Proposal for Improving Family Mechanics

[VanCrayden]

I love the game Old World and consider it the best among current 4X strategy games. I have plenty of experience to compare it with—I’ve played many hours in Civilization IV, V, VI, VII, Age of Wonders IV, Ara: History Untold, Humankind, and other strategies like Amplitude’s titles and Millenia. What I enjoy most about Old World is the intricate interplay of game mechanics, their beautiful and cohesive interaction—something no other strategy game offers. It creates a sense of a living, evolving world where everything is interconnected and one aspect influences another.

After numerous playthroughs, I’ve realized what’s missing for me and what slightly frustrates me. I try to role-play as characters from my nation and pay close attention to each game character—sometimes renaming them if I find a fitting name. I know who is whose son, brother, father, nephew. What bothers me is the family mechanic: characters sometimes appear out of nowhere and also disappear without explanation. We have a royal family tree, but I think it could be expanded.

My main suggestion for improving the game is to introduce three additional family trees for each great family—besides the royal lineage. Let families live on, marry, and have children just like in the royal family. This would make role-playing perfect. If a new character joins a family unexpectedly, there should be an event explaining who they are and why they were accepted into the noble family.

So, three family trees plus realistic marriages and childbirth—this is all I need for absolute happiness. I believe this would greatly enhance the role-playing aspect of the game and make it even more interesting overall.

 

[Verrucosus]

I have a lot of sympathy for this idea. As a simple answer to the occasional "Who on earth is that?" question, vassal family trees would definitely improve roleplay immersion. On the other hand I can understand the benefits of being somewhat unspecfic about vassal characters. If there were more details about them, the event system for example might need additional checks to avoid absurd events that can ruin immersion just as quickly as a detailed family tree helps to create it.

During an interview for his own podcast, the designer said that vassal family trees were removed on purpose because there was no reason to look at them.

"Initially, with Old World, I had way more characters than the game has now. Every family had its own family tree. There was the royal family tree, and then your champions would have their own family tree, and your landowners would have their family tree, and the clerics would have their family tree, and you could swap between them, and the number of characters would explode. Over time, you realise that there's no reason to really look at these other families. There were just too many characters, right?" (Designer Notes, Episode 67, at 27:45)

When I first listened to this, I thought: "Are you kidding? Of course, I'd look at them. I feel like I need to look at everything when I roleplay." Maybe that's a problem from the game's perspective because even now, the roleplay elements demand a lot of attention. My impression is that Old World does not attempt to offer perfect role-playing, but rather a really good balance between roleplay and strategy elements. If they'd made the roleplay even more detailed, that ingredient would become too strong for many people's taste. There's always the no-characters mode which is a really good, even purer strategy game in its own right, but which feels like half the game once you've begun to enjoy the character elements.

I still don't think that redundant information is necessarily bad. For example, the early Civilization games felt alive partly because of real-life population numbers for every city that had no gameplay effect (unlike the number of citizens they were derived from). However, knowing that the designers actually played the game with vassal trees and felt that it was too much, I suspect they made the right call in the context of the game what Old World wants to be.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'd go further and say I'd also like this information for tribes and competitor nations. The developers may be right and maybe this is information I'd rarely look at, i.e. low priority. But just having it available would enhance the immersion experience. And sometimes I'd like to be able to see who's likely to take over if a neighbouring tribal leader dies. Maybe having that much information would be unrealistic, so it could be locked behind setting up an agent in the tribe or some such.

As a tangent, I'm not sure if future DLCs are planned, but I'd like to see one focused on more immersive connection with tribes. The core of what's there right now is very good, but leaves me wanting more proactive ways to push relations with tribes and the ability to create more diverse long-term diplomatic relations.

 

[Dale]

I made a mod that adds all family's trees to that family tree screen.

Steam Workshop::Proper Family Trees

steamcommunity.com

 

[King Jason]

I'd go further and say I'd also like this information for tribes and competitor nations. The developers may be right and maybe this is information I'd rarely look at, i.e. low priority. But just having it available would enhance the immersion experience. And sometimes I'd like to be able to see who's likely to take over if a neighbouring tribal leader dies. Maybe having that much information would be unrealistic, so it could be locked behind setting up an agent in the tribe or some such.

As a tangent, I'm not sure if future DLCs are planned, but I'd like to see one focused on more immersive connection with tribes. The core of what's there right now is very good, but leaves me wanting more proactive ways to push relations with tribes and the ability to create more diverse long-term diplomatic relations.

The issue is often times these characters don't even exist. When a tribal leader dies, the character that replaces them is created immediately. OP is correct that characters seem to appear out of nowhere because exactly what's happening. The game randomly generates characters whenever there's a need for it. In some cases you get some extended characters, like the spouse or heir of a foreign ruler, but for the most part, the characters you can see directly in the game are the only ones that exist, and they come in randomly to fill the needs of the game .

 

[itix]

So there is no really family tree and none from my nation can marry to another nation/tribe? It could be interesting if some vengeful character from my nation married to another nation.

 

[VanCrayden]

I made a mod that adds all family's trees to that family tree screen.

Unfortunately, your mod doesn't work correctly. From the very first moves, my leader keeps trying to get married endlessly. I suspect that a major official expansion focused on families is needed here. I would buy such an expansion, and now I can only hope that it will be released.

 

[Dale]

Unfortunately, your mod doesn't work correctly. From the very first moves, my leader keeps trying to get married endlessly. I suspect that a major official expansion focused on families is needed here. I would buy such an expansion, and now I can only hope that it will be released.

Ahh..... I probably have to update the mod to the latest Main release this week. Sorry about that. I should have time Monday-Tuesday to update, I'll post here when it is.

There will unfortunately be no official expansion for families, it just isn't going to happen. A mod made/updated by an Old World dev is as close to official as it'll get.

 

[uhu]

I'll post here when it is.

I recently toyed around on engaging-data.com/country-centered-map-projections and just want to share my draft for an alternate mediterranean map ...

Spoiler :