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

Right - the workers get their round of work, then the counter takes another -1, so you’ll be able to finish a worker/city based project just under the wire.

I am only just now noticing that cities have a resource cost as they go up in culture levels. Apparently, weak cities require nothing, developing cities require iron, strong cities require iron and stone, and legendary cities require iron, stone, and wood. Is this new? Has it been working this way all along and I just didn’t notice?

But what’s perplexing to me is that the amount of resources consumed isn’t consistent. I’m going through an old saved game looking at my different cities, and I can’t tell what determines how much of each resource they need. Is this something I can affect in any way?

I looked through the draft of the manual that was posted, and there’s only a page and a half on city management. I didn’t see anything about the cost of city upkeep in there and there’s nothing about it in the ingame documentation.

-Tom

Is that just showing you the total maintenance costs of their improvements? Like Barracks take Iron every year, Odeons take stone, etc.

Good idea, but it’s definitely not that. Improvement upkeep is listed separately under a city’s resource breakdown.

I went through the patch notes and didn’t see anything about it, so I’m guessing it was there all along and I just didn’t notice it. But I’d really like to know what determines how much a city consumes.

-Tom

If I’m remembering the tooltip correctly, there’s a maintenance cost to citizens/specialists. Sort of like how the higher level workers in Imperialism II have higher upkeep costs. Checking that right now.

Also, what is this cost?

I remember discovering that courtiers all get a 5 money allowance, but I don’t remember seeing that members of the royal family also seem to get an allowance. Is that new? And what determines how much they get paid? It looks like the calculations aren’t as simple as the 5 money per courtier.

-Tom

Yep, here we go:

image

No idea about the royals. But what’s 18 gold more or less between royals?

Ah, so it’s a matter of population! I love it. That makes perfect sense. But it’s been there all along? I have no idea how I missed that. :(

-Tom

Royals = Descendant of the original rulers. I should probably just take that out (or at least add a CONCEPT) for that as it’s a pretty small thing.

I haven’t given it much thought, but I actually like it as a money sink! It’s a nice expression of how a nation’s ruling dynasty expects certain unique luxuries and privileges.

Is it just one money per royal? I think that’s where I was getting tripped up. I was counting living characters on the inheritance screen and the numbers weren’t matching up.

And is population resource consumption new? That’s been in all along?

-Tom

Population/Culture consumption has been there all along. It’s an important inflation sink in the late game.

I believe it is 2 Gold per Royal (and 5 per Courtier)

I love Old World’s take on the relative values of stone, iron, and wood. I especially like how wood is something you gather before integrating it into your industry. Is that all for gameplay tuning, or were you guys drawing from something historical?

-Tom

Seemed reasonable to assume that with higher culture/development levels comes higher demands for resources. As for the different resources, it really comes from Offworld where I learned that no two resources should ever work quite the same way. Stay tuned to Designer Notes!

Ah, of course! I can’t believe that parallel didn’t occur to me, but that’s exactly what makes it feel so distinct from the usual games where you have to gather food, wood, etc.! There are so many distinct types of gameplay weight for each resource.

-Tom

Crazy timing. I just listened to an episode of Tides of History where they touch a bit on the uniqueness of wood as a resource.

https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/episode/5629-colonies-and-the-quest-for-resources-in-early-modern-europe-interview-with-dr-keith-pluymers/

Ooh, thanks for that link, Dave! I’m queueing this up to listen now. It makes me think of the Vikings in Greenland expanding onto North America as a quest for wood, which I learned about from Phil Eklund’s excellent Greenland boardgame.

-Tom

Is there a consistent cooldown time for harvested resources? If so, what is it? If not, what factors determine how long before a resource can be harvested again?

I’m trying to work out how practical it might be to park auto-harvesting scouts on certain resources, but without any information about how frequently they can be harvested, it’s hard to know whether it’s worth it. Unfortunately, there’s nothing about this I can find in the draft of the manual or the ingame documentation.

-Tom

I’m pretty sure chopped trees and scrub regenerate after a random amount of time. Not sure about harvested resources.

Whoa, that’s an interesting decision! To keep players from micromanaging the regrowth clock, I suppose. I think I like it?

-Tom