Update: So I looked at the screenshot I posted above quite a bit yesterday at work, and realized, hey wait a minute, they actually did a great job in getting numbers out of the player’s way in this game. All the numbers are on the periphery, and not in the center of the screen. Now it’s true that when you move your cursor, they constantly display new numbers depending on where your cursor is, but even that is tucked away in the corner of the screen. So if you just focus on the center of the screen and ignore the periphery, this is a really well done interface even for someone like me who doesn’t like numbers in his face constantly.
I played for about an hour last night. Now that I know right-click is to move, I had a good time.
A few things I had problems with:
If left click is to select and right click is for action, how do I actually find out more about what barbarian units are in front of me?
Answer: Sometimes right clicking on them lets you find out more about them, and sometimes right clicking on them with your archers lets you shoot at them. I never quite figured out when one happens and when the other happens. At first I was like “god, ok, I know about them already, just let me shoot them”, and then suddenly the right click behavior changed and my archers shot at them. But I know my microphone was too far away so it wasn’t voice recognition. Maybe the game knows that you already right-clicked on them once, so a second time must mean you want to shoot at them?
I think when you right click on text it functions like a link. I think that’s what happens to me in that situation. It can be a little finicky sometimes.
Hope that makes sense, I’m typing on my phone at the moment. If it doesn’t, let me know and I’ll go grab a screenshot to illustrate.
No no, definitely had them selected in both cases. I think KevinC is right in that it has to do with the cursor’s position being on the graphic of the unit itself verses the text or symbol above their head.
Yeah, I just played around with it a bit and that’s what’s going on. For example, when attacking a unit in a barbarian encampment, it will have a “Barbarians” label under it (or whatever the nation/tribe name is):
It can be easy to do especially at certain zoom distances and angles, but if I use right-click and order my unit to attack it will instead bring up the 'pedia entry if my mouse happened to be hovering over the nameplate or whatever you would call it.
@SorenJohnson, this unintended action isn’t uncommon whenever I play. Perhaps when a military unit is selected, right-click should focus on the tile instead of the text? It’s not very often I want to right-click on “Barbarians” and get the documentation for them but it’s very common I want to poke them with a spear. :)
I have to admit, now that I know the difference, it seems like a good interface action. I definitely want to be able to right click on anything and know more about it, even if a unit is selected. I think. I can’t be sure. It’s a tough interface design that.
Perhaps instead of the corner displaying the tile information, it should say “Right Click to attack”, but when it’s on the barbarian text, it changes to “Right Click to find out more”. Something of that sort.
For sure, a lot of interface issues are. Pros and cons abound and are made worse by everyone being different and wanting different things.
The thing about right-clicking to bring up info is there is only so many times you’re going to want to bring up the reference info for Barbarians or Gauls or whatever. You’re going to perpetually want to perform actions like attack, though.
Either way it’s not a big deal, I can definitely see arguments both ways. It can be a little confusing when you don’t know what’s triggering it is all.
Different topic: I like the “Old World” map, but it seems really restrictive that it’s so small. I noticed when I started the game that there was “Old World” and “Middle East”. I’ll try that one in my next game.
I’m one of those weirdos that likes to play Civilization games only on the Earth map. And since Old World is more limited in scope, I guess it makes sense that it doesn’t have the whole Earth, but only the Middle East/Caucas mountains area where early life was centered.
Any other weirdos like me, who like playing on the historical maps? I assume most people play random maps, like in Civilization games.
We are actually changing it from right-click to F1 next week, which will be the catch all button for the Encyclopedia (which we are working to improve as well).
Does anyone have this running on Mac as a native M1 app? I believe it supports it, but I haven’t managed to get it to work, details over in the MacBook M1 thread.
@SorenJohnson (or anyone else that knows), have a question for you with regards to the Center Bias game option. It says it only affects single player and when enabled it puts you in the center of the map.
While that option is for SP only, is that automatically enabled? Just curious. I’ve probably started a dozen games with a friend (2v2v2) and we’ve been pegged dead center of the map every single time. That’s not a problem, just wondering if this a wild streak of RNG or if it defaults the players there in this kind of multiplayer setup. I’ve tried all sorts of different maps as well to see if this had an impact.
What is the arrangement of players? If it’s a two team game, it defaults to splitting the teams east and west but with more teams it defaults to normal distribution, which is to put the human(s) in the middle.
I’ll fill out concept entries for religion, but the basic idea is that the world religions (which are all the same outside of their prerequisites) are the ones which you can build Disciples, Monasteries, Temples, Cathedrals, and Holy Sites for, just like in Civ4. You can also establish three different tiers of theologies for your state religion, which provide various bonuses to the religion and its improvements.
Pagan Religions are specific to each nation and are spread by building one of their four unique shrines. (You can build unlimited shrines with polytheism and adopt a pagan religion as state religion with divine rule.) Pagan Religions don’t have the Disciples or improvements of World Religions, but they do effect cities the same way. (Basically, all religions give culture to their cities, and a Pleased/Friendly religion will reduce discontent which an upset/angry/furious religion will increase discontent. There are also plenty of laws which have effects based on which religions are in your cities.)
The simplest way to make a religion like you is to adopt is as a state religion, but you will get plenty of other opportunities to affect opinion via events. Religions have a bunch of effects on other opinions, but they are what you would expect - characters that share/don’t share your religion like/dislike you while families/tribe/nations that share/don’t share your state religion like/dislike you.
A word of caution. I don’t know if it’s hard coded or I just had bad luck, but I started a game on the Middle East map, and there wasn’t a goodie hut ancient ruin to be found anywhere. Frustrated me enough that I started again on the default map.
Ok i feel like i’m over the initial hump after trying it on a 13" laptop yesterday. Now that i’m on my full gaming PC i can see the details a bit better and are starting to dig down into the systems. There’s certainly a lot going on, but at least i’m getting a better feel of things.
I do agree that the “root” concepts need fleshing out in the OW-opedia, like Training.
Has the frequency of character events been tweaked at all? I found them too frequent on normal when I last played, so if they are the same I think I’d prefer to try it on low frequency.
When you start a new game, on the same page as you select the map type, and difficulty level. There is an Advanced Setup, among the many parameters you can changes is Event frequency, you can dial it back to low, or increase it to high.
