Unit Limit Per Tile

[szemek77]

Wait, does the lack of unit swap mean, that if I set the limit to (lets say) 10, and then put 10 defenders in each of my cities, they will become untouchable?

 

[sukha]

Wait, does the lack of unit swap mean, that if I set the limit to (lets say) 10, and then put 10 defenders in each of my cities, they will become untouchable?

If you have 1UPT, then you cannot use the same tile to move around your units, like lets say you have Archer/Spearman, you cannot swap them places. You need to move one of them to a different tile in order for the other to use it.

 

[Killtech]

Wait, does the lack of unit swap mean, that if I set the limit to (lets say) 10, and then put 10 defenders in each of my cities, they will become untouchable?

no. it was a bug in the very first version of this. now it's 10 units per civ - so you can always attack your enemy, no matter how many units he has on a tile.

 

[Sonereal]

no. it was a bug in the very first version of this. now it's 10 units per civ - so you can always attack your enemy, no matter how many units he has on a tile.

However, you can still build pass the unit limit. In other words, say the limit is 10 and you already have 10 units in a city, its possible to build pass that to get 11, 12, 13, etc.

However, say you move the 11th unit out of the city, you can't move it back in as that would violate the rule BUT you can just build another unit.

 

[Sonereal]

Wars are pretty fun still but there's the problem of stacking of military units in cities which caused me to abort a march on Rome given there were 10 Spearmen in a city with a Defensive Modifier of 45%.

Would it be possible to get it so that newly-built units spawn on a nearby fort/town/tile sorta like planes?

 

[Hashishim]

does this feature benefit with the overall speed in the game ie making it faster? or will there be more "processing" in regard to the AI? will it cause the AI to produce less units?

 

[gramcrkr103]

@Hashishim, I haven't noticed any speed difference

 

[Sonereal]

does this feature benefit with the overall speed in the game ie making it faster? or will there be more "processing" in regard to the AI? will it cause the AI to produce less units?

The AI doesn't seem to be producing less units but it will still stack in cities once it lost in the field.

 

[Deathwind]

I've now played a couple of games with this option (using a 10-unit limit) and I love it!
Large scale wars have started to develop "front lines" and "rear areas" that have significantly affected strategy.
Furthermore, it does encourage the AI to take advantage of Surround and Destroy, which is also nice. Not only do we both have long battle fronts, but we are both trying to turn each other's flanks.

I was skeptical about this idea at first, but having tried it I will probably never go back. Sure it isn't "realistic" to say that it is impossible to fit multiple armies in the same area, but it is even less "realistic" for any civilization to put all their armies in one place during war or peacetime. The artificial limit actually ends up creating more realistic wars, which gets two thumbs up from me.

 

[Sonereal]

I've now played a couple of games with this option (using a 10-unit limit) and I love it!
Large scale wars have started to develop "front lines" and "rear areas" that have significantly affected strategy.
Furthermore, it does encourage the AI to take advantage of Surround and Destroy, which is also nice. Not only do we both have long battle fronts, but we are both trying to turn each other's flanks.

I was skeptical about this idea at first, but having tried it I will probably never go back. Sure it isn't "realistic" to say that it is impossible to fit multiple armies in the same area, but it is even less "realistic" for any civilization to put all their armies in one place during war or peacetime. The artificial limit actually ends up creating more realistic wars, which gets two thumbs up from me.

I haven't had frontlines in a while. The English declared war on me and only sent a few units to fight which, to be fair, was because they were at war with the Hittites, a huge military power in Asia. They got the Zulus involved, who was at war with Byzantine. I guess they weren't ready because I ended up razing their one city in Europe (which I needed because I wanted Europe), a few cities on the Iberian Peninsula (Because the Mediterranean is a huge landlocked sea and I needed a city at the foot of the peninsula to grant my Spartan ships range) and a city in North Africa (for lulz) before I ended the war because I simply didn't have the manpower to take down the rest of their empire (huge defensive modifiers+no siege weapons yet=massive casualties taking the city in Europe).

Turning off Open Borders and Map Trading of course made things even better. I went to war with the Abyssians early along with everyone else and because of Zulus in Western Europe, I couldn't just march my troops from Eastern Europe, down through Spain, into West Africa. I had Sparta build a galley fleet and slowly got the forces I needed to North Africa and had them march southwest).

I haven't been in a mono-on-mono war yet since everybody I've gone up against seems to have already sent their forces to combat another enemy, or in one nation's case, had the army already destroyed in Central Africa.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Certain techs/promotions/buildings/civics/other could increase the limit.

 

[Sonereal]

Certain techs/promotions/buildings/civics/other could increase the limit.

Seems kinda pointless unless its a building (like barracks) that increases the number of units that can be stacked inside a city but since you can stack as many units in a city as you want since units built stack inside.

******

Still playing this feature and it shines with Ruthless AI given there're more wars to study. The Hittites, a major superpower, took a long while to take down a small Byzantine Empire.

An earlier Civilization got knocked early and eerily lost a city in the first turn of the war to the Zulus but the rest of the war took a while.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Well, you might for instance, have a civic that increases limit for stack units but for balance, maybe decreases something else. So it would be a strategic choice.

 

[Killtech]

such considerations doesn't make much sense right now as there is no standard limit for units per tile but it can be set individually via BUG options form 1 to 100.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Simply put - if the limit is added at a later point in design, that with give another strategic choice to the game.

This is one way strategic choice is added to the game in general - imposing limits. The question is - just how much strategic choice do we want in a game and do we want to include this one?

 

[Sonereal]

Well, you might for instace, have a civic that increases limit for stack units but for balance, maybe decreases something else. So it would be a strategic choice.

I rather the AI play with what it has to work with. After all, increasing the limit by one in a 3UPT game would be a big deal. In a 10UPT game, not so much.

Plus, I don't know why any civic would increase the limit but maybe a civic that spawns a weak unit every turn during a war that doesn't count in the equation would be pretty nice since human waves are effective to weaken up a defender or provide some delaying forces to allow for your main force to reach the fighting.

Maybe Forced Conscription as a Military Civic? More unhappiness and everything you would associate with it but more units are spawned from the Draft Button (except they're weaker).

And maybe this could be scaled up for map size but how many people use xUPT anyway? Because the Civic would be useless without it.

 

[Sonereal]

such considerations doesn't make much sense right now as there is no standard limit for units per tile but it can be set individually via BUG options form 1 to 100.

That's what I'm thinking as well. I play on 3UPT but others play on 10 or 15UPT so for some, +1 on tile would be HUGE but for others, not much (The difference between 30 and 31 is probably overall smaller than the difference between 3 and 4).


I like things how they are now except the fact units stack in cities still but since the option isn't the main feature and big draw, I wouldn't expect something small like that to be on top of his long to-do list.

 

[Afforess]

I like things how they are now except the fact units stack in cities still but since the option isn't the main feature and big draw, I wouldn't expect something small like that to be on top of his long to-do list.

There's a reason I've let the issue slide. It's not because it's hard to fix... at least not from a code perspective.

The real problem is this: What should the behavior be when a city maxes out its limit for units? I only see three options:

1.) Disallow unit construction in that city. No more land units can be built until some units leave.
Drawbacks: This could cripple the AI.

2.) Kick the units out to the nearest valid tile.
Drawbacks: On a 1 tile island, units would be kicked to the nearest shore. Pretty much a free exploit for the player. This could be gamed easily.

3.) Do Nothing.

I've chosen to Do Nothing, because the alternatives are worse than it is. If anyone has a more elegant solution, I'll consider it.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Well, which of the three options is active might depend on which civic is in play.

 

[Killtech]

i like options 1) and 2) more.

i think if you double the max units count for cities and maybe forts this will do. if the AI produces more units then that and keeps them all in the city... well then it does something wrong anyway.

i mean: do not build any more city defense units for a city then a tile allows. only offensive units make sense and they can be moved into the surrounding area if AI can't find a better use for them. and then units around a city give the attacker a hard time as they prevent him from surrounding the town and bringing all units into striking positions... especially if the surrounding units take position on high defense tiles.

so i'm for intelligent kicking (or better: intelligent production - i.e. no more city defense units then a tile can have) + disallowing further unit production if all surrounding tiles are full... that should help the AI to concentrate on more important issues then spamming even more useless military. (don't we have complains about AI still building too much military and too few economy?)