Old World Quick Questions and answers (and FAQ)

nolegskitten

Warlord
Joined
Jan 15, 2021
Messages
208
Hello everyone,

Old World is a rich game (I prefer that term to "complex" for reasons I could explain at nauseam), and many mechanics are new, or often confusing or hard to grasp, specially if you're new to the genre or have assumptions (often unconsciously) coming from a different game.

Taking a leaf from the excellent "Quick questions and answers" thread from the Civ6 forum, I suggest to use this thread for quick questions and answers. I'll try to compile Q&A in a FAQ at the top of the thread for the most recurring questions.

I will come here at least every day to read and answer questions (unless I don't know the answers ofc) but anyone willing to help is of course welcome. It's not really reasonable to ask for full guides in here, but you can still ask even if it will be maybe answered somewhere else.

That's it, have at it folks !
 
Are you able to give us a quick summary of the various person abilities and what they allow and don't allow?
For example, some abilities enable your people to become generals, some governors etc.
 
Are you able to give us a quick summary of the various person abilities and what they allow and don't allow?
For example, some abilities enable your people to become generals, some governors etc.

That's more guide territory (there's a lot to say), but sure !

Let's start with conditions to be a General or a Governor :

To be a governor or a general of a city or unit, a character needs to be of the same family or to have no family affiliation (founding characters, some courtiers).

But also:

1) restriction based on the archetype of the character:
  • to be a General, the character need to be a Hero, Tactician, Commander or Zealot
  • to be a governor, the character needs to be a Builder, Diplomat, Orator, Judge or Scholar
  • (Schemers can't be either)
2) Age restriction: a character needs to be over 18 to be either General or Governor (or council member), need to be younger than 50 to be assigned as a general, and you can't stay a general if you're 60 years old or older.

3) Exceptions:
  • Your leader can always be assigned as either general or governor regardless of Archetype and family. If already assigned, he can remained a General all his life.
  • Courtiers can always be assigned as either generals or governors regardless of Archetype.

I will point that you can easily find that information in game by using the filters available in the character tab,

Eligible Governors :
upload_2021-7-13_11-9-57.png


And eligible generals :
upload_2021-7-13_11-10-35.png
 

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Character Archetypes always have other impacts, special abilities and bonuses, but the can be almost game changing on your leader. curating and selecting your successors according to how you want to play is a big part of how a player tailor his Nation to his preferences.
This is all available in the game encyclopedia:
upload_2021-7-13_11-26-7.png
and in tooltips when hovering on characters archetypes in game:
upload_2021-7-13_11-27-40.png


my cursor is hidden in the screenshot bu it is hovering the "builder" archetype of my leader.

Not diving into each archetype specialities, pay attention to your leader (and heirs) archetypes special ability, particularly as Leaders. These are very strong effect. A few examples:
  • A commander leader will provide passive XP to all idle units (10XP/turn), buffs all your infantry units defence (+10% defence) and allow you to rush units in your capital by spending orders.
  • A builder leader will allow you to speed up construction anywhere in your empire by stacking workers, and makes all workers twice as fast to train.
  • A Hero Leader buffs all of your units attack (+10%), gains training on kills (by any of your units), and can "Launch offensive", which is the strongest offensive ability in the game (allow you to act twice in a turn with units adjacent to your leader).
  • Scholars can redirect your entire capital production to science, tutor children and redraw techs.
  • etc.

I let you explore to get the full picture for each Archetype (I will make a full guide at one point), but the effect on your leader usually span your entire empire and can be game defining.
 
Hi nolegskitten

Good idea for a thread. Whilst not directly related to the game, I have a question I think many people would like to know the answer to. At present, the game is only available on the Epic Store. There are many controversies with this store, my own biggest worry being potential security risks as it been hacked previously. Is the Epic Store safe to use? Must personal details be given when buying the game? Is it possible to play the game without any extra launchers or software downloaded?

Grateful for any advice.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
 
Hi nolegskitten

Good idea for a thread. Whilst not directly related to the game, I have a question I think many people would like to know the answer to. At present, the game is only available on the Epic Store. There are many controversies with this store, my own biggest worry being potential security risks as it been hacked previously. Is the Epic Store safe to use? Must personal details be given when buying the game? Is it possible to play the game without any extra launchers or software downloaded?

Grateful for any advice.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear


That works too, that's not "in" game but that's still a very relevant question.

I had my misgivings about Epic (I'm suspicious about all game launchers to be fair, yes even steam). You do have to put some personal informations in there, which can't really be avoided as you have to buy the games through it, but as anywhere else you can use a nickname and don't have to reveal your identity to others. You don't have to save your payment info in your account (and I would advise you against doing that anywhere really but it's up to you).
I don't play MP in any other game but I understand that EG features are quite poor compared to, say, steam. features like inviting friends simply don't exists, and you can't even gift a game (I wanted to do a small games giveaway at release and couldn't). So, EG is not ideal. I don't know if Epic got their security in order, but in the end a breach is a breach is a breach, so that could (and did) happen anywhere, I didn't do my homework so I don't have any serious opinion about that specific aspect.

So, subpar implementation/missing features for a game launcher, but I don't use these features that much myself. I rely on good old chat and banter with strangers on OW discord (a fine place to hang around for sure) to find MP opponents and get good MP, and so far this worked well for me.
But if you're used to inviting Steam friends, I understand EG doesn't provide much value at all intrinsically.

I love this game and would like it to reach its audience, but I won't lie, I feel like Epic Game exclusivity is its only serious flaw.

Now for some positives. I want you to buy this game, because it's great and you deserve a great game. The devs also deserve our support, specially if we want them to be able to continue to make great game without having to sign this kind of exclusivity deals. Once you bought the game tho, you can launch it and play with full features, including MP, without having to use the launcher or have it running. I'd advise you to launch it once a week to check and download patches, we're still receiving weekly updates as the game is still being improved and enhanced actively by Mohawk, but once you updated you can say goodbye to the launcher for a week without ill effects. The matchmaking is going through Epic network but you don't need the launcher.

so, TLDR:
- I don't have any serious assessment of EG security. I'm a software architect so I probably want more hard facts than most to give an assessment one way or another, but there you go.
- You need to use paypal if you don't want to provide personal information in the launcher to buy the game. I would assume that payment data is separate from your account data, and you don't have to save your payment info into the store, but I can't say I know how EG SI is setup.
- You will have to get the launcher to install the game and update it conveniently. That's probably not an absolute since I think there are alternate open source launchers at least on Linux, but I can't really help you with that.
- The launcher doesn't have to run on your computer for you to play.
 
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Hi nolegskitten

Good idea for a thread. Whilst not directly related to the game, I have a question I think many people would like to know the answer to. At present, the game is only available on the Epic Store. There are many controversies with this store, my own biggest worry being potential security risks as it been hacked previously. Is the Epic Store safe to use? Must personal details be given when buying the game? Is it possible to play the game without any extra launchers or software downloaded?

Grateful for any advice.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

As all other stores, you can use alias information and Paypal if you wish for security. That's your choice of course.

From a game perspective, you do not need the launcher/store active to run Old World. Just make a shortcut to the exe file. The game does use Epic online services for MP matchmaking, cloud saving and achievements, but that's nothing to do with the launcher/store. The only information EOS uses is your Epic ID. Many people have already added OW to steam as well, so it's in their library. Just add it as a "non steam game". The ONLY reason you would need the launcher/store installed is for updates to the game.

In regards to whether it's coming to other distro platforms. Directly from the FAQ on our discord.
upload_2021-7-14_10-21-35.png


Hope that helps.
 
As all other stores, you can use alias information and Paypal if you wish for security. That's your choice of course.
(...)

oh Fair point about paypal, I forgot that option (bought the game a year ago and never bought anything else on EG since) but it's true. You can use that as an alternative and I'm not 100% sure but you might actually not have to give any personal info in that case (well an email but it doesn't have to be firstname.lastname@wherever.com), even for payment.

I amended the post I made above to reflect that, and will probably split the answers in FAQs as these are important and fairly frequent.
 
Why are the options for me to build a city greyed out? I already have about 10 cities - is there a cap on the number I can build?

CitySite.JPG
 
Why are the options for me to build a city greyed out? I already have about 10 cities - is there a cap on the number I can build?

I notice the settler has a "sleep" icon above them. Try clicking the "wake" button (sun icon in the unit action pane).
 
It might be because you don't have enough gold. Each one costs a bit more than the last.
 
Dale i am now taking a look at modding OW and i can see from your Byzantium mod how and where most things work but when your game and others start they start with 300 stone,wood and iron is that hard coded as i cant find that in your mod?
regards and good game.
 
It might be because you don't have enough gold. Each one costs a bit more than the last.

Paying money to settle only applies when you settle on Barbarian city sites during an alliance. This isn't applicable here (from what I can see).

Why are the options for me to build a city greyed out? I already have about 10 cities - is there a cap on the number I can build?
(screenshot)

The only thing that could do that normally would be having no orders left, but it can clearly be seen in your screenshot that you do have some. So, it would look like a bug. Sometime bugs can be purely on the UI/display thing. Have you tried clicking to settle even if the buttons are greyed out ?

However, I don't recognize any family names, so I suspects you are playing with a mod. The mod or scenario might have different rules that apply to city settling, or they might have a bug.

I can't really help you more about that, but something to check maybe ?
 
Dale i am now taking a look at modding OW and i can see from your Byzantium mod how and where most things work but when your game and others start they start with 300 stone,wood and iron is that hard coded as i cant find that in your mod?
regards and good game.

not sure how that meshes with mods (how to override default behaviour etc) but the amount of resources you start with is normally tied to the difficulty level.
 
Yes of course i tried amount of players didn't think difficulty must be hard coded in the main game then.
Thanks Nolegskitten sad name :(
 
Yes of course i tried amount of players didn't think difficulty must be hard coded in the main game then.
Thanks Nolegskitten sad name :(
not sure it's hard coded, there might be ways to assign it via modding, at minimum with an event. Dale might be better able to answer that better.

Do not be sad about my name, it's a mostly an idiot name and i like it that way :D
 
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