That stack of doom ...

[Shaka II]

Big stacks can be a problem if you let an AI stay at peace too long, to get too friendly toward one another, where they've had hundreds of years to build their army to very high levels. The power graph (F9) is a good tool for keeping an eye on this, and adapt diplomacy to reduce exposure, maybe hire a mercenary civ to fight them, especially important for the warmonger, who ultimately has to fight some of the leaders for domination. This has the huge advantage of taking the edge off of both the civs at war. Their huge stacks are used against each other, not you. After 20 turns, their armies are back down to core defense levels, with occasional stacks of 2 to 5 units in transit. This is the time to jump in to the fray, sometimes going after the mercenary civ if he's getting too strong.

The bottom line, don't let the AI accumulate so much military that they can afford to move it around in stacks of 20 in the renaissance era. In the modern era, a stack of 20 is not that unusual, but it's really asking for it with rails and artillery. The front line cities should be capable of taking down a stack of 20 units, having rail links, some air support even. But in the era you describe, it's unusual to see a single stack that big.

Part of the excitement of playing is occasionally being surprised by the AI, counter attacks, attacks with overwhelming forces sometimes. If everything was predictable, it would be boring. As long as it's not a core city under threat. That would be upsetting.

I agree with Blake that it's best not to limit stacks to allow them to pass through each other. I do enough micromanagement already.

[MattPilot]

I put in a request at civfanatics about a units per tile limit .....

Add your input/support here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=161798

It may be possible.

[MattPilot]

I got really lucky in my current game. I got my landmass right between france (most powerful civ by a wide margin) and every other poor sucka on the other side of me.

Game level is prince and i'm pretty even with the rest, except military wise. Second highest in score. I have around 50 military units and france has around 90.

France gets power hungry and goes on a crusade on every civ on our continent except for me. It sent one stack of doom after the other through my territory and i'm thankful he ain't touchin me.

France is razing every city it conquers. Neighboring civs settle new cities left and right in the path left behind louis. Thing is.... Louis only left about 20-30 units defending its empire. 50+ of his units are in enemy territory getting slaughtered. I can see it on the powergraph where there is a huge drop over a few turns. So now i'm thinking i could take half my units and whoop his industrial base.

Problem is, his production power is 50% greater than mine. So i'd have to be really fast hitting his hammer towns. Also, i don't want his crusading troops to fall me in the back, although the other civs will probably help me weakin them, since they are at war.


What ya think, should i got for it? If i do, i won't have any more friends on the continent. I'm furious/annoyed with everyone except frrance, which is pleased and occasionally friendly.

[Unimatrix11]

Well its a huge risk, esp. since france will make peace with the other AIs as soon as you declare war on it, because as someone stated in another thread AIs hate being in a 1vs2 situation. But hey - taking that risk sounds like a hell lot of fun. Its a WW2-like gamble - it will probably not work out and if you dont succeed after a couple of turns, you are doomed - but if it does work out, victory is yours... Anyways post the save ! You know mad austrian leaders need germans to make their plans work (or better: fail - hahaha)

[bobshiznit]

I do not like the idea of having a stack limit. I currently like the system the way it is. If there was a stack limit you couldn't defend your city with as many units as the attacker could attack with. Consider an inland city. There are 8 tiles that an attacker can attack the city from. With a stack limit of 20 the attacker could attack the city with 160 units while the defender could only defend with 20. This case is a little extreme though.

Anyways to deal with a SoD hide in your city and let the AI throw their units at your well mixed stack defending. You get a defense bonus from the city, fortifying, and walls against non gunpowder units.

A longbow in a city will beat every unit in that stack. The longbow could even take out two or three unit before he is killed. Thow in some pikes, crossbows, and catapults and you have a cheap stack in your city that can kill his expensive stack. That means if you bomb the crap out of his stack with cats or cannons his units don't stand a chance if they try attacking.

10 longbows alone will kill the listed stack without any worry when you are guarding a city.

To avoid this situation altogether build a culture buffer so you have 4-5 turns to get the needed units into the city. The AI won't even throw their units at 10 longbows. You'll just end up with a lot of pillaged land because you were dumb enough not to build a military. If the AI does attack they will win 1 city at the most as their military will be decimated.

DO NOT ATTACK A STACK LIKE THAT. Unless of course you have rifles, cannons, and calvary. Or tanks with seige

Thats just my two cents.

Shiznit

[Unimatrix11]

you seem to have missed my point about defending with a frontline

[Saurus]

Ok. Thanks for many replies.
A little bit more information about the game I had. Maybe this will clear things up a bit .
So I was playing Normal Sized Pangea on Emperor level.

In the case I described in my initial post, It was my only ally, Cahterine, who came from the other side of the continent for no other reason than burn me down.
(she razed all but one of my cities, included my holy city)

I should mention that militarily I outnumbered her SoD but after my capults gone there was really nothing I could do since she always had the right counter unit in the stack. So I was forced to just trying to defend my cities.
(meanwhile catherine could have helaed her stack but she did not do this)


I outnumbered Cahterine by some 2-3:1 ... yet I could only watch her burn my cities to ashes.
This is because even If I outnumber her, I cannot do anything but defend while she can still do anything (including bombard my defenses to rubble while my defenders inside the city is obviously too busy sining songs, playing cards, catching butterflies and what not instead of fighting back from the safe positions inside the city walls)
Should I garrison one city, then I must compromize the defenses of another city. Now Catherine moves the stack toward another city with less defenders. This is what happened ... and here comes the ultimate game killer: soon enough this stack was standing in the middle of my country inbetween 6 cities ...ready to move toward any direction ...
I outnumber it greatly but cannot damage it ... and since the SoD can move in any direction desired it can just choose the city with the least defense. Catherine uses my roads so that when Catherine has made up her mind about witch city to burn first, I cannot reinforce it anymore.
Now Catherine bombards the city and kills whatever is defending it. Then burns it and return the SoD to the middle of my the country and chooses the next city to burn.
in the end the outcome was ...really odd.
Cahterines stack ultimately got exhusted and died. I still had about half my army standing - but with 5 cities out of 6 burned to the ground!

This is why I really feel there should be some counter to the SoD.
Even with a much more powerful army, It is VERY, VERY difficult to deal with a SoD. ON higher levels it is nearly impossible.
This was NOT supposed to be the killer strategy in CIV 4. The catapults + cannons etc was supposed to counter this in the same way upkeep cost was to counter ICS.

Well, upkeepcost works vs ICS. Catapults does NOT work against SoD. So something should be done about this I think.

[Blake]

Congratulations! You got outplayed by the AI.

Don't make half-arsed moves. If you can't destroy the stack in one go (or at least inflict losses) don't throw anything at it. Instead build up the nessecary counter units (ie catapults) until you have enough to destroy the stack. Let the stack rampage until your counter is ready - you have the home team advantage when it comes to reinforcements. Never fight losing battles, fall back until you have a decisive advantage.

Then catch the stack in the open (ie not forest or hills) and decimate it.

Of course only through experience can you learn the probable outcomes of battles, just consider it a lesson learnt; using 5% of a stacks hammer cost in catapults is not effective. (this should probably be obvious, but it's easy to not realise that catapults are 1/3rd the cost of late medieval units, so while 6 catapults may look like a lot, it's only as much as 2 knights)

[bobshiznit]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
you seem to have missed my point about defending with a frontline

I saw it. But if you put units in front of your city you do not get any defensive bonuses besides fortify and terrain bonuses. If there was a stack limit, the units next to the city should get the city defense as well as the city walls should expand. The game is actually set up well to create fronts using proper unit types.

I usually defend my borders rather than my cities, creating a frontline the AI cannot ignore. And if they do find a way to bust through, one of the stacks unit types are usually diminished. Then my standing army behind by frontline can start to kill it, or if things are worse I have built/rushed/drafted proper defenders for my cities and I pull back my units. Build a few SoDs (Stack of Defenders) on your borders and you never have to worry or complain.

The way the game is now actually benefits having small stacks rather than large ones. Why put a limit on the size of the stack?
I think you should just congradulate the AI for creating a good stack if they actually manage to create one. I don't ever see anyone complaining when they create a good stack and run over the AI.

I just like this aspect of the game the way it is, you might not and that's what mods are for.

Shiznit

[Saurus]

Originally posted by bobshiznit


The way the game is now actually benefits having small stacks rather than large ones. Why put a limit on the size of the stack?
I think you should just congradulate the AI for creating a good stack if they actually manage to create one. I don't ever see anyone complaining when they create a good stack and run over the AI.

I just like this aspect of the game the way it is, you might not and that's what mods are for.

Shiznit

Um...in case you were living in the dark, people DO complain about the usage of SoD:s as the main military tactic. Togheter with the infameous ICS, this has been one of the worst aspects of the CIV-series for some time.
And peopple DO complain about the usage of SoD:s against the A.I as a funkiller as it kills the fun the way ICS kills the fun.
I have not played multiplayer in CIV 4.
In earlier civs multipalyer was just a field of ICS.
If ICS somehow was controlled (by rules created and agreed to before the actual game) then the game was in any case plagued by SoD:s.
I can imagine, it is still plagued by SoD:s still during certain eras of the game. In particular during medieval era and the early reneisance.

To the defense of CIV 4 I must admit tough that during later game the balance is better.
Cannons do a reasonable job and Artillery is very effective against SoD:s.
As I said erlier, there need to be a unit in between the cannon and the catapult.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
you seem to have missed my point about defending with a frontline

Defending with a frontline hundreds of miles long wasn't really a tactic until WWI. In earlier times, even up to the civil war, the entire moving army generally wouldn't take up more one then one map-square at a time.

And in the game SOD's don't really work in the modern era anyway, with railroads and cannons/artilerary.

[bobshiznit]

Every conquering army until modern times consisted of what we would call a stack of death.
Comparing an exploit like ICS to the tactic of a stack is rediculous. A stack is nothing more than a large army. Look at the numbers on the F9 screen of your units. A stack of 20 early units comes out to be less than 100,000 units (don't know the exact number). That is a large army but not unreasonable. To be effective it has to be combined arms as well. Not like Civ3 where you could create a stack of 100 calvary and kill everything.

Shiznit

[Saurus]

Originally posted by bobshiznit
Every conquering army until modern times consisted of what we would call a stack of death.
Comparing an exploit like ICS to the tactic of a stack is rediculous. A stack is nothing more than a large army. Look at the numbers on the F9 screen of your units. A stack of 20 early units comes out to be less than 100,000 units (don't know the exact number). That is a large army but not unreasonable. To be effective it has to be combined arms as well. Not like Civ3 where you could create a stack of 100 calvary and kill everything.

Shiznit

Well, the SoD is a serious exploit for a number of reasons.
I'll will create an example so to demostrate why the stack-system in CIV 4 sucks so badly.


Thing about this situation:
I'll attack you with 20 units in a stack.
You have 60 mixed units in total... out of theese you form a stack of 40 to counter my stack.
But from here onward you realize there is nothing you can do at all. This is becouse you lack something witch could be called an "attack"-option.
The only thing you could do woule be sending units from your own army-stack to attack my stack one by one but then you will lose all 40 of your units becouse of my mixed defenders.
You are out of options and since SOC is removed from Civ 4, You just have to wait and allow me to do whatever I please with my stack and this is in spite of the fact that your army is far superior.
I know I cannot defeat your stack but there is no need to do so since your stack cannot attack me... So I'll just ignore your army.
I walk besied and past your army ... pillaging everyting that is coming in my way...razing every city in my path and your big, big army stands there watching unable to do anything at all to stop me.

Now how realistic is that? If this is not an eploit then what is? Did the germans during the second world war stand there watching while American troops advanced and doing nothing about it? Of course not. They resisted and caused heavy caualities to the American troops.

[bobshiznit]

I'll agree a little bit, you should be able to attack a stack with a stack and have combined combat. Something looking similar to Civ2.
But if I have 60 units and you have 20 I can tacticly move your stack wherever I want because I can control the 3 squares that the stack of 20 can advance to, forcing it to retreat or die trying to attack. Actually you could control the stack with less units.

Say the SOD consists of
5 elephants
5 swords
5 axes
5 cats

if the defender had
3 spears and 3 axes in each of the three squares in front of the stack, and bombarded the stack with 5 cats, the stack is pretty much stuck. Hammer wise the defender is in much better shape.

I still don't think it's an exploit though improvements in the combat system would be good.

Shiznit

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Saurus



Well, the SoD is a serious exploit for a number of reasons.
I'll will create an example so to demostrate why the stack-system in CIV 4 sucks so badly.


Thing about this situation:
I'll attack you with 20 units in a stack.
You have 60 mixed units in total... out of theese you form a stack of 40 to counter my stack.
But from here onward you realize there is nothing you can do at all. This is becouse you lack something witch could be called an "attack"-option.
The only thing you could do woule be sending units from your own army-stack to attack my stack one by one but then you will lose all 40 of your units becouse of my mixed defenders.

It's all about knowing what the enemy has. I've never had a problem stopping a stack of doom in this game so long as I had an army close to his size, because there is no defender's bonus for a moving stack in the field like that.

Let's say that you have a SOD of 20 units. Let's say that 6 of them are "anti-horse" units (elephents, pikemen, whatever), 5 are "anti-infantry" units (macemen, ect), 4 are catapults, and the other 5 are horse units. If I hit the stack with 5 or 6 catapults to weaken it, and then attack that stack with 30 knights, it will die; your "anti-horse" units might kill 10 of my knights, but then the other 20 will slaughter everything else you've got. And the best part is, I don't even have to do it all at once; your units heal very slowly in my terratory, and you move much slower then I do. If I'm using knights, then I'll have to sacrifice some knights to break your "anti-horse" defense, but once I do, everything else in your stack will die.

Alternativly, I could do the same with infantry; first break your macemen with catapults-macemen of my own, and then clean up with a mix of macemen and pikemen.

The key to beating a mixed stack is to have a focused attack; a pure cavelry army will beat a mixed stack with 25% anti-cavelry stuff, so long as you use good tactics to your advantage.