The Old World, a new Civ-like from Soren Johnson

[crazy canuck]

If you go to the in game wiki thingie, click on religions and then hover over each one to see what is needed to found it.  Also remember that if you have Egypt or, iirc, Persia in your game, they can instantly found a world religion when their clerical family founds a city.

[Jacob]

Yeah, my first playthroughs have been with Persia and if I use the Clerical family I get Zoroastrianism when I found my first city.

What I'm less clear on is how the different religions interact and how to manage them.... In due time, I guess.

[Jacob]

Having a leader with Orator is really useful when rolling over tribes.

[FunkMonk]

Any folks interested in a possible cloud-based MP game in the future? More convenient than a network game for everyone, I'd think.

[Berkut]

This is pretty overwhelming praise. Is it really this good (and I should go pay full price for it) or are people just that desperate for something that doesn't suck?

[FunkMonk]

Not gonna tell you what to do with your money, but yeah I think it's pretty good.

[Berkut]

Languish praise plus potential multi-player carries a lot of weight for me...

[Jacob]

This is pretty overwhelming praise. Is it really this good (and I should go pay full price for it) or are people just that desperate for something that doesn't suck?

I got it a few days ago based on the chatter in this thread. I got it a small discount, but would not have regretted paying full price. I have no doubt I'll reach my "at least 1 hour played per CDN$1 paid" benchmark for "good purchase". Thought to be fair, I was hungry for something that didn't suck in this space.

I'm still in my first real play through on easy mode, finally getting the hang of the mechanics, learning by trial and error. My mini review:

- The UI can be a bit opaque, but it's not awful.
- I had a hard time just playing and learning, I did end up doing the "learn to play" scenarios and that helped.
- The leader & court & decisions mechanics are not CK level of depth, but they do add both RP and strategic interest.
- There are enough resources, buildings, units, terrain, and tech to add real strategic and contextual depth.
- Having a limited number of orders you can give - and orders being a resource you can farm based on buildings and other choices - keeps most turns interesting. There's almost always more to do than you can, so you have to prioritize. If you want to fight multi-front wars effectively, you'll probably have to neglect your economic development for a bit, for example.
- Other unique mechanics that I'm enjoying include having multiple families within your empire that you have to balance, upgrading units, and assigning governors & generals.
- The battles are, so far, interesting and it feels like the tactical decisions being made matter.
- There's an undo button, which is nice (and I expect that using it effectively is going to be a key skill in MP).

One of the guiding principles seems to be that you have to take several actions to unlock most game actions. The most idiosyncratic (and kind of silly) one is that to play the score you have to research the music-related tech  .

More to the point, to give a luxury resource to a city (to lower discontent), to a noble family (to increase opinion), or to a foreign power (to increase opinion) you need to 1) Have the resource tile within the borders of a city, 2) Farm it (which takes time and may have a tech pre-req), 3) Build the relevant specialist in the city within the city (which has a population pre-req, which may have a tech pre-req, and which also takes time in your build queue), 4) And finally give it to the target (which takes a bit of your "order" resource for a turn). Each of these decisions have both a resource cost and a real opportunity cost, and still feels reasonable. These kind of decision chains are layered throughout, and generates a satisfying complexity from multiple competing priorities.

For the languish demographic, I think this game is likely to be a good purchase. I'm certainly enjoying it (much more than that last couple of civs).

[FunkMonk]

For all the wonderful 4X things this game does well, it has enough CK bones in it to make the game feel alive: playing Greece as an elderly Alexander the Great, my estranged sister just murdered my new heir like 20 years after I removed her from the line of succession, throwing my succession plans completely out of whack during my phony war with the Hittites.

Not long afterward, the Seleucid family head accidentally start a slave revolt across my empire, eventually leading to the death of the family head, a woman who hated my guys, and replacement by a new family head who absolutely loves me.

I'm presented with an event choice: Give the slaves their freedom (thereby forcing me to change my in-game law from Slavery to Freedom with the attendant gameplay changes) or allow a bunch of rebel units to spawn so I can crush them with my army.

My army is mostly stationed out on the frontier guarding against Hittite aggression and Carthaginian efforts to retake their old capital so I have only a few token defenses where the rebel units will spawn. I'd have to reposition half my army to kill these rebels, so that sucks. But because I'm feeling grateful they killed the old Selucid family head (whose animosity was hurting my family opinion stat with a third of the empire) I allow them their freedom. Fair fucks dudes, you did me a solid and I can keep warmongering on the edges of the empire. 

Cool game.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I wonder in which direction the game will expand in the longer term. I can see a few directions that might be interesting and a few others that haven't been successfully done in a 4x game (yet).

There's definately some place for some of the other cultures of the ancient world if you willing to travel to furthest reaches of Alexander's campaigns.

[Jacob]

I'm still learning, that's for sure.

I had my first victory recently, having figured out the basics more or less. Played another game. It was going really well (I thought). Then one neighbour demanded some tribute to not declare war and I told them to fuck off. Then another neighbour made an even more outrageous demand and I told them to fuck themselves too.

It was early enough that my economy hadn't taken off yet and I didn't quite have enough actions... nor did I have diplomacy to ask for peace.

Man, the AI likes to build up and just suddenly swarm you. And with two opponents doing it on the opposite end of the map it didn't work out too great for me. If I'd had unlimited actions per turn, I might have pulled it off... but I didn't.

Didn't help I was on an open plain. At first I was excited about it (I can build chariots and race them to whatever border needs help! Flexibility!). Unfortunately, it meant there were no choke points to stem the advancing tides in any directions and then defeat in detail

Still figuring out the right balance of resources, infrastructure, military build up, and aggressive land grab.

[crazy canuck]

I am finding that in the early game get farmers, so then you can get a bunch of stone cutters - the stone cutters give civil development points in the city which in turn lets you build forums (and other infrastructure) more quickly.  The Forums then give you more action points.

At least that is my strategy with Egypt, which is becoming my favourite - by about turn 40 my eco is booming and I have at least two cities that can pump out military units - then, if my neighbours are behaving themselves I can take out the tribes, or fight a war with belligerent neighbours.

I really love this game.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

got my ass handed to me by the Carthaginians (playing as Rome...).
Let's say that the AI's performance was better than that of the Russians.

[Jacob]

Yeah the Cartaghinians figured in my beatdown as well. Maybe I'll try playing them....

[crazy canuck]

I found playing Carthage focusing on trading was easy mode.  Very powerful, buy all the resources you need and focus on building the stuff you can't buy.