Unit Stacking

[Andydog]

Although I’ve been browsing the Civ3 forums for some time now, I’ve never actually posted before. I’m sure however that the issue of stacked movement is close to many people’s hearts.

There seems to have been only a half hearted attempt by Frixas to introduce the feature of stacked movement – and don’t get me wrong, it is better than nothing, however I feel that it hasn’t been taken far enough.

For example, I have 20 artillery and 30 tanks in a fortress. The AI has about 15 infantry on a tile next to the fortress. I attack firstly using my artillery, which is 80 mouse clicks, and that is before my primary assault with the tanks (another 90 mouse clicks & drags). Tedious, and lets face it, boring! Certainly with multiplayer and the new ‘turnless’ online mode, the stacking feature needs a lot of work.

The way I would like to see it working is like this.

Say I created a stack of 5 knights, 5 pikeman, 1 army (knights), 5 catapults and 5 archers.
I attack.
First the catapults should bombard, then the army should attack, followed by the knights, and then the archers.
The other player (AI or human) retaliates, and so the pikeman defend.

All units in the stack keep attacking until all units on that tile are either destroyed or captured. If this happens before all units in the stack have used up their attack, then it should be clear what units have attacks remaining in that particular turn.

An area on the map can be selected for units to retreat to (if they have that feature), and when this happens they would obviously remove themselves from the stack.

Movement of the stack should be restricted by the unit with the lowest movement rating.

Stack management would need to be carefully designed about so that it is simple and straight forward. E.g. simply right click, click ‘stack’, click on the units to add, click ‘add’. Likewise to remove units, select them and click ‘remove’.

An added feature could be that the player can give names to different stacks, e.g. “3rd Regiment”, or “arse whoopers”

I know this is very similar to the CTP system, but I think that it could be introduced in Civ3 such that wouldn’t change the combat fundamentals. All we are doing is reducing mouse clicks, and this is badly needed. Firxas would be letting themselves down big time if they don’t address this.

And that was my first ever two cents.

[player1]

One thing:

From patch 1.17f there is a "J" commad.

That same as "go to" but it moves all active units of same type with one click.

It's so called "stack-movement" command.



Tip:
Easy way to unforitfy bunch of units.
Press shift and then right click, and then several clicks again.



P.S.
Now only thing we still need is stacked bombard.

[zulu9812]

It'd be good if we could stack all units in one tile (even of several types) and they all move at the slowest rate.

[Lucilla]

Originally posted by player1
Tip:
Easy way to unforitfy bunch of units.
Press shift and then right click, and then several clicks again.

Thanks for the tip, didn't know that . Is that officially documented by FIRAXIS anywhere?
I hate it to get all those useful things to know only by accident.

[player1]

Originally posted by Lucilla
Thanks for the tip, didn't know that . Is that officially documented by FIRAXIS anywhere?
I hate it to get all those useful things to know only by accident.

No, I read it somewhere here on Apolyton.

[Mickeyj]

That J command is absolutely useless. It reaqlly needs to stack different units and move them together.

I think something more along the lines of armies in CTPII would be more usefull and solve a lot of time, especially when at war.

[player1]

No, no.

It is pretty USEFULL.

Stacking bunch of workers helps a lot.

And moving 3 stacks (for ex. tanks, artillery and infantry) is better then moving dozens of units.


P.S.
As for CTP2 model?
Maybe in Civ4.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

The CTP2 battle model always annoyed me because my weakest units always ended up being attacked first. That said, it was leaps and bounds above the civ3 battle model. You can vaguely simulate it with armies, putting a defensive unit with one or 2 offensive units, which is what i see the AIs usually doing. I loved the concept of different battle rows and flankers. I cant believe civ3 didnt use at least part of that

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Mickeyj
I think something more along the lines of armies in CTPII would be more usefull and solve a lot of time, especially when at war.

It would not only save a lot of time of the human but also for the AI, I wrote a slic code that made the AI to stack its units properly and the result were shorter AI turns, so using of armies instead of units can really accelerate the game.

-Martin

[Andydog]

I agree that the CTP2 battle system was superior - the rows and flankers added another dimension to the game, and turns never dragged out too much.

To keep with the Civ3 battle philosophy, when attacking with a stack, the attacks should cycle through from the strongest attacking units to the weakest attacking units (with the opponent cycling through from their strongest defending units through to the weakest defending units).

The J key is only good for moving a number of like units around the map. By expanding that to the ideas above, a much larger number of mouse clicks (and the associated tedium) could be avoided.

I hope Frixas is reading this! They have made a fantastic game, but it still has a few wrinkles that need ironing out...

[Andydog]

sorry - FIRAXIS

[zulu9812]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
It would not only save a lot of time of the human but also for the AI, I wrote a slic code that made the AI to stack its units properly and the result were shorter AI turns, so using of armies instead of units can really accelerate the game.

-Martin

Any chance of getting ahold of that? How is it incoroporated into the game?

[hexagonian]

Its only in Modded CTP2.

(...another fine product of the CTP2 SLIC community - and features like these are free and not part of a XP pack that you would have to shell out the bucks for).

[Coracle]

Stack COMBAT is what we really need in Civ 3.

[Rhuarc]

I agree, stacked combat such as in CTP2 is the way to go. I mean in the real world if you have 3 tanks you are going to use two of them to flank the other person, they aren't just going to sit there and each wait their turn for the other ones to be destroyed! Has anyone tried modding this feature in yet? or is it a hard coded feature that wil be impossible to add?