Why 1upt? (serious question/idea)

[Hescumet]

Hi, I am aware the title sounds like trying to create (yet another) "I dont like this game"-threat. It is not. I am just very interested in game mechanics (used to "invent" board games as a young chield my poor parents had to play).

So I am wondering if anyone can tell me a real advantage 1upt has against what I will outline as alternative below.

But to define the criteria, the positives and negatives of 1up:

Positives:
+ No stacks of doom
+ More tactics involved when near enemy/in combat bringing right unit to the front
+ "unit type A is especially strong against unit type B" is more meaningfull, because you cant just create a stack of different units to create a balanced, boring super-unit or defend units too easily (note that this is an additional advantage over the normal "no stacks of doom" advantage)

Negatives:
- Pathfinding/navigation annoying especially in own territory when shuffling units
- Pathfinding troubles when a 'friend' blocks my units
- Civilian units/workers and 1upt
- Slightly unrealistic touch to it (just remember how huge a tile is in square km)

The solution could have been:

Allow multiple units per tile. But when attacking a stack you attack the weakest unit of the stack and all units deal a certain ammount of collateral damage. Effect: Stacking units is dangerous because of unlimited colatoral damage on that tile.

See how this achives everything 1upt does:
+ No stacks of doom => Make no sense anymore, because a single unit attacking a 50 units stack of doom harms 50 units (collatoral damage!) AND when the stack is attacked the weakest unit defends.
+ More tactics involved when near enemy/in combat bringing right unit to the front => Achieved, Now you'd normally don't want to stack units near the enemy, only in very special terrain situations (tactically interesting!).
+ cant stack different unit types to create balanced bot boring super unit

And see how it avoids the downfalls:
- Pathfinding/navigation annoying especially in own territory when shuffling units => Solved
- Pathfinding troubles when a 'friend' blocks my units => Solved
- Civilian units/workers and 1upt => Solved
- Slightly unrealistic touch to it (just remember how huge a tile is in square km) => Solved

In general this would allow the former easy navigation in own territory while keeping the tactical challenges when in combat.

There sure is a flaw?

 

[AlpsStranger]

If I may I think I have a much simpler solution. It comes in two parts.

1) Civilian units can stack. Workers cannot "work together" like in Civ4, but they can stack infinitely.

2) Military units can take a turn to 'pack up' and become civilian units. They could look like wagons/baggage trains/military trucks depending on the era.

This still seems like the best overall solution to me.

 

[PawelS]

I like the "traffic jams", which represent the logistical difficulties of moving a large army, but, judging from earlier discussions, I seem to be the only one who thinks this way

 

[stormerne]

I like the "traffic jams", which represent the logistical difficulties of moving a large army, but, judging from earlier discussions, I seem to be the only one who thinks this way

No you're not alone. I like it too. I'm a chess player. I can't stack my pieces!

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

You can always imagine your traffic jam taking place way down in the less than 1% of the tile that a unit actually inhabits.

 

[John-SJ]

Personally, I like the Civ II solution. Sure, you can have a stack with several units, but if you are attacked and lose, you lose the whole stack.

Create your stack of doom if you want, but risk paying a heavy price for doing so.

 

[Varanid]

Personally, I like the Civ II solution. Sure, you can have a stack with several units, but if you are attacked and lose, you lose the whole stack.

No. Combat in Civ II was a joke! Plus, you didn't lose the stack if it was in a city or a fort, so you could just stack up 20 units in a city (which the AI often did).

I sort of appreciate that moving a large force around is a bit of work; it's not like it's *easy* to coordinate large movements. Hell, coordinating transporation for a large company event is a nightmare in and of itself; I don't want to imagine scaling that up to moving a whole army...

 

[Finite]

You are missing the two worst issues that 1upt creates:
1. game balance is completely changed to limit the army sizes to make it manageable
2. AI will never be even close to human in combat tactics so military conquest will remain the easiest way to beat the computer

Number one I won't touch here, just requires a lot of tweaking of production costs etc to handle the change of balance. It just means single units become more valuable, contributing at parts to problem 2.

To fix issue two, I would like a change to 2upt, making it so that any two units can share a tile (while it now is only 1 combat unit). Technically this probably wouldn't be a massive change (the ability to display two units on the same tile is already there and I've seen bugs that leave two combat units in the same tile).

This would allow the computer to protect their ranged units with a melee unit, making it a lot easier for them to wage war effectively. Granted, it would take out some tactical depth, but I'd still prefer that when the option is too easy military dominance.

I think the 2upt should work so that the stronger one of the units defends, but both take the same damage (meaning often that the weaker one will be destroyed as well on a loss). Ranged units would need to do slightly less damage to balance it out. Also requires changes to AI so it will take advantage of this, but as all know combat AI is in dire need of total overhaul anyway...

EDIT: Would like to add that making ranged units work like civilian units or create at third category for them works as well, there have been a couple of suggestions like this. Just might be easier to go with any two units so you won't have archers jamming workers or possibly 3 units in a tile.

 

[TM Moot]

Personally, I like the Civ II solution. Sure, you can have a stack with several units, but if you are attacked and lose, you lose the whole stack.

Create your stack of doom if you want, but risk paying a heavy price for doing so.

never had a problem with this, it makes movement and storing units easy, but if you go to war and leave you units stacked then you might sufer big time

allow cities/forts to have a garrision unit in addition any other units in that hex and job done

 

[pi-r8]

I wonder if anyone has ever made a mod for civ 4 that used the civ 2 rules for stack death.

 

[lschnarch]

The solution could have been:

Allow multiple units per tile. But when attacking a stack you attack the weakest unit of the stack and all units deal a certain ammount of collateral damage. Effect: Stacking units is dangerous because of unlimited colatoral damage on that tile.
<snip>
There sure is a flaw?

Yes, there is.
Under your system, the most wounded unit would be used to defend the stack. This isn't plausible in any way and would make for just another "artificial" game rule.

In total, I have every understanding for people complaining about the SoD as a stack of 50+ units, as it is an extreme.
Yet, the solution chosen by Mr. Shafer is just the other extreme.

To counter one extreme with the the opposite extreme is never a good idea. Actually, it looks quite like childish behaviour.

The next thing is that even in the current state, the principle of 1upt has already been softened, as it doesn't work in any way: you already CAN stack units (military and civilian or airplanes).
This already says enough about the core game mechanics, around which the whole game has been unbalanced.

Not to mention the fact that many concepts of the blueprint (Panzer General's combat system) have been left out, so that the whole combat system in Civ5 got even more broken.
To mention only a few: supportive fire, retaliation fire, limited ammo, replenishments with costs, ambushing, retreat, hard defense.

But going back to the idea of "stacks" suffering losses (or damage) when the one defending unit loses its fight. I am pretty sure this idea has so many fans (like the 1upt) because of one single reason: the AI cannot handle that concept properly.
That way, the human player get's "cool advantages", making him feel superior.

This may be ok up to a certain level, but latest when starting to play at Prince or Kind level, it becomes flat. At these levels you are expecting some kind of challenge. With inherent game rules making the AI weak in combat, you are just missing that target and thus, making the gaming experience shallow for the player.

Actually, the solution to fight the infamous SoD would have been a limited stack. About the size allowed for stacks one could have debates, but I would see it somewhere in the area of 10 - 25 units. It would be a matter of careful playtesting.

Final conclusion:
Whilst unlimited stacks could be a nuisance and where not realistic/plausible either, the implementation of 1upt has just opened a bigger can of worms. Tediousness has not been eliminated, but transferred into a different part of the game.
Once again, a solution is only possible by breaking a core concept.

After all, 1upt was one of the worst design decisions possible.

 

[wannabewarlord]

After all, 1upt was one of the worst design decisions possible.

I completely disagree. I love the 1upt system. Granted, it has flaws (friendly units blocking you; they need to fix that) but in general, for warfare, it is simply strategically superior.

The fact that the AI can't handle warfare doesn't advocate a change in the 1upt system, in my opinion. Rather, the AI needs to learn to handle the 1upt concept properly. I am not a programmer or an AI expert, but I can't imagine it is so hard to give priority rules to the AI (don't stand in open field with unit X if it can be avoided. I.e. rough terrain >> flat terrain >> water, don't attack unit Y with unit X if strength difference is >Z, don't move ranged in front of melee, use ranged before melee, check for flanking bonues, etc., etc.).

I agree that the AI will always have disadvantages to human strategies (unless you suck at war ;-) ) but that's why it gets bonuses to production and such. So it might not move its Swordsmen as tactically clever as the human, but it has a 2:1 ratio, so mistakes have less of an impact.

Anyhow,
There will be advocate for any combat systems you bring up here or have been used in previous Civ versions and this is fine. It's just that I don't see 1upt going away for Civ 5 (unless modded) and thus you have to play the cards that are dealt to you.

Cheers

 

[Rohili]

In general this would allow the former easy navigation in own territory while keeping the tactical challenges when in combat.

There sure is a flaw?

I think the glaring flaw with your concept is that it will make the AI even worse at combat. The AI sucks at 1UPT currently, but at least it loses only 1 unit for each incorrect tile it occupies.

Now imagine your system where stacks are allowed, but the whole stack gets damaged when attacked and the defender is the weakest unit. It would just create opportunities for the human player take out entire armies of the AI with vastly inferior numbers. The AI will stupidly stack 10 tanks with 1 swordsman, and I can deal significant damage to all 10 tanks by attacking that tile with, say, a rifleman.

If the designers cannot even programme the AI to handle 1UPT well, what makes you think they could programme the AI to handle your more complicated system? After all, your system will require the AI to make more decisions - whether to stack units, how many units to stack, which units should be stacked with which, etc. It can only result in disaster.

 

[lschnarch]

I completely disagree. I love the 1upt system. Granted, it has flaws (friendly units blocking you; they need to fix that) but in general, for warfare, it is simply strategically superior.

That is the commonly made error:
1upt (if implemented correctly, and in Civ5 it is not) is tactically superior.

The problem is that in Civ, you are playing on the strategic map.

If you look at a civ5 map and just remove cities for a moment, and then imagine that each hex might have a range of say 100 mtrs, it becomes obvious that almost any battle takes places on a bushland battlefield with some low elevations here and there.

What changes is where the bushes (forests) and the elevations (hills) are located and how dense the coverage is.

Unfortunately, we cannot remove the cities, which to a certain degree serve (in terms of tactical warfare) as some kind of one-man bunkers.

Point is, performing the 1upt on the strategic map doesn't make much sense.

 

[/solar/]

I like the "traffic jams", which represent the logistical difficulties of moving a large army, but, judging from earlier discussions, I seem to be the only one who thinks this way

thirded



The AI does do some intelligent things, they are just outweighed by some terribly stupid things. Just today I had a slightly weakened longsword on a hill, the AI surrounded it with 4 other units then attacked with a swordsman, crushing me with the 60% flanking. Problem is, it then gets too aggressive and loses the army in a desert somewhere for no reason.

I don't think the AI needs very much work to show a lot of improvement. I'm really looking forward to fighting a good combat AI with the 1UPT system.

 

[fed1943]

IMO, 1UpT is best for military, but not for civilian.
I would like workers like in civ4, so better tiles fast.
And military 1UpT, so better tactics required.
Obvious, AI should know that better tatics,too (I have no idea if this is possible, easy or dificult).

 

[HorribleHarald]

I think the best solution would be using limited stacks and stacks will fight together, not only one to one unit combat. 1upt is too clumpy and especially AI don't handle it at all.

 

[bitula]

Hey!
I have a great idea which would solve many people's problems with 1 UPS. I really wonder what you say, and how you like my idea. It is similar to the non-military stack concept but refined:
1) Implement a pack and unpack function. So imagine that you have a formation and you want to move it as a single unit. So you click on a unit inside the formation and all members of the formation (army) will be visually packed into the selected unit.
2) This is a symbolic pack, so you can move it, but cannot attack or defend.
3) A graphical -preferably thin - outline would show after packing so you can see the form of your army without hiding the details of terrains and land improvements. (Personally this "huge overlap" is my greatest problem so far with 1UP).
4) Now you can move the army by moving the single-tile pack. The outline moves with it as so you can see how it will be unpacked for each step you make.
5) When you arrive, you unpack.
6) If there is no place to unpack the formation in the way it is outlined, then the game would rearrange the pack so it fits.
7) If it does not fit in no way some units remain stacked and will unstack as soon as there is place for it. until it is stacked it cannot be attacked and it cannot attack or it can be attacked and suffers penalty if attacked.
8) If an enemy unit comes into sight - while auto moving or just sitting packed - the formation will automatically unpack and can be attacked.
So this solves movement problems and the large overlap, which is visually unpleasing. And this way you could have as large as an army as you want, just that not everyone could fight, so some units need to be destroyed to make more room.
Hey! What do you think?

 

[lschnarch]

And this way you could have as large as an army as you want, just that not everyone could fight, so some units need to be destroyed to make more room.
Hey! What do you think?

Sorry to pour some water into the wine, but it sounds a bit like SoD with best defender first. Just not on one hex, but spread out.

If you see a difference, you would have to explain in more detail.

 

[man-erg]

In total, I have every understanding for people complaining about the SoD as a stack of 50+ units, as it is an extreme.
Yet, the solution chosen by Mr. Shafer is just the other extreme.

This really is the crux of the problem. From one bizarre extreme to the other that is even more bizarre. When the defenders of 1upt equate it to chess and admit they like traffic jams, what can you do? As a war simulation chess is on a par with connect 4.

Anyway, ALL of the proposed solutions are way more complex than necessary. I propose a simple, effective solution that reduces micromanagement, speeds up the game and is more easily AI programmable. It will satisfy all from grognards to casuals. Maybe....

Rule a) Limit stacks. 5 units per tile, end of story.

Rule b) All combat is assessed in 1 go, taking all elements of a stack into account. 1 click on your stack, 1 click on the enemy. Then casualties are calculated, units retreat etc based on a combat results table.

You *could* add variations it by making the limit user configurable, or dependant on terrain type, even give units a 'weight' so you could get, say 6 spearmen but only 4 elephants in a tile. Seriously, though, I doubt this would add much to the game. Just 5 units per tile. 1 click resolution. Job done.

Don't forget that "chokepoints", terrain type etc would all be taken into as factors that affect the combat outcome.