What future content would you like to see for Old World?

[Ita Bear]

Hello folks,

Normally I dislike talking about a game's future content (and I especially loathe the term 'DLC'!) but, in what is becomingly increasingly rare amongst strategy games, I feel Old World offers a complete, satisfying package on release. As such, I'm excited to think about what could be added in the future. As I remember the bright and sunny days before 'DLC' tainted our world forever, I do hope Old World takes the more substantial expansion pack approach, rather than selling individual civilisations for absurd prices. I think some additional content for the game is obvious:

A time expansion, perhaps going into late antiquity/very early medieval eras. Could be used to introduce aggressive, migratory tribes like the Huns and the Vandals that can topple entire empires.
Extra civilisations, going further east being the obvious choice. I am sure there could be some nice additions to the game from Japan, China or the subcontinent, which were very active regions during the game's time period.
Deeper character management. While the characters add an interesting dimension, I would like to see it taken further. I'd like to see personality traits better represented which can dynamically affect gameplay as at the moment it feels a little static. Diseases, also, which I would like to see come added with a health mechanic for cities, taking into account surrounding geography, availability of water and buildings in a city.

What would you like to see in the game later on?

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[rlw33]

Things i'd like to see (in no particular order):
Mesoamerican civs (although, admittedly, a lot of them are probably too late for the time period in OW).
An expansion pack that extends the game into the middle ages.
Builders having a "Build road to..." option.
Scouts being able to autoexplore from the beginning of the game rather than with Navigation.
More visually impressive natural world wonders (the OW landmarks just look like regular map areas to me).

 

[Ita Bear]

Things i'd like to see (in no particular order):
Mesoamerican civs (although, admittedly, a lot of them are probably too late for the time period in OW).
An expansion pack that extends the game into the middle ages.
Builders having a "Build road to..." option.
Scouts being able to autoexplore from the beginning of the game rather than with Navigation.
More visually impressive natural world wonders (the OW landmarks just look like regular map areas to me).

Hello @rlw33
Regarding builders, that functionality already exists. If you select the builder, click build road, then press (if memory serves) CTRL + R, you can choose a point where you want your builders to road to. Saves you having to do it every single turn.
I strongly agree regarding scouts being able to autoexplore; add automating workers to the list as well. I'm really not sure why these functions are tied to technologies other than to annoy.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Dale]

Scouts and workers not being automated from the start is deliberate. A lot of the early game is about individual choices for your scout and worker. Do you harvest that elephant? Scout up the mountain range to pop a landmark? Follow that nation's border? Do you focus on nets and farms for settlers? Mines for iron for warriors? Chop trees?

During pre-EA we found the early game would become end turn end turn end turn and that's no fun.

 

[Ita Bear]

Scouts and workers not being automated from the start is deliberate. A lot of the early game is about individual choices for your scout and worker. Do you harvest that elephant? Scout up the mountain range to pop a landmark? Follow that nation's border? Do you focus on nets and farms for settlers? Mines for iron for warriors? Chop trees?

During pre-EA we found the early game would become end turn end turn end turn and that's no fun.

Hello Dale

But surely there's no downside to giving the player a choice? I would for sure manually control my scouts until I was happy with my surroundings, but then having to research a technology to automate them is rather unintuitive and a waste of time. I would like to decide for myself when I deem it worthy to automate my scouts, not when I am able to research a technology that will semi-randomly appear.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Dale]

Hello Dale

But surely there's no downside to giving the player a choice? I would for sure manually control my scouts until I was happy with my surroundings, but then having to research a technology to automate them is rather unintuitive and a waste of time. I would like to decide for myself when I deem it worthy to automate my scouts, not when I am able to research a technology that will semi-randomly appear.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

Here you go, Automation from the Start as a mod.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-how-to-demo-automation-from-the-start.672293/

 

[Ita Bear]

Now that's what I call service!

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Ribannah]

I expect more civilizations to choose from like Nubia, Sheba, and Lydia. Also lots of premade maps and scenario's, including one featuring Atlantis.

 

[rlw33]

Here you go, Automation from the Start as a mod.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-how-to-demo-automation-from-the-start.672293/

My man. Awesome.

 

[Stringer1313]

I'm hesitant about expanding beyond mesoamerica and time period. This is what makes it Old World. I don't want it to become Civ. I want the systems to be very focused. I would much rather they devote resources to enriching the existing stuff or adding more layers of depth. I do not want OW to go down the Civ road of garbage dumping more and more civs and techs endlessly thinking that makes the game better (which it CAN), but those same time resources is better spent on existing stuff. For me, the "existing stuff" to deepen is the personal relationships you build.

The challenge of this game is that there are so many characters and so many traits that it can hard for me to become attached to people - right now, the only people I grow attached to are my current ruler and my heir, and maybe one killer general/courtier. I love that there are so many personality traits but having so many can be tough to build a clear archetype in your head of the kind of person they are.

I don't have a brilliant solution to this (I love that there are so many chars and personality traits), other than adding 1000000 random events that are keyed in to more than one trait, i.e., when someone has BOTH trait A and B (two personality traits, or one personality trait plus whatever office the person is holding), and adding more chained events. So for instance right now i don't care what archetype a council member has b/c it doesn't seem to matter , but events about ambassadors that are commanders (or whatever) would be pretty good.

Another idea is just adding more unique actions/abilities not just tailored to archetypes as is currently, but also tailored to personality traits. So a "Romantic" person can get a second spouse, or a "Bitter" person can divorce someone without consequence, an "Insane" person can roll the dice and increase their military unit's power by X or lower it by X for that year, etc. And maybe even some unique abilities tailored to archetype/personality + office held - - so that only X kinds of ambassadors can do certain things.

EDIT: Also re tech tree, i have never come close to reaching the end of it, and i am currently very satisfied with the tech pacing right now. If more techs are added, then the techs will speed by more quickly and i definitely don't want to do that.

 

[Taefin]

Totally agree that I don’t want any further tech advancement. The game works well having multiple tiers of units that generally coexist throughout the game. It also puts a nice upper limit on what rushing science can achieve.

I could imagine a rework of how unique units are obtained, though maybe it’s as simple as increasing the strong culture threshold. I feel I get the 8 strength unique (assuming I have sovereignty) long before other comparable units, though upgrading my entire army is still well worth the effort.

For new content, I want to see more diplomatic options for resolving a war. As it stands, conquering another empire is not usually that helpful, aside from extra VP and meeting ambitions. The new cities take forever to get online, and you don’t need more than 5 cities to have more workers churning out rural improvements than you have orders for, at least not if you have the military to get them in the first place. Currently a big war of expansion puts my games in a place where a path to victory opens up militarily, where I get the conquered cities to developing for 2VP each and then conquer a few more cities to win. Therefore, I never need to pivot from conquest to massive development, where I might turn all orders into workers and rushing projects. There’s also nothing expensive enough to warrant this.

Therefore I’d like to see something akin to a vassal/tribute system, where you want to conquer much/most of an AI empires cities to extract a good tribute arrangement but where the AI keeps and manages most of its cities (perhaps vassal cities’ VP could be shared with the conqueror). Basically, I’d like to meet conquest ambitions and have the fun of warfare, but conquered cities are such a drag on the economy and family opinion (and orders/micromanagement time—I’ve started just running festival in them) and take AI empires out of the game.

Not that there is an obvious way to implement this, but until the AI develops their cities more, conquest is important, but usually only for ambitions and VP.

Or add an option to play for more ambitions. A 15-ambition game with more successfully developing AI could lead to more fulfilling games that go closer to T200. Then you’d have time to pivot from conquest to development, getting the new cities online and up to strong culture. At this point, it might help to allow the player to buy VP to reward growing such a large economy. This might be a fun option, but I suspect it would lead to more tedium toward an obvious outcome that the design team has expressly tried to avoid (for which I am most grateful!!).

Or short of this (since these might not be productive ideas) some way of retaining the original culture/people of the cities you conquer, akin to how Egypt changes hands so many times while remaining a distinct cultural force.

 

[PiR]

Will there ever be additionnal content?

https://twitter.com/SorenJohnson/status/1410599212429971456

Today, my five-year journey to re-invent 4X gaming with @LeylaCatJ and the rest of @mohawkgames ends. I am grateful to everyone who contributed to the project and look forward to seeing where the community takes it. Old World is finished!

 

[Silver Marmot]

I’d like to see a different starting leader option (+ family situation) for each civilization. It would open up a lot of new early game strategies and add more variety to games since you wouldn’t be facing off against the same leaders for the first 50 turns.

I think there’s a mod that randomizes starting leaders but what I want is thoughtfully-developed options for each civ that offer strong synergies, like the current starting leaders.

 

[Solver]

Will there ever be additionnal content?

https://twitter.com/SorenJohnson/status/1410599212429971456

That was definitely not meant to imply there'd be no future content.

 

[Dale]

Will there ever be additionnal content?

https://twitter.com/SorenJohnson/status/1410599212429971456

I suspect that may mean HIS journey with Old World is at an end...... but there are other people who work at Mohawk who's journeys are just getting to the good bit.

 

[Dale]

I’d like to see a different starting leader option (+ family situation) for each civilization. It would open up a lot of new early game strategies and add more variety to games since you wouldn’t be facing off against the same leaders for the first 50 turns.

I think there’s a mod that randomizes starting leaders but what I want is thoughtfully-developed options for each civ that offer strong synergies, like the current starting leaders.

In Advanced starting options you can randomise leaders and randomise families for infinite configurations.

 

[Silver Marmot]

I didn’t realize randomizing leaders was in the options!

By families I had meant the starting relatives eg Romulus/Remus, not the four families for cities, though I see how that would be confusing. Basically I would at some point in the future like an additional “official” starting leader (and relatives) for each civ.

 

[Dale]

I didn’t realize randomizing leaders was in the options!

By families I had meant the starting relatives eg Romulus/Remus, not the four families for cities, though I see how that would be confusing. Basically I would at some point in the future like an additional “official” starting leader (and relatives) for each civ.

Ahh gotcha. Yeah, randomise leaders only changes the founding leader of the nation, it doesn't present a new family tree. I'll ask Soren about it, maybe we can add something in.

 

[Ranbir]

What I'd like to see is just everything getting bigger. More world to explore/conquer. More events, more character sagas, more empires! I'm already vibin' on a map that could stretch from the Med all the way to East Asia.

And something I'm always bonkers for, factional play that is city-less; roamers.

 

[Silver Marmot]

Thanks Dale! The new leaders idea was just something I thought would be nice in the next weeks/months to introduce more options and variety without requiring a major undertaking (though new civs would of course be welcome too!). I think the judge, orator, and schemer archetypes aren't currently used for any founders. Maybe a Hammurabi/judge could work for Babylon.