Why 1upt? (serious question/idea)

[msacra]

A limit *does* make sense as you cannot squeeze infinite military into a finite space. The problem is defining *what* that limit is as Civ is (deliberately?) abstract on hex and unit scale. Either way, a limit of "infinite" is blatantly wrong, as is a limit of "1". The answer must lie between those extremes...

Presumably a hex must be 'many' miles across? Depending on map size I'd hazard a guess at anywhere between 10 miles and a 100 miles. And how big is a unit? Somewhere from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands?



The goal is an efficient, plausable abstraction of combat in a high level strategy game. however many U's per T. Because 1UPT just feels so *wrong* at the current scale that it hurts! I agree with CivGeek, in that I am amazed the current system got past design stage. I would guess that the original plan was for something much more ambitiously tactical - aka Panzer General. But most of that ambition had to be cut to hit the release deadline and/or to make the game playable as a Civ game. Let's face it, the 1UPT combat as it stands now is a very poor imitation of Panzer General. Which itself was probably the most over-simplified hex wargame ever developed.

In principle, I agree with all those suggesting a move to a separate hex map for the tactical battle. The only problem - but it is a huge one - is the time added on to a game to complete all those tactical battles. Realistically, most of them would be tedious and unimportant anyway. Not worth added several hours on to a game for.

What I was suggesting was effectively the "Quick Battle" as it's used in Total War. Would a separate tactical map at 1UPT, with stacks on the main map be the best of both worlds and keep everybody happy, if, as Bitula suggested, you have the quick combat option?

I think Man-erg and CivGeek have it closest. Tactical/Operational combat just doesn't work/make sense on a strategy level map and game. Simply limiting SoD to 5 units (in hex/Civ5), or 8 units (previous Civs) so each one can spread out to an adjacent tile would be fine. Think of how many Persians there were in a small area the size of Thermopylae or allies on the Beaches of Normandy...stacks make sense, and I never really experienced ridiculous SoDs in Civs III & IV anyway...they were usually 5-10 sized stacks that came in droves, which reflects history much better than 1UPT. 1UPT, even when I "pretend" that my units are entire divisions instead of say, Brigades (Civ4), or Battalions (Civ3), it still feels so wrong.

 

[bitula]

Actually you have 1UPT in Civ4 as well. Just don't stack units and keep always 1 per tile. Voila, here is your 1UPT Civ4 along with tactics: Stuff like flanking and ranged combat can be scripted. Limits can be scripted as well just a single IF statement in the python script IMO. So 1UPT is not a real feature of Civ5, quite the opposite, it is just an imposed limit of one on the SoD (and sometimes two, btw from the point of view of realism it is ridiculously funny that you can stack a worker with a military unit but can't stack say two workers, I mean, why so, what does that suppose to mean?) so it is more akin to removal of a feature than an add-on. I would go along with the mentioned tactical layer as a separate area + quick combat, which is normal SoD, that would result in something truly knew, although I've read somewhere that sub-area can be scripted in Civ4 as well. Examples are the dungeons in FFH or Fall Further, where you can crawl in a sub-map, although I didn't see yet one, but it is possible.

 

[Camikaze]

I like it the way it is because you actually need to use a strategy as opposed to the 'no thought stack of doom'. I just wish they would have/will spend some more time on the AI.

It's quite debatable whether a tactical innovation such as 1upt actually does maximise strategic gameplay options. I would think that it does allow for a bit more strategic variation, simply due to the lack of much with SoDs, but whether or not it's the best solution to SoDs in terms of allowing for that strategic variation would seem dubious.

 

[LordTC]

Pathfinding is already a pain to do in Civ games, it gets calculated every time any AI moves a unit, and if you start spending a bunch of time considering different paths based on whether or not you'll get to end a turn on a rough tile 4 turns down the road when you pass near someone you're at war with the game will bog down horribly.

As for the Total War suggestion, my biggest problem with Total War is that the buildings for cities aren't as interesting and similar issues with wonders. I love the combat system. I like that combats are sometimes multi-turns (even say 2-3 year sieges of a city) but typically are on reasonable time-scales. In Civ, taking 3 turns to take a city is 120 years.

Also some sort of real time or alternating turns battle engine would be beautiful for fixing the issues with simultaneous turns.

Also if most units are grouped into big armies pathfinding is rarer (fewer movements per turn etc.)