I thought stacks were discouraged!

[MasterSlowPoke]

http://www.craigsniffen.com/index/images/omgwtfpwn.jpg

I thought I was going to win that one, too. The Germans were not as far ahead as they appeared - about equal in tech. I tested out the Immortals in an early conquest of Greece - they're not all that great, fortified archers still eat them alive. The Arabs got fed up and attacked me around 1600, and I was able to stick him in last place with a little help from Montezuma of all people. That man is ruthless - I've never noticed it that well because I'm the one typically fighting him, but wow, ally with him one time. It's amazing. I was teching to rocketry when I heard the dreadful war sound and saw this outside my commerce city.

I'll win Prince eventually.

[Blake]

Stacks are discouraged, by the cannons you must have forgotten to build .

[MasterSlowPoke]

I guess I just wasn't expecting him to invade - I tend to let my military slip in peace time - there were archers still fortified over in my capital. I typically have enough to go and upgrade them before they get to battle.

A cannon wouldn't have done much against that stack with only one rifleman defending anyways.

[Quillan]

No, one cannon would not have helped. A bigger defensive force with 2 or 3 cannon would have, however. I have a similar problem. When in a long period of peace, especially when I have researched a few techs that allow new buildings or wonders, I tend to neglect my military in favor of the new improvements. I have to constantly keep track of this, and force myself to build a bigger military with modern units.

[Hypatian]

Stacks that large are discouraged by having reasonable sized diverse stacks with siege units on your side.

It's definitely important to keep a reasonable military presence for defense--the AI will invade (just like a human would) if it sees you having weak defenses, and it's ready to expand. This is smart for a couple of reasons, of course... Not only is it a reasonably efficient way to expand, and to take away the strength of a high-scoring neighbor, it also makes sense on the basis of "If I don't do it, somebody else who's more military minded might, and I'd rather it be me."

[knighterrant]

There is going to be war now or later. I'd rather it be now.

Where did I hear that before?

[teaster]

I have always had trouble putting priority on building military units as well. I used to only start building units in number after I have a couple of cities with no more improvements to build. I have learned though to have a city or 2 focus on building the military up at all times. It's amazing how little even aggressive neighbours will bother you if your military is ranked 1 or 2 in the world. Even if you are not a warmonger it allows you to build in peace, or at least put you in a position where you don't have panic stop what you were building to switch to military units when an attack comes.

edit: I got a serious kick in the pants as well when I first went up to Prince. You live and learn... actually I died restarted and learned

[Artuero]

Am I wrong, or is there a limit to how many units in a stack are affected by collateral damage from a given seige weapon (or bomber, fighter, tank, etc.). It seems like yes, it is a bad idea to stack six units, but maybe it is ok to stack 30 units because only six or eight are going to take the collateral damage and the rest come out fresh and clean.

Haven't looked at this in depth.

[Dis]

at least with bombers this is the case. But if you have enough of them, you'll damage them all.

[Quillan]

I think there's a limit with the artillery as well. At least, I've used catapults on a town and found a unit afterwards that didn't seem to be damaged. If it's stated anywhere exactly what the limit is, I haven't found it yet.

[Blake]

The limit is about 6 i think, it might go 5,6,7 for catapult,cannon,artillery but don't quote me on that. In some cases it makes sense to have very large stacks, basically stacks of 2-3 are good to minimize collatoral damage, stacks of ~5 are very bad because they actually maximize collatoral damage - every unit in the stack gets hurt. You can also minimize collatoral damage by having very large stacks, like 10+, this way if the enemy only has a few siege weapons they'll only be able to hurt some of the units in the super-stack, leaving some full health defenders.

See if you break up 20 units into 4 stacks of 5, the enemy could easily wipe out 1 of those single stacks by sacrificing just a couple of artillery. But to cause actual losses to the stack of 20 they'd need to throw away 5-6 siege units.

If you have overwhemling numbers, use giant stacks of DOOOM to minimize losses.
If you have underwhelming numbers, use small stacks to minimize losses.

[Drachasor]

Hmm, the situation is rather complex with many factors to consider.

1. More stacks help ensure a larger number of full-health units will reach the front lines to attack. Units with Full Health are much better to attack with than damaged units.

2. More Stacks, however, does increase the chance that one or more of those stacks will be destroyed by an enemy offense.

3. Stacks of less than size 6 make collateral damage less than optimal. The smaller the stack, the more "wasted" potential collateral there is.

4. Forces attacking one point/a city need to be somewhat ocncentrated, however so they get there at the same time.

5. The fewer stacks you have the more likely it is that all of your units will be damaged, which can dramatically decrease your losses when attacking a fortified position.

6. More stacks cover more area which causes more of an economic burden on enemy cities.

I may have missed a few factors. In any case it isn't easy to give any general rules. A large part of what you should do depends on how many enemy forces there are and what types of units you'll be facing. The more units with collateral damage you are up against, then the more stacks you should make. This helps ensure that you'll have healthy units to attack with. The presence of medic units can offset the need to spread a bit, but only if a larger stack will survive with enough units intact to heal (this depends on the enemy forces, of course). One single stack of 30 units will help guarantee that the bombardment efforts of the enemy will be maximized, so that is what one needs to be wary of. If they have 10 units that deal collateral damage, then those 10 can dramatically weaken a stack of 30. 6 stacks of 5 would fair much better (for one the enemy would have trouble getting their units to all of your stacks, and for another he'd tend to concentrate on one stack at a time).

The relative gains and losses over the campaign are far from easy to decide, however.

-Drachasor

[bonscott]

Stacks of Doom are definately minimized BUT you *HAVE* to have cats/cannon/arties in your city defense or else you are still vulnerable.

In my latest game I was at war with the French. They had a huge stack of over 20 units including several cats and a secondary stack of about 10 units (and I'll say the AI is very good about mixing up unit types and using arty type units). I had 8 cannons (in the middle of upgrading) stationed in the bottleneck city they had to attack or get past. Those 8 cannon/cats decimated the first stack allowing my knights and newly trained cavs to clean it up. The next stack of 10 moved in and I had a much harder time since I had lost 4 cannon and the other 4 were damaged and not as effective. I was lucky I had just enough to destroy all the units.

What did I learn? 8 cannon aren't nearly enough, I should have had about 20. And if he had one more stack coming in I would have been in real trouble.

Other thing I learned is that cannon can go toe to toe with pretty much any middle aged unit all on it's own and arties can waste enything weaker then rifles on their own.

So you can easily counter the SOD but you have got to build bombard units and keep up building them, don't let up. I'm to the point now that if I've got nothing else to build, pop out a bombard or two. You just can't have enough.

[Blake]

Okay... with stacks, this is how I see it.

Collatoral damage counters *stacks*, it does not nessecarly counter larger stacks better than small stacks.

There are several different forces at work.
Firstly is the counter-system. A stack generally needs several units in it to provide counters. A horse archer by itself is dead meat to a spearman.

The optimal stack size depends greatly on what counters are around. For example if you're attacking a city which has no axemen in it, it makes perfect sense to split up your swords so each is by himself.

Overall it's incredibly situational like so much in Civ4. I think in most city-siege cases where you bring overwhelming force (which you should) it makes the most sense to make a big stack of doom on the tile with the best defense - a hill or forest, if there are other good defensive tiles i think it makes sense to move 1 or 2 units onto each tile, but only if the units are hard to counter, units that are easily countered should nearly always be in a big stack, putting them in a small stack means they get picked off easily once the small-stack defender has been dispatched.

So I think in most cases I end up with things like one stack of 10 and 2 stacks of 2, the big stack is big enough to asorb some collatoral damage and spread it out for maximizing medic healing, the small stacks (of hard to counter units, which the enemy would LIKE to bomard down) stay healthy for attacking the city, or the enemy wastes units killing them.

That's on offense anyway, where the objective is to make war as profitable as possible, being in a position of dominance and wanting to minimize losses. Different rules may apply in situations of desperation.

But anyway, it's all so situational. Hard to even come up with rules of thumb.

[MattPilot]

Good thing about bombard units is, they cause collateral damage no matter how successful they are in combat.

YOu could send a 0.2/5 damaged catapult against a stack or a 5/5 - collateral damage will be the same.


As for the number of units are affected by collateral damage, thats limited too - on all units.

You can easily find out by going through the XML files. Sorry, to lazy (tired) to do that now