Do you like 1UPT?

[Boris Godunov]

Yes.

Although having my army bottled the wrong side of a mountain range because of an allies worker occupying the pass is infuriating....

Agreed. I say "yes" to the concept, but the implementation is flawed. The unit shuffling required to move forces around is absurdly frustrating at times.

[Ming]

Yep... great concept, and TERRIBLE implementation.

And I don't buy into some of the theories that IUPT is the cause of all of the problems.
If there is one thing to really point at, it is the continued anti city spam attitude.
Or the terrible AI.
Or the nonexistent deplomacy.
Or the limited choice tech tree.

There are many things wrong with the current game... the implementation of 1UPT is just one of them, and not the cause for all the problems.

[Gesewa]

Yeah, it's alright. I wish they went back to the old way though

[Dinner]

Yep... great concept, and TERRIBLE implementation.

And I don't buy into some of the theories that IUPT is the cause of all of the problems.
If there is one thing to really point at, it is the continued anti city spam attitude.
Or the terrible AI.
Or the nonexistent deplomacy.
Or the limited choice tech tree.

There are many things wrong with the current game... the implementation of 1UPT is just one of them, and not the cause for all the problems.

You're wrong. 1UPT necessitates that there be fewer units (to attempt to prevent the carpet of doom), that means they had to increase the build time of units and decrease the production rate in cities, that is ENTIRELY what makes the game so damn boring. That's why we sit there hitting end turn over and over again. In other words, 1UPT is why the game is so boring and why is sucks so badly.

[Ming]

You are welcome to your opinion... but that's all it is.
I find the game boring for many other reasons... the total lack of wonder for wonders... the sameness of the land... the crappy diplomacy... the terrible AI... the lack of real decisions when it comes to the tech tree... them trying to cram a limited playing style down our throats... and many other reasons... none of which have anything to do with 1UPT.

I still like the concept of 1UPT. And I would agree that it has had some impact on some of the problems... but to blame all the problems on that single concept is simply wrong.

[Dinner]

I agree there are tons of other issues which make Civ5 bad. Yes, the wonders suck and do very little (I spent all that time building a wonder which only gives me +1 culture per turn?), the land tiles are all the same (what's the difference between 2,1,1 or 1,2,1 or 1,1,2 and why should I really care?), there are too few tile improvements and they take too long to build, the AI is possibly the worst I've seen since CTP2, and diplomacy remains completely broken. That said the single worst thing, IMO, is having so little to do that I end up hitting end turn without doing anything on most turns. Why does that happen? Simply, they had to nerf production to prevent players having so many units the carpet of doom with all of its unit traffic jams raises it's ugly head. That's the reason why each tile produces so little (2,1,1 or 1,2,1, etc...), that's the reason why they slowed do production so much, that's why they had to nerf wonders (to make sure they weren't unbalanced with the low production theme of the game), and that's why they made sure there weren't more tile improvements (because if someone replaces a 2,1,1 tile with a 3,1,1 tile then production & growth would go up even higher causing still more carpet of doom troubles).

It all comes back to 1UPT being the source of Civ5's problems. That's the reason the game is so slow with so little to do. That's just an unavoidable conclusion when people really look at why the game was designed the way it is. Yes, I want the AI fixed so that it isn't completely incompetent and it would be nice if diplomacy actually worked logically but those are not the core problems with Civ5, as 1UPT is, and instead they're just additional problems with the game instead of fundamental design flaws.

[Ming]

Again... all assumputions and I'm not sure they are correct. It's just not units that take forever to build... it's everything. If all they had wanted was to slow down production of units, they could have just jacked up the cost of the them... but the nerfng of production effects all production... wonders, buildings, and units. It takes forever to build anything. I find that boring. Feel free to blame it on 1UPT, but again, if that was the case, it would only be units that take forever, not everything.

1UPT is NOT the "SOURCE" of Civ5's problems... the implementation of it is just ONE of the problems. And frankly, there are much bigger issues with the game than 1UPT.

[rah]

To me the problem is the building maint. Yes they've tweaked it to try an improve it but it's still there. You're faced with the choice, build units (which you can't afford the maint after a point), build a building, (that minimally improves something but you can't afford the maint after a point) or build wealth. (i know they upped it but it's still basically useless) AND to make it worse everything takes so long to build. BORING. At least in CIV 4 in the mid-game you could build some building that marginally would help your civ and not drive you to the poor house, or crank some decent wealth so you could afford that army or up your science rate.

[Nikolai]

You haven't played civ5 in a while, have you rah? It's easy to maintain positive income even with more than enough units. 100-200 gpt in surplus should be attainable by the renaissance.

[Krill]

Yep... great concept, and TERRIBLE implementation.

And I don't buy into some of the theories that IUPT is the cause of all of the problems.
If there is one thing to really point at, it is the continued anti city spam attitude.
Or the terrible AI.
Or the nonexistent deplomacy.
Or the limited choice tech tree.

There are many things wrong with the current game... the implementation of 1UPT is just one of them, and not the cause for all the problems.

Pretty fair point.

[rah]

You haven't played civ5 in a while, have you rah? It's easy to maintain positive income even with more than enough units. 100-200 gpt in surplus should be attainable by the renaissance.

I tried it again and while it was improved it was still boring and lacked the one more turn feel. Until they fix MP, I doubt I'll try again.

[nbarclay]

Again... all assumputions and I'm not sure they are correct. It's just not units that take forever to build... it's everything. If all they had wanted was to slow down production of units, they could have just jacked up the cost of the them... but the nerfng of production effects all production... wonders, buildings, and units. It takes forever to build anything. I find that boring. Feel free to blame it on 1UPT, but again, if that was the case, it would only be units that take forever, not everything.

You're missing an important point. The more time cities spend on buildings, the less time they have available to build units. So diverting cities' attention away from units by requiring lots of time to build buildings and wonders is an important part of the mechanism that limits the number of units. If building costs were lower, unit costs would have to be higher to compensate, and a design where cities spend massive amounts of time building units with brief pauses to pop out buildings in between would feel weird.

Maintenance costs for buildings make the problem worse. The more effective maintenance costs are in limiting how many buildings players build, the more the buildings players do build have to cost in order to keep players from focusing their attention on cranking out units. That problem would exist regardless of whether or not the game used a 1UPT system. But 1UPT makes the consequences if the game mechanics make it practical for players to build large numbers of units a lot messier.

[Ming]

If building costs were lower, unit costs would have to be higher to compensate, and a design where cities spend massive amounts of time building units with brief pauses to pop out buildings in between would feel weird.

Actually, that was exactly one of the things I was suggesting, and no, I don't think it would feel weird, but like your comment, it's simply an opinion.

Maintenance costs for buildings make the problem worse.

This I do agree with... but because it makes you not want to build some of the non critical buildings... kind of forcing the player to build units since converting production to wealth is kind of worthless. In Civ IV, I had the the real option to use my production at periods of time to help my wealth or science rate to cover specific situations... like covering the cost of an expensive war, building up a huge war chest to cover unit upgrades, or racing to beat somebody to a key tech.

There are many different ways they could have limited the number of units without nerfing the production costs of everything... that's all I'm saying.

[LzPrst]

There are several ways to limit unit numbers already implemented in civ5. One of which is the strategic resources required to build certain units (iron/horses etc), adding this for all units could help (wood for archers, etc).

Another is maintenance cost. In my opinion they should make units fairly easy to build, but expensive to maintain. The result would be that in peace time, civs would have small armies, and depending on the war, would crank out additional troops, even to the point of running in a minus if it meant the difference between winning or losing the war. Afterwards a demobilization of troops would make sense in order to bring the economy back into a surplus. It would make Gold even more valuable and production could be increased.

Unfortunately civ5 made the decision to reduce overall production as the main limitation to unit production which affects buildings as well, resulting in frustratingly slow development. Add to that the complete blandness of terrain such as 2.1.1, 1.2.1, 1.1.2, with the same 3-4 improvements available where in most cases farms > anything else and the effect of said farms being the same on all terrain, there are few decisions to make. A strategy game should be made fun by teasing the player with a multitude of options, but limiting the number of options that can effectively chosen, forcing the player to prioritize. In Civ5, it is just teching ahead along the linear tech path, building the next level of building available, and the occasional war made dull by a completely inept AI. The only major decisions the player really makes is Social policies. Even city placement is made completely irrelevant by the low variety in terrain values. all in all = FAIL

[LzPrst]

and just to bring this thread back on topic, I voted yes originally, but the more I play the more I come to the conclusion that I do not like 1upt. 3-7 upt would be far more dynamic and interesting and allow for less frustrating unit movement micro-management. It might also help the AI which is a very big issue. Keep in mind that the 1upt of Panzer General and other games where this worked was based on a set map with clearly defined goals. A map that changes every game becomes very difficult for an AI to deal with.

Other points on that matter worth mentioning is that in Panzer General (one of my all-time favorite games and possibly one of the best implementations of 1upt and hex squares ever made) the maps were actually very large, equalling in many cases the "Huge" map of Civ5, while only covering a limited area such as eastern France, or western USSR. The frontlines were long and vast with dozens of units allowing for all that brilliant tactical manouvering that civ5 wants to do, but just can't. Keep in mind that in that game (and most others like it) there were only 2 sides fighting on 1 front line on a map the size of "Huge" in civ5. A 5-hex border and the 1upt is meaningless. A 50 tile border and 1upt is great, but the game engine has no chance of that. As such, 1upt is bad and needs readjusting. Possibly to a 3-7 upt system.