Kotaku: Old World Is The Best New 4X Game In Years

The_J

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The video game website Kotaku has just released a news article, which describes in its headline Old World as "The Best New 4X Game In Years".

An excerpt:
"I said simply calling this “Civilization x Crusader Kings” was unfair not because it’s technically wrong—five minutes with this game will show you that’s the case—but because it sells the final product short. Old World is so much more than just bolting one game’s popular system into another genre and hoping for the best.

Old World actually feels pretty closer to those older, near-perfect Civ spin-offs like Colonization and Alpha Centauri. Games that took the basic 4X formula and repackaged it into a shorter, more focused setting which swapped out the passing of ages for some more interesting mechanics. In Colonization that meant turning tobacco into cigars and sending them back to Europe. In Old World it’s managing an ancient empire through not just roads and farms, but family ties as well."

Read the full article here: https://kotaku.com/old-world-4x-strategy-game-pc-mohawk-kotaku-impressions-1848973368
 
Colonization, an almost perfect civ that could be compared to OW?

The original, not Civ4Col. I'd agree with that.
 
man i'd love a colonization version of civ spanning all the eras.

anyway, grats guys! well earned :clap:
 
So there are certainly a lot ideas in OW that cold considered ground-breaking. The allocation of growth, civics, and training as differentiated resources is pretty brilliant.

OTH, all the RNG is still present and even celebrated. I'm specifically speaking to going to the trouble to raise and tutor an heir or other family member, and then they just go into negative events that don't seem triggered by anything the player does. I'd tend to think by now we'd past getting notifications at the start of the turn that someone has, for no apparent reason, lost an ability score or gained a flaw. I had one heir to go to -4 Wisdom in the space of five years.

Events where there's some element of cause and effect, choice then consequence, that I can dig. RNG-generated kicks to my sand castle don't enhance the experience. My mileage varies greatly from others tho. Then again, maybe it's not totally random, maybe there's something going on that isn't explained. Maybe if a character has gotten some high states the game tries to compensate with random penalties.

Still, I think everyone else in the 4X game biz needs to take notice.
 
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So there are certainly a lot ideas in OW that cold considered ground-breaking. The allocation of growth, civics, and training as differentiated resources is pretty brilliant.

OTH, all the RNG is still present and even celebrated. I'm specifically speaking to going to the trouble to raise and tutor an heir or other family member, and then they just go into negative events that don't seem triggered by anything the player does. I'd tend to think by now we'd past getting notifications at the start of the turn that someone has, for no apparent reason, lost an ability score or gained a flaw. I had one heir to go to -4 Wisdom in the space of five years.

Events where there's some element of cause and effect, choice then consequence, that I can dig. RNG-generated kicks to my sand castle don't enhance the experience. My mileage varies greatly from others tho. Then again, maybe it's not totally random, maybe there's something going on that isn't explained. Maybe if a character has gotten some high states the game tries to compensate with random penalties.

Still, I think everyone else in the 4X game biz needs to take notice.

You need to work on heir and spare. Not just heir.
 
You need to work on heir and spare. Not just heir.
I don't know what that means, however the game penalizes stiffly for messing with succession. Even an aged and sickly leader isn't allowed to bypass the -10 to abdicate. Changing the laws for succession, choosing new heirs, they not only cost legitimacy, there's a -50 relationship penalty that gets passed on...forever. Even when so many generations have passed that the line'd never be able to reach them, there's still that damn -50 making every governor or general upset. Or so my experiences with the Hittities indicate.
 
I don't know what that means, however the game penalizes stiffly for messing with succession. Even an aged and sickly leader isn't allowed to bypass the -10 to abdicate. Changing the laws for succession, choosing new heirs, they not only cost legitimacy, there's a -50 relationship penalty that gets passed on...forever. Even when so many generations have passed that the line'd never be able to reach them, there's still that damn -50 making every governor or general upset. Or so my experiences with the Hittities indicate.

It means that its good to focus your nurturing on both your heir and your second child, so that if the first heir dies (like in your case) the "backup heir" is still pretty solid
 
I don't know what that means, however the game penalizes stiffly for messing with succession. Even an aged and sickly leader isn't allowed to bypass the -10 to abdicate. Changing the laws for succession, choosing new heirs, they not only cost legitimacy, there's a -50 relationship penalty that gets passed on...forever. Even when so many generations have passed that the line'd never be able to reach them, there's still that damn -50 making every governor or general upset. Or so my experiences with the Hittities indicate.

Hittites are a completely different setup though. Family exclusion as in the Hittites is because historically the King excluded his three children, and their families, by law. He chose his grandson instead to become the King after him.
 
Hittites are a completely different setup though. Family exclusion as in the Hittites is because historically the King excluded his three children, and their families, by law. He chose his grandson instead to become the King after him.
That's self-evident, and all good and well for history. However, in gameplay terms, 100 year have passed and there's still a -50 penalty that has not gone away. There are some mechanisms here that need to be in place for addressing the succession. Have the penalty lessen and vanish over time, or provide descendent leaders an option to reinstate places in line once everybody who was alive at the time have died off. Right now it's a -50...period.
 
We're looking into some ideas to make the Hittite succession mess gradually become less of a problem as the game progresses.
 
I played Old World back when it was in Early Access, and found it to be interesting, but clearly unfinished. It was also a game which looked like I would know how to play it, but with enough things being different that I actually didn't. For these reasons, while I did enjoy it somewhat, it didn't really hook me back then.

Going back to it now, however, after the game has been much improved and polished, while at the same time I have a better idea of how to play it, I'm really impressed, and finding it hard to put down. It is obvious that the developers have used the time in Early Access well, as the numerous interesting ideas have been turned into well designed game systems now. In particular for me, as someone who likes a "builder" playstyle, I am really loving how cities work. This is such a key part of the experience for me, and Old World does it in a way which is both unique and satisfying, and for me, easily beats other recent/semi-recent 4X games. The orders mechanic was something I didn't expect to like, but I do. I really like the concept of legitimacy. I really like how resources work. I think combat is pretty good. I enjoy leveling up characters. I like events.

I'm not saying Old World is a perfect game, and I'm sure I'll find things which annoy me as I play more. I always do. Will Old World surpass Vox Populi as my favorite semi-recent 4X or Alpha Centauri as the game I always point to when I want to give an example of how game systems should be designed? It's too early to tell, but it actually has a shot. I am really curious to see where the developers are going to take the game. Will we see natural wonders at some point? Bonus trees? Resource monopolies? Expeditions? Perhaps none of those would fit the design, I don't know. But it looks like the developers know what they're doing. :)
 
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