With Patch D, I thought I'll go ahead and put my thoughts down in this thread.
First of all, I'm playing 2UPT which is close to 1UPT but is more flexible due to lack of unit swapping and slow movements.
First of all, units can still stack in the city. At first, I thought this was completely unfair game play wise until I realized that once you take those units out of the city, you can't put more than the limit back into the city. Moreover, you can't move out 5 at a time onto the same tile. This doesn't apply to naval units (which can stack in a city even after leaving but can only be 2UPT tile outside a city) and workers. I haven't passed the Classical Age to test more. Also, spies are exempt as far as I know.
Secondly, wars are now far longer and involve more thought as to where your units go, especially as maneuvering in tight places can be a complete
. The war is also fought largely in the field meaning promos like Woodsman and Guerrilla come in handy in the early game (again, still in Classical Age).
As a matter of fact, terrain and defensive bonuses have completely change how I approach wars. For instance, in my Duel game right not, I took out my only rival on a duel map, the Abyssinian. Due to me still being a minor nation, I didn't win conquest and by the time I got Writing, there was another civilization, the Babylonians.
There is only one copper resource as far as I know and they had it. For a large part of the war, I was on the defensive. Spearmen were useless and because I had to choose carefully which units I wanted on border defense, I stopped producing them. Spearmen are easily killed by Bowmen (+50% against Melee) and Axemen. So, I spammed archers.
Not the greatest but it would have to do. An invasion and almost punched through my frontline but I had archers on either side so by the time they got through, their army was bleeding that it took little to take it out.
So, finally, I decide to attack. Note: I had a lot of archers and the difficulty was a step or two above noble (Monarch I believe). Babylon had two cities, both coastal cities. Now, I still had a few spearmen somehow but overall, they were deadweight. I surrounded Babylon the best I could but it was difficult because I simply couldn't put archers in the open grasslands where they would be massacred by axeman. I had the same problem in Akkad, which had less room to play around in.
Long story short, after an unsuccessful assault on Babylon, my army came home licking their wounds. Later, Babylon stopped being a minor, I claimed their copper resource which was on the border and gave them a tech to end the war. Eventually, we did go back to war due to them building a city close to my capital and I razed that city (again, couldn't just smash my way in there but Siege Ships really helped out).
Now, a problem I've noticed, and one of the only problems I noticed, is that the AI didn't seem to go on the assault often but this may be because the AI rather slug it out in the city then attack the well-fortified archers that are launching volleys from every direction constantly.
Another fun thing about this is that I'm actually using Surround and Destroy for a change since before, it was easier to just smash cities from one direction. I've probably pillaged and claimed more territory than I have in all my other games put together as I tried to cut off cities and starve Babylon.
Right now, I'm unsure, but are tiles with enemy units on it still worked?
