Fluffybunny and I started a network game, played 67 turns, and then converted to a cloud game. We’re posting both of PoVs:
Here’s my PoV playlist:
Here’s fluffy’s PoV playlist:
Enjoy! The game is still ongoing and we’ll keep posting turns as we play them.
Does the game favour starting the human player in a central area, no matter the map? I’ve noticed now that I’m always surrounded by other nations/tribes and I’m never on the edge of a map.
Thinking about it, is it a benefit to start in a central position or does it cause more conflict and is a detriment as a result? Since one can’t wrap around the edges of the map, you’d think having one side protected by an edge would be a benefit but perhaps it limits exploration.
I think so, yes. Starting at the edge isn’t always a good thing; you do get small occasional raids from off the map, and it closes an avenue of expansion. Tribes are definitely best viewed as a resource to exploit than a true threat (unless stretched too thin to be dealt with of course!).
Ah, too bad that it’s not fully random. Regardless of whether it’s a positive or negative, I did like how Civ games could plunk me down anywhere. Of course, one could also settle most anywhere in Civ.
It’s an interesting dynamic, though, to control the centre fully. In my current game on a huge map, Carthage and Persia are at war and I’ve spliced off Carthage from reinforcements that were traveling from one side to defend their capital. Now starved of those units, I think the capital may fall.
But keeping my neighbours happy so they don’t crush me is an ongoing battle. Egypt leads and is pushing up against my eastern borders. It’s tense for a builder like me.
Can borders overwrite a neighbour’s borders from anything other than capturing cities, or is territory gained always owned by the nation?
What does it mean for the game if a rival nation steals research from me successfully but is exposed in the process? I’m guessing they get a boost to their science, just as I do, but exposure results in what? Is it just the notification to me that something happened?
Along those lines, I’ve never been able to find an agent working in one of my cities. Is the AI making use of agents like I do?
A thing I wish I knew from the beginning is that ‘connected’ cities isn’t having their borders touching. It means having roads built between them. I only discovered that as I was struggling to figure out how to manage the ambition to connect six cities. It may have been in one of the tutorials and I forgot about it, but I wish ‘connect’ had a pop-up tool tip that explained it. Now I’m building roads!
Key thing I’ve noticed is that, if a game has tribes war with me, or if they spawn invaders frequently enough, I will almost certainly end up losing the game if I don’t wipe them out quickly. I just finished one as Persia on a huge donut map, and I had tribes attacking, invaders, rebels, etc, spawning every other turn so all I was doing was pumping out military units to counter them.
Even though I try to play peaceful (and practically never war with nations), I’m trying to figure out why some games seem to have the tribes so quiet while others have them be the bane of my existence. Do they spawn more invaders at different opinion levels? If I get their opinion high enough, is that what will quiet them down, or do they spawn after they have five total units regardless of opinion?
Not sure about your question about Agents, but I’m pretty sure the AI uses them. I’ll leave that to someone else to answer.
The rules for “connected cities” are spelled out in tooltips and the civilopedia. I guess it makes sense you might take it to mean territory is connected, but the rules are specifically for your “trade network”, which can extend over roads, rivers, and open water. “Connected” just means a city is hooked up to the trade network.
If you’re having problems with Tribes, note that you can adjust their strength and aggressiveness in the game parameters. Also note that sometimes Tribes are multiple smaller tribes and sometimes one or two massive Tribes, which will also affect how much they’re a thorn in your side. As for how many units they spawn, I’m pretty sure that’s fixed to the number and size (?) of their settlements. The spawn rate should be indicated on each Tribal settlement.
But if you’re finding that they occupy too much of your time, just take reassurance that the AI nations are likely having the same problem. :)
I tried so hard to find the word ‘connect’ in the encyclopedia and couldn’t find a thing, nor anything under city concepts. Obviously missed it completely, so thanks for that info about trade networks being the key part. Makes sense now knowing that detail.
I pretty much leave the Tribes aggressiveness and strength set the same from game to game, which is why it sometimes surprises me that it feels so very different between games too. I didn’t realize there was a distinction between small tribes and big tribes nor did I notice a spawn rate on the settlements, probably because I never select or hover over the settlements to read anything about them.
Most of what I come up against tends towards being a result of my focus on the events, characters, and story elements to the detriment of the military and proper order of building city improvements. I’m slowly being steered towards a certain way of playing that I’m not sure I want, but I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it even so.
This isn’t the right thread, but I find Soren’s talks on game design to be utterly fascinating.
Here is his latest from GDC 2023
As a generally peaceful player, I’m unsure of what happens in this situation: if you declare war on a large tribe (6 encampments with multiple units) do those tribal units invade your cities or do they defend their encampments but otherwise stay put?
My current game as Babylonia has five cities on a huge map, but I’m surrounded by Vandals and Numidians, with 6 encampments each and their corresponding units. I can handle the raids from time-to-time, but if I’m going anywhere I’ll have to expand through them. The Vandals would be the best option as they have all their encampments from north of me down the west side of the map to below my southern border. Taking them out would put my western border up against the edge of the map, giving me a great defensive posture. Problem is, if I have to defend my entire nation from attacks from all sides, I’ll have to ramp up my military even more (I’m already pretty strong).
They’ll stay put! You generally don’t have to worry about Tribes creating a new front. But there are raid calculations, where they occasionally spit their units out at a hated or adjacent nation. If you’re at war with them, I’m assuming that hated nation is likely to be you.
Thanks! That’s going to be very helpful as I plan on taking out the tribes around me. It should be fairly manageable with my standing army being as large as it is. It’ll just be all about timing and coordination to ensure I’m not caught off-guard.
The game does drive me to this, though. As much fun as it is to play peaceful, being constantly harassed by tribal raids and having expansion blocked because no city sites exist is a bit of an annoyance.
[Edit] Ohoh. Not going quite so smooth. While I took one of the Vandals encampments on my southern border, another spawned a 3-unit raid (!) on my western border, one on my northern border sent in a unit to start pillaging my land after I took out one of their units, and Persia decided it just might take advantage of my distraction by amassing their armies outside my eastern edge (and they are angry with me). I think I might have miscalculated. I’ll have to do some defensive and diplomatic work before I can continue my expansion.
Although, I am impressed that the AI is behaving this way.
At least Greece is kindly wiping out the Numidians for me so I don’t have to worry about that tribe causing trouble anymore, and Greece is peaceful with me right now.
I managed to take out the Vandals, crushing five of their encampments while Egypt took one other. Greece wiped out the Numidians, so all Tribes are gone from the map entirely. Do they ever re-emerge or are they all permanently gone? I never thought to look for that bit of info.
So now I have 4-5 cities that are inaccessible by any other nation, protected by terrain and my original developed cities where all my military units sit. Although, at the same time that I was eliminating the tribe, I somehow got almost all the nations to Peace with me, so I probably don’t have to worry too much as long as I can keep them happy. Caravans are my friend.
I do love Old World. It has more hooks in me than Civ V & VI did. It is entirely due to the family dynamic; that puts so much more personality into what is otherwise just strategy with stats. The Civ series can learn from this.
If you get the message a tribe has been wiped out, I don’t think they return. If they just drop off your diplomacy list they probably have more disconnected settlements elsewhere.
Be warned that backline cities are not entirely safe: it is possible for barbarian raiders to attack from the edges of the map. They aren’t a huge threat but it’s wise to keep a few units in the area in case of need.
Oh, really? Well, that’s a thing then. I suppose it’s fortunate I learned to build roads and can zoom units back pretty fast if I need to. But that’s good to know so I’m not caught unawares. I typically don’t keep those cities entirely defenceless but beefing them up a bit might be useful.
In my last game, with island space-limited cities, I finally discovered the use for upgrades to buildings instead of building them new elsewhere. I wish there was an easier way to see those upgrades, though. I only stumbled upon it when a worker happened to be standing on a lower tier building and I saw the ‘upgrade’ button appear for that building. Up until then, I always built each of the three buildings separately as they became available.
I feel I’ll be learning this game forever as I discover new things by chance.
It sounds like you’re describing the special ability you get when your leader is a Judge or Builder. I forget which.
You probably didn’t have a Judge or Builder for your leader. : )
Alternatively, there is the manual, the civilopedia, and the ample tooltips. But I do get it. It can feel overwhelming. But I can assure you from experience it’s all pretty thoroughly documented and there’s no need to discover things by chance. Sorry if that sounds like I’m being snippy, but as someone who complained to high heaven about insufficient documentation when the game came out, I hate to see Mohawk not getting credit for the superlative work they’ve been doing since then!
Oh, not a complaint about the learning and no, doesn’t sound snippy at all. Remember when we used to just post RTFM and leave it at that? ;) I know there’s a lot of detail in-game on all the elements. There used to be a time when I’d love getting a new boxed game and reading through the entire manual before I even started it up; that was part of the experience. Nowadays, with limited leisure time, I’m more keen on enjoying the gameplay and if that means I discover things slower, or learn by the occasional ask, I’m okay with that.
I did play all the tutorials, even if not everything stuck. So I’m not a complete loss.
Over my time playing, I have discovered just how powerful money is in the game. Early on, I focused on wisdom and charisma but that’s slowly shifted to a more diverse set that includes a lot of commerce. Having a lot of money has helped me out in events that otherwise would have taken the game sideways, and is great for keeping building on track when resources get low. In Old World, money seems to be the power.
In my current game as Assyria, I’ve formed a Tribal Alliance with the Numidians early on to try out assimilation of the tribe peacefully by settling near their settlements. It’s worked out well so far, as I have the entire south of my large island now protected by masses of mounted troops and I’ve already absorbed one of their settlements. I’m a bit concerned about keeping them peaceful because there are a LOT of horseriders down there.
Later, the Vandals, who went to war with me for no particular reason (they weren’t even nearby), created a Peace offering event where one option was to start an ambition of having a Tribal Alliance with any tribe, including peace with the Vandals. Strangely, the game doesn’t count my current Tribal Alliance as a trigger to complete that ambition (ambition is 0/1). It makes sense, except that you can’t have more than one Tribal Alliance at a time. I’m thinking that the game isn’t supposed to offer a tribal alliance as an ambition if you already have one because that’d force you to break an alliance just to start one again. Feels like it might be something that needs changing, but perhaps it’s designed that way purposefully.
How essential is the DLC for new players? Are the additions something you’d appreciate already in your first few games, or are they just for variety once you’ve played dozens of games?
Not essential to have for your first few games.
Orator. It’s annoying because then I find myself wishing I had it all the time.