Exactly! Nevertheless, doesn´t 1UPT movement tedium and difficulties address even further the waiting during war (i.e slow, thoughtfull movement of the other players)?? Having copiously played IV MP I remember this was an issue. Haven´t played VI MP, but I feel IV stacking aliviated it though.
Tom Chick's take on Civ 6
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Exactly! Nevertheless, doesn´t 1UPT movement tedium and difficulties address even further the waiting during war (i.e slow, thoughtfull movement of the other players)?? Having copiously played IV MP I remember this was an issue. Haven´t played VI MP, but I feel IV stacking aliviated it though.
-Stacks simplify combat, this is the point, over or not enough is yet a matter of taste.
-Stacks intercede quite a lot in the grand strategy, leaving more "room" to concentrate in it´s objectives and paths; than, 1UPT that is.
I spared myself answering and addressing the many concerns I personally have with 1UPT besides the AI needing much more consideration to work properly (might there be enough for the game to resemble AI challenge as in IV? Early to say). Liked Magil´s approach but it didn´t suffice my view. So here I go:
Stacking infinite units over one tile/hex was a somehow elegant solution within the scale civ games came to be. 1UPT breaks the suspension of disbelief here, bringing into the table atrocious scaling. Not only this comes to be too awful, in my book, to fully enjoy the cosmetic aspect of the game, but it bings about some other out of the box issues, completely irrelevant to the infinite stacking approach.. hence, brand new to the series for many of us, at the time Shafer's came along. Clogging issues, tedious unit shuffling and movement, non functional goto command, just to name a few. Some of these issues can be aliviated, and some have been, but never solved, as they are truly inherent to 1UPT.
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Civ has always had an amount of tactics to it. It's been about what goes into the stack, figuring out when to rest and when to advance, how many stacks do you need
I do think they missed the mark by not making ranged/bombard units into supporting units. I mean, really, how much different is a battering ram than a catapult? Done that way, with no defense of their own, you always have to protect them. There might be other parts that needed changing too (can a support unit attack, or do they only impart their ability to the other unit on the tile?), but it would be another way to reduce the clutter on the map.
I do think that they've fixed some of the problems of non-combat units. You can have a great general, and a support unit (balloon), and a regular unit all on the same tile, and even lock all 3 together so they move as a unit. Because builders are short-lived and build instantly, they rarely will conflict with other units (as opposed to before where workers would constantly block terrain). They do need to fix the issue of religious units and friendly opposing units blocking paths. I can understand some of that to a point - if my friend and I both had a warrior on the same tile and a mutual enemy attacked, which do they hit? But there should be nothing stopping me move through a sea of apostles with my non-religious units.
I do think they missed the mark by not making ranged/bombard units into supporting units. I mean, really, how much different is a battering ram than a catapult? Done that way, with no defense of their own, you always have to protect them. There might be other parts that needed changing too (can a support unit attack, or do they only impart their ability to the other unit on the tile?), but it would be another way to reduce the clutter on the map.
I do think that they've fixed some of the problems of non-combat units. You can have a great general, and a support unit (balloon), and a regular unit all on the same tile, and even lock all 3 together so they move as a unit. Because builders are short-lived and build instantly, they rarely will conflict with other units (as opposed to before where workers would constantly block terrain). They do need to fix the issue of religious units and friendly opposing units blocking paths. I can understand some of that to a point - if my friend and I both had a warrior on the same tile and a mutual enemy attacked, which do they hit? But there should be nothing stopping me move through a sea of apostles with my non-religious units.
You mean the old system from vanilla civ IV before it was tweaked?
Now I´m sure you are not refering to IV at all.
Anyhow, any system that the AI can handle makes it an adequate one. Which is fair for any game.
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Magil
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How VP handled it was that military units from different civilizations could not stack, but you could stack a civilian unit under a military unit from another civilization. That makes the most sense to me (and would make the AI parking its units inside my borders for no reason when we have open borders/alliance a little less annoying). Combined with unlimited civilian unit stacking it made 1UPT less of a headache.
It's been a while since I played Civ4, but I remember all you had to do was put an endless pile of units into a stack and move it around capturing cities. Easy. And bombard units had to 'suicide' themselves by attacking directly, causing stack damage but themselves losing health. And there was no lethal bombard, at least for air and sea units.
And if that is indeed how it was, then I stand by my comments that it was a dull, counterintuitive, non-strategic and crappy system and one of the main reasons I embraced Civ5 so heartily.
TheMeInTeam
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The AI fought spectacularly poorly in 4 compared to good players. You'd never just blather into someone's borders with a big SoD in MP, unless you had good knowledge that you would not be greeted with collateral damage x10 and wiped from the map, which was a legit threat as early as construction. You also had to worry about stuff the AI would never do, like training 4-6 guerilla longbows and following a line of hills to fork your capital and a major production city, razing whichever is less garrisoned. Same thing with threatening 2-4 coastal cities at once, etc. Stack too much on offense and you'd eat collateral, too little and they could overwhelm your weak-link counter unit. So you'd need a tech advantage or a positional/tactical/strategic resource one. Most civ 5 and many civ 4 players never realized that aspect of the gameplay in 4 though.
The conclusion is "If you're going to implement a completely game-changing system into your game in place of an old one, you're making a new game. Don't stop half way."
You're right about that, I never play MP. Way too competitive and stressful for me
I take the second half should have been just a new name; for the new game.
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Excellent review of the game. Tom Chick was fair, honest and blunt.
There is a lot to like about Civ VI and the series is definitely headed in the right direction.
However, 1UPT is, as Tom Chick stated it, still an unmitigated disaster.
1UPT hobbles the game in the same way as strapping 15 pound weights around your legs before running a marathon.
Other than the horrible 1UPT, I am confident that Ed Beach will address a lot of the other shortcomings such as the not
up to par AI and make diplomacy better. That and little things such as allowing the renaming of cities, once again. With
that and some more polishing, Civ VI will be a pretty decent game. Ditching 1UPT will likely have to wait for Civ VII.
There is a lot to like about Civ VI and the series is definitely headed in the right direction.
However, 1UPT is, as Tom Chick stated it, still an unmitigated disaster.
1UPT hobbles the game in the same way as strapping 15 pound weights around your legs before running a marathon.
Other than the horrible 1UPT, I am confident that Ed Beach will address a lot of the other shortcomings such as the not
up to par AI and make diplomacy better. That and little things such as allowing the renaming of cities, once again. With
that and some more polishing, Civ VI will be a pretty decent game. Ditching 1UPT will likely have to wait for Civ VII.
kornelm1978
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Nobody says nowhere that civ4 solutions of stacking were perfect and only solution. But many say that it was just much better solution (including me) than current one upt1. Defenders of stacking say that "improved" stacking (many possible ideas) would be much better solution than not civ5/6 one and better than civ4. I do not know what level you played, but the gameplay you described was not possible on higher levels. One huge stack would probably win everything, but in he meantime your cities would be captured by smaller smaller armies. This stack of doom is mythical legend, where in reality it was not possible/working.
kornelm1978
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I hope not (probably wihful thinking). They introduced kind of stacking with corpses, etc. It very small step in good direction. Currently not a solution but if developed wisely and accesible earlier, it would improve gameplay significantly. I hope that they will finally understand how the game suffers with 1upt. Of course it will never be a good solution, but it will help a lot if wisely redesinged.
orasis
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You can get it pretty cheap with all expansions. Should be easy to find.
As I said, the CTP concept was interesting. You could combine a certain number of units into an army (not like the concept of an army in Civ6), with a melee unit, a mounted unit and an artillery unit together, and they would fight as an army. It's been nearly 15 years since I played CTP but I do remember the army system very well. It is as you say a limited stacking system.
Magil:
Stack composition - much ballyhooed, and virtually the only tactical or strategic consideration of note in 4. And you're matching all of that to JUST the logisitics of moving in V and VI? Not very fair. All of the things you said mattered, sure. But there's really not that much game to them to be had. Tactics, sure, but logistics is generally just one click and you're done. You're not having to manage space or movement or staging grounds or things of that nature. You click. That was it. Even the road network was not meaningful because it costs nothing to build except autobuilding roads on your Worker. Or manually building them, which was often worse. It doesn't cost you anything so it was just busywork you always did.
In contrast, the "busywork" you find tedious in V and VI does kind of matter, and it does cost you in movement and turns. The clutter you hate so much is precisely the sort of problem you're supposed to think about and solve, not just have the game auto-play itself for you.
Stack composition - much ballyhooed, and virtually the only tactical or strategic consideration of note in 4. And you're matching all of that to JUST the logisitics of moving in V and VI? Not very fair. All of the things you said mattered, sure. But there's really not that much game to them to be had. Tactics, sure, but logistics is generally just one click and you're done. You're not having to manage space or movement or staging grounds or things of that nature. You click. That was it. Even the road network was not meaningful because it costs nothing to build except autobuilding roads on your Worker. Or manually building them, which was often worse. It doesn't cost you anything so it was just busywork you always did.
In contrast, the "busywork" you find tedious in V and VI does kind of matter, and it does cost you in movement and turns. The clutter you hate so much is precisely the sort of problem you're supposed to think about and solve, not just have the game auto-play itself for you.
Magil
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Again, this can be easily disproven by reading one of the many good Civ IV multiplayer game reports out there on the net. There's a lot of game to be had there.
As has been stated, these "logistics" drag the rest of the game down for minimal benefit. But even beside that, if it's "one click and you're done" then you're probably not playing very well.
Look, Civ IV is all about concentration of force. You can concentrate your force more easily, because your own units don't pointlessly block each other, sure. But you're downplaying the importance of building your empire such that you can concentrate your forces where they are needed, so that you can bring up reinforcements. Keeping your road network solid such that you could do that while also keeping every point of population working improved, beneficial tiles (which changed constantly due to Slavery demanding swapping between growth mode and slow-growth production/commerce mode) is not something to be downplayed. It's a far more interesting balancing act to me--an economically minded player, a player who loves to build an empire, than the logistical concerns of moving units. Throw in actually producing units and keeping cities garrisoned for happiness from Hereditary Rule... there's a lot of game there.
Absurd. Worker turns are a valuable resource in the early to mid-game. You do not want to waste them. And you certainly don't want to "autobuild" anything (other than maybe in the late game when victory is assured, most tiles are improved, you disabled replacing improvements, and you're just chugging along). Sometimes I'm not sure we're playing the same games.
The Fast Worker is considered the most powerful unique unit in the game by many Civ IV vets. Why? Because that 1 extra move saves so many worker turns over the course of the game. That alone shows how important they are.
Again, I don't think we're playing the same game. Forks, chokes, strategic pillaging and harassment tactics were all viable things in IV and all took those things into account.
Just because you automated your workers doesn't mean it was a good idea or even that everyone else did.
TheMeInTeam
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Claiming that stack composition is virtually the only strategic or tactical consideration given earlier posts in the thread is intellectually rude and demonstrably inaccurate. Players that thought that way got some unpleasant lessons in MP quickly.
Same with your comment about roads; a GROSS underrepresentation of the opportunity cost of doing that (auto-building roads is borderline game-throwing against good players). Playing poorly in civ 4 is not an excuse to hand-wave the important decisions good players made when utilizing those mechanics. On a per turn basis, civ 4 offered more meaningful decisions to make than 5, and those turns happened faster with better UI. That many players weren't even aware of their mistakes doesn't change that reality.
Civ 6 is much better with that than 5 was on release, but it's true that its design does not mesh with the 1UPT implementation. You talk about logistics, but then you get this reality:
1) Aside from tedium, there are no serious barriers to making carpets of units yourself.
2) As a result, nations will make more units to better their chance for survival or to survive longer.
3) The sheer demand of moving a large amount of units is not tactically engaging, most of the decisions made are not meaningful, but you still have to make them and do the action.
4) With stacking and the superior civ 4 UI, you could move triple as many units, queue orders, and accomplish inputs for similar plans in seconds.
It is literally and measurably easier to use transports in civ 4 to ship 200 units overseas than it is to send 8-10 units overseas in the 1UPT environment. It takes fewer inputs, despite the need to build and micromanage the transports, much fewer! That has bad implications for a game that allows dozens of units per civ, implications that came to pass because the design never addressed them.
1. Alright then. I have observed several MP games in stream. Nearly none of the players were making carpets of units. They made enough that were meaningful to their frontlines. I have not seen carpets as in units that were permanently relegated to occupying tiles in the back ranks with nothing to show for their being made. What would be the point of making a carpet of units that serve no purpose? Would it not be better to improve infrastructure?
2. I did not say that they were tactically engaging. I said you need to move the units to make them arrive at their destination in time and in the right formation. That is a relevant input. Having them arrive wrong can cost you a turn. That's a meaningful change.
3. The gross number of units in Civ 4 doesn't have any true value. A unit in Civ V occupies a tile. That alone makes it meaningful. You could bog down entire enemy armies, losing all the time, and yet gain in time what you need to win. Or you can have the unit occupy the wrong tile and not be able to bombard an enemy city in time to win. If you're moving a single stack, having multiple units in that stack just makes that stack more numerically powerful. That's all it is - more numbers. So representing that as more units isn't comparing apples to apples. It isn't meaningful to move one unit in a stack one tile when you're moving the entire stack at once and intend to do so. It is meaningful to move any unit in Civ V for the extent of its movement and to a specific tile for a specific purpose.
2. I did not say that they were tactically engaging. I said you need to move the units to make them arrive at their destination in time and in the right formation. That is a relevant input. Having them arrive wrong can cost you a turn. That's a meaningful change.
3. The gross number of units in Civ 4 doesn't have any true value. A unit in Civ V occupies a tile. That alone makes it meaningful. You could bog down entire enemy armies, losing all the time, and yet gain in time what you need to win. Or you can have the unit occupy the wrong tile and not be able to bombard an enemy city in time to win. If you're moving a single stack, having multiple units in that stack just makes that stack more numerically powerful. That's all it is - more numbers. So representing that as more units isn't comparing apples to apples. It isn't meaningful to move one unit in a stack one tile when you're moving the entire stack at once and intend to do so. It is meaningful to move any unit in Civ V for the extent of its movement and to a specific tile for a specific purpose.
kornelm1978
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I'd say more - harasment and pilaging was possible, and right now is not (or does not make sense). Right now, you need to have decenet advantage to harrass or pilage. And when you got it there is no point to do that, when you can win the war by talking over cities. The main point reason of harrasment/distract and pilaging is too weaken enemy when you cannot blow decisive strike. Right now without advantage you will not be able to approach cities to pillage because of carpet. I wonder how distracting the carpet, wich by definition cannot react quicyly, is possible.
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