Old World update #103

[The_J]

New year, new update!
Patch notes: https://mohawkgames.com/2023/01/11/old-world-update-103/

Design

• City Discontent Level can now go negative.
• Negative discontent level gives bonuses to growth and reduces maintenance. Positive discontent level no longer reduces growth.
• Discontent increase rate reduced by 4 on all difficulty levels.
• Citizens now give -5 family opinion
• Repair project is now 1 + (10% of HP)/turn instead of (20% of HP)/turn
• Heroes of the Aegean 1 scenario improvements
• New tutorial event that warns against using a single family
• Diplomats can now be the Governor of any city

Programming

• Performance improvements
• AI no longer builds so many forts and defends them more
• AI water control improvements
• AI knows to use anchored boats as a shortcut for its units, even if the two land points being bridged are on the same land mass.
• If you steal a city site from the AI, it will won’t hold back from stealing one of yours

UI

• New network system enabled. This adds support for LAN games and should improve network game stability.
• Added Portuguese to available languages
• New World Map icon added
• Added a Random Ruins button to map editor
• Updated Modio logos
• Changed agent selection from click to ctrl+click to be consistent with governor selection behavior
• Include agent’s city in idle agent reminders
• Foreign characters no longer shown in mission target lists
• Inheritance screen now shows all branches that contain a character in the line of succession
• Added family archetype multipliers to their tooltips
• Steam Input improvements
• System time in the UI now takes timezone into account, relevant when the BIOS time is in UTC

Bug Fixes

• Miscellaneous event fixes and rebalancing
• Fixed worker button text wrapping incorrectly in some cases
• Fixed AI threading issue
• Fixed nested link issue for some characters in turn summary text
• Fixed border expansion/yield previews sometimes not clearing after starting a build
• Fixed context buttons for some missions with own leader selected
• Fixed modal decision undo/redo
• Fixed trade network bug
• Fixed issues causing replay data to be discarded unnecessarily
• Fixed options reset not saving default hotkeys
• Fixed turn being skipped after turn timer is turned on
• Fixed breaking menu behavior between map editor/event browser
• City ownership change triggers an immediate mission check, in case it was being pacified, for example
• Fixed Learn to Play 5 event text and missing notification icon issues
• Fixed some cases where idle councilors wouldn’t have their position shown
• Fixed game restart fail when mods are loaded
• Fixed governor help text issues
• Expose agent mission text fixes
• Fix for choice_ tags not working when subject not found;
• Bones no longer appear on water
• Fixed AI bug of overestimating damage when multiple units are used in an attack
• Missing art for Free Longbowman and Worker traits added

 

[CornPlanter]

Discontent increase rate reduced by 4 on all difficulty levels.

Whoa thats huge. And I am not entirely sure it was necessary but oh well lets try it with new and happier people

Citizens now give -5 family opinion

What exactly does that mean? The bigger cities the lower family opinion? A bit weird if thats the case.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

What exactly does that mean? The bigger cities the lower family opinion? A bit weird if thats the case.

Only Citizens, not Population. Which means if you use the Citizen to train a Specialist, you can get rid of the -5 family opinion.

Whoa thats huge. And I am not entirely sure it was necessary but oh well lets try it with new and happier people

It's definitely big, even the devs admit that, and I'd argue it's not just not necessary but solves nothing and makes everything worse: discontent generation is still not zero at the start, and at that point all you have is festivals, which is still a noob trap that seriously hurts your nation's development if you fall for it, so in total there will probably no effect on complaints from new players; then there's the balancing part: handling family opinion is super easy now, since the discontent from citizens is negligible; and then last but not least the added confusion with the new negative discontent, which is even worse for modders trying to wrap their head around the new tags and what they actually mean. (I might also really bad at accepting changes )

 

[CornPlanter]

Only Citizens, not Population. Which means if you use the Citizen to train a Specialist, you can get rid of the -5 family opinion.

So basically it's generated by jobless citizens. Makes sense

 

[Ita Bear]

Hello folks,

I can't help but repeat myself - UI and bug fixes are always welcome, but the constant flow of gameplay adjustments really upset one's experience of the game. Do the developers not have a vision of how challenging they want the game to be, or where this challenge should come from? These are really some heavy-changes to discontent, reminding me of the changes made to the slavery policy a while ago.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[uhu]

constant flow of gameplay adjustments really upset one's experience of the game. Do the developers not have a vision of how challenging they want the game to be, or where this challenge should come from? These are really some heavy-changes to discontent

Generally agree -- though I suspect, this time they'll find justification in the coming The Sacred and The Profane DLC ... "Negative religious opinion can lead to dissent in cities with the religion, which will have consequences and won’t be easy to remove."

 

[Solver]

A very coherent theory but that's not the case, the discontent change was not made for SAP.

 

[Forster]

I'm not sure if this is a result of the update, but the game sure seems to play differently. I try to stay from having multiple wars at the same time. Now, that seems to be almost impossible. The game I am in now, the vandals attacked me, then the thracians. Then I was given a choice between going to war with babylon or assyria. Since I still have not found babylon, chose them because I have a border with Assyria and had my hands full with the tribal wars. Then the barbs started coming, there were a bunch of camps to my north and had been concentrating on greece, my other neighbor. So I had my hands full and Assyria decides it is time to go to war with me. I am hanging on baarely, but I don't think I will be able to save this.

 

[InsidiousMage]

I feel like a better change to discontent would be to have the rate of increase scale with a city's culture level. It does make a lot of sense that a newly founded city should have the same rate of increase as a legendary city. I remember someone saying that discontent is supposed to represent the quality of life expectations of your citizens and the current system doesn't really make sense to me in that regard as I feel people living in more magnificent cities would have higher expectations, in that regard.

 

[CornPlanter]

I'm not sure if this is a result of the update, but the game sure seems to play differently. I try to stay from having multiple wars at the same time. Now, that seems to be almost impossible. The game I am in now, the vandals attacked me, then the thracians. Then I was given a choice between going to war with babylon or assyria. Since I still have not found babylon, chose them because I have a border with Assyria and had my hands full with the tribal wars. Then the barbs started coming, there were a bunch of camps to my north and had been concentrating on greece, my other neighbor. So I had my hands full and Assyria decides it is time to go to war with me. I am hanging on baarely, but I don't think I will be able to save this.

What difficulty level was this?

 

[CornPlanter]

as I feel people living in more magnificent cities would have higher expectations, in that regard.

People in larger established cities have higher expectations but they also have higher life quality, like better houses, maybe better shopping, and so on. So it cancels out and that's why rate of increase is the same for any city of any cultural level.

When such complicated social issues are represented in such simple abstract way as (un)happiness meter, there's little point criticizing it, you can always explain that symbolic abstract representation in a way that it would or would not make sense.

 

[Dale]

Also the mental maths required by the player to estimate their own discontent, would result in a bad thing for the game. So we kept to 1 rule, for the entire game.

 

[Forster]

What difficulty level was this?

The Good