Old World: How does X work? Post your gameplay questions here!

Since so many of us are struggling with aspects of the game to a greater or lesser degree, I thought a dedicated thread might be in order. You can thank me later.

I, for one, would like to know more about religion - what it does, why I should care about it, and if there are any differences between them

Religion can have an impact on your relations between characters/families. If your Clerics are of a particular faith and you piss that faith off (usually through events), that can have a negative impact on your relations with that family and individuals belonging to the faith.

Religious buildings like temples, monasteries, etc. are pretty powerful in terms of the bonuses they provide. If you found a faith (I think that’s a requirement anyway) and build Disciples, you can use them to customize the religion by giving it various perks. Stuff like making Cathedrals provide a particular type of resource or religious buildings reducing unhappiness, that sort of thing. When you build the disciple you’ll see the 3 options available for that “tier”, you can pick one and lose out on the other. I think there are three tiers but this is going off of foggy early AM memory. :)

Aside from the customization option you choose, I do not believe there is any difference among the religions. Overall, I find religion to be less impactful in this game than Civ4. That might be due to my skill level/experience level with the game, though.

5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Old World (pka Ten Crowns) from Soren Johnson

So i’ve got 9 characters. They sit in my character pool. What do I do with them, and how do i do it?
Right clicking for “potential missions” is typical character interaction stuff. Do they help by just sitting in the pool?

They sure do. Anyone in your court applies their stats to your nation and can have big impacts on resource generation. A court scholar will give a very nice boost to research, a soldier to Training production, etc. If you hover your mouse over those resources at the top (gold, training research, etc.) you can see where they are derived from. Note that characters can have negative stats that negatively impact your resources! A character with a ton of Courage might be great for Training but if he has negative Discipline then he’ll lose you some gold every turn, that sort of thing.

In addition, these are your available characters to assign roles to. They can lead armies as Generals or fill positions in your council like Chancellor, Ambassador, Spy Master, etc. They are also the people that you can make Governors of cities to apply various bonuses there. For things like court positions and governorships, they require a tech to unlock (and for the latter the construction of a Garrison improvement in the city radius).

Note that not all characters are eligible to fill all roles depending on their archetype (Judge, Builder, Hero, etc.). Someone might be able to lead an army into battle but not be able to be Chancellor. When you go to assign these roles, it will show only the characters that can fill those slots. For your children you can get events that might grant them certain archetypes and the UI should show you what positions it would make them eligible for.

EDIT: “How do I do it?”

To assign a general, select your unit/army and there’s an action to assign general there. For Governors, you need to research the tech that allows you to construct a Garrison (it’s an improvement workers build). Once it’s built the Governor can be assigned via the City screen (look towards the bottom left). Pro tip while you’re in that area of that screen: You can also send luxuries to that city to help keep its happiness up!

For council positions, those are in the upper right of the screen. You can see portraits of people filling those positions (at the beginning this might just be your Consort and your Heir). If you’ve unlocked the tech for Ambassadors and do not have it filled, the icon for the Ambassador position will be glowing/flashing up there. Click on it, then select the character.

Once a character is in that position, you can then click on their portrait and have them do tasks for you. To stick with the Ambassador example, you can click on his/her portrait and then send them on a Trade Mission to another Civ. Or you can send them off to try to craft Peace treaties between your nations, form alliances, etc.

A note on terminology that might be confusing at first: Your default diplomatic state is Truce. This is different from Peace. Think of a peace treaty kind of like a non aggression pact in other games in the sense that it’s a stronger form of peace than the default “we’re not at war” Truce state.

I apologize for lack of screenshots at the moment. I’m at work so don’t have quick access to Old World to grab screens. I’ll try to remember to update my posts later with some screenshots. For now I hope the text can at least help!

Thanks so much, this is just what i was looking for!

Q: When you research Navigation, a third tier technology, you unlock the ability to set scouts to “automate”. However, it seems that automated scouts use up just as many orders as they would if you were to do the same actions manually. Is there any actual advantage to the automate setting? Or is this just an interface option locked behind a tech?

As far as I know it’s just so you don’t have to manually scout with them. I usually don’t have the orders to spare so not something I’ve used.

Why wouldn’t that be unlocked from the get-go then? Why wouldn’t I be able to set my scouts to automate from the very beignning?

Seems like a pretty odd design choice to lock an interface convenience behind a tech, which is why I’m asking. I’m surprised if that’s the case. When I unlocked it, I assumed it was to spare me spending the orders. I was disappointed many turns later to discover that my scouts have been using up orders the entire time. :(

-Tom

That’s a Q I don’t have the A for, unfortunately. :( Automating scouts in general seems… I don’t know, not odd, exactly. Just not something I’ve ever wanted to use, not with the Orders system. I think it would be cool if it gave some sort of discount given it is locked behind a tech, as you pointed out. Would make it something I might consider using more often.

Those are council positions and not courtiers.

I don’t think courtiers come from techs. In my experience they come mostly from family seats and whatnot. I’d have to dig around to figure out the specifics, but their presence will vary from game to game, and I’m pretty sure they’re a facet of your family choices.

I don’t think “personality traits” affect eligibility, although the term “trait” seems to be synonymous with “archetype” in the civiliopedia. Which means I’m not sure what you call the elements of personality like greedy, thoughtful, righteous, cruel, etc. But I’m 99% positive eligibility is entirely a matter of the character’s archetype, which is sort of like a class in an RPG: judge, hero, schemer, and so forth. Archetypes can exclude or require certain “personality traits”, though.

Again, that’s your council, not your court. Seems like courtiers are just family options to squeeze a bit of a bonus from a character’s stats and presumably make him or her like you more.

-Tom

Thanks for correcting the terminology I used, I’ll update my post! I meant Council when I was saying Court positions. :)

Yeah, I’m mixing up terminology again, thanks! I was referring to stuff like Judge, Hero, etc. when I was talking about traits. It’s been a couple weeks since I last played so the terms are a bit muddled in my head, I think.

Not sure if answered already, but how do you lose a game, and how do you win a game? Is this a thing? If I know how I lose a game, usually I know, what to do in a game.

F1 brings up all the ways to win the game, along with your progress in each category. Bascially, barring non-default set-ups, you win by a) having more and better cities than your opponents, or b) completing 10 ambitions, which are like quests.

You lose by realizing you’re not going to win and starting another game. :)

Note there’s a setting when you start a game to determine whether the AI will try to keep anyone from winning. It’s called “Play to Win”. The default is off. So unless you mess with that, this is basically a race game in which all the nations are perfectly happy minding their own business and coming in last place.

-Tom

There’s multiple victory objectives which an be toggled in the game settings. Off the top of my head you can win by accumulating enough Victory Points or completing 10 ambitions. Victory Points are accumulated through a lot of different things. Building Wonders grants them, having culturally developed cities, etc.

You lose the game if you get wiped out or the 200 turns are up and you’re behind on VPs. I’ve also lost a game when I died without an heir, but that’s only happened once.

There’s also an option (I believe the default is “on”) where once you have half the required VP’s to win, it’s an automatic win if you have twice as many as your closest competitor.

I know you get victory points from cities based on their cultural levels and wonders of the world, but what are some of the other things? Maybe I haven’t played enough, but it looks to me like those are the only things that give you victory points. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover there are other ways waiting in the wings.

Oh, man, that must have stung. How did you manage to back yourself into that corner? Or did your leader die unexpectedly or something?

-Tom

Q: What determines the boost cards put into your tech draw deck? Is that something I can influence or control?

I like the idea, but as with any card-based gameplay that involves drawing from and reshuffling a deck, I’d like to have some understand of what’s in the deck and how it gets there.

-Tom

EDIT: Ah, I think I figured it out:

A: Certain techs list the bonus card they’ll add to your next tech draw after you research that tech. It’s displayed in the tooltip on the tech tree. Although the tooltip says these cards are “permanently trashed when discarded”, that doesn’t seem accurate. They cycle into your discard pile just fine when you don’t use them. Seems the more accurate description would be “permanently trashed when used”. Which is the same as every other tech – you don’t redraw techs you’ve previously selected – so I’m a bit confused why it’s presented that way.

Just a couple really unfortunate events. Thankfully it was very early in the game so not much lost there and I haven’t encountered that situation since, so I’m guessing it’s not common. Usually if I don’t have an heir I get events to adopt and that sort of thing. I also wasn’t aware at the time there’s different succession laws, so changing those may have got me out of the jam.