Too much unit clutter?

[Artorius]

I'm catching up on Hadriex's recent 'Kill all nodes' series and it struck me how many stacks of units there are. It seems daunting and messy, at least as a CoM novice / viewer of the game. At times, it blocked unit movement. A minor inconvenience perhaps but does this 'clutter' adversely affect the gameplay experience?



At first I thought perhaps re-evaluating CoM's reduction of food upkeep might be worthwhile. But it seems many of the 'stacks' were 1 or a few units. Compounding the problem, I imagine the AI gets stuck, unable to move units, which causes more congestion. 

A few misc suggestions (@Seravy):

• Unless you have an alliance, have AI keep their units at least 2 tiles away from other wizard controlled cities.
  
• Modify AI to encourage consolidation of stacks
  
• Modify AI to disband/unsummon weaker tier units as higher tier units become available
  
• Keep halved food upkeep as-is but increase unit money/magic upkeep
  
• Or, perhaps just consider reverting halved food upkeep
  

[Catwalk]

Was this a very old version? That screenshot is indeed ugly, but I haven't really experienced anything like that in my games. How late in the game is that screenshot?

[Seravy]

Was this a very old version? That screenshot is indeed ugly, but I haven't really experienced anything like that in my games. How late in the game is that screenshot?

What can be seen there is 4 allied players (Hadriex and 3 AI) attacking the 4th AI together. So all the units in the world are busy being transported towards, and unload themselves on this continent.
Flying units head towards destinations alone - they are forming a stack on the destination continent, not the source continent. Once their gathering point is actually full, the AI picks another one, so it's not disturbing the intercontinental movement - and allows the units to form stacks of 9.
Land units on the other hand come in stacks of 8 (1 ship+8 units), which is large enough to use in combat. Land units produced on the continent appear on the same tile around the city - if they are left unused, it'll naturally grow to a 9 stack as more are produced.
I estimate, around 1415-1420 for that screenshot, and it was on Extreme and Huge land.

A few misc suggestions (@Seravy):

   Unless you have an alliance, have AI keep their units at least 2 tiles away from other wizard controlled cities.
   Modify AI to encourage consolidation of stacks
   Modify AI to disband/unsummon weaker tier units as higher tier units become available
   Keep halved food upkeep as-is but increase unit money/magic upkeep
   Or, perhaps just consider reverting halved food upkeep

If only this was so easy. Sigh.

-Keeping units away is impossible, this has been asked and rejected at least a dozen times already for Wizard's Pacts. Doing so requires complex comprehension of maps and all sorts of common sense an AI does not have, like being able to find another path if the shortest one violates the pact.
-The AI already disbands their weakest units regularly to stay within the allowed max unit limit. If they weren't doing so, you'd see that big red "Error : Too many units, production failed" pop up every turn, like you used to in the original game.
-The AI pays roughly one third of the upkeep compared to the human player to begin with, and this is not subject to change. The AI is dumb and the only way it can win is through overwhelming numbers.

The main reason for massive piles of units is not being in war for a long period of time. I can't do anything against that, not building up military during peace to prepare for war is the same as forfeiting the game, and peace is necessary for diplomacy to have any meaning.

[Artorius]

Screenshot from around 1417. Hadriex (yellow) fighting purple, at peace with red/blue.