Stop Trying to make Civ V into a war simulator

[frekk]

I don't think there is going to be more micromanagement. Yes, 1 upt means there will be far more "stacks" to move. But the unit count is going to be drastically reduced. Sure, once you build your SOD it can be moved about with 1 click, but, there's ALOT of work involved assembling the thing and collecting all the units, and while movement may be a 1-click business, battle is not. You have to operate many dozens of units individually and afterwards, sort out the damaged units and units needing promotion from among the stack. Plus there are reinforcements arriving as individual units and so on and so on. All this easily adds up to much more micromanagement than what I foresee for civ5.

As far as it being "too military" well, whether you like it or not, civ has always featured war as a fairly central aspect of the game. But I don't see it increasing its role in civ5. Just because it's being made more realistic doesn't mean you will be involved with it more - there's a difference between quality and quantity. With the unit count being lowered so drastically (with some suggestion that it will average only about 3 units per city or so) I expect that you will actually spend about the same amount of time or less on military aspects. You'll just be doing different things. Instead of the tedium of mindlessly shuffling massive numbers of units round after round, you'll be carefully plotting the moves of a tiny number of units.

 

[apelsinlax]

On some level, I am vexed by the whole idea that, in a hex that takes forty years to traverse, I have only one "unit" (ten axemen? fifty? ten thousand?) so if they are going that way, then why not just make units "armies" with mixed forces, and the AI can calculate the effect of your technology on the army's performance? Just a thought...

This...

I would like if they did get away from the "unit" model of combat, instead have units act more like cities, they have a location and a range of operations they can conduct from it. Essentially they control an Area rather than a single tile (similar to Air units)

and this!

To me that sounds awesome if the ideas were worked on and perfected.

 

[sbrylski06]

Why is it assumed that there must be a tradeoff? Better war, diplomacy, or domestic management aren't mutually exclusive.

We'll have better and more tactical war with 1UPT, less units, 'roided terrain benefits, and resource rationing.

Jury is out on diplomacy. We should gain from the affect of city-states, but the elimination of religion might mean the net gain is neutral.

Domestic development should be improved with a more intricate "civics" tree and single tile expansion of city borders.

Just because we know most about the new military features, doesn't mean the game is moving laterally in that direction. We have much more to learn about Civ V, but the only direction the game appears to be moving is up - as each Civ game has done in all aspects.

 

[Vatras]

I do not mind an improvement in the art of war (if it turns out to be an improvement indeed), but what I really want from Civ V is improved diplomacy and trade (with more options), several features that were present in SMACX, and more pointed differences between forms of rulership (I may have been reading too much Macchiavelli lately, but I find his Discorsi very interesting ).

 

[idle]

I don't think the trouble with civ is too little impact of military adventures or to little "civilization building". The thing that is sorely lacking in civ is that it's way too easy to "hold on to" your civilizations power. The fact is, no civ (IRL) has been able to hold on to its influence for the entire human period. Internal strife and power struggles have been major factors in history, but is not a factor in civ at all (with the exception of the simplistic "capture capital to split empire"-function in civ1 and the Revolutions mod in civ4).

I'd like to see more focus in that area. You should be paranoid not only about Monty next door, but also that sly cousin of yours in your second largest city

 

[sbrylski06]

I don't think the trouble with civ is too little impact of military adventures or to little "civilization building". The thing that is sorely lacking in civ is that it's way too easy to "hold on to" your civilizations power. The fact is, no civ (IRL) has been able to hold on to its influence for the entire human period. Internal strife and power struggles have been major factors in history, but is not a factor in civ at all (with the exception of the simplistic "capture capital to split empire"-function in civ1 and the Revolutions mod in civ4).

I'd like to see more focus in that area. You should be paranoid not only about Monty next door, but also that sly cousin of yours in your second largest city

I agree. The theme of control versus reaction is being discussed in another thread, but I personally would love to play more as a solitary leader in the Civ World than as the collective will of a nation. The collective will of the nation should not be up to me, but its actually real world factors.

Cities and populations are not just united politically (which Civ only represents), but economically, culturally, and religiously.

The player should have some control on all those factors, but regions should group themselves by all those factors.

(From a Civ IV mindset) That is, if a third of your nation is the wrong religion, there should be some serious pressure to keep them in line militarily/culturally lest they defect. If trade routes are tied in to religious affinity, that would make a city even more eager to defect as they could see even more of a benefit with shifting their political allegiance.

Sometimes, perhaps often, empire expansion (or contraction) should only take a nudge or less, not a war.

I'm rambling, because I pulled an all-nighter, but circling back, Civ takes political unification as a given, when its really a factor of economics, culture, and religion. This should be flushed out.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Absolutely, it was pretty clear IMO from the outset that there would likely be some kind of "formation move" UI. Maybe you can band-box select a group and set that to be a formation.

However, shuffling them through a choke-point could still have some pathing issues and encourage micromanagement, but I think that's unavoidable.
It won't be perfect, but hopefully the pathfinding will recognize that the "formation" is trying to go through the choke, and so units will wait their turn to pass through when the choke is blocked, rather than diverting to try to go the "long way" around.

The problem is the 'formation-move' will almost certainly be like the city governor, you can only use it when you don't really care if its inefficient.

For "stack-move" you didn't have to worry (except a little bit when you were stack attacking and so you had to split the stack then)

If Terrain is important, you can't just "assemble your Block of death" and then auto move it to the enemy city, instead you have to consider each time you move which units will move where.... the "Bloc of death" will have to be reorganized each turn that you move because you will be on a new terrain set up. (unless you are in friendly territory in which case you just tell your units to move to their assembly point in the formation of the 'bloc of death')

(Noe: enemy unit positions would also be an important 'terrain' factor that you couldn't just 'formation-move' through)


Formation move will probably be in, but it will almost never be used by players who actually want their units to survive and do damage.

The only way to truly minimize MM is through limiting unit numbers.

 

[Ahriman]

Formation move will probably be in, but it will almost never be used by players who actually want their units to survive and do damage.

There are still many times when it could be useful; for example, when you're at peace.
Or when you want to move your army that has been invading player X away to go fend off Player Y; there is still a lot of MM to be avoided by getting it to move most of the way with a single select group + right click.
[Imagine you're France and you're just finishnig in a war with Italy, and now England declares war on you might invade your north coast; make peace with Italy, band-box select your units, right click up near northern France. A clever formation-pathing system sends your whole formation one at a time through a narrow pass in the alps (with the slower units going first, so the faster units can then catch up and end up at the destination at the same time), rather than "blocked" units acting stupidly and turning around to try to get there by going via Austria.]

So I think "almost never" is probably inaccurate.

I agree that when there is actual threat of attack and where terrain and positioning matters, you'll usualyl want to MM your units individually.

But as I said, that's unavoidable.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

There are still many times when it could be useful; for example, when you're at peace.
Or when you want to move your army that has been invading player X away to go fend off Player Y; there is still a lot of MM to be avoided by getting it to move most of the way with a single select group + right click.
[Imagine you're France and you're just finishnig in a war with Italy, and now England declares war on you might invade your north coast; make peace with Italy, band-box select your units, right click up near northern France. A clever formation-pathing system sends your whole formation one at a time through a narrow pass in the alps (with the slower units going first, so the faster units can then catch up and end up at the destination at the same time), rather than "blocked" units acting stupidly and turning around to try to get there by going via Austria.]

So I think "almost never" is probably inaccurate.

I agree that when there is actual threat of attack and where terrain and positioning matters, you'll usualyl want to MM your units individually.

But as I said, that's unavoidable.

Actually in that case you probably Wouldn't want that...
In the 'antiItallian Box' my 'frontline units' are in the southern hexes
I want the Bloc to have its frontline units in the north when facing the English.

The easier thing would be
1. Determine your desired "Bloc of Death" formation on the English front (both formation AND location)

2. Select Each unit and send it to its new location (ie Archer 1 to NW of Paris, archer 2 to W of Paris, Horseman to NE of Paris, Swordsman to 2 tiles directly N of Paris, etc.)

All of these new positions would have to be somewhat safely behind the lines, as soon a movement starts getting near the front you have to control a unit for every move they make.


That's because the "facing" of my Bloc Matters


So Basically if I am "moving" my block through friendly Territory, basically I do that by Disassembling it and telling each unit to 'Reassemble' in the new formation at the new location.

 

[Ahriman]

Actually in that case you probably Wouldn't want that...

I could imagine that when ordernig your formation, you could click and drag to determine facing. If they're letting you make a formation, no reason why they can't let you give it a direction.

 

[Pazyryk]

It looks to me like civ5 changes are going in the opposite direction. Instead of unit:city management being about 90:10 (as in current civ4 in late game), the one-unit-per-tile and other changes might make this closer to 50:50. At least I hope this is the case. If by doing this war becomes smarter, great!

 

[Ahriman]

How will 1 unit per tile (which means you have to move each unit individually, rather than in stacks) going to make the game *less* about unit management, and what changes have you seen that will make the game more about city management?

 

[Pazyryk]

I haven't seen anything about city management. But SODs account for most of my play time in current civ4, maybe 90%. I do know how to stack, but you have to get the units into SODs, and then you have to attack 50x in a battle, and you can't really avoid SODs on any higher difficulty level (even though I'm usually a "builder"). So, kill the SODs, and you kill that 90% tedious SOD management that I don't really enjoy.

Of course, they could be replacing that 90% no-fun SOD management with 90% get-the-units-through-the-pass management. I don't know. But I am hopeful that they are thinking about this issue.

 

[conception]

I've always felt that the weakpoint of Civ as a franchise was that a very high percentage of the games devolve into major wars, yet combat functions were extremely limited and combat was just way too simple strategy wise.

 

[Thyrwyn]

and, conception for the win.

 

[troytheface]

?

not sure about what the op is asserting

making the war aspect better is worse because if your a cottage builder you would rather get gold or something? zzzzzzzz

having tactical considerations is not preferable to not having tactical considerations?

worse- it has not come out yet

But making up things - the pitfall of the subjective- (exsistentionalism) is creative i admit


And we can only do it before the fall

so i will join in

i think that the empahsis on stealing workers and turning them into borg and making them attack when you get to the solar level should be nerfed because i like making aquaducts best

 

[Eddogegr3]

Says the man who has a Great General as his avatar. Ironic.

 

[Ahriman]

making the war aspect better

Making war more complicated (as with all the suggestions for supply lines, flanking, morale, etc. etc.) is not the same as making it better.

 

[troytheface]

?

those are suggestions-
they are not going to have them

instead of making a bunch of units - something else

not sure that is "complication"

course it could be for some- including me- who knows

stack of doom was crazy in 3- they tried to quell it a bit in 4- as a stated goal
as they also tackled the city build all over the place and have 8 billion cities
tons of cities to manipulate and units to move may not be complicated, more a chore- worse than complication
-repetition compounded
again there is mention of this in the Civ5 review thing i read (reducing this)

 

[frekk]

How will 1 unit per tile (which means you have to move each unit individually, rather than in stacks) going to make the game *less* about unit management, and what changes have you seen that will make the game more about city management?

With the unit count being so drastically reduced (there was a suggestion you wouldn't want more than about 3 units per city due to resource and upkeep limitations), there really will be much less unit management, even with 1upt. A SOD has massive unit management - it may be simple to move, but every other aspect of it is just a MM nightmare, from construction to reinforcements to actually using the thing to attack another big stack. I spend the majority of every game managing the tedium of the SOD and its huge numbers of units.