Were "stacks of doom" really that bad?

[ShowOfForce]

I passed on all the older civs because of stacking.

It's billed as a strategy game. If I can't beat a superior force through intelligent management of my army, then I don't see the point of having military units. If the 'game' just involves pumping out superior numbers that statistically lead to a win, military might as well be a numeric resource like gold.

 

[Iranon]

Intelligent use of tactics can definitely matter in Civ4 in most game settings... but unless your diplomacy and resource management is already decent you're probably better off refining those. There is little need to learn the ins and out of the military system until Immortal unless you find it enjoyable for its own sake.

'More intelligent management of one's army' will have a bigger effect in Civ5 mostly because the AI opponents are imbeciles and there's a lot less depth to the civilian side.

If the games were First Person Shooters:
Civ4 would focus on picking the right equipment, conserving your resources, and strategic planning; until the highest level you can be quite clumsy as long as you make good judgment calls. It works well enough overall, but the fanbase wanted more satisfying action and battlefield manoevering elements for quite a while.

The sequel addresses the concerns in a literal-minded way. The action is slicker against competent opponents (shame multiplayer is broken), but the features that made the series popular in the first place were stripped down, the enemies keep getting stuck in waist-high fences and the way the game is written make it unlikely that the former strong points can be restored.

 

[XeroK00L]

Anyone else agrees that bombers are still easily the stack of doom in Civ5? The new combat system is great until the bombers come into play, and then it's just about pumping out the most bombers you can with no tactics involved just like it was in Civ4. There should be a limit to the number of bombers a city can store, or bombers are simply way overpowered, throwing all the balance out of the window.

 

[Vordeo]

SoDs were bloody awful.

1UPT as they've implemented it isn't perfect, but IMO it's the only way forward for the franchise (combat-wise, at least).

 

[Gaizokubanou]

I passed on all the older civs because of stacking.

It's billed as a strategy game. If I can't beat a superior force through intelligent management of my army, then I don't see the point of having military units. If the 'game' just involves pumping out superior numbers that statistically lead to a win, military might as well be a numeric resource like gold.

You can defeat larger army through better management in previous Civ, at least I did it consistently in Civ IV. In Civ IV I destroyed an invading stack that was about twice as large as mine by suiciding in cannons while they got bogged down by my culture border. I also placed few units on nearby hills that was away from my city just to distract the AI's SoD. By doing that I kept my army intacted while AI took a huge blow, and by the time it reached my city the SoD size was in my favor, so I killed his stack and eliminated the AI.

And besides, superior logistics is the ultimate strategy

Of course 1upt imo is better than SoD system, but SoD didn't completely kill off battlefield strategy in previous Civs.

Anyone else agrees that bombers are still easily the stack of doom in Civ5? The new combat system is great until the bombers come into play, and then it's just about pumping out the most bombers you can with no tactics involved just like it was in Civ4. There should be a limit to the number of bombers a city can store, or bombers are simply way overpowered, throwing all the balance out of the window.

No because you can't field enough unit where land space becomes an issue for your army size. Also fighters counter bombers both in cost and in air combat, so if one faction is massing bombers the other can mass fighters and come out on top (and fighters suck against ground). And a nuke can pretty much kill entire air unit stack in one shot.

 

[tyler56721]

I happen to like the 1UPT mechanic. I absolutely hate the stack of doom thing though. Its so boring and made the industrial modern eras complete hell to play through. I rarely finished a game in Civ 3 because of them.

 

[Horizons]

Stacks of doom with ranged bombardment for siege units a la Civ3 were just fine. In Civ4 the worst thing was the suicide catapults rather than the SODs.

 

[sav]

Now that I've played Civ5 a couple of weeks, I gotta say, I don't miss having 200 units to manage. +1 for the 1upt in my view. Maybe scratch it for workers, settlers.

Or allow military to stack, but only one unit can do something ie attack, defend, pillage etc. That would allow easy management of units, but get rid of stacks in a military situation. I guess.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

what? you did´'t have to move units individually in civ4.
suicide artillery, take that as if the ammo runs out, so you have to build more....

just recently I had a game last until modern era...
eventually there was a 200+ vs 200+ battle to decide all.

that really felt like war... you order which divisions strike when (unit types). this can hardly be replaced by fighting an epic battle vs enemy capital with 2 units, when the biggest defense is some magic bombardment coming from the city...... lol thats like some sort of arcade, not war

 

[sav]

No, I didn't. But I still had to manage what units were in each stack; as for artillery, are you suggesting other units didn't run out of ammo?

'Just recently...' Well, almost every game I had in Civ4, and so far in Civ5, goes into the modern era, if not beyond, 'cause I play at a difficulty level appropriate to me. Moving 200 units, and waiting for the computer to move 200 units, is not fun.

If you have a modern era battle with 2 units, I'm not sure you're playing Civ5 at the level you should be. My current game, France and I have had several battles of 15-20 units a time, across oceans, each making inroads into each other's land before being fought off.

It's great. It just used to be a case of make as many as I can, now it's a case of make 'em if I need 'em.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

at that stage I turn off combat animations, so it goes really fast

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

With unit stacking, I never did appreciate that warfare in later stages was just flinging huge stacks at other stacks or at cities. It's telling they had to implement suicide siege in Civ 4, considering how nice it must be to just build a huge stack of artillery and bring some protection and just bomb the enemy into submission.

 

[Frank327]

I think the problem is that tactical manouvres like flanking and guarding your ranged units with melee units are completely done on the strategical scale. Because the archers need to be on a different tile than the melee dudes, you get whole parts of the map filled with purely combat units. It would probably work better if stacks were limited to something like 4-5 as suggested.

Then of course, it's important to still make the tactical manouvres doable, meaningful and simple. So if you want to protect your archers, you place a spearman in the same stack. Now whenever a unit attacks your stack, the spearmen deal with the attackers. But if it's done the same way as Civ 4, then flanking is not possible. That's why being able to attack with multiple units from different hexes in the same turn should be possible. Simply make a hotkey for the "attack" command, click on the hex that you want to attack, and then the game highlights the units you can use to attack that hex. Then for example you can use 2 cavalry units to attack the hex at once from two different directions. The spearman deals with one of them, and the other can successfully flank to beat the archers. Basically, every melee unit can cover an attack from one direction.

If combat is done this way, ranged units don't need a range of 2 anymore, and instead can have a range of 1. This makes the scale of combat a bit more realistic. Also battles with lots of units can be fought automatically, making combat faster. This way hopefully the terrain is useful again, while not having armies smeared all over the map.

 

[mva5580]

SoD was definitely my least favorite part of Civ IV, but everything else felt so perfect that it didn't matter.

With Civ V, it's pretty much the opposite. I like 1UPT, but the rest of the game just feels so stale. I just always find myself going back to IV because of the total package.

 

[Redrake]

Instead of units, perhaps they should've implemented an army system. Stack a number of units in one army and voila! problem solved. While, I can certainly appreciate tactical combat (I am an avid player of Panzer General series), I feel they are poorly implemented in Civ 5, because of the scale of the map and the problems it brings. Switching perhaps to a combat mode kind of like the ones Total War series use or perhaps even the simpler, older Call to Power or Imperialism 2, might be IMO a better option.

 

[redmosquito]

Instead of units, perhaps they should've implemented an army system. Stack a number of units in one army and voila! problem solved. While, I can certainly appreciate tactical combat (I am an avid player of Panzer General series), I feel they are poorly implemented in Civ 5, because of the scale of the map and the problems it brings. Switching perhaps to a combat mode kind of like the ones Total War series use or perhaps even the simpler, older Call to Power or Imperialism 2, might be IMO a better option.

I think it is a good idea. A call to power or heroes of MM system. Combined with a fast combat option which displays the combat on the large map as in Civ 4. I dont understand why they avoid the obvious solution

 

[jjkrause84]

Honestly, just the simply addition of ZoC would have made it MUCH less desireable to create stacks of doom in Civ4. That plus existing collateral damage penalties and you can induce the player to want to disperse as you get into the modern era without FORCING him/her to do so.

 

[redmosquito]

Honestly, just the simply addition of ZoC would have made it MUCH less desireable to create stacks of doom in Civ4. That plus existing collateral damage penalties and you can induce the player to want to disperse as you get into the modern era without FORCING him/her to do so.

I like the idea of ZoC. I think rather than disallowing certain movements, you should give the defending party a free strike or something. Perhaps archers and ranged units can punish violations more effectively compared to the other units

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Maybe it has been mentioned before and I'm too lazy to read the whole thread but SoD were really, really bad even when they were no threat to you.
Watching waves upon waves of Aztec Chariots throwing themselves at your fortified Infantry for two full minutes during one turn was not fun.

 

[Redrake]

Maybe it has been mentioned before and I'm too lazy to read the whole thread but SoD were really, really bad even when they were no threat to you.
Watching waves upon waves of Aztec Chariots throwing themselves at your fortified Infantry for two full minutes during one turn was not fun.

I don't think anyone is fan of stacking an infinite number of units. However, agglomerating the map with units is not good either. When they first introduced the concept of armies in Civ 3, I was convinced that this was the future of Civ games. It does look I was being too optimistic.