Unit Stacking

[Aussie_Lurker]

I wasn't saying you were lying, I meant that some of your claims were based on false premises. For instance, your claim that cities can't be defended is fallacious-i.e. false-but that doesn't mean you were lying, just that you haven't got all the facts before making the claim.

As to a couple of historical examples, the most obvious one was Agincourt, where the English Army-in spite of being massively outnumbered-managed to defeat the French, due a combination of archery & good use of the terrain.

The other one, of course, was the 300 Spartans. Although they technically lost, they made a vast Persian Army pay an extremely high price for their "victory". Those two are just the most obvious, but I do recall others, but need to look them up to confirm that I'm correct.

Aussie.

 

[RickInVA]

I wasn't saying you were lying, I meant that some of your claims were based on false premises. For instance, your claim that cities can't be defended is fallacious-i.e. false-but that doesn't mean you were lying, just that you haven't got all the facts before making the claim.

As to a couple of historical examples, the most obvious one was Agincourt, where the English Army-in spite of being massively outnumbered-managed to defeat the French, due a combination of archery & good use of the terrain.

The other one, of course, was the 300 Spartans. Although they technically lost, they made a vast Persian Army pay an extremely high price for their "victory". Those two are just the most obvious, but I do recall others, but need to look them up to confirm that I'm correct.

Aussie.

As the game is not published no one yet has all the facts. As has been said there is some information about units "merging" into cities, but nothing concrete. So while I agree completely that what I say is based on incomplete information, what anyone else says is also based on incomplete information. That does not make any of it fallacious, merely assumptions on both parts.

Agincourt and the Hot Gates great examples of battles where a certain factor gave the smaller side a victory. They are also both examples of the side winning that battle loosing the war.

 

[Panzeh]

As the game is not published no one yet has all the facts. As has been said there is some information about units "merging" into cities, but nothing concrete. So while I agree completely that what I say is based on incomplete information, what anyone else says is also based on incomplete information. That does not make any of it fallacious, merely assumptions on both parts.

Agincourt and the Hot Gates great examples of battles where a certain factor gave the smaller side a victory. They are also both examples of the side winning that battle loosing the war.

It won't necessarily change the advantage of production, but it will somewhat mitigate the advantage of numbers in some situations. It'll be more difficult to bring a more sizable army to bear, take more thought to use that colossus against a smaller defender. That being said, I understand your point, but if I wanted to simplify Civ combat, I think there are better ways than the stack of doom concept. One could, for example, make warfare extremely abstract, getting rid of discrete types of units and such, moving to a model of provinces for military purposes, squares for economic purposes ala imperialism I and II.

I also must reiterate that there's no way to handle stacked combat(unless you combine all the units in a stack for combat), that doesn't give a tremendous advantage to specialized units without adding a huge random factor or a huge micromanagement factor.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

The way you defend cities is to keep the enemy away from them, if the enemy does reach the city you have a choice, defend it as part of your line, or abandon it to the mercy of the enemy and come back for it later.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, in the case of how city defense work, we have very reliable information from more than 1 source-all saying the same thing; namely that cities will be able to attack/defend based on their tech level, culture, presence of certain buildings. We don't know *all* the details, but we know enough to safely say that cities will *not* be helpless, as an attacker will need to wear down the cities Hit Points before they can conquer it, & will be vulnerable to counter-attack the whole time.

That said, though, a city *will* almost certainly fall to an invader *if* no attempt is made to break a siege using conventional forces. As Me, Myself & I quite rightly said, a player will ultimately have to decide whether to allow a city to fall to an invader or not-rather than just turtling dozens of units inside the city & letting the attacker smash its stack against it.

Aussie.

 

[RickInVA]

One of my points about city defense was that somewhere in this 205 post chain some supporters of 1 unit indicated that it was a way to even the playing field (my phrase not theirs); that in prior Civs the Civ which could produce the most units had a huge advantage with the SoD. My counter argument is, in part, that the turtle strategy is a method, and an effective method, for a smaller Civ to defeat the attack of a larger Civ. That using that strategy (or tactic if you prefer) allowed a small Civ to put, say, 10 units in a city and have the attacker throw 30 units against it; and that often in this situation the defender would win. That, IMHO, 1 unit will make it harder for a smaller Civ to defend itself against a larger one, not easier; that their 10 units, open field, will have less chance to defeat the invaders army of 30 units because of flanking and doubling and trippling up on units at the edges, etc.

If there is a flaw in my reasoning I am more than willing to have it pointed out. I believe, however, that any disagreement will only be an opinion, some version of "I don't like green eggs and ham".

 

[Ahriman]

I think the flaw is; the army with 30 units won't actually be able to deploy them all at once (in the sense of; they won't all be able to actually take part in the battle) because of limited space and congestion. Big armies get declining marginal returns from extra units because the extra units have to spend much of their time not being involved in the fight.

If there is a 3 hex wide choke point that I'm defending, then a 10 unit army may not do much worse than a 30 unit army.

A lot of this depends on how the maps work; how open they are, how common are chokes, etc.

 

[Arilian]

There are many historical exmpale when defending forces win versus (vastly) superior siege army withouth outside help.

My favorite: (as i am hungarian)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Eger

 

[RickInVA]

I think the flaw is; the army with 30 units won't actually be able to deploy them all at once (in the sense of; they won't all be able to actually take part in the battle) because of limited space and congestion. Big armies get declining marginal returns from extra units because the extra units have to spend much of their time not being involved in the fight.

If there is a 3 hex wide choke point that I'm defending, then a 10 unit army may not do much worse than a 30 unit army.

A lot of this depends on how the maps work; how open they are, how common are chokes, etc.

A couple of things on that,

I read that the base movement for units will be 2, so I can assume (dangerous I know) that there will be faster units. This may enable my superior number of units to get into battle faster.

In relation to the chokepoint...not to say you are wrong at all (because you are correct), but this comes up so often that I wonder if you all are playing on a map of Greece or Switzerland? I just don't see chokepoints in every Civ's areas or borders in every map, or to get off the hyperbole, I just don't see them much.

 

[aziantuntija]

Been reading this thread for a while and now i desided to join and post myself My english is not too good but ill try my best

First of all i have to say that i really really like this new direction Firaxis has taken with the combat system, 1upt and unit not necessarily dying after defeated battle are good things. Im so sick and tired of those HUGE stacks and the fact that battles were mostly going on at the cities and not in the countryside where they really are held in the real world. Not forgetting that the only strategy in stack combat was just to have a larger stack than your enemy and thats about it.

Finnish Winter War is also a good example of smaller army fending off much bigger army, Soviet Union had three times more men, it had 2,514–6,541 tanks against Finlands 32 tanks, 3,880 aircraft against Finlands 114 aircraft

Here you can see for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

i really dont think this result could off been achieved if Soviet Union and Finland would both just have stack of men and eguipment smashing on one another But then again, thats not how real wars are fought in the first place.

 

[Ahriman]

I read that the base movement for units will be 2, so I can assume (dangerous I know) that there will be faster units. This may enable my superior number of units to get into battle faster.

This makes no sense to me. Higher movement rate does not allow you to have more units actually involved in the fight; what's stopping you is congestion and lack of extra room to move your units too, not lack of unit speed.

but this comes up so often that I wonder if you all are playing on a map of Greece or Switzerland? I just don't see chokepoints in every Civ's areas or borders in every map, or to get off the hyperbole, I just don't see them much.

Take a look through some of the screenshots we've seen of Civ5 maps.
We have some with particular choke points:
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2813&c=36 Narrow choke.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2812&c=36 Narrow chokes.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2765&c=36 Narrow isthmus.

And even without choke points, there are limits to how many units could be attacking.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2823&c=36 Biggest possible front 8 units in most places
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2822&c=36 To attack the coastal city here, front of 4 hex width.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2821&c=36 Continent ~6-7 tiles wide.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2814&c=36 Continent ~6 tiles wide

When there is a front of ~5 tiles, having 30 units isn't much of an advantage over having 12.

 

[RickInVA]

This makes no sense to me. Higher movement rate does not allow you to have more units actually involved in the fight; what's stopping you is congestion and lack of extra room to move your units too, not lack of unit speed.


Take a look through some of the screenshots we've seen of Civ5 maps.
We have some with particular choke points:
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2813&c=36 Narrow choke.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2812&c=36 Narrow chokes.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2765&c=36 Narrow isthmus.

And even without choke points, there are limits to how many units could be attacking.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2823&c=36 Biggest possible front 8 units in most places
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2822&c=36 To attack the coastal city here, front of 4 hex width.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2821&c=36 Continent ~6-7 tiles wide.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2814&c=36 Continent ~6 tiles wide

When there is a front of ~5 tiles, having 30 units isn't much of an advantage over having 12.

I say this not just to be disagreeable (really!), but do you notice that all of those are islands, isthmus and coastal areas? Showing an island and using it as an example that the front can only be 8 wide... well, you would kind of expect that on an island. Showing a coastal area doesn't mean the whole land mass isn't the 50x200 area continent that I usually get in Civ4. If you are trying to say that all land in Civ5 will be like this, that the norm will not be large open land masses, then OK, but that would be a big change, and if there is an Earth map it certainly will have some wide open spaces.

The higher movement rate and the frontage issue are not the same. My intent with the movement rate is when you are covering 10 areas with 5 units and I have 10 with some fast movers I can use my slow units to engage your front and move my fast movers around your flanks, and by virtue of speed engage your 5 with my 10 quickly. It would seem in many cases that if you have even 1 less unit than your frontage that an attacker with more units and some faster units will just do that and be able to bring his superior numbers to bear quickly. Please remember (not that I am saying you haven't) that this exchange is related to my response to others' comments that 1 unit will improve the combat chances of a small country vs. a large one (few units vs. many). IMHO 1 unit will make it worse and small countries with limited units will have less ability to win a war than before.

 

[RickInVA]

Been reading this thread for a while and now i desided to join and post myself My english is not too good but ill try my best

First of all i have to say that i really really like this new direction Firaxis has taken with the combat system, 1upt and unit not necessarily dying after defeated battle are good things. Im so sick and tired of those HUGE stacks and the fact that battles were mostly going on at the cities and not in the countryside where they really are held in the real world. Not forgetting that the only strategy in stack combat was just to have a larger stack than your enemy and thats about it.

Finnish Winter War is also a good example of smaller army fending off much bigger army, Soviet Union had three times more men, it had 2,514–6,541 tanks against Finlands 32 tanks, 3,880 aircraft against Finlands 114 aircraft

Here you can see for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

i really dont think this result could off been achieved if Soviet Union and Finland would both just have stack of men and eguipment smashing on one another But then again, thats not how real wars are fought in the first place.

This is a good example. But as the saying goes, the exception proves the rule.

In one basic manner I have to disagree with you that large stacks of men and equipment smashing against each other is not how reals wars are fought. That may not be how modern wars are fought, but that was very much how wars were fought in much of history. When the way to win a war was to destroy your opponents army you did exactally that, took your army and went to beat each other silly. Battle of Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt, Neva, Austerlitz, Salamis, Pharsalus, Actium, Vienna, Sekigahara, Zama, Lepanto, etc., etc. For much of history the art of winning the war was the art of destroying the enemy's army. Not until the 20th century do we evolve (or devolve) into the concept of total war where defeating an entire country or peoples is the norm. And what else is a defining aspect of many of those battles? they are focused on cities! One way to draw your opponents army out was to threaten a major city. The battle didn't take place in the city, but given the size of a Civ area it is quite plausable that it took place within the city area. So I would challenge the notion that war throughout most of human history is about static fronts or battles spread out across hundreds of miles of contigous landscape. Through most of time battles were between the opposing armies which met and fought at a specific spot, not across 200 miles of "front".

 

[Ahriman]

and if there is an Earth map it certainly will have some wide open spaces.

Will there still be wide open spaces? Sure. But if you're a small civ confronting a large one, that's not where you choose to fight.
You also get artificial choke points added from civ borders; even on a flat open plain, you don't get to enter tiles of civs that you aren't at war with who don't grant you open borders. France/Germany have a chokepoint border if Germany isn't willing to declare war on the Low Countries.
You also get some choke factors from river crossing, since you really don't want to be trynig to attack across a river.

And an earth map will have plenty of choke points. Pyrenees, Alps, Italy is pretty narrow, Istanbul, Gaza, India vs China, India vs Burma (compressed below the himalayas), pakistan vs persia (narrow mountain passes), central America, the rockies, the andes, just to name a few.

IMHO 1 unit will make it worse and small countries with limited units will have less ability to win a war than before.

This just doesn't make sense to me; the only way in which it could possibly be worse is because you can't hide in a city anymore. But a big enemy army in Civ4 can knock down a city's defenses in a turn or 2, and then wipe out your smaller army with their larger stack.

In Civ4, it is easy for a larger army to concentrate their entire force simultaneously against a weaker force. In Civ5, this isn't the case.

In one basic manner I have to disagree with you that large stacks of men and equipment smashing against each other is not how reals wars are fought. That may not be how modern wars are fought, but that was very much how wars were fought in much of history.

The "smashing armies against each other" critique is complaining about all the player has to do is move their stack into the enemy stack.

Yes, until the 20th century, wars were about manuever of armies and major battles where one army confronted the other. All of these historic battles *were* armies facing off against each other, but still had plenty of scope for feints, flanking, pincers, focused line breechs, and kinds of other tactical manuevers that Civ has never given us the chance to pratice.

Many players (including myself) get really bored by the purely strategic combat level of Civ3 and Civ4 stacks. We like 1upt because it offers some tactical opportunities (eg being able to use which unit my unit attacks, rather than just facing whatever specialized defender does best against my attacker) that we haven't had with big stack combat.

Not until the 20th century do we evolve (or devolve) into the concept of total war where defeating an entire country or peoples is the norm. And what else is a defining aspect of many of those battles? they are focused on cities!

Most 20th century battles are *not* focused on cities - they're often named after a town nearby (think: Kursk), but mostly they are out in the field. For every Stalingrad there are 10 others that are not based in cities.
WW1 and WW2 warfare is much more about fronts; 1upt does a much better job of representing armies opposing each other along long frontiers.

 

[RickInVA]

Most 20th century battles are *not* focused on cities - they're often named after a town nearby (think: Kursk), but mostly they are out in the field. For every Stalingrad there are 10 others that are not based in cities.
WW1 and WW2 warfare is much more about fronts; 1upt does a much better job of representing armies opposing each other along long frontiers.

Unfortunatly I separated (or didn't separate) my thoughts well right there. The line about cities was supposed to refer back to the pre-20th century wars.

 

[RickInVA]

Yes, until the 20th century, wars were about manuever of armies and major battles where one army confronted the other. All of these historic battles *were* armies facing off against each other, but still had plenty of scope for feints, flanking, pincers, focused line breechs, and kinds of other tactical manuevers that Civ has never given us the chance to pratice.

Many players (including myself) get really bored by the purely strategic combat level of Civ3 and Civ4 stacks. We like 1upt because it offers some tactical opportunities (eg being able to use which unit my unit attacks, rather than just facing whatever specialized defender does best against my attacker) that we haven't had with big stack combat.

This is exactly where the rubber meets the road. You want more tactical opportunities, I don't (I'd gladly take less). IMHO this change is trying to move Civ closer to being a wargame. That is not what the Civ series has ever been, and it is not what I look for in Civ. I play wargames. I love a good wargame. I have played wargames since I was a little guy, I grew up with Avalon Hill and later Victory Games. I play the Total War series, Hearts of Iron I,II, and III are favorites of mine. Pacific War is a classic, and my all time favorite wargame, The Longest Day. But, that experience is not why I play Civ, and I hazard to say that it is not what the Civ series has ever tried to present itself as, and I feel that as so many times happens, if Civ is now trying to present itself as a wargame (when I truely feel it is not) that it will fail and be neither Civ nor a wargame. Now, if you wanted to take the Total War approach, and move your stack combat to a battle screen I would have been all for it. Simulate the battle or play it out, great choice. But trying to use a grand strategic map with a scale of 10s or 100s of miles to also be a tactical map for ranged and maneuver combat...it just doesn't work for me.

As I said in my OP, I don't expect to change any minds, but there is no purpose for a forum if people don't say what they are thinking.

 

[Ahriman]

If you want a game where war is less important as a part of the game than in Civ4, and where combat is simpler than Civ4, then yes, you're probably not going to like 1upt much.

Its a totally valid opinion and perspective.

Its just, I think, a minority one, and not the way that the game is going to move to.

I agree completely that Civ shouldn't become a wargame; I strongly disagree with the people who want to add morale, attrition, supply lines, multiple damage types, etc.
But I think there is a middle ground that adds a little more interesting tactical decision-making to warfare while remaining a simple streamlined system.

What I don't understand are the people who are insisting that moving from StacksOfDoom a la Civ4 to 1upt won't make the game more tactical.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You see, I'm with Ahriman on this one-I do want more tactical combat, but I *don't* want the game to go the route of a full-scale war game. Even "People's General", my all-time favourite "War Game", never employed things like attrition or complicated supply lines. As long as there is a simple representation (like Unit Maintenance) of the difficulties of armies operating on foreign soil, then I'm happy. Indeed, if Unit Maintenance were to be made harsher-as is predicted-then here we have another instance of how Smaller Nations can defend against larger enemies-the inability to bring vast armies to bear without huge cost.
Another point is this-not every choke-point has to be a narrow area that no units can get around. A choke-point could also be a narrow area of *good* terrain, surrounded by less hospitable terrain. In a 1upt scenario, your units will, by necessity, more spread out-increasing the ability of smaller armies to block access to good terrain-without a fight. Imagine a relatively narrow area (say 4 hexes wide) of grassland between two large areas of jungle or forest. With just 4-6 units, you could force a much larger army to fight on *your* terms-either fight you on the plains (on a 1-to-1 basis), go the long way around in order to take their primary objective, or go through the forest/jungle, which will also probably take longer & subject them to ambushes from your own units.

Now as Ahriman said, if this isn't your cup of tea, then that is entirely your opinion. In that case, though, Civ5 probably isn't the game for you. Indeed, Civ doesn't really sound like the game for you-given that every title in the series has at least *some* level of tactical level combat!

Aussie.

 

[aziantuntija]

There is almost zero tactics in civIV combat system, it also becomes annoying micromanagent in the late game. especially in the higher difficulty levels.

I just loaded my old BTS game where im playing England on a huge worldmap, the year is 1987 and difficulty level is monarch. Take a guess how many units i have in this game. Thats right, how did you guess it? I have 463 units in this game! Why im having so many units? Because im in war with China wich is having even more units than what im having ..Well its not really funny and I have pretty much stopped playing that game.. .. As a matter of fact i havent played civIV for a long long time and the reason is, as i allready said: "There is almost zero tactics in civIV combat system, it also becomes annoying micromanagent in the late game. especially in the higher difficulty levels."

The problem is that i want to play at higher difficulty levels but the unit spam in those games are just sick In those games it would really be good if like 10 Modern Armours would be just a 1 unit and so, that would make the 463 units shrink to 46 units wich would be MUCH better.

Civ is not a wargame and i dont want it to be one, but it doesnt become a wargame if they improve the combat system with improvements like: 1upt, reducing unit spam and unit not necessarily dying if losing a battle, because they are surely improving all the other systems as well. Or does it make somebody feel better if they would only improve all the other aspects of the game and leave the battle system untouched?

Stacks are allso very, VERY stupid way of trying to simulate war between nations. It is lacking tactical decisions, its unrealistic (because nation is normally trying to stop the invator, not just sitting in the cities waiting for city attack) and it also encourages unit spam. So getting rid of stacks is a good way of improving the game experience

 

[need my speed]

So, goodbye archipelago's, goodbye Earth maps...After all, how can we invade archipelago's, or battle on the Earth with thousands of chokepoints (like the Maya area, or south of the Khmer, or Europe and Mesopotamia with all its borders, or Ethiopia).

In Civilizations III, units were always everywhere, but in Civilizations IV, besides the few single units, most move in stacks. I wonder why...