Question about stacking?

Deathwalker · October 10, 2001, 09:30

I was wandering if anyone has seen this in a preview. I know that you can stack units in a army, this army can then attack together and defend together.
My question is, if you have mutiple units on one square, but not linked together as a army and some one attacks and you loss, do you loose all your units, or only the one who defends, or does the whole stack work together?

Can anyone answer this?

Grumbold · October 10, 2001, 09:42

For that genuine Civ I feel, which they seem determined to recreate, I would expect the loss of the best defender to destroy the entire stack unless they are in a fort or city.

Sarxis · October 10, 2001, 09:47

In SMAC there was a limited amount of 'collateral damage' that could be applied to units under attack in a stack. This worked pretty well. I can imagine that Firaxis is going to implement a stack feature along this line in CivIII.

ajbera · October 10, 2001, 11:36

I'm just hoping that one can move a stack of units, even if they are not an army. I don't mind having a non-army group fight and die independently, I just don't want to have to micromanage movement of 10 units if I can simply move them around as a group.

Grumbold · October 10, 2001, 12:27

It would be cool but no mention has been made of any form of stack selection except where armies were involved.

None of the screenshots published so far have shown the sort of massive troop buildup where stack movement would be a godsend. If they really have managed to turn Civ into a far less unit heavy game then the option may be redundant.

Stuie · October 10, 2001, 12:34

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
None of the screenshots published so far have shown the sort of massive troop buildup where stack movement would be a godsend.

I'm not sure if any screenshot has even shown more than one unit in a square. I'm wondering:
a. how multiple units in a square will look given the new graphics
b. what an army looks like.

Hmm.... hmm!

Sarxis · October 10, 2001, 12:38

God questions. It did always bother me in Civ2 and SMAC that only one unit would be shown, and not some kind of 'army' icon. Hopefully CiviIII will have gotten past this.

Ralf · October 10, 2001, 12:39

Quote:

Originally posted by ajbera
I'm just hoping that one can move a stack of units, even if they are not an army. I don't mind having a non-army group fight and die independently, I just don't want to have to micromanage movement of 10 units if I can simply move them around as a group.

Very good point.

Unit-stacking is not just about simulating an army (which the current army-model seems to do well enough - at least I believe so. Im not sure if I have understood it all completely, yet).

Its also about squashing the wellknown Civ-2 endgame unit-by-unit move-micromanage problem. With the current army-model alone, with its max-limit of 3-4 units + other limiting conditions, one can only hope to reduce the endgame combat-unit micromanagement somewhat. But not completely eliminate the burdensome repetitiveness of the underlying problem.

True - in Civ-3 both caravans/freights and diplamats/spy's have been abstracted away to appropriate manager-screens. Good! But still... I really hope that one always can "cluster together" several still independently one-by-one working/reacting units - for pure practical move-micromanage reasons, if not else.

Grumbold · October 10, 2001, 12:46

Quote:

Originally posted by Ralf
Unit-stacking is not just about simulating an army (which the current army-model seems to do well enough - at least I believe so. Im not sure if I have understood it all completely, yet).

Only the armies that fight in column of march. Funnily enough catching armies in column of march used to be one ideal tactic that led to many famous victories for the armies that understood such tactics as scouting, flanking and use of superior numbers. Still, we've done this one to death so I'll go back into my box now. Civ isn't supposed to make sense.

Sandman · October 10, 2001, 14:01

We know that units with a movement advantage can retreat.

Does this apply to armies?

Furthermore, what will the rules be for armies which are composed of units with different movement rates? I'd imagine that the army would move at the speed of the slowest unit. But it's not beyond the realms of possibility for there to be a sight bonus for armies with fast units, representing the faster units scouting around the main bulk of the army.