Multi units or single units, is it an issue ?

[Cernu]

Multi units or single units / tile, is it an issue ?

So far, it seems MotA is a single unit/tile gameplay.

I think it is utterly stupid, non "realistic" (especially the part where archers will shoot over mountains or forests), and it is a stupid mix of strategic and tactical combat.

Maybe I am the only one?

 

[Mivo]

My concern with 1UPT ("one unit per tile", for the non-Civers) is not so much related to realism, but more with the limitations of this system on small maps, especially if only units on adjacent hexes can engage with one another (as opposed to, say, being able to form infantry front lines with ranged units in the back, and possibly extremely long ranged units in the third line). When maps are small (as they are in Civ), you inevitably run into maneuvering problems (Civ5 can't even handle it when units with different destinations cross a path on their way, though that seems to be something that could be better programmed). This screeshot illustrates the trickiness of it perfectly.

There is also the matter of the AI. 1UPT with a few dozens of active individual units is much harder for an AI to handle well than a few stacks that consist of many units each. Good AI in more complex strategy games is already not easy to come by, and 1UPT is an additional challenge, I feel.

On the flipside, if you can limitlessly stack units (or have a relatively high limit), you'll end up with a few huge "stacks of doom" that mop up the map in the middle or late game, which is also not all that fun. I think I'd like to see some experiments with a compromise between SoD and 1UPT.

 

[Cernu]

Lol at your screenshot, it is great. Asd far as I know, men going to war have always arranged themselves in groups, for ease of command, moral and number benefits...
Yes, I wish for a compromise too. Maybe tied to some research ("Headquarters", for example, would allow to have from 5 to 7 units), or the commander's quality (good commanders would allow to stack more units).

 

[Draxynnic]

Just posted this in a different thread:

Well, one thing that it does seem to be demonstrating is that units can be of different sizes, up to about eight.

One thing I would like to see based on that would be perhaps keeping 1UPT, but allowing the units to be heterogenous. So instead of having your warriors over there and your rangers over there and your rogues over here, you could mix all three in a single unit. Which is also kinda 'stack of doom'-ish, but still allows for combat to take place on the strategy map if the devs are going that way (although I'd LOVE a tactical battle map) and has one huge advantage over the MoM and AoW standard that you can see at a glance what's coming for you rather than just what the computer considers the most dangerous thing in the stack.

Personally, considering other unit types known to be present in Ardania, I think pure 1UPT is something that's likely to produce overkill situations. Clerics, for instance, are probably not something that you want wandering around on their own, but having the full unit of 8 to keep them safe is probably more healing then you need unless the army is just that big. 'Twould be more efficient to be able to put one or two in each unit, protected by the rest of the unit.

Now, for Majesty 2 players, imagine eight paladins on a tile, and attempting to stop that with regular troops on a 1UPT basis. Urk.

One way to get around 'stack of doom' behaviour could be to make more powerful creatures take up more space. You get stacks of doom in MoM and AoW because, once you've trained them, it's just as easy to have a stack of eight dragons as eight spearmen... and where a single dragon can generally comfortable eat all eight spearmen, it makes it completely unfeasible to try to make a force of weaker troops that can stop them. If, by contrast, you were limited to one or two of the more powerful creatures per tile, this would make it much more viable to stop them with numbers.

This would bring up realism questions with things like temple heroes (paladins and so on) since canonically they can be quite powerful but technically should only take the same space as anyone else (unless they have companions, anyway). This might be waived by making them hero units in the MoM/AoW sense, but it can possibly also be resolved by having them only take up one space each, but that you can't have two in one tile - they expect to be leading the party or unit they're in, not playing second fiddle to some other templar!

 

[safferli]

Yep, a bit like in AoW wasn't it? Where the better units took up more space?

 

[Draxynnic]

Age of Wonders has no such mechanic. There is a size listed for units, but "Extra Large" units take up one hex on the tactical battle map and can be stacked eight to a hex on the strategic map just like small units. As far as I've seen, the 'size' statistic doesn't actually have any mechanical effect (while gender, at least, determines vulnerability to Seduce attacks).

 

[safferli]

Ah, it was the Warlards series that had the size effect. You could fit 4 "normal" units for one Titan there. Well, against the AI, four fully-upgraded woodelf bowmen were quite deadly, even more so than a titan and far cheater to build... good times

 

[EmperorNortonII]

What if they did something like HoI3, where you make a "division" composed of 2-5 units that have varying toughness, air attack, melee, ranged, etc, based on how they are grouped? I mean, in HoI, IC limits how many stacks of doom (all-heavy armor divisions) and manpower limits swarms of super-cheap units. You hafta balance both concerns with what you're likely to face on the battlefield.

 

[safferli]

What if they did something like HoI3, where you make a "division" composed of 2-5 units that have varying toughness, air attack, melee, ranged, etc, based on how they are grouped? I mean, in HoI, IC limits how many stacks of doom (all-heavy armor divisions) and manpower limits swarms of super-cheap units. You hafta balance both concerns with what you're likely to face on the battlefield.

Also a nice idea, you build armies, similar to HoMM.

 

[Jazthesentinel]

I'm hoping that there will be no 1UPT limitation, too.

As it has been pointed out, it really makes gameplay suffer a lot.

 

[Draxynnic]

Also a nice idea, you build armies, similar to HoMM.

That is an interesting thought. Part of the cause of the 'stack of doom' mentality is the opportunity costs in building from cities in games like Age of Wonder and Master of Magic - when a given city is capable of producing either a top-end unit or lower-end units, the natural inclination is to build the former unless there's some pressing tactical or strategic reason to go with the latter (needing whatever troops you can get right now, the lower-end unit has some capability that you need and the higher-end unit lacks, or to keep upkeep costs down when the role for a particular unit just doesn't need the best of the best). It might well help to limit top-end unit spam if it was possible for a given production centre to engage in parallel construction - especially if it isn't actually possible to put everything the production centre has into a single unit. (Which is how HoMM works - regardless of how many resources you have you can't build more top-end creatures than is available in the city's population of that creature, so you're naturally forced to add the weaker creatures as well. In Warlock terms, it appears tech buildings are seperate features on the strategic map, so each might be able to independantly produce the unit they create if supplied with the funds to do so.)

 

[EmperorNortonII]

That is an interesting thought. Part of the cause of the 'stack of doom' mentality is the opportunity costs in building from cities in games like Age of Wonder and Master of Magic - when a given city is capable of producing either a top-end unit or lower-end units, the natural inclination is to build the former unless there's some pressing tactical or strategic reason to go with the latter (needing whatever troops you can get right now, the lower-end unit has some capability that you need and the higher-end unit lacks, or to keep upkeep costs down when the role for a particular unit just doesn't need the best of the best). It might well help to limit top-end unit spam if it was possible for a given production centre to engage in parallel construction - especially if it isn't actually possible to put everything the production centre has into a single unit. (Which is how HoMM works - regardless of how many resources you have you can't build more top-end creatures than is available in the city's population of that creature, so you're naturally forced to add the weaker creatures as well. In Warlock terms, it appears tech buildings are seperate features on the strategic map, so each might be able to independantly produce the unit they create if supplied with the funds to do so.)

... but the first Age of Wonders always featured low-end units, because 1st and 2nd-level cities could only produce 1st and 2nd-level units. If you could only produce halfling slingers or nothing, and have the gold, might as well make the slingers.

... and the single thing I hated most about AoW2 is how all cities grew and so all there would be on the field end-game were high-tier units.

 

[Draxynnic]

Yes and no... because you could always leave the little cities on merchandise to fund the bigger cities, and unless you really are swimming in gold the upkeep costs of large numbers of weak units will bite eventually (unless they're pony riders or something else that's a tier up in all but name). I think Age of Wonders 2 actually made having weaker units more useful (the gaps between tiers felt smaller, and there was the removal of unlimited retaliations), but as you point out the city growth meant that given enough time any city could build the top-end units.

Mind you, that's probably a result of adding the feature of being able to found new cities (as opposed to just reconstructing ruins) - it'd be a bit silly if a settlement became a level 4 city right off the bat, but a bit pointless if it stayed an outpost forever. What they probably needed, though, was a system like in Master of Magic where the maximum size of a city was determined by the terrain instead of just bothering to check for another twon too close by and leaving it at that.

 

[safferli]

Mind you, that's probably a result of adding the feature of being able to found new cities (as opposed to just reconstructing ruins) - it'd be a bit silly if a settlement became a level 4 city right off the bat, but a bit pointless if it stayed an outpost forever. What they probably needed, though, was a system like in Master of Magic where the maximum size of a city was determined by the terrain instead of just bothering to check for another twon too close by and leaving it at that.

With the obvious hexes of W:MotA, I think it would easily be possible to include this. The hexes clearly have different terrain, so I think cities will produce/grow/do something depending on what is in their sphere of influence.

 

[Shadowless]

Civ 5 made me hate 1UPT, but there were several mods for civ 4 that gave bonuses to the attacker if they had units adjacent to the one being attacked and that seems like a good compromise, Sure people could make stacks of doom but those stacks of doom could be destroyed by a nicely set up ambush where 4-5 hex's of support troops support the main attack (I could be wrong and that could actually be a regular civ 4 mechanic but it's been so long since I've played I can't be sure)

 

[Draxynnic]

@safferli: Age of Wonders had different terrain too, as well as spells that changed terrain, so it had the infrastructure to make city/terrain influences deeper. In practise, though, all that really mattered was whether the hexes immediately adjacent to the city were friendly to the race occupying it or not (with a spell that made the second ring of hexes matter as well). However, the only effect was to increase the gold income of the city - you could place a city on a tiny island surrounded by lava and apart from a slight reduction in income, it would have exactly the same growth potential as one in the middle of a fertile paradise.

Warlock does look as though the terrain will definitely make more difference for cities, though - especially in that if you don't have room nearby to construct infrastructure, you won't be building anything!

@Shadowless: Age of Wonders had the 'rule of hexes', that means units adjacent to a combat join the combat. It just meant that the killer army group had to cover more hexes to stop it from being able to be outnumbered by weaker troops. (Three was probably the golden number, since any group that covered more than three hexes could be seperated out and defeated in detail, and in clear terrain it was pretty much impossible to avoid having at least one component of your army that couldn't be attacked from three hexes.)

 

[Thormodr]

Quite dislike Civilization 5 and I am not a big fan of 1UPT.

I am hoping there will be multiple units per tile but either some kind of stacking limit through leadership (or some form of army mechanic) or severe attrition penalties to punish big stacks.

 

[unmerged(189717)]

There should at least be the possibility for smaller units to stack. One Greater Ancient Wyrm per tile is okay, but Goblin Spearmen should stack.

 

[Praetori]

Quite dislike Civilization 5 and I am not a big fan of 1UPT.

I am hoping there will be multiple units per tile but either some kind of stacking limit through leadership (or some form of army mechanic) or severe attrition penalties to punish big stacks.

Well there's the Hoi3 mechanic of Frontage that could be applied. No matter how many units you can pile up a single front allow for no more than a certain number of troops to engage (depending on techs) though stacking in general has it's own penalties (besides being juicy targets for air attacks, insert dragons/arrows/magic instead of Stukas).

 

[safferli]

Combining Frontage and multi-units-as-armies does actually have some charm