idea: 1 military unit take up 2 tiles?

[The diplomat]

I just had a wierd idea. What if 1 military unit took up 2 tiles?

This may sound weird but I think it could add some depth to warmaking. It would give units a better sense of direction. It would also add a better sense of a strategic "frontline". If you had several units along your border, there would a better sense of having a front. This would especially be true when the player reaches the modern times, as it would make concepts like "breaking through enemy lines", "dropping behind enemy lines" etc, a lot more coherent and visible.

Also, it would allow for concepts like strategic outflanking, pincer movement, attacking from the rear. Since the unit takes up 2 tiles, the unit would have a clearer front, side and rear. An unit that attacks another unit that is facing the opposite direction could get an attack bonus for example. This is something that can't easily be done with 1 tile units as they are now.

I believe that Rise of Nations is implementing this type of idea in its RTS.

Could it also work on the strategic level in a civ TBS?

[Immortal Wombat]

How many tiles for cities? How would attacking and moving work? How would units stack and group?

PS: interesting idea though

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
How many tiles for cities?

Ideally, cities should probably be four tiles ( 2x2 square). That way the entire unit would be "touching" the city when it attacked. But I think it would still work if cities remained to just 1 tile. You would just have only one out of the two tiles of the unit "touching" the city which may be aesthetically unpleasing to some. Of course, this would be solved if the player rotated the unit so that it was moving with one tile behind the other, then this would be solved.

So I do not think that keeping cities to 1 tile would neccessarily be a big problem.

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
How would attacking and moving work?

The player could rotate the unit so that it faced any direction. Also, as mentionned above, the unit could also be rotated to either one tile next to the other, or one tile behind the other. This way the player could move the unit even in parts of the map where the land were only one tile wide. The player would simply rotate the unit where it moves one tile behind the other.
Otherwise, normal movement would still be as usual. Both tiles of the unit would move 1 tile forward.

In terms of attacking, if two units meet where the 2 tiles of both units are "touching", then the units would fight at full strength. If the units meet so that only one tile of each unit is "touching", then both units would fight at half strength. If the two units are facing opposite directions, then the attacking unit would get an attack bonus. If one unit is facing sideways, then the attacking unit would get a similar "flank attack" bonus. These bonuses would be halved if the defending unit were fortified.

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
How would units stack and group?

Units in the same stack would automatically face in the same direction. The player could of course rotate the group to which direction he/she chooses.
The units in the same stack could be linked so that the stack moved as one.
The player could also link two or more adjacent units. So for example, if I had 2 units next to each forming a 1x4 tile front, I could link the two units, so that they both move together. Think of a situation like the eastern front during WW2 where you had a very long front. I could link 2 or more units next to each other so that they all advance together. This would allow the player to move the entire front forward without having to move each unit individually.
Similarly, one unit that was right behind the other (2x2 square), could also be linked in the same way so that they moved together. This would allow a player to move a thick front together without having to move each unit separately.

[Trifna]

I think that this would be true if we could stack units. Being able to stack, we could thereafter say that X units = more than one tile because of the place they're taking. Thus they would be represented as covering around a little too...

Unit stacking is really essential to a good representation of the effects of units since 10 units one after ther other against 4 units isn't the same that 10v4. Napoleon showed that very well, as the entire military history shows that this is the core of strategy (gaining advantage in each battle).