How are folk finding the release version?

Ita Bear

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Dec 8, 2020
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Hello folks,

I'm interested to see how everyone is finding the release version of the game. Reviews are pretty sparse, though those that do exist are very positive so far. I've heard a lot of negativity regarding the Epic Store but I'm not sure if it's overblown. The game is oft-described as a mix of Civilization and Crusader Kings, which sounds terrific! I would really appreciate some first-hand reviews and recommendations from the good folk here.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
 
I'm curious to know how many turns there are in the game. I read somewhere that it was only 120 turns but that can't be right.

Anyone know the answer to this?

People are still complaining about late-game slowdown which apparently is better than it was but still not fixed 100%.
 
Only 200 turns? That's less than half the turns in a Civ game. I wonder if that was their only way to fix the 'late game slowness'.... just chop off the late game.
 
You can set it to biannual, then it will last twice as long (200 years/400 turns)
 
I made a mod for myself, with a "Marathon" mode, really enjoying it. Increased research costs and using seasons, harder tribes, plus some other tweaks to make resource management harder. Basically, it's working a bit like a "permanent" game. No victory conditions, just trying to hold an empire together. Playing in a custom expanded mediterranean map.
 
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Only 200 turns? That's less than half the turns in a Civ game. I wonder if that was their only way to fix the 'late game slowness'.... just chop off the late game.

Civ tries to depict the entirety of human history. Old World focus on late antiquity. There are 200 game years (or turns) which equate with ~1500 years of human history. Most games will average around 120 turns though. Old World also takes steps to eliminate the tedium of end-game mop up. Once it is obvious you will win, the game is called.

And believe me, there is more happening each turn, from turn 1, than there is in Civ.

There is also a "More Turns" mod which allows choosing 200/400/600/800 turns.
 
I'm curious to know how many turns there are in the game. I read somewhere that it was only 120 turns but that can't be right.

Anyone know the answer to this?

People are still complaining about late-game slowdown which apparently is better than it was but still not fixed 100%.

We've done a lot to address the issue of performance over the last few months. However, it looks like there might be an issue with Nvidia RTX cards that results in low FPS and over heating. This is similar to the issue facing the same players with Valheim and a couple of other Unity based games. We're working on this one.
 
Only 200 turns? That's less than half the turns in a Civ game. I wonder if that was their only way to fix the 'late game slowness'.... just chop off the late game.
I had the same reaction when I first tried the game a year ago. Although I think OW games are a bit shorter than Civ 6 games, it's still relatively similar.

As Dale mentioned, There's also a lot more happening in an average OW turn than in a Civ 6 turn, specially early on. Depending on the difficulty level, roughly turn 1-50 is early game, T51-80 is mid game and T80+ is late game territory. Obviously one would tend to finish lower difficulty/smaller maps quicker. Depending on what type of plays you're looking for, you can have extended late game play, that's definitely not "chopped off" even if the time period doesn't span the entire history of mankind.

I'd say I'm fairly proficient at this game and I still have some very late game finishes when I have to catch up to strong opponents or impose myself hard challenges (One City Challenge definitely comes to mind).

The main feature of the game to avoid "already won game" slog to Victory is the Double Victory condition. If you have at least half the VP required and double (or more) VP than your closest opponent, you straight up win the game.

I think there are already options and mods to slow the game down if you want more turns, but I'd have to check to give you more info.
 
Dont worry 200 turns is plenty. Lots of things to do in those turns even if you are not in a war. Mortal characters add a lot to the game because they can contribute so much but because they die you will then lose their talents and have to carry on without them which does somewhat break the endless positive feedback loop that 4X games fall into.
 
Dont worry 200 turns is plenty. Lots of things to do in those turns even if you are not in a war. Mortal characters add a lot to the game because they can contribute so much but because they die you will then lose their talents and have to carry on without them which does somewhat break the endless positive feedback loop that 4X games fall into.

Agreed. It's still an least 8 hours to finish a 200 turn game.
 
Agreed. It's still an least 8 hours to finish a 200 turn game.

Agree x2. 200 turns seems short because so many Civ turns are boring and just mashing end turn. Each turn in OW is meaty and involves significant decision making. I'm actually really impressed with how few OW turns are mindless. My average game lasts 125 turns, and maybe 5 of those turns are kind of mindless.

I'm just happy the release version has finally removed the dreaded "TooManyRequests" yellow text. Though I used that yellow text to remind me to stop playing lol since it always appeared after about 30-60 minutes.
 
Finishing up my second game since release, Carthage at second from highest difficulty, play to win on. This game I noticed an AI (Rome) not taking advantage of opportunities to conquer enemy cities.

Rome and I declared war on Persia at the same time. Rome sniped the first Persian city right after my elephants pancaked the half of the Persian army that was stationed there. I pulled my units back (to see if Persia might liberate their city for me) and watched a few turns as Rome squared off with the rest of the Persian army. I took my army through some poorly defended Persian cities while these two duked it out. Then to my surprise, Rome accepted a truce with Persia without taking any additional cities. My ambitions required me to conquer some more Persian cities so I prepared for a fight. But when I moved through Parsa and their other core cities they were only negligibly defended. It seems Rome had destroyed Persia’s army, and but then passively stationed their own large intact army in the newly conquered city, rather than take the opportunity to conquer the rest of Persia.

Admittedly, there wasn’t much to be gained from these cities for me, aside from clearing three ambitions, but it made my life a little too easy that Rome didn’t even contest them.

Also, there must have been some early AI conquest, since Babylon dropped down to 1 city relatively early in the game, so it seems that at issue is just a mid/late game calculation (~turn 80) over whether Rome wanted to continue the war. I would suggest that the AI should not eagerly agree to a truce while they have an army near their enemy unless they discover that the next city is too well defended to take.

I’ll close with some good news. After I completed these ambitions (8/10 now) Egypt refused a truce with me because I was too close to winning, and my longtime friendly rival Rome declared a surprise war on me the second their opinion dropped below 100 and ambushed an regiment of elephants marching to join my front line. So I am excited to see how this plays out. It’s good to see that my second army was worth training, even if I didn’t have the orders to deploy them (just left them training at the barracks).
 
Yeap, most 4X games have that glaring exploit: you obviously SHOULD all just gang up on whoever is currently the whipping boy and carve up his empire once it's rendered defenseless. By all rights, games should more often than not degenerate into tearing apart the most-surrounded civ.

The game could definitely from a mechanism to control expansion, not just gobble up every city can you can lay your mitts on in a viral fashion. At least some discontent factor.
 
Finishing up my second game since release, Carthage at second from highest difficulty, play to win on. This game I noticed an AI (Rome) not taking advantage of opportunities to conquer enemy cities.

Rome and I declared war on Persia at the same time. Rome sniped the first Persian city right after my elephants pancaked the half of the Persian army that was stationed there. I pulled my units back (to see if Persia might liberate their city for me) and watched a few turns as Rome squared off with the rest of the Persian army. I took my army through some poorly defended Persian cities while these two duked it out. Then to my surprise, Rome accepted a truce with Persia without taking any additional cities. My ambitions required me to conquer some more Persian cities so I prepared for a fight. But when I moved through Parsa and their other core cities they were only negligibly defended. It seems Rome had destroyed Persia’s army, and but then passively stationed their own large intact army in the newly conquered city, rather than take the opportunity to conquer the rest of Persia.

Admittedly, there wasn’t much to be gained from these cities for me, aside from clearing three ambitions, but it made my life a little too easy that Rome didn’t even contest them.

Also, there must have been some early AI conquest, since Babylon dropped down to 1 city relatively early in the game, so it seems that at issue is just a mid/late game calculation (~turn 80) over whether Rome wanted to continue the war. I would suggest that the AI should not eagerly agree to a truce while they have an army near their enemy unless they discover that the next city is too well defended to take.

I’ll close with some good news. After I completed these ambitions (8/10 now) Egypt refused a truce with me because I was too close to winning, and my longtime friendly rival Rome declared a surprise war on me the second their opinion dropped below 100 and ambushed an regiment of elephants marching to join my front line. So I am excited to see how this plays out. It’s good to see that my second army was worth training, even if I didn’t have the orders to deploy them (just left them training at the barracks).

I assume you are playing with Play to Win on?
 
I assume you are playing with Play to Win on?

Hi Soren, thanks for reaching out! Yes Play to Win was on. I just finished the game and just experienced the excitement of a double score victory. Greece and Rome were the only strong powers and both declared war (Rome I forced into a truce, but they declared again when I was busy capturing Pella).

In post game map timeline, I see that Babylon started the game boxed in by Rome and Persia, so never had a chance to expand. The only AI-AI conquest appears to have been the one Persian city captured by Rome with my help. There seemed to be at least one AI-AI war active at most times through the game,

Either way, I felt the pressure the entire game aside from that sweep through Persia, which then mostly left me with 4-5 cities spawning rebel crossbows when my last ruler took over following his mother’s untimely death.

Edit: Also, to continue an early thread, at first I was skeptical about the double score victory, thinking “how could the game be fun if you are outpacing the AI by 2x”. However, what I found in this game was that when I entered the endgame with my new, unpopular ruler, with the score something like Me 44, Greece 40, and Rome 26, that I could win by building another wonder and pushing to Greece’s capital (and picking up a few extra cities that the campaign would isolate). It created the most exciting endgame experience of any 4X I’ve played yet, racing against rising discontent across my empire and ultimately unlocking the 10 strength ballista upgrade that allowed me to punch through cities and mow down Rome’s immense army of 5-6 strength units. It really felt like if I fell a couple inches short of this goal, that my empire would fall into decline and force me to turtle up and focus on finishing my 6 legendary cities capstone ambition over the next 30-40 years.

Also, also, I noticed that some games you get enough mid-game ambitions to win a game without the capstone ambition (probably when you have a lot of legacies you manage to pull off). In this game I landed at 9/10 and didn’t have a strong enough culture or science engine to pursue any of the capstones, which created an exciting pressure to eek out the double score.
 
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I enjoyed my first game but I'm waiting for Christopher Tin's music to be added to the game before starting another I'm hoping that will be ready soon :)
 
I enjoyed my first game but I'm waiting for Christopher Tin's music to be added to the game before starting another I'm hoping that will be ready soon :)

There is heaps of fantastic music already in the game.
 
Trying Babylon on Great (play to win). Lost the first game to an early war, but the second game started peacefully (Greece declared war but never sent units) and I pretty easily became the dominant empire. In a war with Rome (again) I thinned out their army as they charged my line of archers. Rome was also warring with Carthage, where I am guessing most of their army went. This left their cities open for the taking. Also, Rome and I started next to a large open expanse of city sites, and once I blocked Rome out of this area, I got up to 10 cities pretty quickly.

I notice this as a pattern that happened this game and in my last game. With 5 AI on Large maps, there ends up being a corner of the map that no capital starts in. This creates a void where two empires can expand into, growing large without any competition, while the other empires are crowded and struggle to develop. It seems that the inland corner on the standard map is where this happens, while the coastal empires end up crowded together.

I find this creates the sense of a loss of momentum, when you don't need to fight to make substantial gains that decide the game. Does the game attempt an algorithm to put the players in roughly equally sized blocks of city sites? K-means may work pretty well.
 
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