Is CVI any good?

[kentonio]

they could have easily included 2x or 3x as many leaders and civs

there's no reason a future civ game should have less civs than an old one

it's just a database file with text

and one unique unit/building

and if your dev budget is stretched too much that you can't do that... then learn how to manage video game design better

But then how would they sell them to you as DLC?

[giblets]

this is easily the best Civ ever made

doubtful

[giblets]

Why 1UPT is bad:
1. they decided to get rid of road spaghetti, and if you use the "go to" command your unit will go off the road if another one of your units is in the way
2. it leads to a bizarre situation where catapults shoot farther than machine guns

[Elok]

My objection to it isn't just "realism," per se, but rather that it's unrealistic in a way that goes against what I think Civ ought to be. Having the same guy be in charge of an empire for six thousand years isn't realistic, but it's acceptable as a sort of personification of culture or an embodiment of continuity or whatever. Likewise the units moving at an implausibly slow speed, because they can't have the game run at two different speeds and military action always takes place on a much briefer scale.

In general, Civ is a game about simulating history, and as such it ought to find ways to model the forces shaping history--and doing so in an engaging way. It's interesting to try and make the sorts of choices a real ruler would have to make. When gameplay elements are included purely as a gimmick, with no conceivable way of grounding them in a historically feasible rationale, it's a huge turnoff. Catapults shooting farther than machine guns is just one particularly silly manifestation of that general issue.

Don't like stacks of doom? Well, in actual history there were a number of reasons why you couldn't concentrate an infinite number of units in a small space. You'd have a hard time supplying them, it was hard to coordinate so many, they got bogged down easily, camps tended to spread disease, and discipline went to hell. One can think of ways to simulate any one of those; if an army over a certain size tended to wreck the land and seriously PO the inhabitants in addition to suffering a defense penalty and mauling your treasury, you'd think twice about 100 in a pile. You could engineer tradeoffs of concentrated firepower vs. penalties to make it interesting. Getting rid of stacks entirely and making the emperor micromanage soldiers too stupid to march together is decidedly suboptimal, even without the range and distance absurdities.

[Proteus_MST]

...

Don't like stacks of doom? Well, in actual history there were a number of reasons why you couldn't concentrate an infinite number of units in a small space. You'd have a hard time supplying them, it was hard to coordinate so many, they got bogged down easily, camps tended to spread disease, and discipline went to hell. One can think of ways to simulate any one of those; if an army over a certain size tended to wreck the land and seriously PO the inhabitants in addition to suffering a defense penalty and mauling your treasury, you'd think twice about 100 in a pile. You could engineer tradeoffs of concentrated firepower vs. penalties to make it interesting. Getting rid of stacks entirely and making the emperor micromanage soldiers too stupid to march together is decidedly suboptimal, even without the range and distance absurdities.

The (Sid Meiers) Civ-System of army combat always has been extremly unrealistic (at times where you still were able stack units, as well as nowadays with 1 UPT).
It never halfway realistically took the synergy effect of combined arms into account.
(for example the hammert and anvgil tactics of Phillip & Megas Alexandros, combining Phalanx with Horsemen)

And it surely isn't the case that it would be impossible to simulate it in an entertaining way.
As it has been done in the Call to Power-Civ-Series, where you have an halfway plausible army combat

I am still waiting for a part in SId Meiers Civ series, where they will implement something similar to combat in CtP

[kentonio]

And it surely isn't the case that it would be impossible to simulate it in an entertaining way.
As it has been done in the Call to Power-Civ-Series, where you have an halfway plausible army combat

I am still waiting for a part in SId Meiers Civ series, where they will implement something similar to combat in CtP

Amen to that.

[Elok]

I haven't played CTP, but--HOLY CRAP WIGGY IS VIEWING THE THREAD!--ahem. Anyway, I think any attempt to implement tactics in a commanding-individual-soldiers sense is going to slow down the game too much for multiplayer. I'd like to see an abandonment of stack mechanics, yes, but in a whole-army-fights-at-once way. You have a whole heap of troops, and the enemy has a whole heap of troops, and the attacker throws his against the defender with all attacks registering at once, so numerical superiority is represented properly AND you don't bog things down with representing an endless series of turn-based duels. Conditions could be modified by terrain (can't throw your whole horde through the pass at Thermopylae at once), learned tactics or civ bonuses (Mongols get hit-and-run skillz with cavalry), or attached Great Generals (Vo Nguyen Giap makes his army fight like hell in jungles or forests).

How did CTP do it?

[rah]

Thanks for all the detailed comments Sava.

Much different (and more believable) than all the fan boy reviews.

[Proteus_MST]

I haven't played CTP, but--HOLY CRAP WIGGY IS VIEWING THE THREAD!--ahem. Anyway, I think any attempt to implement tactics in a commanding-individual-soldiers sense is going to slow down the game too much for multiplayer. I'd like to see an abandonment of stack mechanics, yes, but in a whole-army-fights-at-once way. You have a whole heap of troops, and the enemy has a whole heap of troops, and the attacker throws his against the defender with all attacks registering at once, so numerical superiority is represented properly AND you don't bog things down with representing an endless series of turn-based duels. Conditions could be modified by terrain (can't throw your whole horde through the pass at Thermopylae at once), learned tactics or civ bonuses (Mongols get hit-and-run skillz with cavalry), or attached Great Generals (Vo Nguyen Giap makes his army fight like hell in jungles or forests).

How did CTP do it?

YOu couzld assemble stacks of IIRC 18 units and all of your troops were of one of 3 categories:
Melee, Flanker, Ranged

Melee troops would go to the frontline, and combat other melee troops.
Flanker would try to get behind the melee troops (in order to attack the secondline ranged troops) and ranged troops would shoopt at the enemy from second line.

If one side had more melee units than the other side then the flankers or ranged units would go into melee (depending on what would be available).
If one side had more flankers than the other side, then the additional flankers would get behind the melee lines and would attack the ranged troops of the enemy (with the ranged troops, naturally, usually having bad defense stats)

In each combat round the units of your army would paired with another unit of the enemy army along those rules and the combat would automatically be fought in a battle window (IIRC till one side was destroyed, haven't played it for a long time, so I am not sure whether you had some kind of retreat button in order to let your soldiers abandon the combat)

This way, you would be rewarded for really building an army of combined arms.

Also, with modern armies, you would get troops, that were good in frontline as well as in second line (i.e. as ranged troops),.
while tanks would be flanbkers, which also would serve a good job as melee troops.

[Elok]

See, I could totally go for that kind of automated tactical rewards system. Though there are circumstances where massing one unit type really did pay off--Mongols with horses, English with longbow (supported by dismounted knights), etc. Mix it up a little with various units performing differently. Grenadiers have a delay before attacking but each attack can take out multiple enemies--high risk, high reward. Dragoons move rapidly but fight as infantry. Phalanxes are crap in the open but tough as hell where they can anchor their flanks. And so on.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

it feels very, very different due to the districts and placing wonders as tiles in the city. district placement is key.

yeah, it's got 1upt, which people apparently care very much about, but they've done a lot of work under the hood, and it really shows.

I'd recommend it, as does Korn469 and Sava.

The AI is dumb with multiple units per tile, with 1upt it is catatonic, about sums it up. CiV original release had many other issues on top... so overall I can only say that I am not surprised the least with Civ VI, it's turning out as expected.

[Grandpa Troll]

YOu couzld assemble stacks of IIRC 18 units

it is actually 9 units stacked together

and all of your troops were of one of 3 categories:
Melee, Flanker, Ranged

Melee troops would go to the frontline, and combat other melee troops.
Flanker would try to get behind the melee troops (in order to attack the secondline ranged troops) and ranged troops would shoopt at the enemy from second line.

If one side had more melee units than the other side then the flankers or ranged units would go into melee (depending on what would be available).
If one side had more flankers than the other side, then the additional flankers would get behind the melee lines and would attack the ranged troops of the enemy (with the ranged troops, naturally, usually having bad defense stats)

In each combat round the units of your army would paired with another unit of the enemy army along those rules and the combat would automatically be fought in a battle window (IIRC till one side was destroyed, haven't played it for a long time, so I am not sure whether you had some kind of retreat button in order to let your soldiers abandon the combat)

This way, you would be rewarded for really building an army of combined arms.

Also, with modern armies, you would get troops, that were good in frontline as well as in second line (i.e. as ranged troops),.
while tanks would be flanbkers, which also would serve a good job as melee troops.

[Proteus_MST]

Ah, just 9, thanks for clarifying that

[Myrddin]

Ah, just 9, thanks for clarifying that

My memory is more than 9 (perhaps 12); and yes there was a retreat button.

I believe that there was also a bombard button for ranged units which was separate to the main combat screen, and that the first combat round was ranged only. To attack cities I generally built 2 armies, a balanced one to storm it and a siege train of mostly bombard units, with a few melee units to protect it on the march. So taking a city was multiple stages; bombard the defences down; an aborted attack with the siege train; an assault with the balanced army. Often it was worth stopping the assault when the enemy had lost more units than I had. An attack on the next turn would have the benefit that the enemy would have to fill gaps in the front rank with ranged units; another round of ranged attack from the siege train, and the balanced army would just have mopping up to do.

I liked it, but even with a higher limit on units per tiles, movement was still a problem. To move a full army through a defended city of you own was impossible, so you needed to build bypass roads around it.

[Brutus66]

It's kind of funny, I think I can sense Sava's progress in a game by the tone of his posts.
His more optimistic and forgiving posts are, I suspect, made in the early part of the game, and then they begin to reflect more and more frustration. A progression of enthusiasm to exasperation.
I'm not disagreeing with his observations, I just found it amusing.