Right-click does open encyclopedia link but we may want to re-evaluate that because it’s not great for action and help to be on the same button.
So one interesting thing i’ve noticed is that OW doesn’t want to waste your time exploring. Maybe it’s a difficulty level or a leader pick but i was handed three scouts at the beginning of the game, and i have lots of orders and little to do.
As others have said, I just have not found it to be any more or less impenetrable than any other strategy game that has all of these systems and icons and calculations some in plain sight and some under the hood. Yep, there is a bunch of interactions between things I do not understand, but I am picking them up as I go.
I completely understand what others are wanting from the game to help them learn it and go into it more informed than you can currently in order to make better decisions when presented choices.
However, I am often more overwhelmed with the amount of instruction from a more manual based approach and would prefer to jump in. I actually think Old World strikes a nice balance between the two.
Just wanted to chime in and add to the chorus of “I get it, but it’s not an issue for me”.
XXXOOO, Tyler
I thought the same at the beginning of my two games, but that only lasts for a few turns. As soon as you get a couple warriors and a worker or 2, you’ll have to be more efficient in who you assign orders to. On a medium map, you still do explore and uncover the map more quickly than in CIV games (from what I can tell), but I think that is by design as you have the 200 turn limit rather than infinite turns you could use exploring and civilizationing in other games.
Ty, I love seeing your name pop up in these threads. Glad to see you getting into Old World. :)
Awww, shucks. We’ll see if my criminally short attention span can stick with it. :) Thanks Kevin.
So i finally noticed the End Turn button is… number 6. Who ends turn with number 6? That’s… kind of bizarre. Only makes sense to people who play the entire game via hotkeys or something.
I end the turn by clicking the “End Turn” button.
Yeah, it’s bizarre. Must have something to do with the 1 through 6 that Tom talked about in his article too. Apparently there’s hotkeys for 1 through 6 that are useful in this game.
That’s fine if you cycle all notifications. If for some reason you don’t want to cycle through them you can’t skip to that End Turn button until you do - it’s hidden behind the notifications. So if for some reason you don’t want to issue orders you can’t End Turn until you, i guess, put all your units to sleep or something.
I mean this isn’t a problem early game or whatever, but if you get stuck figuring out looking for an End Turn button that every other game has, and can’t find it because it’s hidden by tutorial pop ups, than maybe it is.
I don’t have it open in front of me, so I could have a couple mixed up, but it’s pretty much like this:
1 - Next event/decision
2 - Next idle worker
3 - Next idle military unit
4- Next idle scout
5 - Next idle city
6 - Next turn
When you get used to it it’s excellent. Took me a little while.
I am by no means an expert, but so far the AI has been proving tough. Rome saw I was militarily weak, declared war, and has been very clever in its attack and defense. In particular, it is scarily good at exploiting overextension.
The AI will kick butt, play on lower levels lol
Thing I only learned watching a bit of that Soren stream: Shift to queue actions to your worker units!
Yes. This is the rare 4X game where the AI feels like it knows what it’s doing.
Speaking of the AI, I’m pretty sure it gets some map vision buffs. Either that or its spying on me. In any case, please heed this tip:
If you clear a city site or find one unoccupied, LEAVE A UNIT ON THE SITE if you have any interest in settling there. The AI is a complete and utter bastard at sniping those things from you. You move a unit off to just scout a bit more for one single turn? Zoooooooooooom comes the AI scout to squat on it until it can get a Settler over there. Trust me. The bastard will exploit that mistake each and every time, force marching if it has to it seems like.
Also, the AI is smart enough that it gets upset if you snipe their city sites. Like if they’re clearing out a barbarian or tribe encampment but you swoop in for the killing blow and take it? They know what you did and will hold a grudge against you. Just be forewarned. :)
As I mentioned in my write-up, keys 1 through 6 are used to manage your tasks over the course of the turn. It’s actually pretty brilliant when you get used to it. It lets you work your way through queued up tasks in whatever order you want, and you can even right-click through multiple decisions in each category. Great bit of interface design for how it’s more flexible than the usual drop-down icons piling up on the right side of the screen.
The big glowing “End Turn” button is hidden, but that’s not the button so much as a context sensitive notification. The button slaved to the 6 is always available. If it’s not available, it’s because you have a mandatory decision and a tooltip will tell you so.
-Tom
Thanks for the thread!
I want to know how players deal psychologically with the overwhelming amount of information that’s on the screen at all times. Doesn’t it make you want to quit and play something less stressful?
(That sounds like shade, so I apologize, but it’s a serious question. I had the same problem with Civ IV, so I’d like to know how to solve it mentally).
No shade at all!
As I mentioned in the other thread, I think it just comes down to different mindsets? It doesn’t bother me if I don’t immediately know what everything does/means when I first fire up a game like this. I guess I find exploring a game’s systems to be part of a new strategy game experience. It doesn’t come across as overwhelming to me, it’s more “Hmm, interesting! Lets see what this does”.
For instance, the first game I played I was coming from a Civilization background and a staple of 4X games like it are hammers/production, but I couldn’t see something similar here. Mines generated metal but where were my hammers? When I opened the City screen, it started to make more sense. I saw that producing different things took a different resource. Settlers took Growth, Warriors took Training, projects/buildings took Civics. Ahh, okay, so there’s no one-size-fits-all “production” stat. Instead, different things pull from different pools.
That sort of thing isn’t offputting to me and doesn’t stress me out, but it seems like it does for a lot of people. I’m the type of person that plays through a game for a bit and then wants to go read the manual/wiki/reference because then things make more sense to me with some context to hook it all to.
So I guess it comes down to whether or not all that info up front is overwhelming or not. It’s not overwhelming to me when I first start a game like this because I feel okay not grokking what everything does, I figure it’ll come with time/experience. I felt like with Old World I could do the basics through the various prompts. Put a city down? Done. What family to choose? Huh, I don’t know. Let’s just go with the Sages and see how I like it! I wonder how I build Warriors faster without “hammers”? Ahhh, that’s what that red shield resource is for. It just flows like that and things start clicking into place as I go. If I do get stuck I just ask a question or hit google, check the reference/documentation, etc.
I’m the same way. Also I don’t have a problem with starting a new game when I learn something new (usually that I fucked up somewhere) within the first few turns.
Right now I’m on my 4th or 5th restart since yesterday.
And @Rock8man - De nada.
Well, if I can figure out the psychological trick not to be bothered by it here, then I can go back and play Civ IV as well. Funny thing is, in this case it’s learning a completely new game with new systems and so forth. In Civ IV, it’s still a Civ game, so I should already know the systems for the most part, but I’m still bothered by the huge amounts of tool tips and numbers being thrown at me at all times. No other Civilization game does except Civ IV.