post was actually meant to be part of that process - by pointing out the problems inherent to a one unit per tile game, I was pointing out the fact that I've yet to see it really work in any strategy game and maintain the sense of historical realism (sometimes faint, but almost always there) that has grounded CIV so well in the past. In doing so, I'm both giving reasons why I believe the one unit per tile report/rumor might be false and, if it is true, also trying to (almost certainly uselessly, I know) give a nudge to the game designers to create a product that is true to what makes CIV special.

P.S. Comparing the leader issue and the scale issue is like comparing apples and bowling balls. They have very little to do with each other. The name and picture of the leader issue is purely cosmetic and has no real impact on game play. The sense of scale, however, hits you in the face every time you play.

Good post. I guess we really won't know until the game is released whether 1 unit per hex was the right decision. Time will tell but I think Firaxis has earned my trust and hopefully most other Civers.