That stack of doom ...

[Hermann the Lombard]

Ah, well...I wish that Civ4 had the stacked combat of CTP2. The limit of 12 units per army was something to live with, promoting something similar to the Napoleonic corps system (without the ability to combine everything for a major battle).

[Unimatrix11]

Hmmm... I am still pro stack-limit and have another suggestion: Someone else said in the case of stack-limit, the city defense bonus should be expanded to neighboring tiles. I think that should not be the case, but maybe having units heal faster in cities, say, 25% per turn, then 20% on adjacent tiles, 15% two tiles away might be a good idea (only one city affecting each unit), to reflect the improved supply situation.

[Blake]

Saurus, so is this what you're saying?

Spearmen, are the counter to horse archers.
Catapults, are the counter to stacks.
6 spearmen can kill 40 horse archers.
6 catapults should be able to kill 40 units in a stack.

Spot the logic breakdown .

[Unimatrix11]

I would like to remind everybody, that I think a unit-per-tile-limit would be nice, regardless of the SoD problem (whether it exists or not...)

[Blake]

It'd be horrible and unatural. Any limit is essentially going to be arbitary. I wouldn't object too strongly to some kind of scaling overcrowding penalty when stack sizes get very large (altough it'd still be arbitary) altough it wouldn't improve the game strategically, just force extra micro and force players to perform "rituals". As it is the game is extremely neutral when it comes to stack size, stacking units deeper than 12 or so is more convience than anything - if a player can't handle 1 stack of 45, they probably couldn't handle 3 stacks of 15 either (they might be able to kill 1 of the stacks, but the other two would have full health and have their way with the weak player).

The very toughest stacks are the smallest, 1 unit per tile in defensive territory. It's hard to break even when killing them. I suggest nerfing 1 unit stacks.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Blake
Saurus, so is this what you're saying?

Spearmen, are the counter to horse archers.
Catapults, are the counter to stacks.
6 spearmen can kill 40 horse archers.
6 catapults should be able to kill 40 units in a stack.

Spot the logic breakdown .

Throwing insults does not change the core problem, Blake.

Please, read my reply #28, I'll explained in detail what the biggest problems are.
In short, because of game mechanics you'll need an unreasonable big army to kill a SoD.
Do you play on emperor or higher?
It's a pain to realise you have a much larger army than your opponent, yet you can't do a thing to stop him.
Stop talking about having 40 horse archers, 40 spearmen, 40 catapults, 40 knights etc ... nobody has such armies on normal sized pangeas on high difficulty levels. You will never outnumber your enemy by 10 to 1 so please, do not propose that as a solution.
If my defending force is 3 times bigger than the attacker...then there should not be possible for the attacker to roam about freely in my territory doing whatever it wants.

[Blake]

Actually I don't know how I can reply fully to #28 without insulting* you :P. (and did you spot the logic breakdown?)

But if you want, tell me exactly (or roughly :P) the makeup of the stack (at least types and counts), and I'll give you a reasonable and cheaper army of equivilant tech that decimates it. (ie in destroying the stack, not more than 25% of it's hammer cost is lost by you, bearing in mind 100% is breaking even)

Do you play on emperor or higher?

Yes, but my problem on emp is typically having less units than the AI rather than having more but being too incompetent to use them. I doubt it's possible to outnumber the emp AI's medieval armies (and definitely not when counting city garrisons), superier tatics and local superiority are what beats them rather than a larger army.
In any case, problems on emp are caused solely by the huge AI bonuses rather than broken gameplay mechanics. The game would be broken if you could beat an army at tech parity expending only 5% of it's hammer cost.

[CerberusIV]

So the AI has a stack in your territory and is taking your cities one by one and you can't stop it? Think about the problem here.

If you units are simply going to die defending then what else can they do that is useful?

That's right. Go and pillage the AI's land and raze his cities. You are smarter than the AI and should be able to do it faster. You need to hurt the AI enough to get it to cough up a peace deal, not sit and wait to die.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
So the AI has a stack in your territory and is taking your cities one by one and you can't stop it? Think about the problem here.

If you units are simply going to die defending then what else can they do that is useful?

That's right. Go and pillage the AI's land and raze his cities. You are smarter than the AI and should be able to do it faster. You need to hurt the AI enough to get it to cough up a peace deal, not sit and wait to die.

Well if you cannot stop it taking the first city then the best option would be to follow Blake's suggestin and let it take the city. With the compulsory garrison it will leave, it will then send on a much weaker stack and by the time it arrives, you will have the catapults and units to knock out the stack.

At this point, and assuming another similar stack is not on the way, the initiative has dramatically switched in your favour. You can probably even march a relatively small but balance stack back to your former city and take it before it has any cultural defence.

I also find that the smaller stacks are the more annoying ones, you can't just let them pillage your land but you don't want to leave your cities weak while you go and kill them. Several decent small stacks can often tie down defenders in several cities until you can concentrate sufficient forces in one area to take it out. With the larger stack, as long as you have the roads, you can keep a mobile counter stack moving around your empire to keep your cities safe so your main risk could simply be from pillaging until such time as you can cut the stack to shreds with your cats.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Blake
Actually I don't know how I can reply fully to #28 without insulting* you :P. (and did you spot the logic breakdown?)

Well...what can I say .. If insulting is your way of handeling matters and makes you feel better, then I'll guess I just have to respect that.

Explain to me what you mean by "logic breakdown"
(English is my fourth language only so explain things in very plain and boring English, otherwise we would have to discuss in Finnish or Swedish )

Originally posted by Blake

But if you want, tell me exactly (or roughly :P) the makeup of the stack (at least types and counts), and I'll give you a reasonable and cheaper army of equivilant tech that decimates it. (ie in destroying the stack, not more than 25% of it's hammer cost is lost by you, bearing in mind 100% is breaking even)

Now you are basicaly trying to win a debate rather than discussing the issue.
What you are discussing here is theory.
Your theory and calculations is based on that I reveal my troops to you in advance so that you could prepare your "dream team" and thus slaughter my stack.
This is not the reality you are facing on the battlefield and certainly not the reality you will face in CIV 4.

When I attack you, you will be stuck with whatever you have and wherever you have it.
I am positively certain your defense would be anything else than your dreamteam.

Do you think the attackers will nicely inform you in advance what troops he will use when attacking you so that you can prepare the exact counter at the exact right place?

The only fair thing in this case would be to let you chose your defenders blindly .. and me chosing my attakers blindly as this equals reality in civ 4.
Then we could se what happens.

This situation might liike different I you would have a large empire.
If you have a large empire with a good transportation-network you are in a better position.
A small empire will be divided into several factions in just, maybe 2 turns after the initial declaration of war wereby transportation is interupted making counterattacks difficult.
You might have the troops, but still not be able to kill me before I have razed your best cities.

Originally posted by Blake

Yes, but my problem on emp is typically having less units than the AI rather than having more but being too incompetent to use them.

I'll better just ignore this one.

Originally posted by Blake

I doubt it's possible to outnumber the emp AI's medieval armies (and definitely not when counting city garrisons), superier tatics and local superiority are what beats them rather than a larger army.
In any case, problems on emp are caused solely by the huge AI bonuses rather than broken gameplay mechanics. The game would be broken if you could beat an army at tech parity expending only 5% of it's hammer cost.

If huge AI bonuses causes certain game mechanics to be too harsh againt the human player, then the game mechanics are broken. At least this is how I see it.

And besides it IS possible to have bigger armies than A.I at emperor level during medieval age, tough it requires good production-cities and it might still be impossible under certain conditions and against certain A.I:s

[couerdelion]

What I don’t understand is how the limit of 20 “visible” units appears in CIV and why any further units are “invisible”.

Either way, if that stack is in your territory then you can destroy it cheaply using catapults and sufficiently strong troops to take out its big units. If you’ve got grenadiers yourself then you’ll probably be using these to break the stack since there is nothing in that stack that is an effective counter to that unit. The whole point of using catapults on a stack is to soften it up so that it can be destroyed piecemeal by your other troops.

One thing you should remember is that the stack itself is always going to be moving as fast as it’s slowest unit while your units have the advantage of your road system and can often move in much smaller groups ready to strike once you have sufficient units to destroy the stack. You probably have enough time to prepare your defences before the stack can do too much damage though with more than 20 units, you’ll be doing well to stop them taking that first city. You’d probably want to switch to theocracy and vassalage for the extra 4 XP and then start churning out well-trained units to start to destroy that stack.

With regards the AI bonuses, they are there because the AI is so bad at the game. It needs them to have any chance of beating a human player. It's just that at some levels you really start to notice those huge armies, self-healing units etc. The reasons the bonuses are there is simply to make the game that much harder.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

The fact is, you are complaining because you lost. I get my butt kicked on emperor all the time, but I definitely don't attribute it to the stacks of doom the comp brings. They are annoying, but I can usually handle them up to the point until the AI has more advanced units.

If you're army is three times the size of theirs, there is absolutely no way you should lose that many cities. The comp is very stupid when it comes to attacking and you have tons of options for defeating the stack which many people have already pointed out to you. On emp level, the maximum number of cities I have lost in a single war is two and I am usually able to take them right back (not counting double teams).

I think you just need to practice your military strategy instead of lobbying for uneccesary rule changes.

[johnmcd]

Tile limits would be extremely painful to manage, constant juggling and room for stupid errors where you accidentally finish a stack somewhere that prevents some vital unit moving in the other direction or passing or something.

Supply lines are probably the natural way to limit stacks, the number of units away cost being somehow multiplied by the density of the spread of those troops. Of course, by the time you're playing at Emperor those costs would be almost nil for the AI again. It would also mean that an AI that had built an extremely solid economy and could afford a monster stack of doom could have it, and they'd have earnt it too.

Personally I always upgrade my catapults on the collatoral path, it's always useful, city attack seems to miss the point for catapults, you aren't building them to kill units you're building them to wound the unit's friends.

[couerdelion]

Yeah but it still hurts when the AI hits you hard

In a very recent game I took advantage of a big tech lead to launch a war or retaliation against Isabelle (all wars against her are “provoked” in some way). She knocked out my first stack with inferior troops but lots of them. Toku then took advantage and attacked. Obviously unaware that she had an army, he lost a city but once his army got moving, Isabelle was toast and he took that double shrine city before I could get a large enough second force. When I was ready, I declared war on him and took Madrid. With several grenadier, a couple of cavalry and some catapults, you’d have thought I was safe until I saw Monty arriving on the scene. He attacked the minute that Madrid came “on-line” with something of the order of 20 macemen, knights, crossbows and I was barely able to hold off the attack. Despite the promotions, the city fell in the following round with another round of attacks.

Now I have no doubt that he had a larger (but inferior) army to mine but the loss of 32 gold per turn (even though I only got that for one turn) made me rather bitter about the AI and its treachery (of course, I am the model of integrity and honesty ) and the huge build bonuses it gets. I’m very certain that I probably soaked up 30-50% of the combined surplus troops of Toku and Monty in the first turn so really ought to have retreated to my other city to heal and to defend my bridgehead. Really it was my stubbornness in hoping that the city would hold against another attack and I would keep my nice cash cow.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by johnmcd

Personally I always upgrade my catapults on the collatoral path, it's always useful, city attack seems to miss the point for catapults, you aren't building them to kill units you're building them to wound the unit's friends.

I find it amusing that you can send catapults against a unit like a musketman or longbow and that particular unit can remain unscathed while others suffer damage. It would rather imply that your catapults are not very accurate