I appreciate that the devs are working on HK and listen to the community; that way some of the complains I had with it have been solved. I also like that they now seem to have moved from Events/Community Challenges to releaseing actual scenarios repsectively allowing to reaps the benefits without having to do it in a certain timeframe.
So yes, I plan to give HK another chance at some point. If there wasn't Old World providing me exactly what I want from a 4X startegy game, it would have probably already happened. But it is hard to motivate me e.g. to play the new 100year-war scenario in HK, when I read the first feedback for it here, which
@Saxo Grammaticus sums up as "falls short in immersion" (
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...lenge-the-100-years-war.678512/#post-16321866 ), while I'm having a blast with Old Worlds Carthage campaign, involving a beautiful, detailed map and heavy storytelling right drawing me into the it, with a challenging AI constantly sitting in my neck. Yes, I was initially pretty enthusiastic about HK's combat system right after coming from Civ6, but after having tasted OW I realized that this was mainly because of Civ6 having setting the bar so low for years. A thing I don't like about HK is the simultaneous element in unit movement is has (discussed broadly here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/why-simultaneous-turns.677360/ ) - I'm not sure why it has be done this way, but none of the brought up possible explanations sells for me and having to alter my playstyle by using UI solutions like preplanned movment or hotkeys to minimize the impact of this isn't exactly fun either.
Humankinds economic model also felt short in comparison the last time I played it - it feels like your are on a race to bloat your yields up to the point of breaking it the game. If you suceed, you win easily and if not, you fall behind and stand no chance. One could argue that this is the fundamental nature of 4X games and yes, a certain snowballing effect is always in their nature. But my point is how all-or-nothing this feels in HK. Somehow like a puzzle you have to solve and not like a strategy game, where a sum of smaller or bigger meaningful decisions matters. An example are ressources (which have a one-time cost to pruchse, but are delived per turn) - startegics have no stockpile and who has them is highly RNG dependent. Don't have access and you are out. For luxuries, you get the stability to gain even for importing 10 times the same ressource, while their special effects range from game breaking to insignificant. The district/improvment adjacency/terrain game HK shares with both Civ6 and OW here leads huge urbanized areas with the same districts building close to each other to maxime yields. Maybe a personal thing, but I just don't like the result I get (even if there some fun in playing the minigame itself
). I also concede that some observations here might be outdated, as I haven't played since the last updates (but the economic side of HK wasn't change that much, right?) - but it is just not as fun as managing the economy in Old World, where you employ specialists, barter ressources over market, assign governors suited for the city or decide whether you sustainably harvest a ressource tile (to come back later to do it again) or clear it finally for the double amount of wood. To sum it up, its how your actions go in hand with immersion - in HK, I often have the feeling that I have to do things (and do them in a certain way) to play the game correct in terms of the necessary min-maxing - even if this means e.g. planting trees in artic regions:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/1-0-3-253-forest-can-be-planted-on-ice.673624/
So at least for the moment, I'm just watching HK's further development and wish for its best, but if I'm playing its OW.
