The 1UPT system (as we know it) has to be expunged first, if we want a better A.I

[Abade69]

Maybe something like:

+1 Army support per city, encampment, fort.

For stack sizing you could get limited "recluit points" which would represent the stack power por each army. They would increase army power by some small number (around 5%). As they are limited by unlocking techs, policies, governments, small empires are not necessarily worse than large empires for warfare (in theory).

 

[Buni0ns]

Both stacks and carpets of doom (as seen in past civ games) have to go.

Most important point in the thread right there.

I think tying armies or units to a more robust logistical subsystem has all sorts of merit. Just as importantly I'd also like to see a combined arms approach that incorporates sensible ranges for ranged units and promotes limited stacking.

Some potential benefits:

• Limits amount of overall units
• Abstracts combat somewhat further
• Adds a more strategic element to force composition / utilization
• Adds another subsystem creating more strategic depth to the game
• Preserves the tactical maneuver warfare elements of the game.
• Promotes a reasonably sane system that the AI may be able to handle.

 

[Krajzen]

C) Limiting the max number of units in game and thus reducing the A.I incapabilities. Instead of "more", we (and the A.I) would be looking for "better" units. For this the game should be fixed and balanced accordingly (defense building to strong, units not upgrading, etc.)

I think this would be the best solution for now (simplest).
Limit the number of physical units on the grid, make unit quality and individual unit powers deeper.

Carpets of doom are horrible because
a) AI can't manage them
b) They are very annoying, tedious slog for the player (infinite traffic and logistical problems, unit swapping, etc)
c) They devaluate individual units experience

Increase unit build times and maintenance so there are less of them on the map (like 2-3x less). Balance city defenses and other costs so it's enough for conquest.
Make individual units more valuable with extending promotion system, experience and maybe inventing entirely few new, small minigames altogether (such as training, discipline, morale etc)

I'm pretty convinced AI would be far more capable of managing few more "unit quality" rules than gigantic mess of dozens of units swarming entire continents. It would also make warfare more pleasant for the human player.

--------------------------------------------
Otherwise, if devs had more time and resources, I would be the great fan of introducing limited stacking - either via "hard caps" or soft gameplay limitations (such as aforementioned ideas of logistical limits).
I greatly despise unlimited stacking in strategy games and 1UPT is "less bad" but... notice how I said "less bad", not "better".
Unlimited stacking = quantity always wins over quality, no depth in warfare, boredom.
Unlimited (many units) 1UPT = incomprehensible mess for AI and tedious pain for human player.
Better solution lays somewhere between those two extremes.

 

[Abade69]

I think tying armies or units to a more robust logistical subsystem has all sorts of merit. Just as importantly I'd also like to see a combined arms approach that incorporates sensible ranges for ranged units and promotes limited stacking.

Some potential benefits:

• Limits amount of overall units
• Abstracts combat somewhat further
• Adds a more strategic element to force composition / utilization
• Adds another subsystem creating more strategic depth to the game
• Preserves the tactical maneuver warfare elements of the game.
• Promotes a reasonably sane system that the AI may be able to handle.

Combined arms is a very nice idea (someone on the forums recently posted his idea of this). I wouldn't know how to balance or implement it just yet. As long as the AI is able to handle it, and adds to strategic depth with no unnecessary micromanagement (clicking a lot of buttons) i am for it.

Another great (indirect) benefit of reduced units is faster turns (late game is so painful right now). The tactical maneuver in the current 1UPT is the most contradictory thing ever (it's impossible to flank those carpets).

Limit the number of physical units on the grid, make unit quality and individual unit powers deeper.

Carpets of doom are horrible because
a) AI can't manage them
b) They are very annoying, tedious slog for the player (infinite traffic and logistical problems, unit swapping, etc)
c) They devaluate individual units experience

Increase unit build times and maintenance so there are less of them on the map (like 2-3x less). Balance city defenses and other costs so it's enough for conquest.
Make individual units more valuable with extending promotion system, experience and maybe inventing entirely few new, small minigames altogether (such as training, discipline, morale etc)

I'm pretty convinced AI would be far more capable of managing few more "unit quality" rules than gigantic mess of dozens of units swarming entire continents. It would also make warfare more pleasant for the human player.

I forgot to add the individual unit experience devaluation on my last posts (very true).

Unit value may be increased on tree ways: Promotions (already existing), Stacking (not by x2, but by adding % power ideally), Difficulty Bonus for A.I, (i know most people don't like the idea, but it could be optional).

 

[Abade69]

The current stacking system of Civ VI allows you to stack up to 4 units on a tile - an Army and one support unit. the problem with carpets of doom is the AI, not the system. Fix the AI.

So what and how would you fix it exactly? If you just simply make the A.I generate less units (a hard, imposed limit), it would just make it an easier prey for the player who will then outproduce and outsmart at the same time. If you make the A.I adjust its production of units to the rest of the players you are creating an infinite feedback loop that will also create carpets of doom. If you hard limit the A.I unit generation AND add combat bonuses for hard difficulties it will work to balance player vs A.I warfare and eliminate the carpets, but A.I vs A.I warfare would end up in stalemate most of the time unless promotions and terrain make a difference. Also, most players don't like the idea of combat bonuses for the A.I. If you add deepness and limit the number of units you are getting rid of the carpets for all eras, balancing A.I and player warfare (as they are both under the same rules, the A.I having a production edge and human intelligence edge). You are also preventing A.I vs A.i stalemates as matching stacks would be unlikely (also considering promotions, terrain, etc.).

Armies don't make a difference since they come to late into the game. By then the A.I's already got their carpets of crap units, and it's not willing to use them anyways because of the warmonger penalties. So this doesn't fix the problem at all, although it opens a window of opportunity for future mods.

 

[Abade69]

I do support the concept of armies as a unit - not the civ 3 style or 6's non-armies - and have indeed been working on my own idea for armies and how such a system might work to keep combat interesting, require the player to make meaningful choices and keep a sense of immersion. I'll post it when I've got a few issues nailed down (modern era's proving a challenge since modern armies tend to be wider a looser than the strict formations of prior armies)

Please do and notify

 

[PoweredBySoy]

/signed.

Whatever it takes to get rid of the current system of unit spamming. It's embarrassing, for a game that is supposedly the premiere 4X game, when I see all of my allies' units taking up 2/3rds of my home tiles. Basically just doing circles, back and forth, taking up space. This is the best they could do?

 

[Abade69]

/signed.

Whatever it takes to get rid of the current system of unit spamming. It's embarrassing, for a game that is supposedly the premiere 4X game, when I see all of my allies' units taking up 2/3rds of my home tiles. Basically just doing circles, back and forth, taking up space. This is the best they could do?

I know right?. I hope they make up their minds before Civ VII.

I think the 1UPT can be modded through the new army system (still waiting for the tools). Intercontinental naval invasions may even become a reality now (after 5 games).

 

[Roxlimn]

So what and how would you fix it exactly? If you just simply make the A.I generate less units (a hard, imposed limit), it would just make it an easier prey for the player who will then outproduce and outsmart at the same time. If you make the A.I adjust its production of units to the rest of the players you are creating an infinite feedback loop that will also create carpets of doom. If you hard limit the A.I unit generation AND add combat bonuses for hard difficulties it will work to balance player vs A.I warfare and eliminate the carpets, but A.I vs A.I warfare would end up in stalemate most of the time unless promotions and terrain make a difference. Also, most players don't like the idea of combat bonuses for the A.I. If you add deepness and limit the number of units you are getting rid of the carpets for all eras, balancing A.I and player warfare (as they are both under the same rules, the A.I having a production edge and human intelligence edge). You are also preventing A.I vs A.i stalemates as matching stacks would be unlikely (also considering promotions, terrain, etc.).

Armies don't make a difference since they come to late into the game. By then the A.I's already got their carpets of crap units, and it's not willing to use them anyways because of the warmonger penalties. So this doesn't fix the problem at all, although it opens a window of opportunity for future mods.

You can code the AI to make a base amount of units (something reasonable) and then have an adjustment that makes it spontaneously (let's not kid ourselves here, it's an AI - it doesn't need to abide by our rules) create units in response to player creation. So Prince level AI will have the base number of units, but King level AI will always have at least as many military units as the most numerous active player, and Deity level AI will have that much plus 3 and automatic upgrades to the latest tech.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

I would wholeheartedly support bringing back unlimited unit stacking.

I think the reasons stack of doom was unpopular were

1) It is very scary to see a stack of doom emerging right next to your city completely unexpected. It is VERY scary when that happens. Yes, we can pull our own units from other parts of our empire and converge them all onto the city immediately under threat, but by the time these units reach the area that need their protection, it is already too late.

The source of this problem is fog of war. Fog of war is realistic and should not be eliminated to solve the stack of doom problem. But there should be some kind of mechanism (such as some kind of scouting/spy mechanism) that allows us to constantly see if any enemy units are encroaching our boarders. Moreover, this scouting/spy mechanism should not passively just let us see through the fog of war for those tiles that are immediately outside of our boarder. They need to give us pop up messages to bring our awareness to the fact of possible enemy units concentration near our boarder. Otherwise, we will have to be checking out the perimeter of our boarders every turn, and that can become quite tedious as our empire increase in size.

The point of this scouting/spy mechanism is to make us become aware of enemy units' movement each turn. This way, we can move our units accordingly.

2) I support some kind of logistic system requirement to keep the units nourished while they are inside enemy boarder. The idea is that units inside their own country's boarder will not get penalized. Once they start moving into neutral territories (hex that are not claimed by any civ or city states), they begin to lose hit points, but the attrition rate is quite slow. Once these units move into an enemy territory, the attrition rate will start to bleed much faster. The only way to check this problem is to to send supply. The supply will be send by a new unit I recommend designers to add to this game. This new unit (lets call it war wagon) will travel between their origination city and the military units that they are designated to supply, much like how traders move back and forth between two cities. As long as this unit exists, the military units will not suffer attrition problem even while inside an enemy boarder.

Each war wagon unit will supply 5 units (or however many game designers see fit). If my army got nine units, my army will need 2 war wagons to keep all 10 fully supplied.

Each war wagon will be able to supply only a group of units (but no more than five) located on the same hex. If I have two separate units, and they are located on different hex, then I am going to have to create two different war wagons to keep both of them supplied.

If I can destroy the enemy war wagon, then the enemy units will resume bleeding attrition right away. The war wagon will travel a specific route much like how traders/cargo ship also travel along a specific route. However, only the portion of the route that is travelled inside my territory will be visible. Base on this route, we can place troop nearby to intercept the war wagon.

Calvary units/and any kind of mobile units should be given an upgrade/promotion where they can intercept any enemy war wagon automatically if any enemy war wagon travels into an hex adjacent to those mobile units, or travels right into the hex that these mobile units are located in.

At a grand strategic level, without war wagon, which is very prone to interception, enemy units will have a hard time penetrating deeply into the inside of our boarder. Any attempt to do deep penetration will result in heavy attrition. This means that we pretty much know where the enemy is likely to attack. When we have better anticipation of where the enemy might attack, the fear of stack of doom is diminished further.

3) I suggest that certain coastal tiles are not available for embarking and disembarking (both my own units and enemy units). For example, some coast tiles are clearly cliffs. Any kind of units will NOT be able to embark from such geography, including the enemy units and mine.

Let me know what you guys think

 

[Roxlimn]

I've never feared the AI stack, FWIW.

 

[Beorhtric]

Please do and notify

Done and it is here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/proper-armies.604394/

It is quite a lot of text though. But to summarise:

• There is a new unit type "Army" - (and Fleet.for naval units)
  
• Players are limited on the number of armies they can have - this would be a small number that changes through the eras. Armies are created empty (player decides the composition by assigning units).
  
• Military units are still produced in the same way. However once construction is complete they must be assigned to an Army or a City (garrison)
• There is a limit on the number of units an Army can contain (called supply), there is a separate limit for Siege units and Field units.
  
• Armies gain abilities based upon the units they contain (e.g. Knights add a "Charge" ability)
• Combat is now based around the use of these abilities and is no longer resolved by moving one Army on top of another but rather by "deploy"ing the Army (like you needed to setup Civ V siege) and then using the abilities assigned to them (only so many abilities can be used per turn).
  • Melee units can be ordered to advance to another tile and will then fight any enemy unit in that tile every turn until told to do something else
• Armies have Moral and if this gets too low during combat will fall into a disorganised retreat preventing them from being used by the player for a couple of turns
• Enemy cities can be captured by either starving them into submission or by battering down its defenses (creating a breech) and then ordering your foot to "storm" the city.

 

[Buni0ns]

I do support the concept of armies as a unit - not the civ 3 style or 6's non-armies - and have indeed been working on my own idea for armies and how such a system might work to keep combat interesting, require the player to make meaningful choices and keep a sense of immersion. I'll post it when I've got a few issues nailed down (modern era's proving a challenge since modern armies tend to be wider a looser than the strict formations of prior armies)[

Here's my thing, if you are indeed going to have combined arms armies, please limit ranged units. (not bombard units - ranged) Limit them to adjacent tile range, not the 2 tile range they currently enjoy.

This makes their inclusion into a combined arms stack make sense, and it also limits them to requiring protection.

It also makes stack (army) composition meaningful because of defensive weaknesses.

I would not allow bombard units into mobile army stacks nor anti air for that matter.

 

[REDfeller]

Good post. Totally agree. IUPT looks good on paper but by medieval times is an absolute chore.

We can argue forever about stacks or carpets, but one thing is quite clear, by BTS the AI could give you a damn fine game, I refer to my post from June 2008 BTS Civ4:

One reason for signing up on this forum was to tell of my epic "D-Day"-esque struggle for survival against the enemy. Unfortunately I cannot recall who the leader was but it shouldnt detract from a truly awesome effort from the AI on Noble level.

I was ticking along nicely going for culture/diplo victory, had one side of a continent, fairly good relations with all, especially my neighbours, when all of a sudden out of nowhere the "Trumpets of Woe" echo around me and the AI drops in about 10 paras behind my lines, who break up roads/mines etc(all on hills with Guerilla 1) cutting supply.

I am sort of ready for war ,but not the blitz that comes with it, almost my own tactics or human in cunning, a fake attack from the sea side of my territory then smaller SoD's aimed at each of my border cities!!!!
I lost 2 cities straight away because I couldnt reinforce(paras). Didnt want to bother with them as I couldnt afford the losses and had to focus on cities.

I just about saved the 3rd city and the AI lost momentum, luckily I was close to Industrialisation so let my Shermans do the talking after I had recovered from the initial losses.

Of course it was a great blow to my ego and with my people right behind me, (and Mr Sherman), liberated the lost cities and cranked up war production to take revenge, battering them into the ground over a long protracted war, that'll teach 'em.

In the end I lost, someone won a diplo vic but I still chuckle thinking about all those para drops, dont think I've ever seen anything like it since.

I still remember my reactions to the enemy moves in that game, surprise, shock, awe, respect. To use the paras to pillage my production and cut off re-enforcement. The fake landings. The smaller SOD's on 3 cities at once.
I can not recall such a story in Civ5 or Civ6 ( with far fewer diverse military units).

For the last 6 years we have just had a very large obvious build up of ridiculous amounts of (usually obsolete) units, milling around borders before the inevitable "surprise" war.

I really thought that Civ6 would be the time to move to limited units based on government/war footing/finance or other mechanic and change to a smaller tactical map for battles.
The thing that kills Civ6 for me at the moment is the amount of non-combat units that clutter the map. Even after the ridiculous 3 charge builders disappear until you make ANOTHER one (who thought that would be fun?)

 

[Roxlimn]

It was one time it happened, apparently, in all your games. And we all game a lot here. Civ 5 doesn't have Paras - the XCOM troopers were a late add and a VERY late game unit. The actual Civ 5 Paratroopers were not on a level with Civ 4 ones. That attack, frankly, was sucky. If I had Paratroopers and that much forces, I'd plan and plan until I could take at least half your cities out within a turn. The AI had a tech and troop advantage on you and lost, and that was a post 3rd-expansion AI with generous Community coding help.

We didn't have as good community AI help with Civ 5. People were too busy trying to convince the devs to switch back to stack combat.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Another options would be to use military population cap, based on city population, and territory, to end this nightmare. Then some units should have the ability to gain the ability to forage its food, thus allowing larger armies.
1UPT does not work this way. If a unit cap is introduced, then stacking units could be introduced back.

I just played a game on deity with just Domination victory and NO AI has managed to conquer me or anyone else, they had Nukes when I had Pikemans, and didn't even tried to conquer me. I'm so pissed off.
Not being Blitzkriegged in any way is not fun!

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I still remember my reactions to the enemy moves in that game, surprise, shock, awe, respect. To use the paras to pillage my production and cut off re-enforcement. The fake landings. The smaller SOD's on 3 cities at once.
I can not recall such a story in Civ5 or Civ6 ( with far fewer diverse military units).

You remind me of a game in CIV 3, when the AI was capable of forming up an Army ( then lost this feature with the last upgrade ).
And Japan started a war with me deploying paratroopers armies with helicopters all over inside my Tibetan kingdom mountain range fortified line and destroying my supply roads while Ninjas armies where doing the typical hit and run Go tactic... it was a massacre... I think I was on King... playing with Rome on Tethurkan Earth map.... Such glorious battles....

 

[Abade69]

You can code the AI to make a base amount of units (something reasonable) and then have an adjustment that makes it spontaneously (let's not kid ourselves here, it's an AI - it doesn't need to abide by our rules) create units in response to player creation. So Prince level AI will have the base number of units, but King level AI will always have at least as many military units as the most numerous active player, and Deity level AI will have that much plus 3 and automatic upgrades to the latest tech.

Spontaneous armies? You must be joking. Let me see if i understand... I kill 5 of their 10 base units, next turn it generates other 5 units is this what you are suggesting?. I think it may work if they generate when NOT at war with anybody. Dirty but as you say they don't need to abide to the player rules if we are trying to make it a challenge and eliminate carpets of doom.

Another question comes to mind: How would you balance what kind of AI level spawns for each game?. King level AI will keep building above their base, is that right? If that is so, 2 King level AI's would make them enter a loop of unit production. as they will be trying to balance each other to infinity (that includes the player trying to match numbers too).

I think your idea may work to some extend. If you got a base minimum per AI difficulty, and each new level exceeds that limit (removing the "as many" part), then maybe battle bonus, or free upgrades as you say. Pretty cheap but worth a try.

 

[Abade69]

I would wholeheartedly support bringing back unlimited unit stacking.

I think the reasons stack of doom was unpopular were

1) It is very scary to see a stack of doom emerging right next to your city completely unexpected. It is VERY scary when that happens. Yes, we can pull our own units from other parts of our empire and converge them all onto the city immediately under threat, but by the time these units reach the area that need their protection, it is already too late.

The source of this problem is fog of war. Fog of war is realistic and should not be eliminated to solve the stack of doom problem. But there should be some kind of mechanism (such as some kind of scouting/spy mechanism) that allows us to constantly see if any enemy units are encroaching our boarders. Moreover, this scouting/spy mechanism should not passively just let us see through the fog of war for those tiles that are immediately outside of our boarder. They need to give us pop up messages to bring our awareness to the fact of possible enemy units concentration near our boarder. Otherwise, we will have to be checking out the perimeter of our boarders every turn, and that can become quite tedious as our empire increase in size.

The point of this scouting/spy mechanism is to make us become aware of enemy units' movement each turn. This way, we can move our units accordingly.

2) I support some kind of logistic system requirement to keep the units nourished while they are inside enemy boarder. The idea is that units inside their own country's boarder will not get penalized. Once they start moving into neutral territories (hex that are not claimed by any civ or city states), they begin to lose hit points, but the attrition rate is quite slow. Once these units move into an enemy territory, the attrition rate will start to bleed much faster. The only way to check this problem is to to send supply. The supply will be send by a new unit I recommend designers to add to this game. This new unit (lets call it war wagon) will travel between their origination city and the military units that they are designated to supply, much like how traders move back and forth between two cities. As long as this unit exists, the military units will not suffer attrition problem even while inside an enemy boarder.

Each war wagon unit will supply 5 units (or however many game designers see fit). If my army got nine units, my army will need 2 war wagons to keep all 10 fully supplied.

Each war wagon will be able to supply only a group of units (but no more than five) located on the same hex. If I have two separate units, and they are located on different hex, then I am going to have to create two different war wagons to keep both of them supplied.

If I can destroy the enemy war wagon, then the enemy units will resume bleeding attrition right away. The war wagon will travel a specific route much like how traders/cargo ship also travel along a specific route. However, only the portion of the route that is travelled inside my territory will be visible. Base on this route, we can place troop nearby to intercept the war wagon.

Calvary units/and any kind of mobile units should be given an upgrade/promotion where they can intercept any enemy war wagon automatically if any enemy war wagon travels into an hex adjacent to those mobile units, or travels right into the hex that these mobile units are located in.

At a grand strategic level, without war wagon, which is very prone to interception, enemy units will have a hard time penetrating deeply into the inside of our boarder. Any attempt to do deep penetration will result in heavy attrition. This means that we pretty much know where the enemy is likely to attack. When we have better anticipation of where the enemy might attack, the fear of stack of doom is diminished further.

3) I suggest that certain coastal tiles are not available for embarking and disembarking (both my own units and enemy units). For example, some coast tiles are clearly cliffs. Any kind of units will NOT be able to embark from such geography, including the enemy units and mine.

Let me know what you guys think

Problem with infinite stacks is the impossibility to counter AI bonuses in short periods, and that it nullifies tactical and promotion edges (ie: it doesn't matter how strong a tile defense is, you simply build a strong enough stack to destroy the units standing there, in other words: you win by numbers). And individual promotions will get lost on numbers (same problems with carpets of doom).

The supply system has already been suggested before. I think it could work, but i see players abusing the AI inability to use it (and killing off AI wagons very early), but who knows.

 

[Abade69]

It is quite a lot of text though. But to summarise:

• There is a new unit type "Army" - (and Fleet.for naval units)
  
• Players are limited on the number of armies they can have - this would be a small number that changes through the eras. Armies are created empty (player decides the composition by assigning units).
  
• Military units are still produced in the same way. However once construction is complete they must be assigned to an Army or a City (garrison)
• There is a limit on the number of units an Army can contain (called supply), there is a separate limit for Siege units and Field units.
  
• Armies gain abilities based upon the units they contain (e.g. Knights add a "Charge" ability)
• Combat is now based around the use of these abilities and is no longer resolved by moving one Army on top of another but rather by "deploy"ing the Army (like you needed to setup Civ V siege) and then using the abilities assigned to them (only so many abilities can be used per turn).
  • Melee units can be ordered to advance to another tile and will then fight any enemy unit in that tile every turn until told to do something else
• Armies have Moral and if this gets too low during combat will fall into a disorganised retreat preventing them from being used by the player for a couple of turns
• Enemy cities can be captured by either starving them into submission or by battering down its defenses (creating a breech) and then ordering your foot to "storm" the city.

Sounds pretty cool, but it seems to requiere completely new mechanics added to the game (some other deleted), are you sure it can be modded?