6 ms·

> Civilization 1, 2, and 3 had "stacks", but if you kill one unit in the stack, you kill ALL units in the stack. As such, "death balls" were incredibly fragile,

by peder 5y ago

> Civilization 1, 2, and 3 had "stacks", but if you kill one unit in the stack, you kill ALL units in the stack. As such, "death balls" were incredibly fragile, one well placed attack kills the whole stack. That's not how I remember things TBH. Only something like a nuke would kill all units on the same tile.

dragontamer 5y ago
Units in the field would die as a singular stack (aka: stack kill). There were two exceptions, and one exception-to-the-exception. * Cities had units die one-at-a-time. This means that to siege a city, you were forced to build a stack (!!!). Attacking cities was always a dangerous operation in Civ 1/2 (though made easier in Civ3). * Fortresses had units die one-at-a-time, but were relatively difficult to build. IIRC, they also took up room, so no farms or mines if you build a fortress. Still though, they served as a "city-lite". Civ3 revamped the fortress system rather severely, so this only really applies to Civ1 / Civ2... and the top-tier fortress in Civ3 (lower-tier fortifications IIRC didn't defend vs stack kills, only provided a minor defensive bonus). The exception-to-exceptions was the nuke, as you pointed out. A nuke can stack-kill even in the stack-kill immune zones (cities / fortresses).
- skhr0680 5y ago
  I think the only improvement that can’t exist together with fortresses in Civ2 is the airbase, and that can be a nuisance because airbases are bugged and act as a farm even on mined squares.
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
Civ1, Civ2, Civ2 Call to Power, all suffered from stacked unit insta-kill glitch that OP mentioned. I have very unpleasant memories of a spearman somehow being hidden in stacks of tanks and losing them all to a crossbow or pike. This happened too MANY times to forget; and though enough time has passed that specifics have faded the pain and frustration never will. =) Yeah I'm still kinda bitter about that.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Its not a glitch. Its completely unrealistic, but its in fact designed like that to discourage death-balls. You can search on "stack" in the Civ2 manual to see many, many references to how entire stacks will die all at once! (http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.365 http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.365). This manual proves that Civ2 designers intended stacks to work like that. Even the "glitchy" behavior of Bombers "defending" a stack (ie: bombers are an air unit, so they are "immune" to ground units attacking them. Therefore, a bomber "in a stack" makes the whole stack immune), is in fact referenced in the manual (!!!). The Civ2 developers had 100% intension of encouraging this "gamey" behavior. ----------- Civ1 likely was the same, but was a much worse game. (I'm pretty salty about militias beating my battleships in Civ1) But hey, Civ1 was just the first iteration of the game, lol. Civ2 was when the game was rebalanced / revamped into a better game. Civ3 and Civ4 started to diverge from the original plans rather severely.
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    What do you make of FreeCiv? http://freeciv.org/ http://freeciv.org/
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      FreeCiv has largely succeeded in making a "more fun" Civ2-like environment. They've backported some things from Civ4/5/6, like hex-maps, culture, and also changed some mechanics to better interact with these backported items (Democracy's "Deployed Troops" penalty now extends to your culture-zone, instead of cities/fortresses only, which makes sense). FreeCiv in general suffers from outdated UI-choices. QT-client solves a lot of the issues though, and hopefully will evolve into something better. FreeCiv got an incredible "solver" embedded into its engine, allowing you to optimally place your citizens. But the use of this solver-engine is arcane. Proper use of it leads to cascading advantages over your foes however, so its a must have to learn. (especially in auto-calculating rapture situations) The use of optimal trade routes (with a good solver available in the FreeCiv-GTK client, but not in QT ... at least last time I checked) also is a major advantage to the players who use it. ----------- FreeCiv is likely a highly competitive, highly optimized game. But the community seems split and fractured. Some want to use FreeCiv-Web (and without the Governor / Trade route solvers, its a very different game), others like me prefer to play highly-optimal Civ2-like games. FreeCiv's solvers (both the Governor solver, and the Trade Route solver) presents a difficult question to the community. Is the use of arcane constraint-solvers part of the metagame? If deployed for free so that everyone can use them, is that fair? Its one additional step to learn before you can be an effective, competitive, FreeCiv player. But knowing that these lower-level items are "solved" by solver-systems makes it really, really difficult to go back to Civ5 / Civ6 (!!). So many times do I look at my citizens placement and realize that the AI-placement of citizens is terrible compared to the FreeCiv solver... ---- The "core" of FreeCiv is pretty incredible. The solvers to make provably optimal choices (well, at least "locally optimal", such as most trade from a collection of 12-cities trade routes + auto-caravan decisions). As well as the use of "symmetrical island maps" to ensure everyone has equal starting-positions, and the first to deploy "concurrent turns" (long before Civ5 did). It plays like a macro'd up / steroids version of Civ2 + minor mods as a result. The community needs to unify and decide if this version of the game is how it should be... and if so, rebalance the game in this field. Well, basically, FreeCiv-web vs FreeCiv-GTK/QT flamewars in a nutshell.

by peder 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

Units in the field would die as a singular stack (aka: stack kill). There were two exceptions, and one exception-to-the-exception. * Cities had units die one-at-a-time. This means that to siege a city, you were forced to build a stack (!!!). Attacking cities was always a dangerous operation in Civ 1/2 (though made easier in Civ3). * Fortresses had units die one-at-a-time, but were relatively difficult to build. IIRC, they also took up room, so no farms or mines if you build a fortress. Still though, they served as a "city-lite". Civ3 revamped the fortress system rather severely, so this only really applies to Civ1 / Civ2... and the top-tier fortress in Civ3 (lower-tier fortifications IIRC didn't defend vs stack kills, only provided a minor defensive bonus). The exception-to-exceptions was the nuke, as you pointed out. A nuke can stack-kill even in the stack-kill immune zones (cities / fortresses).

skhr0680 5y ago
I think the only improvement that can’t exist together with fortresses in Civ2 is the airbase, and that can be a nuisance because airbases are bugged and act as a farm even on mined squares.

UI_at_80x24 5y ago

Civ1, Civ2, Civ2 Call to Power, all suffered from stacked unit insta-kill glitch that OP mentioned. I have very unpleasant memories of a spearman somehow being hidden in stacks of tanks and losing them all to a crossbow or pike. This happened too MANY times to forget; and though enough time has passed that specifics have faded the pain and frustration never will. =) Yeah I'm still kinda bitter about that.

dragontamer 5y ago
Its not a glitch. Its completely unrealistic, but its in fact designed like that to discourage death-balls. You can search on "stack" in the Civ2 manual to see many, many references to how entire stacks will die all at once! (http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.365 http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.365). This manual proves that Civ2 designers intended stacks to work like that. Even the "glitchy" behavior of Bombers "defending" a stack (ie: bombers are an air unit, so they are "immune" to ground units attacking them. Therefore, a bomber "in a stack" makes the whole stack immune), is in fact referenced in the manual (!!!). The Civ2 developers had 100% intension of encouraging this "gamey" behavior. ----------- Civ1 likely was the same, but was a much worse game. (I'm pretty salty about militias beating my battleships in Civ1) But hey, Civ1 was just the first iteration of the game, lol. Civ2 was when the game was rebalanced / revamped into a better game. Civ3 and Civ4 started to diverge from the original plans rather severely.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  What do you make of FreeCiv? http://freeciv.org/ http://freeciv.org/
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    FreeCiv has largely succeeded in making a "more fun" Civ2-like environment. They've backported some things from Civ4/5/6, like hex-maps, culture, and also changed some mechanics to better interact with these backported items (Democracy's "Deployed Troops" penalty now extends to your culture-zone, instead of cities/fortresses only, which makes sense). FreeCiv in general suffers from outdated UI-choices. QT-client solves a lot of the issues though, and hopefully will evolve into something better. FreeCiv got an incredible "solver" embedded into its engine, allowing you to optimally place your citizens. But the use of this solver-engine is arcane. Proper use of it leads to cascading advantages over your foes however, so its a must have to learn. (especially in auto-calculating rapture situations) The use of optimal trade routes (with a good solver available in the FreeCiv-GTK client, but not in QT ... at least last time I checked) also is a major advantage to the players who use it. ----------- FreeCiv is likely a highly competitive, highly optimized game. But the community seems split and fractured. Some want to use FreeCiv-Web (and without the Governor / Trade route solvers, its a very different game), others like me prefer to play highly-optimal Civ2-like games. FreeCiv's solvers (both the Governor solver, and the Trade Route solver) presents a difficult question to the community. Is the use of arcane constraint-solvers part of the metagame? If deployed for free so that everyone can use them, is that fair? Its one additional step to learn before you can be an effective, competitive, FreeCiv player. But knowing that these lower-level items are "solved" by solver-systems makes it really, really difficult to go back to Civ5 / Civ6 (!!). So many times do I look at my citizens placement and realize that the AI-placement of citizens is terrible compared to the FreeCiv solver... ---- The "core" of FreeCiv is pretty incredible. The solvers to make provably optimal choices (well, at least "locally optimal", such as most trade from a collection of 12-cities trade routes + auto-caravan decisions). As well as the use of "symmetrical island maps" to ensure everyone has equal starting-positions, and the first to deploy "concurrent turns" (long before Civ5 did). It plays like a macro'd up / steroids version of Civ2 + minor mods as a result. The community needs to unify and decide if this version of the game is how it should be... and if so, rebalance the game in this field. Well, basically, FreeCiv-web vs FreeCiv-GTK/QT flamewars in a nutshell.