Why I will never accept 1upt, or buy future Civ games.

[tranx]

In Realism Invictus, there's no cap limit for your stacks but if more than 15 units share a tile they suffer a HUGE malus, called "crowded": -1 in vision, -1 in movement, -25% strength etc... It works very well, you can still stack a lot of units together to cross bottlenecks or mountain pass but you're very vulnerable to an ambush when you do so, and once you've reached wider space the incentive is great to build smaller, less crowded armies that line up on a widened front.

The only problem is that the AI very often stacks more than 15 units together even when that could easily be avoided. I believe it would only take a small amount of programming to solve that.

That's probably only true if you build the game from the ground up. Otherwise, the consequences of biasing the AI into making 15 man stacks will cause it to do strange movements and make vulnerable compositions, not to mention the human could still create funnels to set up the "ambushes". It's an interesting idea from a civ perspective to stack-cap and would be worth exploring, but would be difficult in the framework of either existing game.

Ok you're right I hadn't thought of that. But even if it takes a lot more programming (about stack position and stack composition), I still think the idea of a 'crowded' malus is a valid one. For Civ6 maybe?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Could you please explain sample tactics then (for Civ IV)?
I actually want to hear this....

Very well. Here are some important/critical considerations of civ IV combat:

Collateral Initiative: Because of the best defender rules on defense, without siege the defender typically has the advantage. However, due to siege collateral the advantage swings instead to the attacker. In true stack combat, collateral rules the day. However, it is also the #1 reason that running a pure stack into the lands of a competent player means throwing away your units unless he has nothing (you're cherry-picking) or is fighting multiple fronts.

Culture Movement: Civ V has zones of control...however civ IV is configured such that only the defender can use roads in his territory. See collateral initiative above for why this matters...a LOT.

Forking: Put units between multiple cities, preferably on defensive terrain. The defender can't build up double (or more) the forces required to defend both sites. On the flip side, it is then important for the defending player to block the attacker from reaching these spots. Forking is not a good idea in civ V due to the 1UPT, zones of control, and the ability for cities to fire at you, so this is a consideration players only familiar with the newest game won't appreciate. Note that forking is particularly devastating with amphibious attacks.

Terrain-Specific Promotions: MP veterans probably know a thing or two about this, while most players won't otherwise. Guerrilla and Woodsman (which civ V only has "rough terrain") not only give significant defensive bonuses on their respective terrains...the 2nd level of these promotions lets 1 move units get 2 movement points on said terrain. This allows for crap like "land 4 crossbows on a hill with guerrilla II, and now attacking them means attacking a 10+ str unit with a first strike...but they can reach 2 cities next turn too").

Flanking vs siege: Mounted units are excellent forkers, but they also hold the ability to inflict damage on siege in stacks without attacking it directly. Considering the impact of collateral damage and the best defender code, composition of mounted vs other defenders vs siege can drastically affect what kinds of units the defender wants (and the attacker too, if he knows what the defender has).

Counter units: Civ V has counter-units too, but in civ IV they're "harder" counters. You stand a reasonable chance with proper horseman usage of avoiding losses vs opposing spears in civ V. In civ IV, it's quite difficult to accomplish that. There are also more "counters", as there are both melee and archery that get bonuses vs melee and units specifically designed to defeat gunpowder.

All of this boils down to a very simple reality: If you simply enter enemy territory with a stack once siege is available, you're going to die embarassingly. Allow me to put these lessons into practice. During a polycast "cooperative" multiplayer game, we had a guest player playing with us that we met through starcraft 2. He got rolled by his AI on either monarch or emperor (I forget), so we permitted him to return to the game as that AI. Prior to that happening, we had agreed that I would get a city from the Arabian empire, which was now his civ. He refused to give it to me, so I tried to culture flip it. I admit, I baited him, spamming spies on him and commenting that "that city is looking mighty Chinese". He declares on me. Some pre-war facts:

1. We're at tech parity. Both of us have longbows, crossbows, catapults, maces...pretty much all medieval but knights available.
2. When he declared on me, I was around 70% of his power.
3. We were on a horseshoe-shaped continent (upside down U), with me on the right and him the left.
4. I had astronomy, he did not.

When he declared on me, I was momentarily nervous. If he played his cards well, stack split properly, and burned cities my small empire wouldn't be able to keep up and he could just outproduce me. However, he then moved all of his forces into my territory, and instead of being nervous, I knew I'd won instantly. You want to tell me tactics don't matter in stack warfare? At that point I told him I'd give him one last chance to give the city back and take peace, otherwise he was going to die horribly. When he didn't answer, I simply said "oh...so you chose death..." .

It was horrible. This war lasted around 15 turns. His stack got massacred really badly by cho-ko-nus, something like 8:1 kills to deaths in my favor. I whipped 2 galleons, and used them to ship some guerrilla II CKN into his territory, sniping some poorly defended inland cities using the promotion. His capitol, on the interior of the horse shoe, was captured amphibiously by CKN and he couldn't retake it since his AI had built mostly melee and his real army was in my territory before it got its pants pulled down. His production crippled by all of 6-8 units, he couldn't bring anything new to the front lines and got rolled by a basic stack because I knew he didn't have any siege + follow up anymore.

In other words, a larger, more powerful army at tech parity got asbolutely massacred by a smaller force and the entire 9 city empire was gone in a flash...all because of 2 tactical blunders (not shoring up against naval attacks and moving a big stack into enemy territory without knowing what was there). But go ahead, keep pretending that you just move a big stack in and win .

We also need to look at Decisions-Per-Minute here. In Civ5 you will repeat lots of steps which requires little or no brain, but lots of clicking.

This, combined with the amount of time civ V forces you to wait until you get to meaningful decisions again, is what single-handedly killed the game for me. Nothing is quite as irksome in a game as not being able to do anything in it. I move one unit then spend triple the time it took to move that unit waiting to be able to move the next unit or end the turn...and then wait another 30-60 seconds before I can do anything again...and then it's time to move the units again. Sometimes, deciding how to move them matters. Too often, it's managing units that aren't on the front yet however, and they can't even be waypointed when produced into a general, more manageable area.

Micro isn't a bad thing unto itself, but micro that doesn't have a significant impact on the outcome (IE meaningless/tedious micro) is nothing but a detriment to a strategy game's experience. This kind of thing is, for example, why BUG allows people to set the slider to 100% or 0% in one click. Rather than learning from what the community modded into civ IV, failaxis went the other way, forcing us to use MORE inputs to queue multiple things into a city's build and removing some keyboard shortcuts...all while making each action take longer in a game that, due to 1UPT, forces more actions. It's a disaster. I don't agree with people who hate on it because it's different from a design perspective; it's a different game. However, its UI conventions and the way it runs on *recommended* specs makes it rather objectively measured as a bad game. Why can'[t I immediately give orders to my next units after moving one...with animations turned off?! Why is it so hard to register that a unit moved over 1-2 hexes? How could they have screwed up basic movement to such a pathetic degree?

As for MP in civ V . Well, at least people can finally play it. At first when they were selling the community the beta you couldn't even play MP with more than 1 other person consistently lol. Its coding is STILL awful in MP, which is an unfortunate trend in gaming in general.

 

[traius]

As a now retired but once very vivid Skyrim player, I demand you take back that filthy accusation of a beautiful game!

OMG Skyrim is so bad. Don't defend it! My enchanter/alchemist/blacksmith who has no weapon skills and has spent his whole life at the mages' guild doing no quests does more damage with an iron dagger, and defends better/just as well in iron armour, than my seasoned longswordman does with the top level weapons and armour. That kind of game "mechanic" is completely f***ed, and ruins a game. Moreover, there is no balance at all between mage classes and any other class. Enchanting, a mage type ability, is awesome, and healing is always useful, but every other mage ability sucks. Master level spells do less DPS than expert level, expert level spells do less than one sword-swing worth of damage, and enchanting 1 handed increases damage while enchanting to boost destruction... lowers spell cost. Guess what? Swinging a sword costs nothing. So sword does more DPS, can be boosted with enchantments to more dps, never degrades, and can be swung unlimitedly (because while they weakened magic, they got rid of weapon degradation and stamina-use-for-a-regular-swing, meaning nothing slows my swordsmen down....)

There were in fact many other problems with the game, but they are irrelevant compared to that, though the complete uselessness of both stamina and magicka is also very close, as is the fact that my companion would happily and invcibly fight everything for me, while I gallantly run away, away!. "Nothing can stand toe-to-toe with my mage who has never been toe-to-toe with anything in his life." I recently tried to replay the game not "abusing" crafting, (it's not abuse if the game-makers intended for it to work that way! Though god only knows why....) but at some point I realized that I shouldn't have to purposely play badly to make a challenge for myself.

I didn't buy any DLC, because my character could slay dragons with an iron dagger. What challenge could possibly exist to be worth any amount of money? I wouldn't even play them if they gave them to me for free.

 

[damerell]

I've seen large concentrations of forces. Can you imagine if IRL units didn't know how to make space and suffered from pathing issues.

I can very easily, yes, given the number of historical occasions in which road and railway capacity has been a limiting factor, where units advancing have got tangled up in units retreating (even on an operational scale), etc.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Wow, I didn't realize Skyrim subscribed to civ V tall/wide balance principles .

 

[Archon_Wing]

I can very easily, yes, given the number of historical occasions in which road and railway capacity has been a limiting factor, where units advancing have got tangled up in units retreating (even on an operational scale), etc.

Sure. But it makes no sense that the artillery is within the next adjacent region while its support unit is over there twiddling their fingers.

That makes more sense in RTS games like Starcraft where it's possible to quickly and dynamically create formations. This makes no sense in a turn based large scale world based map.

And the pathing issue (where units move backwards) is admittingly not inherent to 1 upt design. However, as is, was needlessly cumbersome.

 

[ork75]

Very well. Here are some important/critical considerations of civ IV combat:

Collateral Initiative: Because of the best defender rules on defense, without siege the defender typically has the advantage. However, due to siege collateral the advantage swings instead to the attacker. In true stack combat, collateral rules the day. However, it is also the #1 reason that running a pure stack into the lands of a competent player means throwing away your units unless he has nothing (you're cherry-picking) or is fighting multiple fronts.

Culture Movement: Civ V has zones of control...however civ IV is configured such that only the defender can use roads in his territory. See collateral initiative above for why this matters...a LOT.

Forking: Put units between multiple cities, preferably on defensive terrain. The defender can't build up double (or more) the forces required to defend both sites. On the flip side, it is then important for the defending player to block the attacker from reaching these spots. Forking is not a good idea in civ V due to the 1UPT, zones of control, and the ability for cities to fire at you, so this is a consideration players only familiar with the newest game won't appreciate. Note that forking is particularly devastating with amphibious attacks.

Terrain-Specific Promotions: MP veterans probably know a thing or two about this, while most players won't otherwise. Guerrilla and Woodsman (which civ V only has "rough terrain") not only give significant defensive bonuses on their respective terrains...the 2nd level of these promotions lets 1 move units get 2 movement points on said terrain. This allows for crap like "land 4 crossbows on a hill with guerrilla II, and now attacking them means attacking a 10+ str unit with a first strike...but they can reach 2 cities next turn too").

Flanking vs siege: Mounted units are excellent forkers, but they also hold the ability to inflict damage on siege in stacks without attacking it directly. Considering the impact of collateral damage and the best defender code, composition of mounted vs other defenders vs siege can drastically affect what kinds of units the defender wants (and the attacker too, if he knows what the defender has).

Counter units: Civ V has counter-units too, but in civ IV they're "harder" counters. You stand a reasonable chance with proper horseman usage of avoiding losses vs opposing spears in civ V. In civ IV, it's quite difficult to accomplish that. There are also more "counters", as there are both melee and archery that get bonuses vs melee and units specifically designed to defeat gunpowder.

All of this boils down to a very simple reality: If you simply enter enemy territory with a stack once siege is available, you're going to die embarassingly. Allow me to put these lessons into practice. During a polycast "cooperative" multiplayer game, we had a guest player playing with us that we met through starcraft 2. He got rolled by his AI on either monarch or emperor (I forget), so we permitted him to return to the game as that AI. Prior to that happening, we had agreed that I would get a city from the Arabian empire, which was now his civ. He refused to give it to me, so I tried to culture flip it. I admit, I baited him, spamming spies on him and commenting that "that city is looking mighty Chinese". He declares on me. Some pre-war facts:

1. We're at tech parity. Both of us have longbows, crossbows, catapults, maces...pretty much all medieval but knights available.
2. When he declared on me, I was around 70% of his power.
3. We were on a horseshoe-shaped continent (upside down U), with me on the right and him the left.
4. I had astronomy, he did not.

When he declared on me, I was momentarily nervous. If he played his cards well, stack split properly, and burned cities my small empire wouldn't be able to keep up and he could just outproduce me. However, he then moved all of his forces into my territory, and instead of being nervous, I knew I'd won instantly. You want to tell me tactics don't matter in stack warfare? At that point I told him I'd give him one last chance to give the city back and take peace, otherwise he was going to die horribly. When he didn't answer, I simply said "oh...so you chose death..." .

It was horrible. This war lasted around 15 turns. His stack got massacred really badly by cho-ko-nus, something like 8:1 kills to deaths in my favor. I whipped 2 galleons, and used them to ship some guerrilla II CKN into his territory, sniping some poorly defended inland cities using the promotion. His capitol, on the interior of the horse shoe, was captured amphibiously by CKN and he couldn't retake it since his AI had built mostly melee and his real army was in my territory before it got its pants pulled down. His production crippled by all of 6-8 units, he couldn't bring anything new to the front lines and got rolled by a basic stack because I knew he didn't have any siege + follow up anymore.

In other words, a larger, more powerful army at tech parity got asbolutely massacred by a smaller force and the entire 9 city empire was gone in a flash...all because of 2 tactical blunders (not shoring up against naval attacks and moving a big stack into enemy territory without knowing what was there). But go ahead, keep pretending that you just move a big stack in and win .



This, combined with the amount of time civ V forces you to wait until you get to meaningful decisions again, is what single-handedly killed the game for me. Nothing is quite as irksome in a game as not being able to do anything in it. I move one unit then spend triple the time it took to move that unit waiting to be able to move the next unit or end the turn...and then wait another 30-60 seconds before I can do anything again...and then it's time to move the units again. Sometimes, deciding how to move them matters. Too often, it's managing units that aren't on the front yet however, and they can't even be waypointed when produced into a general, more manageable area.

Micro isn't a bad thing unto itself, but micro that doesn't have a significant impact on the outcome (IE meaningless/tedious micro) is nothing but a detriment to a strategy game's experience. This kind of thing is, for example, why BUG allows people to set the slider to 100% or 0% in one click. Rather than learning from what the community modded into civ IV, failaxis went the other way, forcing us to use MORE inputs to queue multiple things into a city's build and removing some keyboard shortcuts...all while making each action take longer in a game that, due to 1UPT, forces more actions. It's a disaster. I don't agree with people who hate on it because it's different from a design perspective; it's a different game. However, its UI conventions and the way it runs on *recommended* specs makes it rather objectively measured as a bad game. Why can'[t I immediately give orders to my next units after moving one...with animations turned off?! Why is it so hard to register that a unit moved over 1-2 hexes? How could they have screwed up basic movement to such a pathetic degree?

As for MP in civ V . Well, at least people can finally play it. At first when they were selling the community the beta you couldn't even play MP with more than 1 other person consistently lol. Its coding is STILL awful in MP, which is an unfortunate trend in gaming in general.

Interesting.....

Stuff like this makes me want to pick up BtS again and maybe get beyond chieftain. Sadly, leaving the disk in my laptop for 6-7 months tends be slightly bad for it .

I don't really understand the delay of decisions that you mention or the time between unit movement though.

I guess I like the tactical elements more present in V than the strategic elements of war represented in IV (many of the "tactics" seemed more like operational or strategic level decisions than tactical ones).

 

[vranasm]

Interesting.....

Stuff like this makes me want to pick up BtS again and maybe get beyond chieftain. Sadly, leaving the disk in my laptop for 6-7 months tends be slightly bad for it .

I don't really understand the delay of decisions that you mention or the time between unit movement though.

I guess I like the tactical elements more present in V than the strategic elements of war represented in IV (many of the "tactics" seemed more like operational or strategic level decisions than tactical ones).

well I can totally see how you can think that civ iv lacks depth based on playing on chieftain...

 

[gps]

Stuff like this makes me want to pick up BtS again and maybe get beyond chieftain. Sadly, leaving the disk in my laptop for 6-7 months tends be slightly bad for it .

Why would you want to do that? Properly updated to 3.19 BTS does not need the disk any more.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Based on his implication, he probably forgot it was in there at some point and ruined it (or left it in there before 3.19)...I don't think he was implying he'd leave the disk in on purpose now.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Based on his implication, he probably forgot it was in there at some point and ruined it (or left it in there before 3.19)...I don't think he was implying he'd leave the disk in on purpose now.

Correct. I think gps is saying that he isn't SOL, provided the game is still installed.

 

[gps]

No, silly me, I guess I really misread the posting.
I though it would be bad for the notebook to have the CD-drive blocked by the Civ-disk for another six months. But you're right, it could absolutely mean something different...

 

[ork75]

When was 3.19 released?

 

[Windsor]

June 2009

 

[ork75]

Oh my. In that case, I may have it. I might not though... let me check...

*edit - GAHH.... looks like I don't; it still asks for the disk. I'll try to get it on steam this time, preferably on sale. After all, I got the original for $15.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

You have Beyond the Sword (BTS) therefore you can download the patch and update to 3.19 just like the rest of "us".