Old World update #92

[The_J]

https://mohawkgames.com/2022/06/16/old-world-update-92/
New update is out!

Highlighted Changes:

Design

• Doubled positive religion opinion from Holy Sites
• Iconography: +20 Money per Temple, Enlightenment: -2 Discontent per Elder Monk, Gnosticism: +1 Science per Urban Specialist
• Vassalage: No Unit Consumption Outside Borders
• Slavery: +20% to Mines/Quarries, +1 Discontent
• Serfdom: +5 Orders per turn
• Centralization: +2 Science per culture level
• Assyrian UUs now get a +50% attack bonus vs. Forts
• Added Food to most unit consumption
• Dealmaker has been renamed Cunning
• Family Heads can now marry and have kids
• Added Bisexual trait
• Can now change Generals without removing them first
• Can “Buy Tiles” between adjacent cities (restricted to unimproved tiles)
• Increased frequency of some events

UI

• Improvements to the MP Lobby
• Improvements to tooltips
• Improvements to fonts
• General’s portrait and name now shows in unit selection panel
• Attack preview bonuses are now color-coded

Addressed Issues:

• Fixed various minor typos
• Carthage IV: fixed issue with ambassador
• LTP2: fixed issues that created issues with goals
• Fixed minor errors which occur on shutdown
• Added Peace/Truce missions for No Characters
• Scenario character portraits will show up in Hall of Fame
• Fixed issue where dowries weren’t always being paid
• Removed Underwater Trees in Deadsea Duels Map
• Various fixes to Greek Campaign
• Fixed issue with “Alexander the Who” Achievement
• Fixed bug where Workshop mods weren’t being unsubscribed on uninstall

Full list:
https://gist.github.com/MohawkGames/09b854c59e192f6f5df660d566c25e75

Spoiler :

Main Branch: Old World Version 1.0.61025 Main 06/16/2022

Design
Bonuses which give Ambitions now have help text with Role Playing mode on
Added "No Ancient Ruins" game option and "Competitive" game option preset
Doubled positive religion opinion from Holy Sites
Iconography: +20 Money per Temple, Enlightenment: -2 Discontent per Elder Monk, Gnosticism: +1 Science per Urban Specialist
Vassalage: No Unit Consumption Outside Borders
Slavery: +20% to Mines/Quarries, +1 Discontent
Serfdom: +5 Orders per turn
Centralization: +2 Science per culture level
Assyrian UUs now get a +50% attack bonus vs. Forts
Add Food to most unit consumption
Leaders who get Excluded trait now abdicate, Characters leaving a nation now divorce their spouse(s)
Increased per-city production increase for Settlers, Workers, and Disciples
Dealmaker has been renamed Cunning
Family Heads can now marry and have kids
Automatic marriages will only occur after the character is 20
Added Bisexual trait
Can now change Generals without removing them first
Returned Scouts from Agent Network will be closer to where they started the Network
Agents get an opinion bonus when assigned
Can now no longer ask a Tribe in an Alliance to declare war on another player
Releasing a Governor no longer costs Civics
Can "Buy Tiles" between adjacent cities (restricted to unimproved tiles)
Naval units do counter damage against each other
Seaside maps always have two purely water sides
Continent Map has been improved
AI no longer recommends that you replace an existing tile improvement
In Competitive Mode, can only Gift City to your own team or the team which founded the city
Competitive mode now cuts global yields from characters by half but gives some base global science, training, civics, and money yields.
No longer possible for non-host player to change turn style and turn timer using keyboard shortcuts
Improvements to the Stats screen
MP: When a MP game is over or surrendered and the map is revealed, the city screen for any city is available
Adjusted placement of some goals
Adjusted frequency of some events
Added more conditions where "Assassinate another Leader" achievement can be met
MP: It is now possible to play Scenario 6 of the "Heroes of the Aegean" Campaign as a multiplayer game

UI
Improvements to the MP Lobby
Improvements to tooltips
Improvements to fonts
Use ellipsis if player/nation name are too long for foreign city widget
Improved clarity some icons
8 leaders now display on nation-selection screen
General's portrait and name now shows in unit selection panel
Attack preview bonuses are now color-coded
Selecting Learn to Play from the main menu (once again) pre-selects the latest uncompleted LTP scenario on the scenario screen
Adjustments to the location of some tooltips
Added Silver icon for tutor events
Updated "pick later" icon in nation select screen
Added hotkey (Ctrl+X) for Network host to turn off replay data

Programming
Improvements to terrain system
Mods - Game will now install mods subscribed from Steam client workshop

Art
Fixed some Hittite portraits that were not appearing
Fixed Greek adult portrait that appeared too old
Updated unit portrait for Three Man Chariot
Updated some Hittite portraits
New Historical Portrait for Heroes of the Aegean
Mardonius
Added team color to certain improvements
Mine
Quarry
Farm
The Hanging Gardens
The Necropolis
Colossus
Pyramids
Hagia Sophia
Ishtar Gate
The Oracle
Lighthouse
Pantheon
Apadana
Circus Maximus
Mausoleum
Acropolis

Localization
Improvements to localized text

Addressed Issues:
Fixed various minor typos
Carthage IV: fixed issue with ambassador
LTP2: fixed issues that created issues with goals
Fixed minor errors which occur on shutdown
Added Peace/Truce missions for No Characters
Scenario character portraits will show up in Hall of Fame
Fixed Tribal courtiers having duplicated traits
Fixed issue where dowries weren't always being paid
Can no longer use undo multiple times to receive different promotions for units
Siege weapons no longer show up on danger overlay unless they are unlimbered
Removed redundant job text from character tooltip
Mounted bonus on clear terrain is still in effect if the improvement is unfinished
Boundary tiles no longer affect the minimap visible area
Removed Underwater Trees in Deadsea Duels Map
Fixed UI interface for city luxury buttons
Fixes to Greek Campaign
Fixed character popup sticking when opened via text link
Fixed children with divorced spouses sometimes not showing on inheritance screen
fixed reminders not updating after council assignment
Fixed issue with "Alexander the Who" Achievement
Fixed city cycling hotkeys cycling in the wrong direction
Fixed bug where Workshop mods weren't being unsubscribed on uninstall

Additional Fixes:
Fixed issue where events with female characters were using he/him pronouns
Fixed advanced settings being used with a fresh options file
Fixed issue with vegetation and terrain displaying incorrectly
Fix to dead leaders abdicating
Fixes to owned tile purchase action
Improvement made to Hittite family tree succession
Fixed issue where Mausoleum was raising to the heavens
Fixed issue with Greece 1 achievement
Test Branch: Old World Version 1.0.60823 Test 06/08/2022

 

[steveg700]

Major update! I gotta find time to start a new game this weekend. Happy Juneteenth I guess.

Having said that, let me leap to some conclusions:

• Can “Buy Tiles” between adjacent cities (restricted to unimproved tiles)
  LOVE IT!
• Centralization: +2 Science per culture level
  WANT IT!
• Slavery: +20% to Mines/Quarries, +1 Discontent
  BLEH
• Doubled positive religion opinion from Holy Sites
  MAKES SENSE T'ME!
• Added Food to most unit consumption
  NEEDED, I THINK
• Dealmaker has been renamed Cunning
  WHY? It's more oblique as to its purpose

 

[Ita Bear]

The regular update cycle is much appreciated, but sometimes I wonder if the developers are tinkering for the sake of it. I think slavery worked perfectly before - the orders bonus from it made sense and was thematic and fit in with the developers' vision of starting with slavery before moving on to freedom. The extra discontent per city isn't worth the small bonus - just build an extra quarry. I also agree that Dealmaker was a better name for the trait than Cunning. What's cunning about sending trade carts and making trade deals? Strange decisions. I really wish the developers would use less time tinkering with mechanics and percentages and instead try to improve the cumbersome UI, especially when it comes to 1UPT.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[steveg700]

So like I said in another thread, if it was intended that slavery be the de facto choice, perhaps they might simply start civ's with slavery, and then maybe soon afterwards they get a prompt to make the choice of taking on freedom. Instead of gaining +4 orders, they're presented with the option to lose 4 orders. It's well-known fact that psychologically taking a loss is more painful than missing out on a gain.

 

[Quintillus]

This wound up being perfectly timed between my games. I loaded up the old one, and the bonuses have changed for it. E.g. it gets the +20% slavery bonus instead of the +4 orders. Kind of glad it happened to coincide with when I started a new game.

I pretty much agree with steveg700. I had very few farms my first game and was never building them after very early on since few things consumed food; in the post-update game, I was fairly consistently building farms, not at a huge rate but I needed a few more as time went on. I went with slavery both times, and I go through so much stone that I still needed that bonus till late. I wonder if the intent was to make orders a bit more scarce early? You can now get +5 from Serfdom, but it's a bit later on.

I also agree that at this point Dealmaker seems to make more sense than Cunning. Maybe as I play more and get more events for Cunning characters, the name change will make more sense.

 

[Solver]

The problem with Slavery was that it was the right pick close to 100% of the time. An early orders bonus is extremely valuable and for any kind of competitive or high difficulty play, Slavery was a no-brainer.

 

[PiR]

Wasn't it as well irl?

 

[InsidiousMage]

The problem with Slavery was that it was the right pick close to 100% of the time. An early orders bonus is extremely valuable and for any kind of competitive or high difficulty play, Slavery was a no-brainer.

I kind of feel like the change has moved things in the other direction though. Science is kind of limited in the early game and I've never had too many issues getting stone on the early game even if I have to sell and buy stuff to do so. I haven't started a new game with the changes but I feel like I'll be taking Freedom every time now unless I really, really need stone, which has yet to be an issue for me. The extra discontent doesn't seem worth it when I get some extra early science instead.

 

[Ita Bear]

The problem with Slavery was that it was the right pick close to 100% of the time. An early orders bonus is extremely valuable and for any kind of competitive or high difficulty play, Slavery was a no-brainer.

Hello Solver,
The problem now though is that slavery has been brutally nerfed into the ground and, as InsidiousMage points out, Freedom is now the clear choice in 95% of cases. I thought it was the developers' intention to have players start with Slavery in the early game and then transition to Freedom later on. What made you go back on this thinking?

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Solver]

Well the new slavery bonus is just a first iteration. We can always boost it if it seems too weak, which it currently might be.

And yes, the thinking was that slavery is more of an early game law and freedom is for later, but there should still be a choice. When every high-level player says they pick slavery as a non-decision, that's a problem.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Well the new slavery bonus is just a first iteration. We can always boost it if it seems too weak, which it currently might be.

Admittedly, I still consider myself to be learning the game with only 100(ish) hours of playtime but I feel like +1 discontent in all cities is a fairly high cost in the early game since you are rather limited in dealing with it until the mid game so the trade off needs to be worth it. Four additional orders per turn was probably a bit too high, to be fair, but some minor output increase in from a couple of types of improvements doesn't feel worth it. Maybe a slightly stronger generic boost to all rural improvements might work so you are choosing between being able to build more things or get to better techs faster. To me that feels like a better trade off because you aren't always going to be prioritizing the same law in every game and the choice itself would be more based on the situation in the game.

 

[steveg700]

Well the new slavery bonus is just a first iteration. We can always boost it if it seems too weak, which it currently might be.

And yes, the thinking was that slavery is more of an early game law and freedom is for later, but there should still be a choice. When every high-level player says they pick slavery as a non-decision, that's a problem.

Welp, I'd posit that slavery being the choice 100% of the time is pretty thematically appropriate to the ancient world. Which ancient *didn't* make that choice?

I think I already gave a good proposition.

Like I said, have the discontent from slavery ramp as cities gain coculture levels. And maybe freedom is a boost that conversely scales with them. And then maybe look at some events where cities have the combination of sophistication and misery fomenting revolt.

The problem now is, to me, that the benefit of Freedom is still distanced from when the law becomes available. I mean, how soon do players really start to pivot into urban specialists? A few shrines initially maybe, maybe barracks a while after?

 

[HiRezAudio]

Well the new slavery bonus is just a first iteration. We can always boost it if it seems too weak, which it currently might be.

And yes, the thinking was that slavery is more of an early game law and freedom is for later, but there should still be a choice. When every high-level player says they pick slavery as a non-decision, that's a problem.

It is now definitely way too weak.
Colour me cynical if you will, but dare I ask just how much of the slavery nerf was out of a desire to appease a certain section of society??

 

[Solver]

None whatsoever, really. Not that I've even seen such complaints but I probably know what you mean. It's a purely mechanical change because Slavery continued to be overpowered despite several iterations (adding a discontent penalty, decreasing the orders bonus from 5 to 4) so it was time to redo the law completely, or more precisely to move the orders law bonus later into the game. Slavery becomes available early in the game, potentially on turn 1, and orders are way too valuable to consider anything else then.

Interestingly, we can quite clearly see a disconnect in the data between "thematic" and "strategic" players. Freedom and Constitution, two laws that are clearly inferior for their effects, are very popular and our best guess is that people pick those for thematic reasons, as strategically Slavery and Tyranny are overwhelmingly better.

 

[Quintillus]

I'll counter those saying that Freedom is now better 95% of the time. I went Freedom this game, never having chosen it before, and what benefit has it given me? Almost nothing. I'm 63 turns in and have one urban specialist. No sages, so no benefit there. Some culture in Rome, but Rome would still be Developing without it, and Rome is mostly a Settler factory anyway.

An extra 20% stone though? I might've snagged the Pyramids with that. I'm seemingly always able to find uses for stone, and sure, I could buy it, but I need my money for settling Danish city sites. Not gonna get a Double victory if I don't build cities everywhere I can.

In my last game, the wonders I built with that 20% extra stone were what kept me in the running victory point wise. Eventually I did manage to take a couple of Carthage's cities and blow it open, but that wasn't a sure thing.

The extra discontent? It wasn't a significant problem in my last game. There was that one city that started having a few issues at discontent level 6, but I just parked a couple military units on its barracks. And I'd been neglecting building happiness buildings there. But thanks to the extra stone, I was able to build lots of odeons, theaters, and amphitheaters (and even a few baths) in my other cities, even while building wonders. Roads too.

Extra iron is just icing on the cake, although it did wind up being useful last game when I was training Macemen and other iron-intensive units.

That is interesting that the disconnect between "thematic" and "strategic" is evident. I've done the opposite on Tyrrany/Constitution though. Picking Constitution on the theory that the specialist gold will be higher because I have a lot of specialists and my military is (hopefully) mostly outside of my territory, particularly if I have Vassalage. Does it actually add up? No idea, but it sounds good in theory.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll counter those saying that Freedom is now better 95% of the time. I went Freedom this game, never having chosen it before, and what benefit has it given me? Almost nothing. I'm 63 turns in and have one urban specialist. No sages, so no benefit there. Some culture in Rome, but Rome would still be Developing without it, and Rome is mostly a Settler factory anyway.

An extra 20% stone though? I might've snagged the Pyramids with that. I'm seemingly always able to find uses for stone, and sure, I could buy it, but I need my money for settling Danish city sites. Not gonna get a Double victory if I don't build cities everywhere I can.

In my last game, the wonders I built with that 20% extra stone were what kept me in the running victory point wise. Eventually I did manage to take a couple of Carthage's cities and blow it open, but that wasn't a sure thing.

The extra discontent? It wasn't a significant problem in my last game. There was that one city that started having a few issues at discontent level 6, but I just parked a couple military units on its barracks. And I'd been neglecting building happiness buildings there. But thanks to the extra stone, I was able to build lots of odeons, theaters, and amphitheaters (and even a few baths) in my other cities, even while building wonders. Roads too.

Extra iron is just icing on the cake, although it did wind up being useful last game when I was training Macemen and other iron-intensive units.

That is interesting that the disconnect between "thematic" and "strategic" is evident. I've done the opposite on Tyrrany/Constitution though. Picking Constitution on the theory that the specialist gold will be higher because I have a lot of specialists and my military is (hopefully) mostly outside of my territory, particularly if I have Vassalage. Does it actually add up? No idea, but it sounds good in theory.

I will very much agree with all of this. I don't think slavery is poor compared to freedom, there are many games where slavery will give me greater benefit, but its no longer an obvious gimme. But the better question is.... is slavery/freedom worth going at all? Aka worth going the tech and investing the civics. That I think is a more slippery question, so far in my games, I have made the time to do it.... but is it REALLY worth it, not sure yet.