@dunecat, I'm fairly certain units can move through the space occupied by another, they just can't stop there. The lack of being able to 'stack' units in one space was to fix the 'stack of doom' problem Civ IV had. Basically, there was no strategy, whomever had the biggest stack would win.

@Ursa I hope that works for you. I have an older system and Civ 4 runs fine on it, but some of the larger Mods are slow. Civ V will be another story.

@ spitfire Perhaps they should have made a stack size limit, such as 3-6 combat units. That way you could create combined arms stacks, but prevent the 'stack of doom'.

eh, I have to say that I like the new combat system more than the last one... particularly in the ancient era.

I've been playing as the Romans, and the fact that Roman legions take iron, therefore you have only a fixed number of them makes it a bit more fun for me. I mean, it means a lot more once I build up Legio II Gallica into an awesome fighting unit, rather than it being one of ten or fifteen just like it.

But that is just me. And there are still some broken combat things... defending a city that is at a chokepoint with artillery is stupid easy... even the early artillery wrecks units, and as long as they can't surround you and beat the city down, you can wreck a unit every turn or two. I think I held off about twenty or so Russian riflemen units at a chokepoint with nothing more than a city, a cannon unit, and a couple of my own infantry units to smash up anything that survived to get in range.

I think they got it right with Civ III and since then they've just been screwing up. I boycotted Civ IV when I found out they got rid of attack/defense values. I played Revolutions for a bit but it was too simplistic. They've tried to move Civ into the mainstream of computer games, and in doing so they've alienated the nerdy purists like me and my dad who want an intellectual, rather than a kill everything game.

Civ V is excellent if you want in-depth combat in particular with the limited amount of strategic resources as it can and will cause wars to break out over key resources such as Iron and Horse. The single unit per hex was a huge improvement over previous Civ games as it forces players to do more than stack 15 units on a square to succeed, I personally think more ranged only units would make it even better though. The policies are a huge improvement to the culture. The only major negative gameplay-wise in my opinion is City-States as they are too random and potentially game-changing for me.

civ iii better

it does look better than civ iv though, that thing was a piece of shit

i agree with durden mostly.

civ III was better.

the attack defense values were a huge thing.

i also happened to like that railroads cost 0 move points in civ iii, and that you have to build a road to every resource and that you dont need a special improvement for each resource and that you don't have stupid fucking "giant attack robots" or whatever.

but yeah i gave up on civ iv when i found out they changed the railroads. so there. they've thoroughly alienated me i could never go back honestly.

and also i hate how in civ V you don't need to build a boat to send troops over ocean tiles. THAT is SO stupid. i mean come on.

anyway.. civ iii overall produces a much more, you might say, realistic mirror-image of the development of history, so i like it for that.

these other games act too much like all the other strat games.

and the takeaway of stacking, and of eight possible directions of movement down to 6 with hexagons???? come on. its basically unplayable.

I have neither played Civ III or Civ V, but I do know that stacks are annoying as hell. I you do not naturally build up an enormous army, like me, then you always start at a gigantic disadvantage once war breaks out. It should be easier to maintain a competitive army.

You mean lack of stacks don't you?

Yeah I would often, in civ III, in cold war situations where I expect hostilities to break out, maintain a force of 50+ state of the art units. Where you fit that in Civ V... I have no idea.

Thucydides: No! That's why I hate stacks! I hate having to maintain and remember to build such an army. I also hate it when your enemy starts out with that army as well. There's no strategy there.

@Thucydides The hex grid is far better than the square grid. The square gride has been dropped decades ago by wargamers long before PCs were around. The formost reason is that when you travel diagonal squares you travel a further distance on the map. Example: traveling a distance of 3 squares diagonal on a map you end up traveling about the same distance as 4 squares moving north/south, or east/west. Being limited to 6 directions is hardly unworkable as is attested by it use by most, if not all, serious wargame publishers. The hex grid gives far more flexability in movement than you think because its staggered alinement of rows.

"There's no strategy there"

wrong, not in the world of large railroad networks that move you instantly.

it becomes a world of espionage in an attempt to locate his large concentrations of fleets and armies, and when you do strike, to tactically nuke the crucial railroads so that it takes him a few turns to reach you while you attack and then batten down the hatches.

there is an immense amount of strategy involved in executing the plan correctly, especially if you have to contain them from invading your own territory, border guards and air support and large response fleets and coast guards all become issues.

in a stackless game, maintaining an army would be basically impossible.. they would be sprawled across an entire continent. to mobilize them to move as a group would be a huge undertaking, just in terms of clicking.

pain in the ass you ask me.

Thucydides: What I meant is that there's no strategy if you are hopelessly outnumbered, or if you're better off but the defense of several of your cities is a forlorn task as you crank out military units. I also meant that just building huge armies – I'm not talking about deploying them – is not at all a strategic process.

Thucydides: As for your "stackless game" comment, I can't really comment, because I don't have Civ V. Now that I think of it, though, Civ Rev did have that sort of system, and it was annoying in the latter stages of the game. That was more because of the ridiculous timer, though, than anything else.

@ JECE - But if you can't stack the size of your army is limited greatly. With that goes my entire strategy for playing civilization. I'd stay at peace until I could out-produce someone. Then I'd attack someone and use the weight of my economy to beat them by producing more and better units than they could. Lowering the unit count makes it a strategic endeavor. While I like strategy games, Civ isn't supposed to be about military strategy, it's about being the best civilization.

Yeah, but the military aspect of it can destroy you unfairly in the old games, even if you have a spectaculor civilization. Sure, your producution will help you if you drop everything and have every city in a sprawling civilization build military units, nut in the meantime (and this often happens to me) you loose several cites on your fronteirs first, which you must then slowly reconquer.

Im waiting for the first patch to come out before getting it on Steam.
I really liked II and III but I really liked civ 4 because it introduced corporations, religion, culture and government policies. Thats my style, I never really won the game thru aggressive wars of conquest but thru money, technology and being a nice guy (who carried a big stick). civ 4 BTS was great for that.

Simplifying most game mechanics with a slight graphics update, and hex tiles turned me off. It may look like a cooler game, but Civ IV is still better.
IMO, Civ V should have been a combination of Colonization (city planning was much cooler and more realistic) Rise of Mankind (An epic mod for civilization 4) but with hex tiles. That was what I was hoping for and I am thoroughly disappointed. I may buy the game after a couple of good mods come out but untill then, I will be satisfied with the religious wars I know and love in Civ IV.

@JECE
"Yeah, but the military aspect of it can destroy you unfairly in the old games, even if you have a spectaculor civilization. Sure, your producution will help you if you drop everything and have every city in a sprawling civilization build military units, nut in the meantime (and this often happens to me) you loose several cites on your fronteirs first, which you must then slowly reconquer."

lol dude that's just the way it goes, you should have bigger garrisons on the frontier cities. the advantage is to the defender so chances are you won't lose them if you have more than two or three spearmen or equivalents.

I have both Civ III (Game wouldn't install on my computer through) and Civ IV, I have played Civ II when I was in 3rd grade. I'm planning on getting Civ V but, I have to say I'm already sort of disappointed. The grid system worked like a charm, I enjoyed having Religion through Espionage was the biggest pain in the ass, I have gone so far as to setting no espionage in all of my games. No more stacks of doom? Epic sad face :( I'm downloading the demo but, I don't think I'll stop playing FFH2 or Rhye any time soon.

I have to agree with JECE, not allowing stacks makes it far more fun. There was no enjoyment to war when it was just a case of pushing a stack around the map, slowly conquering cities. Now it's about positioning armies correctly, utilising natural choke points and flanking. In fact, the style of warfare has gotten more similar to Diplomacy.

I still say the middle ground of limiting the size of the stack would have been better than no stacking at all. The stacks of doom take some of fun out of it.

Thucydides: B-O-R-I-N-G task.

well - I bought it about 5 days ago and been playing the entire weekend ;) almost NMR'd in my league game because of it today haha.

I LOVE it. the way they've done money is much better - the happyness is a much superior system than simply city by city. I like the diplomacy as well but I think the information that was provided in Civ IV in the dip pages was much better.

embarking is a great solution. and after all is considered, I like the new Unit system - it makes your units much more important, the strategic resources now make much more sense than before.

so long story short - I'm lovin' it ;)

are you kidding choke points and strategy still matter HUGELY with stacks.

example:


two large continents. i had conquered my continent by the time the industrial age rolled and around and china conquered his side in the modern era. we were the last two left and had fully improved our continents.

it became an arms race.

he had a small isthmus on his continent that connected a land mass about 25% of his total continent. I knew that was my entry point. I knew (through espionage) his army size was almost my own in size. So I knew if I attacked him the retribution would be swift and I would be at a disadvantage. The advantage is on the defender and I simply could not economically outpace him.

So I developed a plan. I realized that if I nuked the fuck out of all the cities on the peninsula and nuked away his improvements (railroads) around the isthmus, I would know how long it would take his "stack of doom" to reach the area. I showered him with enough nukes that it would take him about 5-7 turns.

During this time I executed a long-planned attack with marines from transports that took the cities outright all in one turn so as to prevent airlifts and then began moving my "stacks of doom" into place at the choke points.

The isthmus was two squares wide, so I had to stack two armies there that would be able to withstand his attack once it arrived. I got ready and waiting in anticipation.

(Of course all this while a world war raged - at sea we clashed and self-exterminated our respective navies, flying bombing sorties against each other and maintaining fighters on air superiority missions. And of course his nuclear arsenal got about 50% used against me, thank god for strategic missile defense, which blocked the lion's share. But much time was spent attempting to prevent his several attempts at land invasion counter-attacks on my continent, which I did successfully thanks to a larger navy, with better pre-war placement. But that's another story.)

So finally his giant army of modern armors and infantry came into view, and i began barraging it with what was available to me - artillery, cruise missiles, battleships, and bombers in hopes to weaken it - any thing to hold out and defend my new conquests long enough to annex them.

And after a prolonged battle sequence, I came out ahead, but only just. On the next turn, seemingly acknowledging his major defeat, Mao agreed to a peace treaty. I had conquered part of his continent. I now had a beach head, and it was only a matter of time.


Was it at times tiresome to build so massive an army and nuclear arsenal, and more so to rebuild it twice after the three successive wars I had with Mao to finally conquer him? Yes, it was, at times. But don;t think for a moment that I did not strategize endlessly and did not enjoy to no end the, what seems to me in the context of the game world, ultra-realistic preparations for war as much as the actual massive epic battle.

So hate on stacks all day, but without them, that level of scale is lost, and Civilization becomes a children's game.

Sure, more people will like it, their appeal is broadened and they make more money, thus encouraging their dumb-down practices, but that doesn't mean I have to play. I'll stick to the endlessly variable world of Civ III whose games are truly an undertaking. A rewarding undertaking.

Thucydides: You need to play Europa Universalis III or other Paradox games. I think you would love them.