I guess we are thinking of tactics in different ways. My definition is rather simple. I see Civ as a big chess board with lots of pieces, and many civs and city states. Many of the tactics on a chess board apply to Civ in my opinion. I think one can see lots of similarities, yes?
Ah, see, I disagree with that (that Civ is a big chess board), but I'll explain why in a minute.
In addition, Civ has some tactics that chess doesn't have like flanking (but, I'd say that chess has flanking too), boosting morale with use of a general, ambushes, using terrain bonuses and promotions effectively, ... These have been important part of Civ, though the promotions and general are more recent additions.
I agree, but I also think that Civ focuses on a great deal more than just that. Am I correct in supposing that you are, primarily, a "warmonger?" (That is, you use warfare most often to achieve victory -- even in cases where you don't win via conquest or domination.) If that is the case, I can see why you'd view Civ as close to chess. In terms of combat, it can be. Although I'd say that chess is far more detailed in terms of the types of maneuvers and overall strategy required. Civ has (up until this version) never really been that, in my opinion.
Yes, we do have to limit the number of pieces, otherwise we can get the “carpet of doom.” That requires a careful feedback control system of unit costs/maintenance to prevent that from happening. Whether they are there yet, or more tweaks are required remains to be seen. There has to be a balance to allow a reasonable number of units to take a city several turns, with some bombardment support. But I think part of the fun is studying the map, terrain, defenses, planning a siege and all.
Ok, so a few points to address here.
1.) Re: avoiding the carpet of doom. The carpet of doom issue only becomes an issue IF you impose limitations on the amount of units that can occupy a hex/space. It is precisely this that I think the designers tried to do by slowing down production and making units generally more survivable. This is actually the problem I see with the game. IN ORDER to achieve the "no carpet of doom" thing, they had to "nerf" production heavily. They're backing off of that, apparently, so we'll see what happens next...
2.) If you dig the approach to attacking the city, the positioning, etc., and if you dig chess, again, I can see why this new approach appeals to you. I got enough of that out of the stack system (IE: which unit do I attack with first, what tile do I stick my stack on, etc.), but that's just my tastes. I think, however, the problem is a bit different.
More on that below.
I think that the Civ board is also perfectly designed for chess, but on a grander scale. We have pieces, we have squares (or hexes), we have one turn each. It is chess, but a much more interesting version.
I don’t see that 1UPT is any more of a wargame than SOD. It does require you to pay more attention to battles of course.
Was the peaceful building of past Civs more exciting? Which aspect was more exciting?
Bear in mind, however, that chess is a perfectly circumscribed, balanced system. You have a finite number of pieces on a finite number of squares on a single board. You can move in a finite number of ways, and your opponent's pieces do the same. Civ, however, is different. There are far more variables at work in any single game of Civ. You have more opponents, more space (and randomly laid-out space at that), more "pieces", more ways each piece can operate (with upgrades and such), etc. You also have a functionally limitless number of units that you can make. Which means, as soon as you start limiting the number of units that can occupy a space, you have PROBLEMS.
The solution the devs took was to limit production as well, and to essentially "cap" your units. Although, in doing so, they didn't quite go whole-hog in that direction. I mean, they COULD have said "Each civ can build no more than X number of this or that type of unit." But they didn't do that. I think they recognized that would've created different problems, so their solution was to just....slow everything down. This effectively solves the potential for "carpet of doom", but it makes the rest of the game rather...slow. It leads to the "next turn.....next turn.....next turn....>sigh<" issue.
As I've mentioned, they've apparently sped stuff up now, so we'll see how that all goes. I don't think it'll make a TON of difference, although it might help the "GOD this is boring...I just keep clicking 'next turn'" problem that the peaceful builders have. I don't think it will make a lot of difference for 1UPT itself, so in that sense it may be a net gain.
That said, I still think you have a problem with 1UPT and scale that cannot be rectified by anything save either returning to stacks, or by switching to a two-tiered map system. The Civ map is a large scale map designed to be, in some sense, representative. Using 1UPT places a far more definite sense of "scale" into the game than previously existed, but not in a way that seems to bear any relation to what the map represents. "You can only fit one unit per hex." Ok, but...what's a hex represent? In a game like Squad Leader or Steel Panthers, a hex = appx. 15m or somesuch. In Civ....nobody knows. Your hex could be....the width of the Italian peninsula. Or it could be the straits of Gibraltar. Or it could just be some no-name island that's less than 1 mile in any direction.
Basically, what 1UPT has done is to take a game that -- while it certainly had certain gaming conventions -- at least seemed to TRY to be a bit more about pseudo-simulation (or perhaps representation through game mechanics) and tossed them out the window entirely. Nobody questions what a square on a chess board "represents." It's chess. It's a square. Whaddaya want? But in Civ, we're dealing (at least on Earth maps) with the real world...and coming up well short. We're dealing with odd abstractions that have no real consistency among them, and the question becomes WHY is the game this way. Civ 5, to me, seems very much a step back in this regard. In previous games, there seemed to be a drive towards the representational. Yes, these are gaming conventions but they stand for SOMETHING. They're trying to represent some real-world thing, in however abstract a fashion. With hexes and 1UPT and the rest of the game, though, that's all tossed out the window. It doesn't "represent" anything. It's a hex. You put a unit on it Whaddaya want? That's the game!
This is what people mean when they call Civ 5 "gamey." Whereas prior entries SEEMED to be trying to be more representational, Civ 5 is actually TRYING to be more "gamey." Some folks don't mind that, and that's all well and good. Personally, I view it as a step back. I don't require a "world sim", but I do like it if the parts are at least more or less internally consistent. They aren't in Civ 5, to my way of looking at it. They're discrete game mechanics used for the sake of a game mechanic, instead of using a game mechanic to approximate some real-world phenomenon. If you ask "Why is this like this?" in Civ 5 for ANY element of the game, chances are the response will be something to do with how the GAME works, rather than what the mechanic represents. I guess that's where I see the problem with 1UPT and the Civ map, even after they "fix" production speeds and such. That'll be a big help, of course, but it still all just seems very...gamey.
? Also, the AI can of course get you unprepared and still win; the point I was trying to make is that the AI does not understand the concept of a stack of doom; it just builds many units and puts them on the same tile, while the player specifically builds a stack that is tailored to beat other stacks with few losses.
