Stacking units in cities

Osvaldo Manso

Warlord
Joined
Jul 28, 2006
Messages
282
Location
Lisbon, Portugal, Europe
Most Sid Meier's Civilization players are aware of the "rule of stacking units": when two or more units are located in the same square (stacked), if attacked, only the unit with the highest defense value enters the combat. If this unit loses, all other units are lost. The only exception to this rule occurs at cities: in this case, when attacked, units defend one at a time, starting with the unit which has the highest defense value. If this unit loses combat, then the next unit enters the action, until the enemy unit is defeated or, if things go poorly, all units are lost (and most probably the city will fall into the enemy).

Now, I think I found an exception to this exception, I mean an exception to the rule I explained above, when units are stacked in cities. The case is this: if a city has a population of only 10,000 (size 1), even if it is defended by more than one unit, all units will be lost if the best defensive unit loses the combat. Of course, the city is destroyed as well.

In my present game, it happened that one of my newest cities was only defended by a non-veteran Phalanx and was under attack by barbarian Cavalry units. Usually, a single fortified Phalanx inside a city is enough to defeat a barbarian Cavalry unit. However, to see what could happen, I moved a nearby Settler unit and a Diplomat unit to the city. Guess what... the barbarians killed my Phalanx unit, immediately city size dropped by one point causing it to disappear and I got the message that 2 units were destroyed (the Settler and Diplomat units). Please note that the barbarian Cavalry attacked only once.

This was new to me, because I was expecting that the Diplomat and the Settler unit would survive the attack because they were in a city by the time of the attack.

It's amazing how after 22 years of playing, I'm still learning new things!
 
It's more probably the latter. Defending units in a size 1 city that are homed in other cities will survive upon the city's destruction, at least in my experience. But bugs do happen in Civ. There are also other well-known exceptions: fortresses and stacks of over 10 units. 10 units is the maximum amount that can perish in a land battle, not sure about stacked transports at sea. So if you attack 12 stacked defenders in the open, two of them will survive, even if your attack is successful.
 
...This was new to me, because I was expecting that the Diplomat and the Settler unit would survive the attack because they were in a city by the time of the attack.

It's amazing how after 22 years of playing, I'm still learning new things!
Your exception needs rephrasing: stacked units in a Pop1 city all die if the top-defender loses and the city has no Walls -- because as well as boosting D-values, CivDOS Walls prevent pop-loss when a town-defender dies. (But Walls are/were so damn expensive in CivDOS -- dropping the shield-cost in Civ3 was definitely an improvement, IMHO!)

So if your Pop1 town had been walled, it wouldn't have been razed, and the Diplomat and Settler would have survived at least the first Barb-attack. Instead, after the Phalanx died, the game then treated the other 2 units as though they were on open ground, and killed them too.

Of course, if there were 3 or more Barb-Cavs, then even with Walls, you'd still have lost all units and the town, because Settlers and Diplos have D=0, so wouldn't have been any use as 'defenders' against the next Barb-attacks. BUT the Barbs would have captured the town instead of razing it, and then you could have got it back later -- provided the Barbs didn't sell off the Walls in the meantime...
 
There are also other well-known exceptions: fortresses and stacks of over 10 units. 10 units is the maximum amount that can perish in a land battle, not sure about stacked transports at sea. So if you attack 12 stacked defenders in the open, two of them will survive, even if your attack is successful.

Thanks for clarifying that, Mize! I was aware of the benefits of fortresses although I rarely use them but I have forgotten about the ">10 units stacks". Anyway, I think it is just a curiosity because who would want to risk losing 10 units in a single combat?
 
Your exception needs rephrasing: stacked units in a Pop1 city all die if the top-defender loses and the city has no Walls -- because as well as boosting D-values, CivDOS Walls prevent pop-loss when a town-defender dies. (But Walls are/were so damn expensive in CivDOS -- dropping the shield-cost in Civ3 was definitely an improvement, IMHO!)

So if your Pop1 town had been walled, it wouldn't have been razed, and the Diplomat and Settler would have survived at least the first Barb-attack. Instead, after the Phalanx died, the game then treated the other 2 units as though they were on open ground, and killed them too.

Of course, if there were 3 or more Barb-Cavs, then even with Walls, you'd still have lost all units and the town, because Settlers and Diplos have D=0, so wouldn't have been any use as 'defenders' against the next Barb-attacks. BUT the Barbs would have captured the town instead of razing it, and then you could have got it back later -- provided the Barbs didn't sell off the Walls in the meantime...

Yes, you are completely right! But "in the real world" who would build City Walls in size 1 city? Anyway, the rule must take the effect of City Walls into account.
 
Indeed, the cavalry attack caused the city population to drop to zero, thus destroying the city, thus all the units in it.

Yes, I think this is how the computer dealed with the barbarian attack. I just don't think it should be like this. In fact, I don't even know why cities should be destroyed. I think it could be interesting to have ghost cities with all the streets and buildings but no population - size 0 cities. These cities would maintain their original civ colour on the map view until they would be occupied by another civilization. Of course they would not produce anything since they had no one to work the land. Well, it's just an idea!
 
I think it could be interesting to have ghost cities with all the streets and buildings but no population - size 0 cities. These cities would maintain their original civ colour on the map view until they would be occupied by another civilization. Of course they would not produce anything since they had no one to work the land. Well, it's just an idea!

Very good idea, and this idea has a precedent. There is an extremely entertaining card game called Nuclear War, and rules exist for incorporating these cards into the board-game Risk. Satisfyingly, this reduces playing time from the usual 6 hours of a Risk game, to about two hours.

To the point, one of the provisions of Nuclear Risk is that nuked provinces are "ghosted" for a certain number of turns, unable to be entered by any army, depending on the megatonnage dropped on them. Three units in a province, hit by 50 megatons, kills the armies and ghosts the place for two turns.

Incorporating such a game-rule into Civ, however, would be only slightly less difficult than re-writing the whole game's code.
 
I think there may be another exception to the stacking rule-if multiple units are in a fortress, do they also defend one at a time?
 
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