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I haven’t played much Civ — is there some reason that preserving that particular mechanic is important? It doesn’t seem obviously desirable (or undesirable).
by npinsker 2y ago
I haven’t played much Civ — is there some reason that preserving that particular mechanic is important? It doesn’t seem obviously desirable (or undesirable).
- 29athrowaway 2y agoCiv 1, 2, 3, 4 all played the roughly the same. Civ 5 onwards plays completely different because how tile movements are restricted. In real life those silly restrictions they added do not exist and get in the way of simulating a war.
- jncfhnb 2y agoA single giant blob of every unit you have moving as one is about as unrealistic as you can get with respect to war logistics and strategy.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoNo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pharsalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pharsalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae
- morgante 2y agoAll of those battles involve battlefield tactics, and in several of them the numerically inferior force won — exactly the opposite of "death stacks."
- 29athrowaway 2y agoThe Civ series is not the Total War series. The level of detail of battles is meant to be low because it's focused in wars not battles. You are not a war general you are a head of government. There are still plenty of tactics in Civ 4. Units have different bonuses depending on terrain and other factors. You have to plan where the combat takes place and what types units you want to use. Some unit types have collateral damage (catapult, trebuchet, cannon, artillery, mobile artillery, etc.), and there are similar mechanics with air units, cavalry, etc. The game is not short of battle tactics just not the board game inspired mechanic of Civ 5+.
- focusgroup0 2y agoAt random, I picked and read Battle of Pharsalus. The Deployment section explains in detail how, through meticulous troop positioning and clever tactics, Caesar was able to defeat the overwhelming force of Pompey.
- HideousKojima 2y agoStalingrad was won because the Soviets flanked and cut off the supply lines supplying the German 6th Army, not because of one death stack defeating another.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoAnd in Civ 4: - you can destroy roads (needed for some resources) - you can also occupy the tile or destroy the improvement (mine/plantation/camp/quarry/etc) needed to harvest a resource - you can use diplomacy to deny a resource - you can use a spy to destroy an improvement
- Apocryphon 2y agoOn the other hand the “solution” has to be create a carpet of units creating traffic jams, just a different set of annoying and unrealistic logistical problems.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThat’s what I thought. But Humankind’s solution of moving stacks around that get spread out for combat solved this very elegantly imo.
- bee_rider 2y agoMoving to one unit per tile didn’t add a logistics or strategic component. It jumped all the way down to a tactical one, you suddenly care about individual units flanking each other. IMO it was sort of more “honest” from a realism point of view to just admit that the simulation is not that accurate at the unit level, you smash the stacks into each other and assume the officer corps of each army is handling flanking. It is hard to say which way is more fun really. Seems like a matter of preference. I like tactical games better anyway, so IMO the new way is an improvement. But, realism? Not really.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThat’s why Humankind’s approach is great. Stacks are fine for macro movement. And then actual battles take place with one unit per tile and tactics considerations.
- senkora 2y agoI preferred it because I considered the point of Civ to be building up your economy/tech such that you were superior to your opponents, and then using that economic/technological advantage to out-produce them in military and defeat them that way. The shift from death-stacks to one-unit-per-tile made economic advantage relatively less important and battlefield tactics relatively more important. Tech is still important, though. Some players like the old feel where battlefield tactics were abstracted away, and some players like the new feel where battlefield tactics are a big part of the game. But they are two very different feels from the same franchise, so we get into this debate.
- recursivecaveat 2y agoImo one way it was desirable was it was much easier for the AI to play (most people only play against the AI). It has never reeeally gotten the hang of routing and positioning units around in a 1-unit-per-tile model. Consequently they struggle to pro-actively fight each-other even.
- drawkward 2y agoYou've got it right: it comes down to personal preference.