Humankind/Old World game?

[Bruindane]

Picked up the game as it is on sale on Steam this evening. I expect the first game will be a combination of blunders and mid-game mechanic discoveries, so I appreciate Kaiser's suggestion to make it simpler.

[Kaiser]

Let us summarize interest here to see if/when we can launch a possible Old World game.

participants:
CMF
Ginger (when his term is done (when is that?))
Banzalizard
Kaiser
Speaker (was that a signup?)

The idea is to go for a team game to encourage discussion and to avoid burning out on orders. I suggested some settings to have the game be more entry level friendly, mostly removing characters and having a more forgiveable difficulty/game interaction (UNDO).
We could right now start a 2 vs 2 game whenever Ginger is ready or we can wait for more players (and get their feedback regarding the settings) to get a 2 vs 2 vs 2 or bigger team game going.

Btw. my personal experience with the Order system is not that bad in multi front wars, but fighting a 1 vs. 2 certainly means you have to slow down if not stall your conquest on the original front.

[Kaiser]

New year, new game?

List of possible participants was/is:
CMF
Ginger / Ginger*
Banzalizard
Bruindane
Kaiser
Speaker (was that a signup?) wink
Naufrager (let's see if this works, he actually stated that he does not have the time to get proficient enough with OW, but maybe he is willing to give it a shot)

I think the general idea was to start with a beginner team game, so 2 vs 2 or any even combination of players will work out fine.
CMF, Banzailizard and me were available, Ginger still needed to state when he would be available and the others are welcome to join

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm still in, if others are.

[Bruindane]

I'm in as well. Finished a few single players games in noble (liberally using the undo button to better manage orders).

[Kaiser]

The Undo button is a big help, especially when the empire gets bigger and you realize late in your turn that you needs the orders elsewhere.

[Ginger*]

Yes I’m in
I think we should focus on ironing out the map type (mirrored, yes, but what shape?) and player format we want

[Kaiser]

Great, that means we are already enough for a 2 vs 2 game.
Do you guys want to start in this setup or do we want to wait for 2 more to go with a 2 vs 2 vs 2 or a 3 vs 3?

We can already try to straighten out the timeslots for establishing player order, my best availabilty is 20:00 - 23:00 UTC with a high probabilty of a slot on 11:00 - 13:00 UTC (Lunchtime - Naptime for the Kids on the weekend). I am happy to play whenever I can spare the time, but these timeslots are kids and work free.
Wednesdays and Sundays I have my the dark eye group in the evening timeslot, but I should be able to play before (so 18:00 - 20:00 UTC) as my wife will take care of the kids :D

Regarding the map settings, I think a given is mirrored and balanced ressources (Horses and Iron) but then we can choose among different map scripts and sizes:



These are only the ones which are balanced for teams or MP in general, I think we can pick from them.
My order of preferences woud be:
- Coastal rain basin (closest to the standard setting)
- Arid Plateau (might be food starved)
- Inner Sea (team interaction might start late due to the inner sea)
- Disjunction (creates often maps which have 2 or 4 separate areas with only 1 or 2 chokes connecting everything)

And the size of Old World maps is typical generous, so my preference is:
- Small
- Duel
- Medium

An organizational question is what version of Old World you are running, there are Steam, GOG or Epic (I am on Epic).
If we are on different platforms then we need to schedule a timeslot for us all the start a network game. We can then turn this into a cloud game from there and it works just fine.
If we have to schedule like this, we can consider to play the first X turns (10 -20) in the network setting to get a quick start, but it might be easier and better for reporting to switch immediately to cloud game so there is more time at hand.

Do we play with duplicate Civilizations or do we come up with some kind of a pick order?
A possible pick order could be inverse player order (so player 1 picks last, ..., last player picks first)

[naufragar]

Good luck, all! Happy to be invited, but yeah, I won't be able to do this plus PB69. Will lurk with eagerness, though.

[Bruindane]

UTC -8 (PST). My preferred time window maps to 03:00 - 07:00 UTC.
Platform Steam & Mac (if that matters).

This implies a network game is required to start. My availability to join a game is flexible, playing x turns at that time less so. I saw a youtube duel where the nation is selected on the first turn acting on starting location visibility, can we do that? Prefer distinct nations, but people should play who they want.

To set expectations on reporting and for team mates. Similar to my stint in Civ6-PBEM-20, I expect to post a screenshot or two with some light context. I wasn't using spreadsheets or planning weeks ahead, but it was fun, and it appears that old world might be more forgiving.