How are folk finding the release version?

[FinalDoomsday]

There is heaps of fantastic music already in the game.

No argument there I assure you! I just have to balance my gaming time and it sounded like the C.Tin music would be in sometime soon so I thought I'd just wait

 

[Dale]

No argument there I assure you! I just have to balance my gaming time and it sounded like the C.Tin music would be in sometime soon so I thought I'd just wait

Oh I totally get it. I can't wait till his music goes in too.

 

[Taefin]

I’m only in my fourth full game since release, but I notice AI (now on Great) struggle to train unique units (what are we calling these?), and generally are working with bows, spears, axes and catapults into turns 100-120 when my games seem to end. Luckily the catapult is such a defensive powerhouse when it travels in packs, but I am surprised that the second level uniques give me such an advantage over the field, even though the AI has the tech and strong culture they would need to get their own.

I’m on turn 118 now, after a delightfully rocky start with Persia on Realistic lifespan (so hard to build a family!) and Greece has a citadel and several academies, so it’s possible I’m about to eat my words, but definitely they and other AI should have been in a position to do get these units by now.

Edit (addendum): Just finished my fifth full game, this time as Assyria on The Great. Ended up playing builder of all things. Egypt took my second city (right after I grew a settler who valiantly fled the battlefield) and established a tall 5-city empire on a peninsula. Getting a quick 30-training capital with the lumbermill shrine allowed me to pump out enough slingers to fend Egypt off, but not retake any ground. Also, this was my first game where an AI offered an alliance, and it led to interesting gameplay. You end up in tons of wars, but my ally Greece kept my two neighbors busy enough that I only saw 2-4 unit advances on my border that were easily fended off.

With this initial setback, it seemed I was ~20 turns behind my normal pace and won ambition and double score both on turn 144. Playing my first tall game was certainly interesting. I enjoyed having fewer cities to focus on, and really invest in, and getting 4 of them to legendary was pretty rewarding. This also allowed me to finally see how the various urban buildings work. The percentage increases in gold/civics with each tier of building really stack up once you hit strong, and explode at legendary. I definitely won't be shrugging off odeons in future games. Also, it is amazing how much stone it takes to keep up with 5 core cities! I picked up a 6th city but didn't have any other rural satellites, so I was just carpeting every available hex with quarries (it'd certainly be cool if a future release animates adjacent improvements with larger animations, like a giant quarry). Also, since all my gold went to buying more stone, I ended the game with stone valued at 13.4 gold, which meant every new quarry was worth ~45 gold! This was also the first game I managed discontent (only my capital had rivers for baths, but I got most cities back to level zero by the end) and it is amazing how high family opinion gets when you play tall with happy-ish cities. I ended with 350-700 family opinion each (after assassinating one particularly angry family head).

All this building up to my observations of the AI during this game:

It seems that every empire had exactly 1 unique unit. I am guessing this is the free unit from research. Even at turn 144, the AI struggled to field any better than spears, axes and archers.. I saw a crossbow, but again wonder if it wasn't the free one from research.

Also, despite having several builders standing around in the battlefield, the AI empires were very minimally developed. Greece hit developing/strong cities early due to their +2 culture bonus, but never legendary. Each of Greece's cities, most of which they started the game with, had only 2-5 rural and 1-3 urban improvements.

Among these improvements, surprisingly, I have seen a lot of water and windmills, and quite early in the game. I wonder if this means that the AI are dumping their research into rushing this tech, which would severely impede their getting new unit techs.

All said and done, the game has been a blast! I loved each of the narrative, military, and builder gameplay. However, the main drawback to me is that the AI empires are very static. In the early game, by the time you can field enough units to consider warfare, the AI already has a sizable army of 5 strength units. However, for the rest of the game, their army does not get meaningfully stronger (a bit larger and they add catapults) and so as soon as you get 8-strength units (crossbows for me this game, though usually the unique unit) you begin winning each skirmish with minimal casualties until you can deplete their army. Maybe I've just been prioritizing wisdom too much, but it seems much easier to field a few 8-strength units (often relatively early in the game) than to churn out enough 5-strenth units to mount a successful offensive against the AI.

I'll probably put the game aside for a bit, though I'd be interested to see if/when future updates and/or mods help the AI develop throughout the game. Admittedly, if the AI was improved in the way I am describing, then conquering fully-developed AI cities might cause the player to snowball a bit to fast. In their current, less developed state, the AI plays their asymmetric role pretty well, creating a world in which the player can chase ambitions. However, knowing that the AI will not develop into a real rival currently deflates my excitement to start another game.

 

[Delor]

Finishing my first full game. I was overall pretty impressed until right at the end. The UI's got major issues, but you can learn your way around it. The AI's got some issues- in particular I think sometimes it's way to willing to offer you an out when it ought to just declare war. The engine has some issues- unit movement can be choppy, it's hard to see your units getting attacked during the enemy turns, and by the end of the game everything was chugging badly.

Most prominently up front, I think the default difficulty settings are terrible- they trivialize the early game economy and render the enemy way too passive. I almost quit out of boredom, then I went back and looked at the difficulty settings and noticed that it was starting me with a ton of bonus stuff and heavily reducing enemy aggression. Switching to "The Good" with increased tribal strength turned my initial negative impression completely upside down.

Overall, I had a good time and was telling my gamer friends that this was a "deeper, shorter Civ" and that I was really excited about it. The midgame was the best part. I got into a decent slugfest with Rome before they found themselves sandwiched between Persia and Greece and deleted, and when I turned to the south to conquer Carthage it wasn't much of a fight but I did get to see how frightening pushing into a wall of mass onagers with low-to-mid tier units can be. If the final third of the game did evolve into a bit of "click next turn to win", I was overall pleased with the experience.

Then at the end, I noticed something that's really killing my enthusiasm to play more. My world had devolved into three super powers- me, Greece, and Persia. Entering turn 120 I was clearly pulling ahead in VP from a position in the middle of the pack, so I just tried to maintain good diplomatic relations and coast to victory. The other two superpowers looked like they had huge armies anyway and I didn't want to tangle. However, at turn 185 Greece demanded I convert state religion and out of orneriness I said no- I've been asleep at the wheel for a while anyway so let's end with a bang!

I concentrated all my forces on the Greek front expecting a brawl, and watched in amazement as the entire Greek army disintegrated on contact. What?

That's when I noticed: Greek and Persia, despite controlling 1/3 of the settled map each and having largely been left unmolested for decades, had armies consisting of first-tech-tier units and militia. I scroll over dozens and dozens of units and it's literally all slinger, spearman, axeman, onager, chariot, militia, garrison. The AI had only churned out the cheapest units and never upgraded anything. They're completely harmless against my modern troops but what really makes it comedic is that a pair of my Saddleborn cataphracts can chain-rout to delete arbitrarily large blocks of enemy units as long as they're standing next to each other. Greece went from having a wall of units four deep at the center of our front to having nothing in about two turns.

It's kind of hard to want to devote another huge chunk of the time to the game knowing that halfway through the game the AI's going to completely lose the ability to play it.

 

[Ita Bear]

My biggest disappointment so far has to be the 1UPT system. Soren and the team must be aware of the criticism Civ V and VI have faced from this mechanic, and they have done virtually nothing to freshen it up or alleviate the tedium. I'm now about 80 years into a campaign, at war, and most of my turn is spent tediously telling each unit to move and attack. Perhaps this is Soren's way of saying that he didn't like the so-called 'stacks of doom' in Civ IV, but the implementation of what is virtually the exact same system of Civ V is pretty disappointing. At least the AI can sort-of manage and play with the system though, I guess.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[MkLh]

My biggest disappointment so far has to be the 1UPT system. Soren and the team must be aware of the criticism Civ V and VI have faced from this mechanic, and they have done virtually nothing to freshen it up or alleviate the tedium. I'm now about 80 years into a campaign, at war, and most of my turn is spent tediously telling each unit to move and attack. Perhaps this is Soren's way of saying that he didn't like the so-called 'stacks of doom' in Civ IV, but the implementation of what is virtually the exact same system of Civ V is pretty disappointing. At least the AI can sort-of manage and play with the system though, I guess.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

I think 1upt works quite well there. There aren't terrible jamming and pathfinding problems of CiV (where two units blocked each others paths forcing you to re-route) and the AI is way much better than in CiV and CIV. Because the AI isn't a pushover wars now take a lot of time.

The problem with stacks is that while it's quick and easy there is almost zero tactics in it. Stacks are the best option for a player who wants to execute wars quickly and concentrate in building.

 

[nolegskitten]

My biggest disappointment so far has to be the 1UPT system. Soren and the team must be aware of the criticism Civ V and VI have faced from this mechanic, and they have done virtually nothing to freshen it up or alleviate the tedium. I'm now about 80 years into a campaign, at war, and most of my turn is spent tediously telling each unit to move and attack. Perhaps this is Soren's way of saying that he didn't like the so-called 'stacks of doom' in Civ IV, but the implementation of what is virtually the exact same system of Civ V is pretty disappointing. At least the AI can sort-of manage and play with the system though, I guess.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

I disagree. It's not at all the "same system as in civ V". The main problem of 1UPT in civ has been that the AI doesn't know what to do with it, and that is not the case in OW. Also, units are much more mobile, so there's no real congestion on the map even with entire armies, both AI and players can manoeuvrer quite a lot, which is very different from civ. It also works wonderfully with the order system.
In civ 5 (and to a lesser extent, still in civ 6), the problems the AI has with it means they can't handle large numbers of units, so production is awfully limited to allow only a handful of units. OW deals with that wonderfully and allows larger scale combat, making much better use of 1UPT enabled mechanics ( ZOC, front lines, position based tactics) and forces a level of attrition in conflict.
In fact most players coming from the civ franchise (5 and 6 I mean) usually need a few games to adjust to the need for larger armies and the intense mobility in OW, and there are suggestions every week to make it more civ-like (5 & 6) with more counter strike damage and less mobility (among others).

So yes it's longer to move individual units than stacks, but to me that never has been the main argument for or against 1UPT. And although I loved civ 4 and played many thousands of hours on that game, you have to admit the tactical aspect of combat isn't great. All the interest is deported on the strategy (how many units can you get and in what mix, rather than positioning and manoeuvre), which worked fine in civ4 but now feels poorer than OW (to me).

Of course there is a matter of taste and you are entitled to your preferences, but I think it's unfair to state things like "Soren and the team must be aware of the criticism Civ V and VI have faced from this mechanic, and they have done virtually nothing to freshen it up or alleviate the tedium", as not only Soren and the Civ IV (and OW) playtesting community wrote some of the best in-depth analysis about these systems and design choices (I'd recommend Soren Game design blog or Sullla analysis of the 1UPT induced issues in civ V)), but I really think OW handles it much better, specifically because the main problems 1UPT created were addressed specifically in this game (mobility constriction, AI incompetence, inflated production limitations to mitigate the first two points).

The tedium/micro management never was the main problem of 1UPT in my opinion, but if that's your main gripe with it, it's true that you will have to spend more time moving things around in OW.

 

[Ita Bear]

Hmm, can't help but think there's a certain degree of partisanship and glossing over issues here. We can "you're wrong, no you're wrong," for as long as we'd like, but I am aware of what I have experienced in my games. I said in my original post that "At least the AI can sort-of manage and play with the system," which means it's better than Civ V, but's it's hardly still a glowing recommendation. I've seen log-jams, "carpets of doom," cities bogged down with units and AI shuffling units back and forth. Mobility is increased for individual units, but then all units are limited by the orders system. If you have a large army, you have to tell your units every single turn to take baby-steps towards the enemy cities or you will quickly run out of orders.

1UPT also introduces the problems of absurd scale. We have individual units of warriors taking up the same space as cities. We have archers firing arrows hundreds of miles over lakes and hills. It's all a bit too unbelievable. The tedium of moving units has always been one of the main problems of 1UPT and has been complained about endlessly in these forums and elsewhere. It's just that in Civ V and VI, the issues are diluted because you can also complain about the AI, balance and general whackiness of it all. The only thing OW goes any way to solving is, in my opinion, the AI; and it's still far from stellar.

But hey, I still love the game. One of the best strategy games in recent years but I still like to complain about some things.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Taefin]

Oh yeah, absolutely love the game! And to my critique about AI struggling to get top tier units, for now the work around is just to try and win the game earlier. Knowing you’ll eventually overwhelming the AI doesn’t help much when you have a “capture three (enter strongest AI empire) cities” legacy.

Part of me wonders if a mod that buffed AI resource production by a scaling rate throughout the game wouldn’t help a lot. I suspect the AI keeps building low-mid tier units is they lack the resources to train the high tier units they have tech for (does the game allow you to train low tier units in this case?) and they lack the resources to build the improvements to get more (imagine they are sacrificing their economy to get more low-tier units, this can easily make the 20 iron to build a quarry prohibitive). Sure, changing the build priorities will probably help, but perhaps some tried and true 4x asymmetry is a good place to start.

Regarding 1UPT, I don’t think anyone’s arguing that there isn’t some micro. But my experience with Civ 6 (I joined the 4x party late) and OW is that in Civ 6 I need to micro every single unit, one step at a time, every turn of the game, including navigating choke points with difficult terrain. The 2UPT mods in Civ 6 help with combat (esp for AI) but still retain the intense turn-by-turn micro. In OW, micro happens when you engage a hostile army, especially forming the battleline. But this phase only lasts 2-3 turns for me tops, and once the fighting starts, I find that the fatigue system allows every unit to find its target every turn, and instead of moving units who aren’t yet in position to attack (as in Civ), now I just let them sit until I have the orders to move them. Later on with Elites or Coin Debasement, when you can move everyone directly into the battle, I find that even though I have more moves, they are each exciting.

So turns take a while, but I am basically playing 3+ Civ6 turns all at the same time, without the mental demand of tracking all those independent movements between turns. The tactics jumps up a level to “who to attack with what” and not the step by step of how to make that happen. At this point, I doubly appreciate the orders system because I usually just idle my workers until the fighting slows down, so aside from city production, I don’t need to micro both military and economy when fighting at the largest scales. For me it’s a huge QoL improvement knowing that neglecting my economy is close enough to optimal play. It is stressful to me in Civ, Stellaris, endless, knowing that I am playing subpar on economy when I chose to fixate on the combat. This keeps the pace of the game up since I don’t need to constantly code switch between economy and military.

In between conflicts, I find that it is much nicer to move units 2-4 at a time through my empire with leftover orders after building, than to move all my units every turn one set at a time. I don’t use movement queues because I don’t like orders being robbed from future turns and I haven’t gotten them to work consistently for cross-map movement.

TLDR, I think basing the game around orders guarantees that OW will be a micro-heavy game, but I enjoy how micro is limited by orders, fatigue and forced marches. Micro is [much more] enjoyable for me in OW, whereas it was painful in Civ6.

 

[Dale]

I'm REALLY REALLY loving the game.

PS: I'm also super biased and paid to say that.

 

[nolegskitten]

Hmm, can't help but think there's a certain degree of partisanship and glossing over issues here. We can "you're wrong, no you're wrong," for as long as we'd like, but I am aware of what I have experienced in my games.
(...)

I love the game but the way I see it, that is the result of my agreement with its main design choices, not the other way around. I'm sincere when I say I think 1UPT work better than stacks would have in this game.You disagree because you have gripes with 1UPT that I don't have and that's perfectly fine !

I do enjoy micro so I don't have a problem with large numbers of actions to take, units to move, etc, mostly along the line Taefin mentioned above. The game is definitely not geared toward automation (stacks for army movement), the whole order system doesn't fit that type of features well.

But hey, I still love the game. One of the best strategy games in recent years but I still like to complain about some things.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

I would have my complaints too but they're usually minor, I guess I reacted because I count myself in the cIV camp regarding civ as well, and most of use have given long thoughts to the 1UPT debate, among others ;-)

Glad you love the game, you recently wrote (something along the lines of) "you have to dig for the treasure" and unfortunately I think it's true, the game is not easy to "figure out" and many aspect that feel familiar actually work differently and that doesn't help new players.

 

[Ita Bear]

I love the game but the way I see it, that is the result of my agreement with its main design choices, not the other way around. I'm sincere when I say I think 1UPT work better than stacks would have in this game.You disagree because you have gripes with 1UPT that I don't have and that's perfectly fine !

I do enjoy micro so I don't have a problem with large numbers of actions to take, units to move, etc, mostly along the line Taefin mentioned above. The game is definitely not geared toward automation (stacks for army movement), the whole order system doesn't fit that type of features well.



I would have my complaints too but they're usually minor, I guess I reacted because I count myself in the cIV camp regarding civ as well, and most of use have given long thoughts to the 1UPT debate, among others ;-)

Glad you love the game, you recently wrote (something along the lines of) "you have to dig for the treasure" and unfortunately I think it's true, the game is not easy to "figure out" and many aspect that feel familiar actually work differently and that doesn't help new players.

Oh I should say clearly that I am not advocating for stacks to be in this game. I think the Civilization fanbase is categorised into two camps; stacks of doom fans and 1UPT fans, and never shall the two meet and never shall a compromise be sought. I would have just preferred to see something a little more refined - it looks like the Amplitude game Humankind have tried to innovate in this area by allowing stackable armies that "unstack" for battle on surrounding terrain. It's a pretty minor concern though, all in all. The game is fantastic and I can't wait to see how it develops.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Angst]

Having a lot of fun with Old World. Superior to civ for me due to a number of factors. Same boardgame base, but the setting restrictions makes it feel less weird when people snowball; with a restriction of age, instead of covering all of history, it feels less weird when something just climbs and doesn't break.

 

[Taefin]

A curiosity after a recent game that really stuck with me. This game I had two martial cities as Persia, one quickly climbed to Strong culture, the other lingered at Developing (also had child labor for +20% training) and both with the lumber mill shrine for +6 and +4 training. Interestingly, this allowed me to train uniques in both cities, but in the second city, I trained the cheaper 6 strength unit, strolled over to the other city, then upgraded it. This allowed me to produce one 8 strength unique on average every turn. I notice that unlocking later units sometimes locks earlier units (though sometimes not, apparently when there is a branch in the path, e.g. spears don’t block warriors). Wondering how easy it would be to mod to never block earlier units? It feels a bit cheesy to use this combo as is, though it is extremely effective provided one’s economy is strong.


Edit: okay, I need to formally apologize to the AI for complaining about them failing to settle “empty” corners of the map they start by. I’m hitting turn 80 as Egypt on Great and these Danes and Vandals are brutal! Finally making some headway through the fully occupied peninsula that only I neighbor, but neither I nor the AI have had the orders to deal with the the scattering of tribes located between us. I realize in an earlier game I must have picked up 30% or the map through the good fortune of poaching the land Rome had painstakingly cleared of tribes and barbarians, all while they were losing a war to Carthage.

 

[Dale]

- it looks like the Amplitude game Humankind have tried to innovate in this area by allowing stackable armies that "unstack" for battle on surrounding terrain. It's a pretty minor concern though, all in all. The game is fantastic and I can't wait to see how it develops.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

I would argue that HK is NOT innovating in this area, as we've seen this in a few games previously. Aside from Total War, which everyone knows about, the Call To Power series and the very old Destiny are 4x Civ games that did this in the 90's. Man I even modded that into Civ4 (the CtP way).

Personally too, from all the opendevs of HK, I've not found much fun in that game's combat model. I can see how others could be huge fans, but it's not for me.

 

[Taefin]

I had one fun encounter in Victor where the battle went back and forth over one of the more interesting landscapes in their handcrafted map, but every combat since made me believe that one was me projecting what I wanted to see.

I just finished my Egypt game on Great. It occurred to me, I may not have lost any military units this game. Most combat was with tribes, who can’t take advantage of movement the way AI can. I scrolled around after the game, turning the fog off, and notice that most AI seem to be skirmishing with Barbarians and rebels at every front. Presumably this is holding them back a bit, and preventing them from threatening each other or me. I’m considering next trying a game with Great difficulty but with only standard strength tribes. Dale, so you have any experience of balancing AI and tribe difficult to help get the AI on their feet?

 

[nolegskitten]

I had one fun encounter in Victor where the battle went back and forth over one of the more interesting landscapes in their handcrafted map, but every combat since made me believe that one was me projecting what I wanted to see.

I just finished my Egypt game on Great. It occurred to me, I may not have lost any military units this game. Most combat was with tribes, who can’t take advantage of movement the way AI can. I scrolled around after the game, turning the fog off, and notice that most AI seem to be skirmishing with Barbarians and rebels at every front. Presumably this is holding them back a bit, and preventing them from threatening each other or me. I’m considering next trying a game with Great difficulty but with only standard strength tribes. Dale, so you have any experience of balancing AI and tribe difficult to help get the AI on their feet?

I'm not Dale but I feel the balance of Tribe vs AI can shift considerably depending on the map (specially on "The Great" maybe). Sometime there is a large cohesive territory covered by tribes sites that will be an important opponent for all major nations, sometime tribes get eliminated relatively quickly... so the player's experience in one game is not always a good predictor of overall balance or simply what they'll experience in the next game. I almost didn't see any tribes in my last game, for instance.

 

[Taefin]

I’m trying one on Great with Passive tribes, just to force that balance. Pretty easy, just got my hoplites training infrastructure up with Greece as Egypt declared, both Rome and Egypt have felt comfortable massing decent size armies of axes and chariots in my border, excited to see where this goes.

Also, looks like it will be the second game I get to found my scholars family seat twice for two free techs! Evacuate the workers, leave the city to burn!

 

[nolegskitten]

I’m trying one on Great with Passive tribes, just to force that balance. Pretty easy, just got my hoplites training infrastructure up with Greece as Egypt declared, both Rome and Egypt have felt comfortable massing decent size armies of axes and chariots in my border, excited to see where this goes.

Great ! Please do report your findings about Nation/Tribe balance.

Also, looks like it will be the second game I get to found my scholars family seat twice for two free techs! Evacuate the workers, leave the city to burn!

Wow, I didn't know that was a thing. Sounds a bit exploity, I will have to try it for myself before I report it tho

 

[Dale]

Yeah I gotta try that one......