This game badly, badly needs a "keep together" command

[Alexander's Horse]

Moving zillions of units around one by one is the main reason the end game sucks. Its so boring. I have 4 stacks of 15 military units in my current game but instead of 4 moves to move the stacks its like 60 moves each turn

Same goes for workers - its so tedious moving them around one by one - especially if you're using them in teams of say 3 or 4.

Please, please give us a "keep together" command in future enhancements of the game!

Thanks

If you support this idea, please register your support with a post on this thread

[napalm010]

I support the addition of stack movement 100%. Personally I have stopped using artillery and carriers. Moving them around with defense units is just to damn annoying. I keep a artillery or 2 in border cities only to damage attacking units or bombarding ships.

[Pythagoras]

I agree this is a very necesary upgrade. Not only does it save your time when have tons of units, it also allows you escort non-combat units and provide strong combinational arms tactics. I dont know how this could be implemented other than a simple "escort" command where the unit assigned to escort another unit instantly moves either with or one after the other unit making sure that by the end of the movement they are on the same tile.

[kailhun]

Support, support.

Robert

[vancomycin]

i support you

[dweez]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Moving zillions of units around one by one is the main reason the end game sucks. Its so boring. I have 4 stacks of 15 military units in my current game but instead of 4 moves to move the stacks its like 60 moves each turn

Same goes for workers - its so tedious moving them around one by one - especially if you're using them in teams of say 3 or 4.

Please, please give us a "keep together" command in future enhancements of the game!

Thanks

If you support this idea, please register your support with a post on this thread

Absolutely! The lack of grouped movement makes the slow game even slower....

[Eli]

[Libertarian]

There've been a number of threads on this topic, each with overwhelming support from the players, and each summarly ignored by Firaxis. On the off-chance that this one might actually do some good, consider my support registered.

[Be Quicker]

I support!
It's the only save way to keep my vulnarable units protected from my sloppyness!

[Zealot]

Go Horsie!

[BanastreTa]

Another vote for stacks.

I wasn't a big fan of the CTP series, but one thing it handled well was battle groups. As such, CTP had a very good implementation of the concept of combined arms--something that is very important in Civ 3, but more tedious to use because of the individual movement requirements. Nothing is more irritating than having an artillery unit taken because your finger slips and accidentally move your cavalry one space too far!

Armies should just be considered confer some sort of bonus on the grouped units, because they are sufficiently rare so as to make them a bad way of handling run of the mill stacks in the game.

BT

[Colonel Kraken]

I COMPLETELY support such a feature!

It seems like such a basic thing to add to the game. It's so obvious a necessity.

Oh well . . . .

[Redstar]

This must require some major re-working if stacking has not been done after a decade of civ development.

Yet, a partial solution is already in this game...its called army. They stack and move as 1. The leader is like a big box that takes little boxes.

So how hard would it be to change that box into an invisible box and name it a division (user could name the rest of it, eg. Red Wolf Division). These Divisons could be bound to the number keys.

Then we could have divisons running around ..click on the disband option and we would have free units again.


disclaimer: non-programmer alert!

[GeorgeG]

Stacks would be great!

[Ming]

We totally agree again on something AH

[barefootbadass]

Stack movement would be nice, but I doubt it will ever occur. I personally would prefer that all the major bugs introduced with the latest patch be fixed, without adding more major bugs. I also think that they should not include it in a patch that fixes many bugs, the patches need to be smaller so they can be tested better and don't introduce a host of other bugs.

Anyway, they would be REALLY nice for a pollution cleanup crew, since the auto pollution thing doesn't work very well. Perhaps right click on a square with several units, and ctrl-shift while clicking on each unit for the stack?

[LaRusso]

well, the king of spam got it right for once

[claggie96]

Yes, suppport!!!

[Ozymandous]

Great idea and full support as long as...

1) Units only move as one they do not attack as one. As soon as they are attacked or attack someone they "break" back into individual units.

2) We don't have to bunch them into a permanent grouping like the "army". Great idea, poor in reality. Who has ever heard of being able to upgrade individual "divisions" yet not a whole army? yeah right.

If this is done then great. I'd love to be able to have 1/2 or less icons to move each turn.

[RobC]

You could actually get most of the benefit of this in an easier-to-implement way by just adding support for a 'batch' move. Instead of actively placing units into a 'stack' or 'group', it could just let you give a command to all units on one tile to go to the same destination tile. Most of the time-wasting effort in the end game comes from clicking on each unit separately and selecting a destination. Combined with 'don't show/animate automatic moves', this should speed things up considerably without requiring major modifications to the existing code. If you want to improve things further, you could add finer granularity to the command, such as 'move all defensive units on this tile to the same destination' (or offensive/artillery/explorer/worker/etc.) While this isn't quite as good as stacks (because it's only good for automatic, not manual moves), it's a much easier fix (you don't have to create new objects to store the information about the stacks and what units are in them) so there's less chance of introducing new bugs or other problems.

[Th0mas]

Originally posted by RobC
You could actually get most of the benefit of this in an easier-to-implement way by just adding support for a 'batch' move. Instead of actively placing units into a 'stack' or 'group', it could just let you give a command to all units on one tile to go to the same destination tile. Most of the time-wasting effort in the end game comes from clicking on each unit separately and selecting a destination. Combined with 'don't show/animate automatic moves', this should speed things up considerably without requiring major modifications to the existing code. If you want to improve things further, you could add finer granularity to the command, such as 'move all defensive units on this tile to the same destination' (or offensive/artillery/explorer/worker/etc.) While this isn't quite as good as stacks (because it's only good for automatic, not manual moves), it's a much easier fix (you don't have to create new objects to store the information about the stacks and what units are in them) so there's less chance of introducing new bugs or other problems.

me me me me me

...Damn! you beat me to it!!
Fully agree with RobC..just improve the goto command.

I can't remember, but didn't SMAC have this functionality?

[Luigi]

alt-g (all units go to)
Move all the "active" units on the same tile to the location you select with the mouse.
And ctrl-alt-g would do the same but moving the units to a city you select from a popup list.

The range of the move will be equal to the minimum of the ranges of all the active units in the tile, you can then move units individually if they still have movement points.

It must be very simple to implement, just loop through every active unit on the tile and move it as a single unit.

I can't believe this can take more than 10 minutes of coding and can speed up the game by hours.

Of course you can't move towards an enemy city or enemy unit, you should then group-move to a neighbour tile and perform individual attacks from there.

"Simplicity is better than success"

[dissent]

You have my support. This game would be so much more enjoyable without the tedium of moving units around.

[Mokael]

heh, u got my support. And if CTP2 model can be used, it would be awesome ...

I say we keep on bumping up this thread everyday ...

this, and the one about the need for a scenario editor ...

[Special_Olympic]

Originally posted by Redstar
This must require some major re-working if stacking has not been done after a decade of civ development.

Yet, a partial solution is already in this game...its called army. They stack and move as 1. The leader is like a big box that takes little boxes.

So how hard would it be to change that box into an invisible box and name it a division (user could name the rest of it, eg. Red Wolf Division). These Divisons could be bound to the number keys.

Then we could have divisons running around ..click on the disband option and we would have free units again.


disclaimer: non-programmer alert!

Yes, if the program can do armies it should be able to do stacks. Armies are somewhat useless anyway, so firaxis should change it so we can stack any units we want whenever we want.

[Trifna]

Support registered.

[Drefsab]

Dear God yes please... support support

[Alexander's Horse]

Here's a good example. I want to move 8 artillery from one continent, across my home continent and onto another continent. I can do it in a turn because I have railroads and ships linking the continents.

If there was a keep together command I could group the 8 artillery and move them as one stack. The commands would be

1. The 8 units I want to move are grouped together as one stack.

2. 8 unit stack moves to port by rail.

3. 8 unit stack loads onto the transport ship.

4. Transport delivers the 8 unit stack to a port on my home continent.

5. 8 unit stack unloads.

6. 8 unit stack railroads across the continent to another port.

7. 8 unit stack loads onto another transport.

8. Transport delivers the 8 unit stack to a port on the destination continent.

9. The 8 unit stack unloads.

10. The 8 units stack railroads to its destination.

Its a complex movement but in all involves only 10 commands and can be done in one turn. It would take a minute or so to execute.

Now compare this to the current situation. To achieve the same movement under current settings I would have to do the following:

1. Times 8 individual units move to the port by rail.

2. Times 8 individual units load onto the transport ship.

3. Transport delivers the 8 units to a port on my home continent.

4. Times 8 individual units unload.

5. Times 8 individual units railroad across the continent to another port.

6. Times 8 individual units stack load onto another transport.

7. Transport delivers the 8 units to a port on the destination continent.

8. Times 8 individual units unload.

9. Times 8 individual units railroad to their destination.

That can all be done in a turn too - but it involves a staggering 66 indivual commands as opposed to 10 with a keep together command.

Something should be done about this - it shouldn't take 66 commands to move 8 units in a turn

[Chronus]

Wow, AH! Nice thread!

I support stacked movement as well.

[uh Clem]

Anybody with two or more functioning brain cells supports stacked movement. Hell, Osama bin Laden probably even favors it.

What I find interesting is that here is another thread by someone who raved about the game immediately after getting it, and now finds a serious flaw or two.

I know the feeling.