qouigv93027
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2022
- Messages
- 74
I've noticed the complaint and framing regarding "what does Old World have that Civ doesn't?" and "why should I play OW instead of Civ?". Frequently the framing is around what does it do differently.
I do not see OW bringing anything revolutionary to the table, or any outrageously unique innovations. Pretty much all that it does, has been done elsewhere. But that shouldn't be a detractor!! In fact, I think what it does bring, is the right balance of game mechanics to optimize player experience.
What it excels at is exactly taking things that have already been "invented", taking things that already exist in other games, and changing and combining them in ways to achieve the ideal balance of game mechanics and design. I'd like to go through a few to highlight how Old World "recycles" a lot of game content and why that is not a problem, but something to be valued and celebrated, especially in the way it's delivered within the game.
Hex Tiles
Arguably people will think that this was invented or at least popularized with Civ5, and everyone else who does it is just copying. But fact of the matter is that it's the ideal tile layout to deal with distance units. Civ4 type layout of square grids doesn't work for diagonal movement, it complexifies the matter needlessly.
Adjacency Bonuses to Building
This has been done before. For example, Civ6 grants adjacency bonuses for districts. For another example, one of the Galactic Civilizations games (either 2 and/or 3) grants adjacency bonuses for building hexes on a planet. So this is nothing new.
However, in Old World you get more and better chances to take advantage of adjacencies. In Civ6, it's generally just districts, and they're hyper-permanent; once it's down you can never get rid of it or tweak your layout. In GC3, the tiles are prepopulated on the planet and often there are too few to really take advantage of opportunities. In OW, adjacency bonuses can apply to all manner of improvements, and you can change them around if you wish to optimize differently later. It can provide a source of fun to tweak your improvements strategy taking this into account.
1 Unit per Tile
Arguably people will think that this was invented or at least popularized with Civ5. There are also realism considerations. But despite all of that, having 1 unit per turn is just more fun for tactical play. Old World has latched onto this innovation and uses it to make for fun gameplay. Furthermore, OW has leaned into this further by allowing units to cause all manner of extra/splash damage, like the spearman hitting for minor damage the unit directly behind its target. This allows the player to arrange all manner of fun tactical exploits.
Historical Realism
Games are always at odds with historical realism and realism in general. Like the 1UPT which may be unrealistic, and certain ahistorical elements being introduced which improve player enjoyment. Like most things in life, it's a spectrum. The most realistic extreme is simply watching a history documentary. The most player agency ahistorical extreme is a pen and a blank piece of paper where a player writes whatever they want. Games are obviously somewhere in the middle, where players have agency to make choices and enjoy the game in a particular way, with some realism and historical limitations (the extent of which is subject to balancing the game design).
Incorporating historical realism is nothing new, so that's another thing Old World does that other games have already done. What the right balance is a manner of player preference, but I'd argue that they've struck an excellent balance here because there are plenty of historical aspects that are sufficiently immersive while nevertheless allowing the player to roleplay and make their own choices. Furthermore, OW has leaned into this further, by providing links to events so that inquisitive players can learn more about a particular historical context. You can learn about history while you play!
Settling Cities
Obviously being a civilization game with the ability to settle new cities is nothing new. Likewise, having restrictions on where cities can be placed, and outright restrictions of exclusive city locations, is likely not new either. OW strikes the balance here of restricting city site locations, with some minor tweaking (you can settle on the site or any of its attached urban tiles).
In my opinion, this is an excellent design choice because it eliminates the extremely large degrees of freedom to making decisions regarding where to place cities, or strategizing thereon. Now you just need to choose which city site to go for, and which tile of them you wish to settle (which then highlights what the borders would be).
Furthermore, OW leans into this further by allowing city borders to expand indefinitely. This again removes non-value-added player analysis and agonizing over individual tile details by allowing just about any resource to be reachable with some work. (Unlike in Civ where you might agonize over the dynamic changes to how you might settle 3-5 cities in an area to optimize capturing all the resources and such)
Dynastic Components and Relationships
As it's well-known, the game Crusader Kings is focused heavily on building your dynasty and on maintaining relationships with the various nobility around you. In fact, CK does this much better if that's the only set of game elements that interests you.
But what OW does is that it still produces these elements in an immersive way - you get to roleplay as your leader, you get to roleplay your nation better (as opposed to Civ where you're some immortal ghost ruler telling all the people what to do), and it's more historically immersive (nobility was in charge back then)... yet OW does this without making the system as incredibly complicated as CK2. Obviously from a meta-development perspective, they shouldn't, because CK2 has already done it. And from a personal gaming perspective, if this is what you seek, you can just play CK2.
What OW brings to the table is a lighter version of that so that you get most of those benefits (e.g. roleplaying and immersion), while precluding inordinate complexity.
Heroes and Leaders
Having a group of special characters or "heroes" to take command of a unit or become ruler of a city is again nothing new. Endless Space 2 has this with its "heroes", which can be assigned to command fleets, or command a star system; thereby yielding bonuses accordingly, and an opportunity to upgrade them to your designs. But this is very fun! So it's great that OW has this! Furthermore, OW leans into it by giving you the ability to have interactions with these characters and influence them, also factoring in religions and families. Your interactions can have an impact, improving immersion and positive feelings of player agency, since characters/heroes that are pleased with you will perform better at their jobs.
Orders
Arguably one of the genuinely novel things OW brings to the table is the concept of "orders" being limitations to how much you can control all your units. The purpose behind this design choice is present elsewhere - preventing the player from being overwhelmed with the amount of available command decisions by creating limitations such as "supply limits" (think in StarCraft where you need more Supply Depots to build more units, and even then there's a hard max).
Like the limited city sites, this at first sounds like something that isn't that great for the player, but it turns out to be fantastic. It prevents the player from being incentivized to build such enormous amounts of units that they become bogged down with decision fatigue and so overwhelmed it starts to feel like a chore. And it does it in a way that is manageable and allows the player to improve upon as the game goes on (i.e. you can increase how many orders you get per turn through your various player choices).
In Closing
I could probably go on and on about all the things Old World does that are nothing new, and that have been done elsewhere, and in some cases, done better. But as you peer into what makes OW so enjoyable, you feel it's almost like the game designers of OW have looked into "what is it that players enjoy when playing a game", picking those out and including them; and also looked into "what is something tedious or unfun that players are stuck having to do in such games", picking those out and finding ways to remove them from the game. For example the tedium of multi-factor dynamic city site selection (eliminated via select city sites). For another example, managing countless units (eliminated via limited orders).
What OW brings to gaming is tying in all these game mechanics and elements in a way that optimizes player enjoyment based on its game design choices. While that's ultimately a subjective assessment, for players like myself, I think it's pretty much the perfect balance of having good mechanics that are enjoyable while excluding tedious and otherwise uninteresting elements.
I do not see OW bringing anything revolutionary to the table, or any outrageously unique innovations. Pretty much all that it does, has been done elsewhere. But that shouldn't be a detractor!! In fact, I think what it does bring, is the right balance of game mechanics to optimize player experience.
What it excels at is exactly taking things that have already been "invented", taking things that already exist in other games, and changing and combining them in ways to achieve the ideal balance of game mechanics and design. I'd like to go through a few to highlight how Old World "recycles" a lot of game content and why that is not a problem, but something to be valued and celebrated, especially in the way it's delivered within the game.
Hex Tiles
Arguably people will think that this was invented or at least popularized with Civ5, and everyone else who does it is just copying. But fact of the matter is that it's the ideal tile layout to deal with distance units. Civ4 type layout of square grids doesn't work for diagonal movement, it complexifies the matter needlessly.
Adjacency Bonuses to Building
This has been done before. For example, Civ6 grants adjacency bonuses for districts. For another example, one of the Galactic Civilizations games (either 2 and/or 3) grants adjacency bonuses for building hexes on a planet. So this is nothing new.
However, in Old World you get more and better chances to take advantage of adjacencies. In Civ6, it's generally just districts, and they're hyper-permanent; once it's down you can never get rid of it or tweak your layout. In GC3, the tiles are prepopulated on the planet and often there are too few to really take advantage of opportunities. In OW, adjacency bonuses can apply to all manner of improvements, and you can change them around if you wish to optimize differently later. It can provide a source of fun to tweak your improvements strategy taking this into account.
1 Unit per Tile
Arguably people will think that this was invented or at least popularized with Civ5. There are also realism considerations. But despite all of that, having 1 unit per turn is just more fun for tactical play. Old World has latched onto this innovation and uses it to make for fun gameplay. Furthermore, OW has leaned into this further by allowing units to cause all manner of extra/splash damage, like the spearman hitting for minor damage the unit directly behind its target. This allows the player to arrange all manner of fun tactical exploits.
Historical Realism
Games are always at odds with historical realism and realism in general. Like the 1UPT which may be unrealistic, and certain ahistorical elements being introduced which improve player enjoyment. Like most things in life, it's a spectrum. The most realistic extreme is simply watching a history documentary. The most player agency ahistorical extreme is a pen and a blank piece of paper where a player writes whatever they want. Games are obviously somewhere in the middle, where players have agency to make choices and enjoy the game in a particular way, with some realism and historical limitations (the extent of which is subject to balancing the game design).
Incorporating historical realism is nothing new, so that's another thing Old World does that other games have already done. What the right balance is a manner of player preference, but I'd argue that they've struck an excellent balance here because there are plenty of historical aspects that are sufficiently immersive while nevertheless allowing the player to roleplay and make their own choices. Furthermore, OW has leaned into this further, by providing links to events so that inquisitive players can learn more about a particular historical context. You can learn about history while you play!
Settling Cities
Obviously being a civilization game with the ability to settle new cities is nothing new. Likewise, having restrictions on where cities can be placed, and outright restrictions of exclusive city locations, is likely not new either. OW strikes the balance here of restricting city site locations, with some minor tweaking (you can settle on the site or any of its attached urban tiles).
In my opinion, this is an excellent design choice because it eliminates the extremely large degrees of freedom to making decisions regarding where to place cities, or strategizing thereon. Now you just need to choose which city site to go for, and which tile of them you wish to settle (which then highlights what the borders would be).
Furthermore, OW leans into this further by allowing city borders to expand indefinitely. This again removes non-value-added player analysis and agonizing over individual tile details by allowing just about any resource to be reachable with some work. (Unlike in Civ where you might agonize over the dynamic changes to how you might settle 3-5 cities in an area to optimize capturing all the resources and such)
Dynastic Components and Relationships
As it's well-known, the game Crusader Kings is focused heavily on building your dynasty and on maintaining relationships with the various nobility around you. In fact, CK does this much better if that's the only set of game elements that interests you.
But what OW does is that it still produces these elements in an immersive way - you get to roleplay as your leader, you get to roleplay your nation better (as opposed to Civ where you're some immortal ghost ruler telling all the people what to do), and it's more historically immersive (nobility was in charge back then)... yet OW does this without making the system as incredibly complicated as CK2. Obviously from a meta-development perspective, they shouldn't, because CK2 has already done it. And from a personal gaming perspective, if this is what you seek, you can just play CK2.
What OW brings to the table is a lighter version of that so that you get most of those benefits (e.g. roleplaying and immersion), while precluding inordinate complexity.
Heroes and Leaders
Having a group of special characters or "heroes" to take command of a unit or become ruler of a city is again nothing new. Endless Space 2 has this with its "heroes", which can be assigned to command fleets, or command a star system; thereby yielding bonuses accordingly, and an opportunity to upgrade them to your designs. But this is very fun! So it's great that OW has this! Furthermore, OW leans into it by giving you the ability to have interactions with these characters and influence them, also factoring in religions and families. Your interactions can have an impact, improving immersion and positive feelings of player agency, since characters/heroes that are pleased with you will perform better at their jobs.
Orders
Arguably one of the genuinely novel things OW brings to the table is the concept of "orders" being limitations to how much you can control all your units. The purpose behind this design choice is present elsewhere - preventing the player from being overwhelmed with the amount of available command decisions by creating limitations such as "supply limits" (think in StarCraft where you need more Supply Depots to build more units, and even then there's a hard max).
Like the limited city sites, this at first sounds like something that isn't that great for the player, but it turns out to be fantastic. It prevents the player from being incentivized to build such enormous amounts of units that they become bogged down with decision fatigue and so overwhelmed it starts to feel like a chore. And it does it in a way that is manageable and allows the player to improve upon as the game goes on (i.e. you can increase how many orders you get per turn through your various player choices).
In Closing
I could probably go on and on about all the things Old World does that are nothing new, and that have been done elsewhere, and in some cases, done better. But as you peer into what makes OW so enjoyable, you feel it's almost like the game designers of OW have looked into "what is it that players enjoy when playing a game", picking those out and including them; and also looked into "what is something tedious or unfun that players are stuck having to do in such games", picking those out and finding ways to remove them from the game. For example the tedium of multi-factor dynamic city site selection (eliminated via select city sites). For another example, managing countless units (eliminated via limited orders).
What OW brings to gaming is tying in all these game mechanics and elements in a way that optimizes player enjoyment based on its game design choices. While that's ultimately a subjective assessment, for players like myself, I think it's pretty much the perfect balance of having good mechanics that are enjoyable while excluding tedious and otherwise uninteresting elements.
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