Stack Busting

This trend only exists in games that do not have AOE weapons. AOE weapons in most games can damage everything in a stack at once, so if you put all your strongest units in one spot, the other player has an easy time hammering them down. the civilization games have artillery and siege weapons that fill that roll. Most fantasy games have overland attack spells that can hit whole stacks. FfH2(civ4 mod) has the omnipresent fireball which will harm every unit in a stack. Even master of magic has the "black wind" spell that will harm an entire stack at once.

Making a super stack and crushing everything only works in a few games, or if your opponents have no clue what they are doing.

Even in many of the games you mentioned (like FFH2 and Civ4), super stacks can still be effective. Consider that both sides have access to these anti-stack ingredients, thus its almost a cancelling factor. However .... if you had an army of mounted untis behind your AOE stack, after hitting each other with AOE your mounted stack could kill them.

Another thing in FFH2, which was a real killer, was a Stack of Magical Caster units!!!! Sure, this is somewhat balanced when they are only mage strength (4) and take time to upgrade from adepts to mages. But STRONG units which can cast AND be built en masse are truly deadly. Like, Blasting Workshop golems, or vampires, or Firebows. Acess to Iron only makes it worse, as you now have Vamps and Firebows +2 strength, and Iron Golems vs Wooden Golems. truly a sad day for an enemy of a magical state.

Nay, the REAL reason why stacks won't work as well is because cheap stack tactics + world-map "fast moves" are largely impossible in a game with tactical battles. Sure, the larger army has the better chance of winning, but its far less RNG, and things aren't decided on the Strategic Map, which allows things to be somewhat more balanced (you can't kill the enemy before he even knows you are attacking him).

I still think we should have "Shadows" in this game. Invisible elite units that kill other units in their sleep (essentially). High level Shadows with inc. strength and first strikes can be truly deadly. Their could be a "reveal" spell which gives a 70% chance to reveal any Shadows in a certain part of the Battle Map for 2-3 combat turns, while a "hawk" ability could have a 30% chance to reveal any Shadows on a part of the map for 1 combat turn.

Thats another thing, hidden armies and invisible units won't be quite so NERFED by hawks (potentially), as the utility of invisible units and armies is somewhat reduced. Perhaps the "Wraiths" fallen faction could make some usage of this mechanic.

In Summary -> properly built Tactical Battles will do alot to decrease the Prolific usage of giant Stacks.

Agree with Tasunke.  Civ 4 had to introduce bombardment (i.e., attacks that damage a whole enemy stack) because there is no player input beyond that level.  In Elemental, you WANT players to have strong stacks that spearhead their military efforts.  The battles that these stacks will have with each other are the crown jewels of the tactical combat system.

Civ4 isn't the best example. FfH2 is quite good at that though. If you spread your troops out, and the other guy stacks them all into one square, he will lose the AOE blast fight.

The best exmaple though is age of wonders. 2 spells come to mind right away, pestilence and wildfire. Both were overland spells and when csat would strike the target hex and ever adjacent hex and they would remain for 2-3 turns. If your opponet had stacked all thier most powerful units one place, they would really get hammered.

A few overland damage spells are pretty much staples in fantasy games, and use properly they can discourage the use of super stacks. Super stacks are still powerful, they just are not the be-all end-all of combat.

And there is a difference between having a set of strong units leading your attack, and using a super stack. The super stack IS your entire army and can beat anything by itself. The leading units are just the shock troopers who break up defenses for the rest of your army.

Hmmm, I would rather have ALL combat be done within the tactical battle than have severely powerful Overland spells.

The stack attack phenomena is largely unavoidable, and it makes people like Chalid simply OP in *most* regards :p

There is a funny story of someone with 5x the better economy AND ARMY quitting because I was using Chalid effectively.

Civ 4 IS the best example of what I was talking about, which is countermeasures against a giant single stack, and particularly the bombardment mechanics in Civ 4 which allow a single unit taking a single action to damage every unit in a stack.

What you are talking about is damage to multiple stacks in multiple squares or hexes.  This is a different issue, and it doesn't have the same relationship to whether stacking large armies together is effective from a gameplay standpoint or desirable from a design standpoint.

From my perspective, while the large-scale spells'll do a lot to negate the "superstack" strategy, I'd have to say that the tactical battles are probably an even greater deterrant. If combat autoresolves, then of course the guy with overwhelming numbers of troops will win. If you take it to a tactical battlefield, you've got a great opportunity to negate that advantage--if not entirely, then to the point where you can make him pay for each victory.

It's not that superstacks should be negated in Elemental, it's that "how is your stack super?" should be an interesting question.  I do see a couple of unavoidable natural upper limits to stack size, though:

1. A cap on armies due to the constraints of tactical battles.

2. Multiple fronts.

I hope you mean a soft cap ... in any case, if the "Defenders" are holding a fort, and the giant army only has a limited seige, and manages to make only one (or even several) breaches in the walls ... then the Defenders have the advantage of morale, supply, and defense. Only so many attackers can enter the breach at a time, so there is a better chance for the attackers to suffer more in morale and stamina as more and more allied soldiers are sent to their doom.

The constraints on tactical battles will certainly recieve diminishing returns for larger armies in some instances, however that doesn't mean we should be limited in the size of our armies.

I mean ... thats what makes the difference between an "army" and a garrison force. Of course, in real life its spread out among multiple fronts across multiple divisions, but having two large armies clash on a giant battlefield is enough immersion for me.

civ 4 had an easy anwer to this all you needed was a few siegie weapons 4+ was effective on a stack in ffh2 the elves were screwed up they had no siegie weapons what so ever so citys would be to hard to take.

Elemental is going to have spells so that should mean stacks should be more screwed from a gaint fireball.

Tact battles might (option) be disabled in muiltiplayer to make it go faster.

Numbers are everything even in real life who ever has the most firepower will win most of the time.

Tasunke, I'm not sure what you mean, precisely, by a soft cap, but I assume the existence of a hard cap at some point due simply to technical and design limitations on the tactical map.  A reinforcement system could soften that, though.

KillzEmAllGod, why would we WANT to keep large stacks out of Elemental?  Should every tactical battle be a small engagement?  Should a war be decided by a long string of tiny battles, or a handful of major ones?

Well yea, I guess 20,000 or so soldiers for each side might be a Hard Cap. It might be higher or lower than that though.

They did, however, have adepts, which could act like super siege weapons.

And super stacks are fine. If you think you can build and use one well, then go for it. But i also think that there should be some overland damage spells to punish it. If your super stack really is super, then it can take it and still win. If it losses, it wasn't really that super in the first place.

I would prefer that the choice to super stack or not is based on personal preference rather than anything hard coded. If you super stack, you risk getting hit by overland damage spells. If you keep your units spread, you risk a super stack eating them bit by bit.

Also, dividing or not dividing your forces is a strategic decision.  If you have one major army, a clever enemy could avoid that major army and rampage through everything else.

That is something I personally don't like.  I see it in many games and I prefer a system where 75%+ are normal units and the other super units (heroes/ elite units) are rare and are there to add to the base units.  This is particularly common in fantasy games with heroes and dragons and such.  I particullary don't like it when one unit becomes a super-stack by itself (except maybe end-game type of stuff).  I remember playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle way back when and getting disgusted with a few heroes that could become almost (or maybe even 100%) immune to normal units.  I know not everyone prefers this though and Elemental is looking like it will be a game where super stacks are common.

Super-stacks and superunits (or supercombatants, in Dominions) are two different things.  A super-stack is just a large army.

Normally, to be a super stack, you need a decent sized group of very powerful units all in one place that can simply punch through your opponents defenses and smash all his stuff.

Not saying they should keep large stacks out just saying who has the most of x powerful units would most likly win but we will see how its gets balanced over time.

In Elemental, stacks are "armies" but another way to think of them is as "baskets".  Do you put all your eggs in one basket in a game where wizards can cast volcanoes and wipe out the entire army at once?

Excellent. I have always enjoyed being able to blast at armies on a world map.

I'm not sure I'm a big fan of balancing against big stacks with doom spells.

I'd much rather see big stacks benefit tactically, but suffer strategically.  I'm definately averse to capping, as it has nasty side effects.  Epic battles need an Epic number of soldiers in them, so capping damages the realization of dynamic and Epic battles (you end up with a whole lot of battles where players are equally matched in number, *snooze*).  But that's a minor concern of mine in regard to stack caps.  My biggest concern with stack caps is that it doesn't actually stop massive stacks.  Want a better stack?  Then you start to flesh out that stack with super units and exclude diversity in training and experience.  So you've basically traded a more dynamic stack problem with more diversity for a less dynamic stack problem.  Think Master of Magic.  Want to attack a Wizard's home city and vanquish him?  Well, since you couldn't make a stack of 100 spearmen to overwhelm the wizard, you pretty much had to just stack nothing but your best units to have an effect.

My solution would involve building features into the game that give big empires reasons to break up those big stacks into smaller stacks.  These features can already elegantly fit into the game schema and cannon.  Have marauder barbarians and monsters exist in the wilds that prefer to prey every so often on places in large empires where there is no resident army.  Make the game landscape force large empires to snake through undevelopable land features so that empires have multiple borders.  Make armies slower and slower the larger they become.  This forces large empires to split up their super stacks to protect other strategic interests, rather than because there is an artificial unit cap.  Yes, they will probably still have their "best" army, but most forces would be deployed elsewhere as a matter of sound strategic judgement.

i'm sure there will be a thing to limit how many you can have in one spot or stack but doom spells would be fun for both sides, starcraft they have nukes Civ 4 has nukes its best not to keep everything in one stack or spot. Gal Civ 2 really came down to who had the most tech to counter the enemy.

I don't want to have a million troops crammed into a single square mile. On the other hand, i always felt that having a cap of like 9 units or whatever was kinda silly. If you want to really heap your troops up, you should be able to. The logical counter is the nuke or magical equivalent, as KillzEmAllGod said. Stacks will then have a natural organic cap rather than a hard cap, which is much better to my mind.

Want to put all your units in one spot? you can do that, just expect the other guy to use all his nukes in that one spot and blast them all to bits.

Not really. As long as they leave just enough basic recruit troops to hold their cities, they can afford to stack everything else into one spot, and even if they only move at 1 tile per turn, that dosen't mean they can't totally crush another player. Even if they move incredibly slowly, a stack like that will not be stopped by throwing barbarians or small stacks at it. And when it reaches the other players cities, his only option is to make his own super stack to fight it off.

Super stacks are so common because the only real counters to one are high powered overland damage spells or another super stack. Think glaciers. Ya, they are slow, but they really mess up the area as they move through. Valleys dug, mountains gone, or created. Slow but strong works just fine.

Even if having a super stack crippled your economy or defenses, as long as it can attack before your empire falls apart, the only way for another player to counter it is to make their own crippling super stack.

Although forcing armies to travel through rough terrain in between empires sounds great. Would be fun to set up ambushes or traps in those areas. Although it wouldn't really deter a super stack.