How do you group units?

[CagedCrado]

Im new and i played CTP at one time, and i bought civ3 to try it out. I cant figure out how to move more than one unit at a time, how can i?

[bobbo008]

yes, towards the bottom right i believe there are two icons to move the "stacks" of units.

one, you can move all units on that tile (that are not fortified) and the other all units of the same type (also that are not fortified).

now that i think about it, i forgot exactly what they look like, can anyone else help him (or her) out?

[CagedCrado]

Alright ill try it out, thank you!

[CagedCrado]

I couldnt see the icon in the lower right.... is there a better description or hotkey?

[Kaos XIII]

I believe the icon is only in PTW, maybe you have only Civ3. Anyway in civ3 I think it's CONTROL+J

[bongo]

CagedCrado , one important difference from CTP is that this grouping is for moving units only. You can't group units for attack, at least not the way you are used to in CTP.

The icon is in PTW only and I don't remember if the hotkey is J, shift+J or ctrl+J. Anyway it's in the readme for the latest civ3 patch.

[Nym]

The hotkey in Civ 3 is J.
SHIFT+J is to automatically clear jungle.
CTRL+J is new to PTW and do quite the same thing as J. One is to move a stack of identical units, the other for the whole stack regardless the units types within it.

Have a look at the civ3data.pdf within the Civ 3 directory or here

[CagedCrado]

thank you, you cant attack with multiple units??? that kind of takes the point out of building a lot of units anyway but oh well, still a fun game.

[Nym]

Originally posted by CagedCrado
thank you, you cant attack with multiple units??? that kind of takes the point out of building a lot of units anyway but oh well, still a fun game.

With Civ 3 you can not attack with a stack; maybe with PTW but I am not sure as I am not using it yet.

[bongo]

CagedCrado , you still have to build lots of units. Those large stacks are powerful even if they don't attack all at the same time.

You have the special Army-unit which is a (expensive)container-unit that you can load with other units(but not unload). It's quite powerful but a bit tricky to use. Try to look at it as an expensive super-unit.

PTW-combat is identical to civ3.

[nbarclay]

The difference is that in CTP, when your stack attacks the enemy stack, the whole stacks fight at once. With Civ 3, the fights are one unit at a time, your attacking unit against the most potent surviving defender. But you still have to deal with the whole enemy stack to win. Also, in CTP, battles continue until one entire stack or the other is eliminated. In contrast, in Civ 3, each side generally wins some of the individual fights, so an attacker needs enough local superiority that fresh units can deal with defenders that win their initial battles. Local numerical superiority very, very definitely matters in Civ 3, especially given the healing advantage of defenders fighting on their own turf.

Coming from a CTP background, I was originally skeptical of how I'd like the simpler, unit-at-a-time combat model of Civ 3. But I quickly came to like it very much. With fights happening one unit at a time, you can abort the attack and cut your losses if an attack is failing or move units that aren't needed for one attack on into position for the next. More importantly, in CTP, attackers could use overwhelming numbers (coupled with units able to fire from the second rank) to minimize losses against small enemy numbers, but numerical superiority was absolutely useless in any particular battle once both sides reached the cap of nine units per tile. In contrast, Civ 3 treats twenty-seven units attacking nine the same as nine attacking three. The defender can get nice bonuses against initial attacks, but numerical superiority can shift the balance more toward the attacker as fresh attacking units go up against defenders injured in fights earlier in the turn.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Also, in CTP, battles continue until one entire stack or the other is eliminated.

Small clarification about the sequel: If you initiate the attack, CTP2 has a retreat option allowing you to cut battle off before your stack is destroyed.

[bongo]

The 'retreat' option had the interesting side effect that once you were able to get numerical superiority on the battlefield your losses almost went down to nil...

[Nym]

Originally posted by TheArsenal


Small clarification about the sequel: If you initiate the attack, CTP2 has a retreat option allowing you to cut battle off before your stack is destroyed.

Yes, and AFAIR you can use up to 12 units and not 9.

[TheArsenal]

It might be 9 in CTP (I haven't played in awhile), but its definitely 12 in CTP2. Great game, played it a ton.

In PtW, while there isn't combined stacked attack, when I know I'm going to throw the whole stack at a city, I often line up large numbers of attackers outside and use either the (a) move all units or (b) move all units of this type, to launch an attack instead of moving each unit one by one. There are exceptions. I don't do it when holding an elite unit to use against their last wounded unit in hopes of a GL. Or if a war is going particularly well and I find myself deeper in their territory than expected using smaller stacks to "probe attack" cities to see if they're close to falling. And the worse case scenario, I'm getting whipped and my stacks are smaller than I would have liked.

[Nym]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
It might be 9 in CTP (I haven't played in awhile), but its definitely 12 in CTP2.

I confirm for CTP2: it's 12.
I did not play CTP1.

[nbarclay]

It was definitely 9 in the original CTP; I played far too much of that before Civ 3 came out to forget. I do have CTP2, but too many pieces of its design drove me nuts for me to ever really get into it. In any case, CagedCrado said CTP, not CTP2, so I focused my comparison on the original CTP.