Old World, from the designer of Civ4

[Syt]

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/old-world/home

Conquer the Old World in this historical, epic strategy game from Soren Johnson, Lead Designer of Civilization IV and Offworld Trading Company. Every year is a turn, and each leader is a mere mortal, so your lasting legacy will be the dynasty you leave behind.

Orders
Orders are a resource used to issue commands across your nation. Instead of moving every unit every turn, as is traditional in 4X games, each unit can be moved as many times as desired, until the player runs out of Orders. There are many other ways to spend this resource: Combat, Construction, Events, Diplomacy, and so on.

Legitimacy
Each ruler must prove that they are worthy of the throne. As you accomplish Ambitions, finish Wonders, and gain renown (as "the Wise" or "the Avenger" or "the Peacemaker"), your Legitimacy increases, granting additional Orders each year and improving your standing with the people.

Succession
Every turn in Old World represents a year, and the rulers are mortals who won't last forever. They will need to get married and produce an heir to continue their line. When a ruler dies, the heir who takes the throne chooses a new Ambition to make a new name for him/herself.

Events
Old World has a powerful and deep dynamic event system that generates a procedural story for your nation based on your decisions, your accomplishments, and your characters. The game has over 1,000 unique events, many of which are inspired by historical events from the period. These events give characters Memories, Traits, and Relationships, which can then trigger later events, so be careful what you choose.

Ambitions
Your dynasty achieves victory by fulfilling 10 Ambitions, each one more difficult than the last. These Ambitions are dynamically generated from the Events of your game and the desires of your Characters. No two games will ever play out the same way, and the wise ruler will know when to change direction.

Territories
Cities form cohesive blocks of territory, with an urban center and rural hinterlands. Each improvement occupies a single tile, including Wonders and urban buildings, such as Shrines, Amphitheaters, and Garrisons. This territory grows based on where the player constructs improvements and trains specialists on the map.

Previews:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-nations-and-annoy-kings-in-old-world-the-new-4x-from-civ-4s-soren-johnson/
https://www.pcgamer.com/old-world-4x-preview/

AFAICT the civs are:
Greece (Philip II)
Egypt (Hatshepsut)
Carthage (Dido)
Babylonia (Nebuchadnezzar)
Rome (Romulus)
Persia (Cyrus)
Assyria (Ashurbanipal)

A bit of a weird spread of civs who had their peaks millennia apart from each other. Also, mix of real and legendary leaders ... who will die anyways, so they're only there temporarily, anyways?

[fromtia]

There's an Old World thread already.  I'm also pretty excited about this game and will be playing for sure!

[garbon]

Did the rps writer really get these breathless when talking about events?

Some are one-offs, presenting a simple trade-off between one benefit and another, while others will set in motion chains of event that will affect your empire for generations. And they'll affect your character, too. If you keep taking an inquisitive, non-violent approach to problems, for example, you might earn the cognomen "the Scholar", and your ambition might become to create a certain number of libraries or the like. And while it's all tied into Old World's meticulous bean-counting base layer of resource management, the event system manages to evoke a robust sense of storytelling with the lasting nature of its consequences.

[Syt]

Well, it's not exactly a common thing in 4X games, these days.

[Syt]

There's an Old World thread already. 

Oops.

[Tamas]

Can I have an early impressions report on this ASAP?

KTHXBYE

[Grey Fox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r-T3sIto8o

Quill18's playing it.

I'll watch it, maybe report.

[Tamas]

You guys are slow, I have bought it.


I am not yet sure what to think. It wants to be less abstract than Civ, but also very streamlined and boardgamey, which is pretty cool but doesn't make it easier to add the chrome they seem to want to add.

One thing I struggle with I guess is that because it looks like Civ I am playing it by standard motor reflexes, but it is not like Civ. It is quite possibly better than Civ, perhaps even far better than Civ, but the lack of guide on how the systems work makes that an unknown for me for now.

So there's tons of potential there, but I can't yet place it on the range between greatness and a dud.

[Josquius]

Civ 4 was good... but Off World Trading Co...bleh.

[DGuller]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r-T3sIto8o

Quill18's playing it.

I'll watch it, maybe report.

I tried watching it, but I can never git into Quill's videos.  He just seems to be so incredibly slow and a little too clueless.  I'm surprised Marbozir hasn't posted any videos yet about this game.

[Syt]

Ugh, can't stand Marbozir. Not since I watched him in a game of Talisman where after a spell of bad luck he just kept whining and bitching and wanting to quit. The other players tried to cheer him up, but he was just pissed and triggered for the rest of the series.

[Tamas]

I got pretty hooked on it last night, so there's definitely potential.

One nice thing is how your main source of victory points (on my current difficulty level / settings players need 32) are "ambitions", things like killing X units, researching X techs, nothing unique but you get new ambitions from a list informed by your ruler's traits, so the direction of how you develop your country is really informed by your rulers and their personalities.

Which is all the better because I am having some doubts about replayability. I mean, one new thing I had to get used to is that your production buildings are all built as on-map improvements. Which is kinda' cool, but the restrictions on what can be built on what terrain type seem quite lax so I am not sure there's a real incentive to specialise cities for example. I mean, in my current game I have a city close to a mountain range so I ended it up being my stone quarry city, but if I'd face a danger of losing the city I'd be in real trouble. It feels like I might as well just have spread production among all my cities for safety. Then again maybe on higher difficulty levels (I am playing one of the middle ones and to be fair I am in the bottom half of the VP track) or in multiplayer you must specialise to optimise building times of production and production-bonus giving buildings.

But right now I wonder just how different one game will feel from the other.

[DGuller]

Ugh, can't stand Marbozir. Not since I watched him in a game of Talisman where after a spell of bad luck he just kept whining and bitching and wanting to quit. The other players tried to cheer him up, but he was just pissed and triggered for the rest of the series.

He definitely sucks on streams, probably because he can't save scum quietly, and that always hits his ego.  However, when it comes to introducing new games, I find his LPs to be one of the best, because they let you know what the game is about very efficiently.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm enjoying this game so far. At the moment I'm still trying to understand the various ways of optimising production..........there is a risk that once I do understand that then i will lose interest 

[Sheilbh]

Where do you get this game?