I remember in Rome I that I would always recruit mercenary hoplites and drag them to Egypt or Gaul/Britannia. I mostly used them to kill off chariots but their other great use was bridge defenses. You could stack 3 of 4 units right on top of each other, enter phalanx formation and sit back to watch the fun. Impossible to break.
We don't seem to have bridge defenses like that in Rome II but we sure can stack units on top of each other. Both in initial deployment and in battle. I think its time CA addressed this issue. And, I think it might help alleviate the "blobbing" issue.
No units ever double stacked upon each other in "real life". There wasn't any room to do that in a tightly packed formation like a phalanx or cohort. I doubt that a friendly unit would wade right into the middle of a unit engaged in battle and totally disrupt their formation in "real life". They'd fight side by side but when would they ever try to stand on each other's heads?
I'll bet that if CA could come up with a way to prevent friendly units from overlapping (or at least reduce it dramatically) we'd get:
1) battle lines properly spread out and maintained when fighting
2) better battlefield strategies by having to manoeuver units to flank and get behind enemy units
3) a huge reduction in blobbing
4) longer, better battles
There could be other benefits too. I'll bet it would be relatively easy to do since enemy units have some form of collision detection that tells them when they are "touching" each other. Why not just apply that same code with a slightly different outcome (in other words, the friendly units don't attack each other - they move around each other).
I agree on all your points, and I must admit I shamelessly used double stacking more than once
We don't seem to have bridge defenses like that in Rome II
There is bridges battles in Rome 2 if you fight while being on the other side of a bridge and the enemy army is opposite, on the campaign map.
Sure there is a shallow river pass in those battle maps but there is also a bridge and playing with Epirus I broke a hell of a lot of AI armies in those fights.
Even though its quite bad to double stack when the enemy has a lot of good ranged, its quite true that double stacking is overpowerful. Would be cool if they nerfed it.
There is bridges battles in Rome 2 if you fight while being on the other side of a bridge and the enemy army is opposite, on the campaign map.
Sure there is a shallow river pass in those battle maps but there is also a bridge and playing with Epirus I broke a hell of a lot of AI armies in those fights.
That happens only because the AI is stupid enough to only use one point of crossing (which happens to be the one you are defending) and completely ignore the other (which you can safely leave unguarded), instead of splitting up and using to maps' features, forcing you to defend multiple crossing points, it does this even when it is numerically superior and could afford splitting up, while you can only defend one crossing point.
And yes stacking is quite ridiculous, there is just no room for all these people. Friendly units actually try to get out of each other some times, but never while in combat, only when they are idle.
That happens only because the AI is stupid enough to only use one point of crossing (which happens to be the one you are defending) and completely ignore the other (which you can safely leave unguarded), instead of splitting up and using to maps' features, forcing you to defend multiple crossing points, it does this even when it is numerically superior and could afford splitting up, while you can only defend one crossing point.
(Im using mods)
My experience had been exactly the opposite. If they are deploying their army last, the AI puts the majority of their forces in front of the least defended access (the bridge or the shallow river) and if both are equally protected (from its POV) they will attack both places separately and often simultaneously. Apart from siege BAI, the AI is smart as hell.
Anyway even in open field battles, double stacking is powerful and has to go.
The only remedy I found is mods that increases the fatigue while in combat, so it is preferable to not have all your units fighting simultaneously or they will all get exhausted fast.
Last edited by Butan; November 04, 2013 at 01:18 PM.
I'll bet that if CA could come up with a way to prevent friendly units from overlapping (or at least reduce it dramatically) we'd get:
1) battle lines properly spread out and maintained when fighting
2) better battlefield strategies by having to manoeuver units to flank and get behind enemy units
3) a huge reduction in blobbing
4) longer, better battles
I don't really care for double stacking, but don't pull those "improvements" of removing the double stacking, because they aren't tied to each other AT ALL
The very ugly forgive, but beauty is essential - Vinicius de Moraes
I don't really care for double stacking, but don't pull those "improvements" of removing the double stacking, because they aren't tied to each other AT ALL
Actually those points would all benefit, for these reasons: 1) In the form of a restriction it would force the AI to maintain army shape. 2) It stops the player from exploiting the overlapping effect and forces him to pre-plan his maneuvers. 3) Blobbing is less likely to happen if armies are less dense, due to having more surface area. 4) Battles would be longer to less concentrations of units. When you have a high concentration of units with this rock-paper-scissors gameplay you get extreme results (mass routes) and contributing to the rapid routing is the surrounding morale debuff which comes into effect when a unit's flank or rear is exposed to an enemy unit, this is something that would be avoided more often due to less frequent blobbing. You haven't exactly explained why his points are invalid, have you now CA apologist?EDIT: had to use lines because enter doesn't work on this forum.
Last edited by Evan MF; November 04, 2013 at 12:10 PM.
1) If you can fix the pathfinding issues that would arise from such system, there is a very clear reason that every game out there uses pass through units. Not to mention the nightmare that deployment would be for the ai and the player
2) dont exploit it, not to mention the pathfinding is going to prevent more flanking not create more opportunities
3) blobbing happens because there is a loss of cohesion in the unit formation and because of the weight system
4) battles will be longer because of the pathfinding, not because there are less units in the fray.
The very ugly forgive, but beauty is essential - Vinicius de Moraes
I don't see what the issue is. I personally have never double stacked. Sometimes my units overlap a little when trying to create a curved defensive line (rare), but other than that I've never put one unit on top of another. It seems like if you don't take advantage of the exploit, there are no consequences. Unless the AI is doing this, which I have never observed.
I don't see what the issue is. I personally have never double stacked. Sometimes my units overlap a little when trying to create a curved defensive line (rare), but other than that I've never put one unit on top of another. It seems like if you don't take advantage of the exploit, there are no consequences. Unless the AI is doing this, which I have never observed.
Well as far as deployment is concerned there is no problem, it's a matter of being polite to the AI and thus not deploying units on top of eachother.
The indirect problem is related to the famous unit blobbing. Not only can you deploy units on the same spot, units can also move through a dense body of troops, such as a phalanx. Or, when two units are fighting each other in formation (which is rather hypothetical for R2TW) a third unit can move through both formations without too much problems. This is acceptable for elephants, not for soldiers. Soldiers should present an occupied space where other soldiers can't move.
Until now it has not occured to me that the battle engine cannot handle units passing through each other correctly. "Correctly" means, imho, that a unit's formation attributes may get impaired or break while there is another unit passing through. I am much more sceptical that the battle engine would be able to deal with so many moving obstacles to avoid real-time. But maybe I am suffering from my Civ5 "please-wait-to-be-slaughtered" one unit per tile experience. :-/
With regard to intentionally using multiple stacks: At least in campaigns I have not experienced significant use of multi-stacking as an exploit. Actually I like the way how skirmishers in R2TW are able to penetrate their main inf line to regroup behind it. And I see good tactical reason for double-stacking as a means to reinforce a wavering line. So, I think getting rid of multi-stacking would not be helpful.
P.S.: Please read my post carefully. I do not blindly defend CA nor the use of Warscape in its current state for a melee-centric TW game - I just think that multi-stacking is not an issue.
Double Stacking Units Has To Go
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Originally Posted by Butan
