Humankind/Old World game?

[Sullla]

I would second Yuris' opinion which is something that I discovered as well at a very early date in Old World's testing: the gameplay cannot handle multi-front wars. You're always sinking all of your orders each turn into pushing units up to the front lines and if a new attacker appears from a different direction, well, you usually just die because there aren't sufficient orders to handle the threat. From the limited MP games that I've seen, Old World really has to be played with two teams contesting over a single front. And it works great in that setup! But it falls apart in a Free For All setting which is a major reason why it hasn't caught on here for Single Player stuff.

[Krill]

Question: Can Old World handle multifronm wars in a pre-set teamer ie 4v4 set up as 2v2v2v2 layout? Or does this lead to the usual "Simple miscalculation causes disproporionate losses" scenario (which I see happening quite quickly in a teamer TBH).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So, ideally we'd get 6 players, and perhaps a 3 v 3, or, if Krill's suggestion is viable, a 2 v 2 v 2?

[Banzailizard]

If we are doing this I would rather buy it while it is on sale. Dlc necessary?

[Speaker]

Not a sign up.

It would be good to watch an Old World PBEM. I know a couple of posters here were part of the closed beta but not sure how invited they were (for transparency I signed up but then Covid hit and I had no free time to even read the beta forum).

A few of us were pretty heavily involved in testing early builds of 10 Crowns aka Old World!  It was a pretty fun game. Admittedly, I never tried MP. I was doing most of my testing before there was much of an MP setup. Once I had figured out the formula to consistently beat the game on the highest difficulty level, and was able to do so as a one-city challenge, I finished giving feedback and moved on to Civ6.

[Speaker]

I have played humankind and enjoyed it but the trend here seems to be for old world.  I have not played that yet but might be willing to give it a shot.  I think I would need to research it /play it a bit first.

Soren Johnson (Civ4 lead) runs the studio that made Old World.  And Sirian (long-time Realms Beyond member) was one of the main developers.  They are why I sunk a ton of unpaid time into QA testing.

[yuris125]

If we are doing this I would rather buy it while it is on sale.  Dlc necessary?

DLC adds an extra civ and a campaign, but all updates are applied to the main game, so I'd say it's optional

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I don't have the DLC either.

Do we think we could find one more, and shoot for a 3 on 3 or 2 on 2 on 2 teamer sometime around the New Year?

[Kaiser]

I would love to get this going in some kind, as I really like Old World and I believe it has the potential to become a staple RB MP game as there are active patches coming in frequently to optimize the game and its balance.
I get that people dislike the order mechanic as it is a snowball limitation and another thing to consider when waging war (a.k.a increasing order demand) but I personally think this means you need to prepare differently, for example by setting up defensive positions (with units) where you expect to be attacked and reserve some of your order potential to defend (and not be just massacred). Think of it at as a CIV4 without having access to Slavery.
For my part, I really like the combat system of Old World and am looking forward to play this with you guys.

Maybe we can convince some people by playing on simplified settings so the first fame will not demand that you learn all of Old Worlds features from the get go.



Green are the standard settings defining the game pace.
Yellow are the standard winning conditions, we can turn some off if you want to reduce complexity:
- Points victory is achieved after one player/team achieves a certain number of points which is defined by map size and number of city sites (every city gives 1 point per cultural level (weak, developing, strong, legendary, these levels als gatekeep improvments and units build queues) world wonders also give 2 points)
- double victory is achieved after one player/team has at least half of the points victory points necessary for the points victory and double the points of 2nd place player/team
- ambition victory is achieved by completing 10 ambitions (these get harder over the course of the game, you can see which ambitions have been completed and are open once you have contact with players) => likely candidate to be turned off but an interesting winning strategy
- time victory is the point standing after 200 turns
Purple is how difficult expansion against non-players is, I recommend starting with an easier setting like weak here
Force march is the ability to move your units beyond their natural ability, (typical 3 moves per turn) by paying 100 Training and paying 2 orders per 1 move, turning this off will make player actions more predictable and unit movement decisions more defining. => this is a good candidate to be turned off but it will means mistakes in unit position will be more difficult to remedy



Green are standard setting again, we can argue for changes but I think Unique nations and balanced starting ressources make the game interesting
Yellow concerns the fog of war, for me exploration is one of the interesting parts of 4X games and I would prefer playing with Fog of War
Red are settings for the neutral spawning units, I think we can go with standard but we could also decide for only barbarians (all AI units hostile but unorganized, occupy city sites) or only tribes (diplomacy with organized tribal (basically barbarians) nations which do occupy city sites)
Purple is the most complexity reducing option as enabling this will remove the family and character functionality out of the game and replace it with linear stats increases. This is a game changer on how the game plays but it also makes it way more accessible than having to hedge your characters the way your civilization needs them to be as well as having to manage your families for a prosperous empire). I personally prefer playing with Characters, but I will gladly play without if this might hook you guys on the game



Again Green are in my opinion standard settings for a MP game
Yellow are controversial, my recommendation is the shown one. Starting tech combinations are unique per CIV (always 2 Tier1 and 1 Tier2 tech), playing without starting techs takes away some of the things making them unique. It also makes the game start slower. 
No Undo means decisions are final, I think for the sake of lowering the entry level hurdle, we can play with Undo. Please note that this enable scouting and undoing your moves, we either accept that, ban it with a soft rule or decide to play with "No Undo"
Red is a setting which increases complexetiy and is only available if we play with characters, I would argue against it meanign that CIV selection means family selection (each CIV has 4 standard families)
Blue is a team game question, disabled means teammember can use their orders to move team units, disabling this will make warfare more predictable and rushing more difficult as each team member needs to manage their orders themselves

And the biggest settings are in the player rows, for Archetype and Difficulty:
- each Civ has a Archetype leader, but we can also choose other leader types to start. I prefer to go with pick later so you can pick during your first turn after having seen the starting screenshot, but it might be less complex to stay with Archetype so CIV pick matters more.
- Difficulty defines:
   - the base income in science and orders 
   - as well as the starting ressources for wood, stone, metal, orders, training, civics
   - as well as the base gold income and discontent per city per turn
   - starting units (more scouts and workers on easier difficulties)
   - AI faction aggression (up to raiding parties spawning on map edges)
  I recommend we play on the good or the strong which is unit neutral and has no special modifiers on faction aggression yet. If we continue playing we likel will increase the difficulty.

Any preferences on these settings?
My experience is that the game creates decent to good MP maps if we select a good base type map, for a 2 Team game Arid Plateau or Coastal Rain Basin are good choices I think, while discjunction will lead to a less natural but more strategical map.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm fine with Kaiser's settings. I haven't completed a full game yet, and the family/faction system has been a bit confusing to me for a while (I find the interface kind of clunky and hard to read, but I play AGEOD games so I have no room to complain here - I'll get used to it in time), but those sorts of wrinkles are what give OW its character.

Does anyone know of a 6th that'd be interested in joining?