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

Games
568

Oh I definitely like tree regrowth being randomized.

I stopped climbing the Civ IV difficulties when I had to get serious about optimizing worker chops and slave whips to not get snowed under by the AI’s various resource advantages. One of the contributing factors there is the remarkably deterministic behaviors of and interactions between all those elements.

I realize this is apples to oranges to some extent, but my larger point is that introducing some randomness to resource gathering of whatever form presents a sort of uncertainty threshold beyond which optimization is impossible, which is an important tool in the designer’s toolbox IMO.

569

Agreed! I’m definitely down with tweaking the usual systems with this sort of stuff. And if it’s random, that’s great. I like how you’ve broken it down here. There’s so much sweet sweet determinism in Old World – it’s very boardgamey – that I’m happy to discover little die rolls like this.

But my sticking point here isn’t with the design, it’s with the documentation. I’d just like the information necessary to make the kinds of decisions Old World is asking me to make.

Specifically, I’ve got some nice spikes in growth in some of my cities that I’m not taking advantage of. So one of the strategies I’d like to mess with is cranking out some scouts – a solid agricultural city can easily spit out a scout in two turns – and fanning them out into a picket to park on surrounding resources. With the scouts set on Auto Harvest, they’ll provide dribbles of income in resources, gold, and influence. But since resource and tree regrowth isn’t documented anywhere, I have no way of knowing how practical or even viable this strategy is.

-Tom

570

Harvested resources and vegetation regrowth are dice rolls, yes. As a neat touch, some more valuable resources regrow slower than others.

571

Sweet!

Sweeter! Do you have any idea of the range of die rolls? Are we talking ten years on average, three years, something in between?

-Tom

572

Wait, really? I had no idea.

573

Generally the rolls range from 1d6 to 1d10 (requiring a roll of 1). I’ll add some help text for that somewhere.

574

So if center bias has been removed, what is the net effect when I set up a new campaign? All civs can end up anywhere on the map?

575

Center Bias was for you, the human player, so the removal means you can now start anywhere, instead of almost always be in the middle, with the AIs around you. The most visible consequence is that, on Seaside maps, you now have a decent chance of starting on or near the coasts, which was previously very rare.

576

That was especially annoying as Carthage!

Is it removed for MP as well?

577

It was a SP-only option in the first place.

578

The option was only there in SP, but in MP the player is always center-biased if there are AIs involved. I was wondering if that had been taken out.

579

Is there any difference between goats and sheep? What about fish and crabs? Barley, wheat, and sorghum?

It seems to me there are there multiple resources that do the exact same thing. Did they have differences that were cut? Are they separate for just flavor reasons? Do they have some relationship to the map scripts or climate that I don’t understand?

-Tom

580

It’s mostly just flavor although they also have slightly different rules about where they can be generated (sorghum can exist in a more arid climate, for example).

581

image

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I kinda feel like you didn’t get to play with one of these when you were a kid!

Kidding of course Tom :-)

582

So does this mean you’re not going to hire me to run a zoo? :(

Also, sheep are adorable and goats are terrifying because Satan is watching you through their eyes! There’s a reason Black Phillip in The Witch wasn’t a sheep.

-Tom

583

Whaaaaat?

adorable!

584

https://youtu.be/xau1ZQUtW5c?t=1m20s

585

I’m confused about how succession works, which happens on any day that ends with a Y. In particular, I’ve had a whole game thrown out of whack because I apparently don’t understand the rules for how to determine the next king. Let me explain, and maybe someone can point out where I went wrong.

So I’m playing Persia, and Cyrus is the starting king. He’s getting up there in age, but he’s got two sons. Teispes is the eldest brother and Vologases is the younger brother, both from the same mother. Naturally, I’ve been grooming Teispes to be the next ruler and Vologases to be a supporting character. Teispes is a Tactician because I want to try sniping from trees with all my Persian ranged units. He’s already married and he even has a daughter. The Persian lineage is secure for two more generations and I’m setting up a convenient war for when Teispes takes over.

But for some reason – I really wish Old World would include some flavor text about untimely deaths – Teispes dies at the age of 29. Welp, so much for that plan. Now the younger brother, Vologases, will inherit the throne. He’s a Brave and Insane Commander, so it should still lead to some wartime fun, even if I won’t be able to snipe invisibly from the treeline. And with Cyrus at the age of 64, it should be happening soon.

Two years later, Cyrus dies at the age of 66. No problem, I’m ready for Vologases to be king. I’ve still got the default Primogeniture law in effect (I haven’t touched the inheritance laws since the game began). For some reason, it shows Teispes’ 6-year-old daughter as next in line (?), but I’ve had an infant inherit the throne before, and a ward took over in an elaborately arranged event. This must be the game’s way of sparing you the indignity of a child ruler? I figure Vologases will be that ward, even though I don’t think primogeniture works that way. Whatever, just play it through.

But for some reason, with Teides dead for two years, when Cyrus dies, Vologases is passed up and the throne goes to Teispes’ six-year-old daughter! What!? Why didn’t Vologases get to be king? Does it take a turn for the ward event to spawn? Why is Teispes daughter taking precedence like this?

I keep playing, and Vologases is never given the chance to be a ward. He’s next in line to rule, but it turns out a six-year-old can’t abdicate the throne (that option doesn’t appear until she’s 18). I play 12 years with a child on the throne giving me no archetype abilities and almost no stat bonuses. It’s a fun challenge, but I never puzzled out why she inherited the throne when Cyrus died.

Why would a granddaughter through a dead son inherit the throne ahead of a living son? Did I miss some weird event text? Could it be a bug? It made for a great game, but I have no idea why it happened.

-Tom

586

I haven’t had a would be child-king that young, but for another data point:

I was also Primogenitor. King dies with an underage son.
I received a pop-up event for an older relative to step in, when I accepted the child-king received the trait “Rightful King” (might have been “Rightful Heir”).

However, when the rightful king did reach age of maturity, there was no event for him to take over. Perhaps there is some random chance per turn with a MTTH (mean time to happen).

Not only that, and this is where I think your situation might apply, the rightful king was no longer part of the succession path. A new path had been drawn from the regent, and it was then the regent’s son who became the next king.

587

That’s how primogeniture works (or at least how I interpreted it working in Old World). The first born always takes priority so their kids take priority over the uncle. (This is in fact why the murderous uncle is a medieval trope.)

Think of it this way - if Prince Charles suddenly died, the succession wouldn’t go to his siblings but to his kids.

(Apologies if I’m reading any of this wrong.)