What is so great about the combat?

[TLF]

To me the stacks made the game less tactical.
Where you place which troops should matter.

Creating a line or spreading out to block a chokepoint.
The stacks just seem like brute strength.

Admittedly, I'm not a veteran player and may not know what I'm talking about.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Suggestions being thrown around that limited stacking should be allowed is fundamentally flawed. One of the key issues w/ SoD was that you had no choice at which units you wish to attack within the stack, which makes combat completely mindless as you throw either more units or better units at the stack to defeat it.

On the other hand if you are allow to choose which units to attack within the stack then there is no point in stacking as you can simply choose to kill the artillery and supporting unit one by one. If you stack multiple of the same unit to make the stack stronger, then there is no difference in balancing the game such that the original unit was stronger in the first place but takes longer to build.

W/ the 1upt system now, you have more choices on which units you want to attack limited by terrain and positioning. It actually takes some thinking in how your army approach the field, positioning of each unit, and the order in which each unit is destroyed. Each unit is now more valuable since it provides an offensive function in attack, and blocking function in defense.

Overall SoD was never fun, you simply build more or better versions of the same units and throw them at each other. Sacrificing artillery units to do collateral damage to a stack never really made sense. 1upt is clearly a superior system and the game is better for it.

One unit per hex creates roadblocks and traffic jams which feel totally inappropriate given the grand strategic scale. And the AI clearly can't handle the challenges - whether it is mounting an invasion, protecting archers, or even figuring out when it's a good idea to attack. And boats? Try an Archipelago map if you want an automatic win. A design where the computer is incompetent is a bad one, regardless of merit in principle.

FYI the 1 unit per hex approach is also an auto-win for anyone with a tech advantage, since you can't beat quality with quantity. Yet another option by the boards.

 

[juanbobo]

One unit per hex creates roadblocks and traffic jams which feel totally inappropriate given the grand strategic scale. And the AI clearly can't handle the challenges - whether it is mounting an invasion, protecting archers, or even figuring out when it's a good idea to attack. And boats? Try an Archipelago map if you want an automatic win. A design where the computer is incompetent is a bad one, regardless of merit in principle.

FYI the 1 unit per hex approach is also an auto-win for anyone with a tech advantage, since you can't beat quality with quantity. Yet another option by the boards.

These are good points.

 

[TLF]

Roadblocks are appropriate for a grand strategy game.
Those are choke points, like deciding to hold a mountain pass to keep an enemy from advancing and being able to do it with a relatively small force.

Hopefully the AI is sufficiently moddable so that it can eventually handle 1UpT.

 

[Venereus]

The combat system is just the least bad feature.

 

[MaXimillionZero]

- Not sure that the AI grasps the concept of "bring siege engines" before tackling cities.

Neither do I. Cities without walls (ie. pretty much every AI city) fall so easily to a few melee units that there's no need for siege unless the AI has actually managed to put a sizeable army between you and the city, which is very rare.

 

[boredatwork]

My feelings about the new system are mixed largely due to the context in which it was presented.

While undoubtably FAR more enjoyable than SOD the new system is still unmistakably a CIV combat system which means it's still "low calorie" combat.

In the context of balanced empire management meal the new system would have been far more enjoyable than the Tofu it replaced - finally giving Civ warfare that didn't detract from the game, despite the poor AI.


The problem is the designers, by delibrate choice, reduced the meat and potatoes portions of empire management in favour of an extra large helping of warfare. Under that context, as vastly improved though it is, the flaws and limitations of the new system become more pronounced. The empire management was compromised to make it more of a wargame but compared to a real wargame combat is still very bland.