How are folk finding the release version?

[TheMeInTeam]

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

How about QoL/UI in controlling the units? Civ games after 4 have been pretty awful with that. Civ 4 put a lot of effort into usability (saving building queues, waypoints, shift/control adding to queue, looping units, managing cities from sortable city list screen for example...all somehow disappeared from future versions).

One way to alleviate the 1UPT issue is map scale, does this game have more, fewer, or same # of tiles vs cities? More tiles between cities = more field for maneuvers, and would make 1UPT less bad.

I at least like the sound of a game that ends quickly once it's over, that has been a long running problem in Civ games, and exacerbated by how the newer ones advance turns slowly and have poor UI.

I probably won't be able to try this game in the immediate future, I have commitments to multiple Dominions 5 MP games and am doing the DCSS tournament + a few other things game-wise, which is all I can handle day to day. But this is on my radar.

 

[Dale]

How about QoL/UI in controlling the units? Civ games after 4 have been pretty awful with that. Civ 4 put a lot of effort into usability (saving building queues, waypoints, shift/control adding to queue, looping units, managing cities from sortable city list screen for example...all somehow disappeared from future versions).

One way to alleviate the 1UPT issue is map scale, does this game have more, fewer, or same # of tiles vs cities? More tiles between cities = more field for maneuvers, and would make 1UPT less bad.

I at least like the sound of a game that ends quickly once it's over, that has been a long running problem in Civ games, and exacerbated by how the newer ones advance turns slowly and have poor UI.

I probably won't be able to try this game in the immediate future, I have commitments to multiple Dominions 5 MP games and am doing the DCSS tournament + a few other things game-wise, which is all I can handle day to day. But this is on my radar.

Quite a few of those QOL items you mention are in Old World. Everything in the list tabs you can left click on for the full action card, or right click on to popup the "obvious" thing you can do with that thing. EG: right click a city brings up it's build list, right click a character brings up the list of missions they can perform.

On map scale, the city sites spread out the map quite a bit. The scale of a tile is naturally smaller than in Civ (each tile represents less area since OW only represents a geo-region not the planet) so the map feels it has more space. This leads to some awesome tactics on the ground. You can easily manage a front of 20-30 units and not feel hemmed in. Ranged units actually having range also helps.

Yeah one of the things we were all adamant over in the design team, is that the game should recognise when the human has won, and not drag the process out. This led to the Double Victory. So if you're at least halfway to winning, and more than double the AI score, just put them out of misery.

 

[Taefin]

Okay, just finished the game (Greece, The Great, Passive Tribes). The AI is generally better at conquering tribes and expanding. Rome even used some boats to hop the sea twice to create a chain of cities. By victory at 141 (cathedrals and holy sites ambition) there were still tribes in the furthest north tundra and on the island Rome was expanding too. Except for Egypt, much of whom I conquered at midgame, all AI empires have large standing armies of the typical axes, archers, conscripts, catapults. This game I notice Egypt pump out several war elephants, and others create some horsemen and horse archers. Rome also has some tier-1 uniques which they appear to have built in their capital with their empires only stronghold.

However, the main issues with AI development and advancement that I've described earlier still are in full effect. I'm surveying the map with revealfullmap after the victory.

- Rome and Assyria have all their workers actively building improvements, though Babylon has many idle workers. However, very few workers overall (looks like 1x per city) and this appears to have the effect that when AI build wonders, their main cities stop developing for 12+ turns. As a result, they are still upgrading resource tiles in the capital at turn 141.
- Very few civilian buildings, one Assyrian city has 2x courthouse and two Roman cities have 2x library, with a few scattered courthouses. Also, lots of windmills and baths (with master doctors!). Rome has 2x barracks in several cities.
- I see many cities running units/specialists/projects that will take forever to finish (9-turn specialists, 13-turn militia, a 24-turn settler, way to many disciples).

I suspect that all these together explain why the AI would advance so slowly. Again, I am surprised to see so many baths and windmills. Even an Egyptian city I captured at midgame had a cold bath, while we were still trading stones with slingers. And yet, I don't see any markets (and personally, until I get grocers I am just bleeding gold!).

Come to think of it, it would almost seem as if every AI empire draws a diagonal line on the tech tree and struggles to get any further: they research up to Hydraulics, Scholarship, Stirrups (sometimes), Architecture, Manor, Composite Bow, Monasticism, and Machinery. I don't see any units or buildings from any higher techs, which deprives them of all high tier units. At this point, I wonder if they get stuck researching techs like Jurisprudence, Lateen Sail, and Fiscal Policy which would easily shut down their research through the endgame. Or if they grab too many of the Discover Bonuses along the way (the only ones I consider are free settler and discontent reduction, some earlier courtiers would be tempting).

If any game updates or mods were going to strengthen the AI, I think the following changes would be important:

- Change the formula for number of workers. I end up with about half the numbers of workers as I have orders, which lets me flex from building to combat pretty effectively and get all civilian buildings soon after they become available, alongside carpeting rural improvements. It looks like AI are coded to start each new city with a worker (and presumably to replace killed workers), but getting a second/third in the capital and a second in most other cities would go a long way.
- Only build civilian units in high-growth cities. Settlers and disciples bog down cities, and militia are only worthwhile if trained quickly.
- Give the AI some kind of city classification, e.g., training, urban, rural. Prioritize military and officers in training cities, civics followed by specialists in urban cities, and resource specialists in rural cities. Projects should probably only be run if civics are high or no other good options exist. Monks are very good, and can probably be prioritized in both urban and rural cities.
- Increase weight for techs that unlock new units and civilian buildings. Lower the priority for baths and windmills, as these are not that useful until an economy is in place.
- If the AI rush things, I would recommend weighting the decision to rush on how many turns it would save the city multiplied by the target value of that city's main yield. The goal here is not to waste a training city's turns by training officers, or an urban city's turns developing its first few civics boosters.
- Prioritize strongholds, citadels and unique units in the 1-2 cities with the highest training.

Even just hardcoding different weights for techs and increasing the number of workers might be enough. The AI would then probably tend to distribute their military and civilian production across all cities, which is not optimal, but at least overall production would be about twice as strong as it is currently with adequate resources and all civilian buildings built.

If the AI gets high-tier units, it may become important to change the formula for what rebel units can form. As soon as I get crossbows, all my rebels are crossbows, before I get a chance to even build more than one. This would decimate the AI's standing army.

I'd love to hear how feasible any of those improvements may be to mod. I've mostly just changed around parameters values in Civ6 and am interested at trying my hand at some simple mods in OW. Are there any AI-only autoplay options for testing mods yet?

 

[Dale]

Okay, just finished the game (Greece, The Great, Passive Tribes). The AI is generally better at conquering tribes and expanding. Rome even used some boats to hop the sea twice to create a chain of cities. By victory at 141 (cathedrals and holy sites ambition) there were still tribes in the furthest north tundra and on the island Rome was expanding too. Except for Egypt, much of whom I conquered at midgame, all AI empires have large standing armies of the typical axes, archers, conscripts, catapults. This game I notice Egypt pump out several war elephants, and others create some horsemen and horse archers. Rome also has some tier-1 uniques which they appear to have built in their capital with their empires only stronghold.

However, the main issues with AI development and advancement that I've described earlier still are in full effect. I'm surveying the map with revealfullmap after the victory.

- Rome and Assyria have all their workers actively building improvements, though Babylon has many idle workers. However, very few workers overall (looks like 1x per city) and this appears to have the effect that when AI build wonders, their main cities stop developing for 12+ turns. As a result, they are still upgrading resource tiles in the capital at turn 141.
- Very few civilian buildings, one Assyrian city has 2x courthouse and two Roman cities have 2x library, with a few scattered courthouses. Also, lots of windmills and baths (with master doctors!). Rome has 2x barracks in several cities.
- I see many cities running units/specialists/projects that will take forever to finish (9-turn specialists, 13-turn militia, a 24-turn settler, way to many disciples).

I suspect that all these together explain why the AI would advance so slowly. Again, I am surprised to see so many baths and windmills. Even an Egyptian city I captured at midgame had a cold bath, while we were still trading stones with slingers. And yet, I don't see any markets (and personally, until I get grocers I am just bleeding gold!).

Come to think of it, it would almost seem as if every AI empire draws a diagonal line on the tech tree and struggles to get any further: they research up to Hydraulics, Scholarship, Stirrups (sometimes), Architecture, Manor, Composite Bow, Monasticism, and Machinery. I don't see any units or buildings from any higher techs, which deprives them of all high tier units. At this point, I wonder if they get stuck researching techs like Jurisprudence, Lateen Sail, and Fiscal Policy which would easily shut down their research through the endgame. Or if they grab too many of the Discover Bonuses along the way (the only ones I consider are free settler and discontent reduction, some earlier courtiers would be tempting).

If any game updates or mods were going to strengthen the AI, I think the following changes would be important:

- Change the formula for number of workers. I end up with about half the numbers of workers as I have orders, which lets me flex from building to combat pretty effectively and get all civilian buildings soon after they become available, alongside carpeting rural improvements. It looks like AI are coded to start each new city with a worker (and presumably to replace killed workers), but getting a second/third in the capital and a second in most other cities would go a long way.
- Only build civilian units in high-growth cities. Settlers and disciples bog down cities, and militia are only worthwhile if trained quickly.
- Give the AI some kind of city classification, e.g., training, urban, rural. Prioritize military and officers in training cities, civics followed by specialists in urban cities, and resource specialists in rural cities. Projects should probably only be run if civics are high or no other good options exist. Monks are very good, and can probably be prioritized in both urban and rural cities.
- Increase weight for techs that unlock new units and civilian buildings. Lower the priority for baths and windmills, as these are not that useful until an economy is in place.
- If the AI rush things, I would recommend weighting the decision to rush on how many turns it would save the city multiplied by the target value of that city's main yield. The goal here is not to waste a training city's turns by training officers, or an urban city's turns developing its first few civics boosters.
- Prioritize strongholds, citadels and unique units in the 1-2 cities with the highest training.

Even just hardcoding different weights for techs and increasing the number of workers might be enough. The AI would then probably tend to distribute their military and civilian production across all cities, which is not optimal, but at least overall production would be about twice as strong as it is currently with adequate resources and all civilian buildings built.

If the AI gets high-tier units, it may become important to change the formula for what rebel units can form. As soon as I get crossbows, all my rebels are crossbows, before I get a chance to even build more than one. This would decimate the AI's standing army.

I'd love to hear how feasible any of those improvements may be to mod. I've mostly just changed around parameters values in Civ6 and am interested at trying my hand at some simple mods in OW. Are there any AI-only autoplay options for testing mods yet?

Nice feedback, I'll make sure it gets back to Alex.

In the console type in: autoplay NUM_TURNS
IE: autoplay 50

 

[Ribannah]

I played 50 turns in my first game (Persia, The Good, Medium Seaside). So far I play the same way that I used to play Civ, i.e. quality towns with growth as the first priority. Built the Hanging Gardens quickly. I have one Slinger and two Warriors which seems fine, they took out four Tribe towns. I just got the tech for Camel and Elephant riders. Carthage declared war on us years ago but they seem unable to get any units through.

What I like is that I don't have to micromanage all the cities every turn. The family and the tech cards make for some nice variety. Since the game is basically won already I'll start over at the next difficulty level.

 

[nolegskitten]

I played 50 turns in my first game (Persia, The Good, Medium Seaside). So far I play the same way that I used to play Civ, i.e. quality towns with growth as the first priority. Built the Hanging Gardens quickly. I have one Slinger and two Warriors which seems fine, they took out four Tribe towns. I just got the tech for Camel and Elephant riders. Carthage declared war on us years ago but they seem unable to get any units through.

What I like is that I don't have to micromanage all the cities every turn. The family and the tech cards make for some nice variety. Since the game is basically won already I'll start over at the next difficulty level.

It feels a bit strange to me that the game feels won on T50 in your first play-through ? You will probably need a few more units by T50 as you ramp up the difficulty.

Glad you're enjoying the game !

 

[Taefin]

Games where you pick up a bunch of tribal sites early can really run away for the player, I certainly recommend dropping a game at any point it feels slow, over, or you’re no longer vested.

Still not far enough in my current playthru to see the effect of +50% AI cheats, but the intro reminded me of something interesting that may be slowing AI conquest. I find when I win an early-ish war it’s usually a brutal slugfest trading units faster than I’d like and that I have to really push through what looks like long odds to get that first city capture, since you really need to fend off the waves of defensive units prior to dedicating 6-8 hits on the city. Usually this looks like churning out units until that first battle is won, at which point I have a force that is strong enough to defeat the remnant of the AI army.

However, I notice that the AI is somewhat easy rebuffed when they attack cities, to the point that if I produce a numerical advantage of the front line, they often pull their units back rather than move in the reserves. This current game the AI has a handful of spears and axes that could probably take my larger warrior army. I wonder if much of the AI’s difficult capturing cities of the player or other AI isn’t this hesitation to commit to an assault. Admittedly, you don’t want them to suicide too much of their army that they become easy pickings. But since warfare seems more about economy/production and/or size of reserve army that the current matchup on the front, the AI might be playing too conservatively for offense.

Edit: Okay I’m pretty sure AI cheats were on, but not certain (they were set at off when I went to set up my next game, whereas many settings are retained from game to game). If they were on, I did not see much difference. Started a new game where I know they are on -(+50%). It looks like it will be interesting, since I only snagged 3 cities before the AI claimed all other cites and began clearing tribes. Need to pump out enough slingers to hold a defensive line while I mount an offensive on Egypt’s isolated peninsula of cleared tribe sites, hopefully in time to save the last of my Dane allies.

Edit 2: Update from the end of the Assyria game, the Great with AI cheats at +50%. Ambition victory at T113 with very little science output. I got monasteries up but too late for impact, and they only helped speed along biremes at the end for an amphibious invasion for the win (capturing 5th city with 7th wonder and 100th urban tile) but never got to markets or libraries and build few courthouses. For the first time I have seen two AI empires reach Battleline and field a half dozen macemen each starting somewhere around T90. Macemen were my strongest unit as well, aside from three siege towers, so this created some lasting parity, the best I have seen so far. My capital was cranking out macemen fast enough that Egypt and Rome couldn't really compete, but it felt like I was playing against something closer to real rivals, and two simultaneous wars compensated for neither being especially aggressive.

I gifted a third AI (Persia) Battleline, and when I revealed the map after the game, I see the fourth (Carthage) had it as well. Also see that Persia had a large army including longbows, war elephants, and horsemen/archers. We were at war and just beginning to clash when the game ended (that could have gotten ugly!). Persia also took a city off their AI neighbor near the end.

This game (raging tribal difficulty) the Vandals owned 1/6 of the map at the end of the game, and I see I could have chosen to expand through their territory if I didn't get bogged down fighting Egypt and Rome. I tend to stop exploring at midgame, and miss opportunities like this, and even let the Vandals retake a city site. I see the AI continued to clash with tribes throughout the game, making slow but steady progress (I see some claimed city site at the end, and watched Carthage attempt, but fail to hold that city site I gave up, which was quite far from their border).

Perhaps this is because the tribes kept their share of the map, and because I developed so little infrastructure, but the scores stayed quite low most of the game, all hovering 15-26 (of 81) until I got some wonders and captured cities to jump up to 42 at the very end. I would need to get 52 points to win double score, so things may have got interesting (or tedious) if I didn't snag good ambitions, since I wasn't prepared to take any cities off Persia who had 26.

I think my next game will dial back the tribal difficulty a bit, since the AI do their part to prevent me from picking off tribal sites freely, but this would give them the opportunity to expand. Persia expanded as much as they could without taking land off other AI, which they were beginning to do, and they looked pretty good. They must have been pulling in 150 science per turn to my 80, competitive this game, but maybe not if I were to focus on infrastructure at all.

And while Persia had strongholds, they did again not build any uniques, as far as I can tell. Even with their sparsely developed empire, if they just built these units instead of some weaker ones, I would genuinely struggle to content with them.

Also, not as critical since Egypt got pretty badly beat, but their endgame builds were all 10-15 turn militia and festival, which is below subpar. The others were developing a reasonable mix of 6-10 turn units (longbows, ballista, macemen), 4-7 turn specialists, a few projects, and one 25 turn settler (oops!). To me, this appears that the AI cheats are working well, keeping build times reasonable even if the AI won't develop or specialize cities. Perhaps giving them a 50% growth toward units (they have plenty of citizens) may round out the effect, since they really struggle there.

Oh and possible bug, capturing Egypt capital didn’t give me the ambition (it was a legacy). I agreed to a truce triggered by taking the city, I wonder if that could have prevented the detection.

 

[alexman]

Taefin, a lot of the issues you discovered were addressed in tomorrow's update. I would be curious to see whether you notice any AI improvement.

 

[Ranbir]

I'm really enjoying this. Ever since Civ 5/6 I've essentially been cured of "Civ-addiction" that I had with the four versions prior. Old World is getting that juice back. My main hook right now is for larger european maps and some interesting custom worlds/scenarios too

 

[Stalker0]

I played Old World periodically through its beta period, and now coming back to it, can definitely see where a lot of polish has gone into it.

The event based system remains a favorite of mine, giving the you ability to customize your family but in a straightforward way that is simple to understand.

My two issues currently:

1) Hotkeys: Some things don't seem to have hotkeys or some hotkeys are very strange (end turn is the number 6?)

2) Units from different families have different colors. This was a common complaint in the beta and I was very surprised to see this still in the game. Considering you can have 4 colors of units and your enemies can have colors it can get very tricky to remember who has what units. I can understand the appeal of having family bonuses and the like, the but the UI cost on the board is far too great.

 

[Solver]

Hotkeys: Some things don't seem to have hotkeys or some hotkeys are very strange (end turn is the number 6?)

We added hotkey rebinding support into the game in a recent update. You can now customize things like 6 for End Turn.

Units from different families have different colors. This was a common complaint in the beta and I was very surprised to see this still in the game. Considering you can have 4 colors of units and your enemies can have colors it can get very tricky to remember who has what units. I can understand the appeal of having family bonuses and the like, the but the UI cost on the board is far too great.

The idea is that the banner color indicates the player, and the shape indicates the family. The color thing was previously the only way to tell families apart, so different shapes were added.

 

[Stalker0]

The idea is that the banner color indicates the player, and the shape indicates the family. The color thing was previously the only way to tell families apart, so different shapes were added.

I played just last night and I had two units with distinctly different colors, it wasn’t just shapes.

 

[Solver]

Yeah, the colors are also still there. That's a good point, will bring it up internally.

 

[Ita Bear]

Hello folks

I really think there needs to be more transparancy regarding AI turns and the damage they are inflicting on your units. It's simply no fun to see what appears to be an inferior enemy unit stroll up to yours and then yours just suddenly disappears. What doesn't help is that enemy units often seem to go invisible as they are walking around (is there a reason this happens?), making things even harder to keep track of. Am I missing a setting that allows me to see battles take place during AI turns? I can see their units move but not when they initiate combat.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Solver]

Do you have the option to follow AI moves set? If so, you should see every AI move, including combat, that's within your visibility radius.

 

[PiR]

Hello folks

I really think there needs to be more transparancy regarding AI turns and the damage they are inflicting on your units. It's simply no fun to see what appears to be an inferior enemy unit stroll up to yours and then yours just suddenly disappears. What doesn't help is that enemy units often seem to go invisible as they are walking around (is there a reason this happens?), making things even harder to keep track of. Am I missing a setting that allows me to see battles take place during AI turns? I can see their units move but not when they initiate combat.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

I encounter the same thing, but sometimes, not always. Is it because of ranged units going into woods?

Do you have the option to follow AI moves set? If so, you should see every AI move, including combat, that's within your visibility radius.

On war, yes.

 

[Dale]

Could also be they have a schemer Leader too.

 

[nolegskitten]

I encounter the same thing, but sometimes, not always. Is it because of ranged units going into woods?
(...).

With a Tactician leader, ranged unit are hidden on woods (unless they attack), it might be what you're facing ?

 

[Old World Fanatic]

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 thought the same. But then in turn 75 I usually feel like I'm already approaching the end game. At turn 110 it's usually clear who will win (but sometimes a cutthroat race). I haven't yet had a game go beyond turn 150. I do generally play small maps in this (unlike civ/alpha centauri where I generally play big maps).

Production feels to be about double the speed as it is in civ (though I played civ at normal speed), whereas movement feels about 8x the speed in civ. Due to the many interesting choices per turn, I think the average old world turn takes about 4x longer than civ, because there are almost no empty turns.

--------------------

My biggest issue with the release version compared to a couple of the earlier versions I played, is that I'm missing the theology screen. It kinda makes sense to remove it due to how little was there and there no longer is a tree for theologies (good choice), but finding out what each of the theologies are in advance when planning is hard if you don't remember the name.

Would be nice if the in game help had a list of the theologies under "theology".

Since it also isn't in any wiki, I've hand copied them. The best way to find them now is from the law screen and each of the laws that affect theology opinions. But there must be a better way to quickly see theologies.

The fact that disciples give stuff when working tiles is not very clear at all and I miss seeing some visual representation of that, like a symbol from the city screen, some unit specific animation or some info when hovering over one. Since both holy buildings and cities are green, do they also give something when stationed inside a city?

I also find that Patron culture from specialists and Landowner culture from crops is poorly communicated. I'm probably spoiled because of all the good adjecancy communication.

 

[Taefin]

Do you have the option to follow AI moves set? If so, you should see every AI move, including combat, that's within your visibility radius.

On my system this happens as well (I have some setting to avoid flicker at 165 Hz but I think I had the issues from release at 60 Hz). I don’t think there is any part of the game where I see all AI movement, they mostly all appear on the tile after combat is complete and the damage dealt. Less than half of the time I see them march over and watch my units do the funny walk into the spears animation, but the rest of the time the unit just disappears. I might see the start of the move, then they disappear, then they reappear a frame before the camera cuts to the next action. Thinking back it may occur in the middle of a long sequence of AI moves.