3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Old World: Post your gameplay questions here!

The score required to win scales with map size, which makes sense. The “get x of y” ambitions seem easier on larger maps; for example “have 4 universities” first requires 4 legendary cities. Did the team discuss having these scale with map size too? If so I’d be interested in what the issues were.

As Rome on Mediterranean map vs AI.

AI seems to struggle mightily with troop transport. The map has several places where troops could cross from Africa or Asia to Europe with one or two anchored ships as bridges: Gibraltar, Dardanelles, Sicily, Aegean islands, et al.

AI never crossed with anything more than one or two rogue units that almost seemed like they somehow crossed on accident, while their massive armies gathered in huge defensive masses around their cities.

Also allows for some seriously cheap moves like parking a long ranged siege engine on a one tile island within range of shore - AI never seems to figure out how to attack it or to avoid hanging out in bombardment range.

Yeah, this is exactly the thing I was worried about when I saw Old World was doing a 1UPT model that’s heavily interactive with the terrain. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the higher level stuff, but I’m dreading what I’m going to discover down in the weeds at the tactical level. For the most part, it’s nice to see stuff like the AI sticking generals into units, being aggressive with forced march, reinforcing attacked cities, and so on. But I’m bracing myself for it to all fall apart when it comes to situations like what you’re talking about, @davehemke. :(

-Tom

When using a worker.

When you can build an improvement on your current tile, you can get a great preview of the effect on all nearby tiles. This allows you to compare improvement across tiles. Awesome.

However, when you are on a tile that cannot support the improvement you want (perhaps because you already built the improvement type), there is no way to get the same preview effect because that improvement doesn’t show up in the list of actions.

Related, certain higher end improvement and wonders that have more placement restrictions are a pain to plot due to the same mechanic. Many wonders I didn’t even realize I had the option to build until I stumbled on to the correct tile type and/or the AI recommended the build.

Suggest always presenting the full list (which admittedly gets painfully long) and just letting us know why we cant build on current tile plot.

AI is still going to get a lot of improvements, but I would just say that if you want to see the AI at it’s best, I wouldn’t recommend playing on the Mediterranean map.

The AI is an absolute bastard on land and outperforms any other 4X I can think of. I haven’t done naval maps but it seems to me that with a lot of the AI performing pretty well you guys will be able to focus attention on problem areas like that.

Seriously, thank you for launching with a decent AI. It’s been my biggest complaint with the genre for… well, most every 4X since Civ4 (there are a couple exceptions).

I’m afk so can’t do a screen shot, but you’ll see a few little tabs under the worker action which includes one for All Improvements, so you can test out all the improvements there.

It’s in there!

OW worker todo list

And it definitely tells you why you can’t build something:

Also, you’ve probably already found this, but the N key is invaluable in terms of planning workers and specialists.

-Tom

Quick hits after two games:

City filters - appears to be no way to filter/sort by research, one more button?

Stone - holy smoke, always seem to be running a serious deficit, even while amassing insane surpluses of everything else.

People vs Courtiers - I think the only way to get spare courtiers is through random or tech event (Court Scholar joins!), is this accurate?

With my limited playing time, the most important thing anyone on my court seems to do is tutor my future heir (~4 simultaneous tutors yields god-king heir and demigod companions), but the only people available for this all important task are courtiers who have not been assigned to the big roles. I often ‘forget’ to use the chancellor, spy, who seem rather underwhelming, but I never want to forget to queue up another round of tutoring.

Can we get a end of turn nag/interrupt if we have available courtiers available for tutoring?

Garrison / Governors - Governors are another easy thing to miss, especially for a new player (like me!). Once you have one assigned, you do get a nice pre-turn prompt to replace them should the current one die, but there ought to be an easier way to find available governor employment opportunities to begin with.

The trick, for you dear game designer, is that sometimes there are no good available governors and getting nagged every turn might get annoying. I just play the games.

BTW - Please, take all comments as intended, in good faith effort to improve a game I am enjoying.

I’m an old Civ I guy (Atari ST → Amiga → PC) who after sinking multiple lifetimes of hours in Civ and other clonish games for decades (CIVIV PITBOSS FTW!!!) has largely abandoned 4x in favor of PDX style real time.

This is the first one I’ve been able to sink some hours into again. Thanks.

It’s in there!

Wow that was a fast update! Good work guys. :P

I totally missed it.

Just to echo what @KevinC said, I’ve been pretty happy with how the AI uses its units and seems to exploit the game systems appropriately. I’m just aware that there might be situations like what @davehemke is talking about when the AI might fall apart because of a specific map script, game set-up, or even terrain layout.

For instance, I love the way you guys are doing mountains! They aren’t just isolated hexes; they’re entire ranges that push around the flow of development. Mountains matter, a lot, to the shape of the map. And it’s obvious you guys have taken pains to make sure the map scripts put passes through the mountain ranges. I’m imagining some Thermopylae situations. Which, to be fair, broke Persia’s realworld AI. :)

So, just to reiterate, no overall concerns about the AI from me yet. Just concerns that you guys have assumed the burden of 1UPT and all the pitfalls that come with it.

-Tom

F6, click the beaker!

Patrons and Traders give you courtiers with their family seats. But otherwise, you’re correct. As near as I can tell, courtiers aren’t an easy commodity to manage. It especially sucks when they have the gall to die.

I’m pretty sure your leader – and maybe his/her consort? – can also tutor.

Keep in mind you’re paying 200 money for tutoring. It’s not just something that you need to remember to do every turn. It’s an expensive action. Furthermore, there’s only a six (?) year window, from 12 to 18 years of age, when tutoring is available for a successor, and each tutor action takes three of those years. But it is nice to be able to pile on the course load with multiple tutors.

“But, Dad, I don’t wanna take 40 hours of classes!”

“I’m paying good money for your education and, by golly, you’re gonna get educated. Now shut up and get to your Charisma classes. And don’t you dare acquire the Drunkard trait!”

F6, the second column. And I’m pretty sure you get an event notification with an option to replace when a governor dies.

-Tom

F6… aha! Thanks.

I was looking for it here, but F6 will do in a pinch

@tomchick - you do get a notification when the gov dies, but not when you are first able to assign (building a garrison, for example).

Late edit - leaders can only tutor if they are the correct class (Scholar, I think) and not assigned to some other task (governor or army).

Later edit - if you’re Johnny on the Spot, you can get 3 education cycles, with 4 tutors, for 12 pretty solid chances for positive stat or trait increases. In the Roman game, one of the leaders started in his 20s and lasted into his 80s.

@SorenJohnson: the filter for mounted units isn’t working as expected.
image

Looks to me as though mounted melee units count as both mounted and infantry. Which makes a degree of sense, but then the filter should probably be labeled melee instead.

Survived Elsa with no loss of power, so here’s another question/observation.

With building/improvement upgrade chains, is it necessary to preserve the legacy precursor buildings?

For example, a Stronghold “enables” building a Citadel, but can also insta-upgrade into a Citadel. Do I lose anything by no longer having the Stronghold around?

I would guess no, except that my workers keep recommending that restore the Stronghold over the Citadel or build a second Stronghold.

Unless it’s changed you used to keep all the bonuses from old buildings too. This had the disadvantage of urban sprawl and using up space.

There’s a leader trait that allows you to upgrade in place, so T1 turns to T2 etc etc.

Stronghold provides a bit of Orders and tile defense. So if you had a garrison and a stronghold you’d have two tiles with defense and providing a bit of orders.

It functionally deletes the old improvement, but all of the garrison chain improvements enable Governors, so you won’t lose that.

When you are running out space the automatic upgrade is really helpful.

What I do is just plop down the Garrison anywhere to enable governors. Then when I’m ready to start making my military cities. I start planning my military section. I put stronghold and/or Citadel surrounded by barracks and ranges, you get a decent boost in Citadel income and large boost to city defense, plus an extra order or two.