Based on the 45hrs I had already time to play this fine game, I also came to the conclusion that either the units move to fast or too many of them are needed.
In civ, I also hated it to move a whole army (late game) around the globe, not being able to move all at once (mark the ones you want to move and give them the collective order to move to the destination, like in rts games) is a pain in the ***, especially when one has to move unit by unit and half the way to its destination the unit "forgets" the order and asks again.
Now in Old World, this effect is even worse, because you have to move unit by unit and you have to do this every turn (units do not remember their orders a round ago) and you have to move waaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more units compared to civ.
I really like the game BUT please dear devs, add the described rts-feature (move all marked at once) or atleast being able to order a unit and it will reserve the needed order points year by year for its movement, so we dont have to gave order to the same moving unit year by year.
This click feast is almost to much for me, reduce the total of units needed to wage war, make them slower, bigger ZOC, less dmg more hp, more expensive or whatever but in this state its not so much fun as soon as you hit the (early)midgame.
Currently imo the game has to struggle with the same issues the last 2 civs with the one unit per hex rule also had when they were released. The so called carpet of doom.
Its not desireable to have this much units needed, that it basically blocks your whole territory.
What I like is the fact, caused by the limited orders per turn, no matter how big your or the opponents army is you/the enemy cant move all at once. So when you have a superior military in terms of stats, you could win a war even when the opponent has way more units and/or production power.
- Perhaps add an option with shackled AI for people who don't really want to engage on the type of combat challenge this game adds, but please don't change it for the rest of us. It's really great as it is (there are improvements to be made for sure, but the core idea works extremely well).
Hmm Im not in the same boat with you, especially the term "shakled" seems to imply that users which do not like this click feast arent able to fulfill the challenge (are dumb) and are in need to get the AI "shackled"
Also while options like the proposed one are always fine, they also seperate the playerbase into camps. Not to mention its an early access and Im very sure that this aspect will be revisited and shrinked down to a more "manageable" amount of units that could still be called an army.
Im also not so sure if the combat system, weilding very large armies, is so expected and given as you state, because the game at all, seems at its current state, to have no need for full sized wars. Because currently the diplomatics system is way to easy, in ALL of the difficulties its no problem to keep the nations that are most "dangerous" to you in a green cautionous or even friendly state. Also the amount of winning points needed, is imo currently to low. At a medium map with 6 opponets you have enough citys midgame to win without the need of more citys, depending on your starting location a war with a nation isnt even needed sometimes. So in some circumstances you just have to go for war when one of the opponents seems to outpass you in winning points (is snowballing).
As soon as you hit the midgame (explore and expand "finished") with lets say 6-8(10) citys your fine, not neccessarily to win but to defend, if this ever happens because of the easy diplomacy system and the cowardly AI that does not really rush at you (at least in my games so far)
Basically there is currently no real challenge, despite the fact that you have to fight against a giant blob of units or in the "old world" the infinite supply chain (as they arrive unit per unit at the battlefield), it just tooks patience.and an huge amount of units to kill as much units of the opponent per year as possible (because the ai is smart enough to retreat wounded units and replace it with fresh ones, which does not have much to counter (beside the amount of orderpoints), because if you sent fe. mounted units to destroy the wounded fleeing ones, you could be sure that this mounted ones are getting smashed by the opponents next turn)
Also Im missing advanced features like, flanking unit bonuses or rochade (chess cascade?!), softening of units by hitting them ranged first and second melee them, given the amount of units that are fielded, maybe a siege weapon with splash damage, land improvements that slows the enemy down etc.
Its fine that mounted units can attack twice, as long as the first attack killed an opponent unit and the next unit to attack is in direct adjacency. More features like this please!
So in the end, I would suspect to beeing far of knowing every trick and hint but its currently to easy and to click intensive aswell. You could say you are not really forced to "learn" more because the little bit I already know is enough to play and win even at the higher difficulties
The whole balancing of the resources, the creation of units, the movement speed of them, the little nifty combat "tricks" like flanking etc., the amount of winning points , to less "bad" events, missing ledgers for the progress of the opponets and so one, clearly SCREAMS early access!
my10Cents...
