So in a lot of the strategy games I play the main mechanic is to build up an uberstack and head out.
Can anyone tell me about/remind me of games that don’t use the uberstack as a primary game mechanic?
I want to play some good strategy but other than tactical games, which aren’t the same as strategy games I can’t think of one where you can legitimately fight a multi-front war because of this lame mechanic.
Hrm. Dominions -sort- of goes against this, as a Pile of Badass will often be killable by One Huge Badass With Like Seven Magic Items. Are you counting the latter as an uberstack?
Civ 4 has the bombardment bonus of artillery and catapults that did damage to the entire stack whenever it attacked. Hearts of Iron 2 has a bunch of rules on how many units a general can effectively command when attacking.
Even so, both of those games have the “build the uberstack” primary game mechanic regardless of the disadvantage/complexity of doing so.
I have a good story on that.
We were doing 3v3 Hearts of Iron.
So my friend was playing germany, and our opponents where a bit clueless on just how badass he was.
Soo having played single player HOI they kinda had the production and stuff sorted.
So the Russian player attacked early 1939 with huge super stacks of tanks, rushing into Germany in a tactic that works well in theory, but against my friend…doom. Particularly cause he attacked in 2 big stacks of troops…my friend let them enter poland…and hit warzaw…
however, he at the same time manouvred horse infantry…who doesn’t need much fuel…around and behind them…just eating undefended land behind them.
Result… 2x super stacks stuck in Warsaw with no fuel, all it took was a few infantry and tank divs to surround them…and starve them out.
It was a massive victory, but a sad session, as early endings suck.
Basically, superstacks are vulnerable against spread out attacks, and raiding.
AGEOD’s American Civil War (three AAR threads here) seems to have a high need for many generals/armies.
That’s one of the reasons I really was looking forward to the demo.
Never got into said demo though and stopped trying after a few attempts to get into the bad UI and complex, unexplained game system.
Some strategy games enforce supply limits on squares or provinces, and if you park a large stack there, they lose men or effectiveness each turn. Dominions 3 has this (although it’s a minor factor, in my experience). Europa Universalis 2 modeled this well – play Russia and try to attack or siege in winter with an uberstack. You’ll lose more to weather than to battle.
I’ve only played a bit of Dominions 3, so I’ll defer to LeSquide’s earlier comment. I have observed that, while uberstacks are effective, they impair your mobility in a given turn. The enemy AI might attack 5 provinces using moderate sized stacks. You attack or defend one with overwhelming force, but still up with less territory, because you couldn’t respond elsewhere. That game’s mechanics seem to reward a greater number of moderate stacks.
If you include wargames, I recall a few that impaired the combat effectiveness of multiple units in the same square. I think they were simulating that the sheer density of friendly units meant they got in the way of one another & couldn’t operate as effectively. I haven’t played wargames in a few years, but I think either The Operational Art of War and/or Korsun Pocket had this mechanic.
Proper game design defeats super stacks the way the real world defeats super stacks:
I probably do, I played Dominions II but not III but if it takes all your resources to create one big tough unit and the rest of your army is a pathetic home defense force then yes it’s an uberstack.
Well, if you are counting the real-time genre, it’s full of small scout units, and quick harassing attack forces. Turn-based strategy, I haven’t seen a good balance executed.
A supercombatant in dominions is just a super stack of 1.
It’s also worth noting that alot of historical wars did actually use ‘superstacks’ even with all these real world limitations. So proper game design should prolly also make superstacks effective too.
Shoot out the tracks! That was how to stop an O.G.R.E.
Yep, arguably most wars before WW1 involved “superstacks” (aka armies) without continuous front lines. And fortified strongholds/ towns that formed marches (disputed borders). So you had campaigns (a mobile army) and sieges, but no front line as such. E.g. the Blenheim campaign (Battle of Blenheim - Wikipedia)
The cost/logistics of keeping an army in the field, rather than in quarters, meant that campaigning was limited to short seasons, and armies would often agree to meet to get things over and done with.
Napoleon in Russia would be a good example of a superstack defeating enemy superstack (Borodino) but then melting away due logistics in the winter.
Superstacks should be most vulnerable to getting cut-off from supply. Combat forces are very dependent on their supply lines. I would guess most only have a couple days of food/ammo on hand.
If you group your forces, they are easy to by-pass with small forces, which can then destroy the non-combat supply units with ease.
Armageddon Empires is a game where the superstack isn’t that much of a problem, I think. It happens, of course, but it can be countered, and in ways that make sense (i.e. cut it off from supply, nuke, cut off the head).
I disagree.
Stacks of Doom are insanely strong in Armageddon Empires.
Fights are often very one sided with few losses for the winning side. Because of special abilities and the general combat system additional units don’t just add their power to a stack, but have a small multiplier to the stacks overall combat strength as well.
I think that there should just be limits to the size of the stack. There are physical limits to the amount of troops you can fit within an area and a hex/tile represents a geographic area. To further limit their effectiveness reduce their mobility and defence rolls as they get larger to simulate logistical and command difficulties.
Superstacks are the result of the playerbase maxing the ability to kill, just as armies do in real world scenarios. If I know that logistically I can only get so much in a carrier fleet, I load up the best of what I have. And I move the entire fleet around, both as a deterrent, as well as a guarantee that I bring the largest amount of firepower to the gunfight. Sure it might get a bit cheesy within a game, but a lot of times it’s not done by the AI, resulting in a strategy that the player uses to get a cheesy win. If most of the AI did this as well, the majority of strategy games would get a nice boost in toughness. I also like the ideas of limited command radius (resupply), limited unit counts within a battle, etc. These tend to even out the superstacks a bit.
Note that real armies also use the same strategy we use in games to power level new units. Throw new recruits into a successful large force and allow them to get good battle experience.
Proper game design should also incorporate the “war is not fun” feature from the real world, but nobody seems to have caught on yet. ;)
Jon
I like the Kohan approach: your units are organized at the company level (4 - 8 units each); there’s a constant supply cost for maintaining a company (so you have to grow your economy in tandem with your army); there is a hard cap on the max number of companies you can have (20, IIRC), no matter how big your empire gets; and companies only heal when they’re within your supply range. Plus formations actually work and flanking enemy companies actually means something in most battles (i.e., bypass frontline troops to attack vulnerable archers and magic-users in the rear). You still end up with uberstacks, but you can’t just spam unit production and there’s an incentive to use troops wisely, rather than just hurling them headfirst into battle.
Of course. You always have a point where your forces are most concentrated. You just have to wield that force in a way that doesn’t get it wiped out.