[Spoilers] Old World PBC test game 1.

[Alhazard]

If you are one of the other players in the game (Dale, And, fluffybunny, Nylen), no peeking unless you are eliminated or game ends!

turn reports coming soon...

[Alhazard]

5 player FFA game.

Been really busy with work so I haven't been playing OW a lot recently and honestly I think the SP experience is bad. Maybe there are some under the hood improvements but the problems I have with SP doesn't seem to have been addressed. Annoying families is the biggest problem. I also immensely dislike the urban system; there seems never enough tiles available to build all the urban improvements you need. Specialists cost too much. Events are acceptable but boring.

T1
No screenshot but standard opening of worker improving food, warrior promote (got garrison 25% in urban, which is one of the best promotions), scout move found city site to NW

T3


Working on clearing the barb camp in south for 2nd city since it will automatically get connected to capital by river.

T4


No city spots to immediate SW

T6


2nd city just settled and building settler for free city site. Grabbed ruin with warrior next turn.
Trapping first for slingers and it leads to barracks tech, which is really important to get axe access.

T7


Labor force is one of the key techs because it leads to slavery (Freedom got nerfed hard now to 1 science per city. I would now never take it except for all these events in SP that force you to.) and roads for movement and connection to capital for money. However, every game where I passed on stone boost turned out really bad so take it now.



Next barb camp.



More city spots to NW.

T8


Not much I can do. But I am going to go for a very greedy play and build the Ishtar Gate (1 culture level to all cities), which is the best wonder in game especially since now there are no cultural steps in between to go thru. All cities now will grow to next level of culture. Do not plan to finish it right away. Instead, hold off and finish after I settled most of my cities. Since I am playing Greece with passive culture in all cities, no one should be able to contest it unless they start next to a lot of cultural resources and mass harvest them.



I thought the warrior would only get attacked 1 time but miscounted tiles so the ranged unit in the camp also got a hit because of 1+ range from hill bonus. Retreat and lick wounds.

T9





T10


Temples are nice but I need all the stone for the ishtar gate and roads. Stick with military drill tech as planned.



Will I settle the next city right in the face of Carthage?

[Alhazard]

T11


I have to think that And massively misplayed here because his workers are not building resource generating improvements. The capital worker should be building the HG. I decided to forward settle seeing this misplayed opening.

T12


Building military in case he goes straight to the forward city. Saving iron for Ishtar's gate (requires 300 iron and 600 stone).

T13


Warrior has to retreat.

T14


Moving units in position to take the camp again. Also bought 100 stone for the wonder plan.

T15


Too late

T16


Even though steel is tempting, I went with administration to cycle the tech deck faster since slavery is too important to hold off.



Moving units in position.

T17


Not sure why he moved the slinger in that position. Sad that I didn't have the promotions to 3 shot it.

T18


Here I misplayed because I wanted to trap the warrior but I moved the Eastern warrior right into ZOC instead of moving along the lake to sandwich the warrior. I even spent the 100 training to force march. Feeling really dumb. There was an update to the game where you can now rush settlers so the capital will rush the next 2 to settle the open spots. And did finish the HG.

T19


Ishtar gate start but won't complete since I will move the scout guarding the city site to sit on it (so random scout can't pillage the attempt) because the worker has better things to do at the moment.

T20


Sadly I can't relax on the military build up.

[Alhazard]

T21


So now I am at negative money since population increases upkeep. In addition, improved tiles now cost money so you can't just spam improvements if you don't have the economy to back it up. Money is actually important in MP because it allows you to buy resources. Connecting cities to capital gives you income (I take it that it is internal trade) but the administration tech I got allows cities to build treasuries at 10 gpt. Since I was not fortunate enough to get a gold/silver mine access now, I have to build some treasuries to boost income. Polis tech for cottages is too far away.

T22


Seeing that slinger movement made me panic now thinking he is going to attack so shuffled units. In Argos I moved the warriors around so the northern warrior that has the highlander bonus (25% strength on hills) is on a hill, and the warrior with the garrison promotion is on the urban tile.

T23


Temporarily building council (this game's version of wealth) in Sparta to see if Steel tech is available next or not.

T24


Divination to cycle the tech for steel. In the past, spears were the go to unit but axes now get bonus damage against them and there is nothing that does extra damage to axes at tier 3 tech so Axes are the go to unit in MP right now, which is kind of unfortunate since games can come down to who can mass more axes.



I don't agree with building all these raxes. Right now they eat 2 iron per turn, which is huge unless you build enough mines to balance it out and I would expect that money is also limiting how much improvements you can build. Note the wounded warrior likely attacking a barb camp.

T25


And already moved so I think the barbs can kill the warrior below half-health

T26


Ok so I could see from the overlay that Dale was at war with Nylen and was attacking the latter's cities but I didnt realize that it was bad enough that Nylen lost 2 cities this turn. From tech channel, it seems that fluffybunny is also at war with Nylen, who is to my south so yeah he is done for. Now not sure what I need to do. Was thinking of just building a strong front to And and going after the red camps to my NW, but now wondering if I should upgrade a bunch of warriors to axes and do a strong timing attack to And. He does seem to have a respectable number of units to though. Bought more stone for roads and several cities will build treasuries while teching to axes. Probably will buy 100 iron once finances stabilize.

[TheArchduke]

Interesting read. Does the Multiplayer raise OW playability? I was not that thrilled with SP on a second look on the game.

[Alhazard]

i think MP is more interesting atm but we will see since I think it has its own potential problems such as deterministic combat, games can end so fast so you don't see 50% of the game mechanics, and no counterplay to axes.

[NobleHelium]

Why is deterministic combat a problem?

[yuris125]

We've been arguing about deterministic combat for well over a year I think reducing the influence of RNG in combat is good and OW does it well (there's still a little bit of RNG due to crit chance, although MP is almost completely deterministic as you don't get crit chance from characters, only from one specific promotion)

Agree with the other two points, although not seeing a lot of the mechanics seems par for the course in 4X games, how many Civ4 games with meaningful late game have we seen?

[Alhazard]

You can just calculate to a solvable optimal situations in combat scenarios. This is hidden because most MP games are played with a timer but I forsee it being a problem in asynch play.

[Alhazard]

Unfortunately this game shows why FFA in OW is not viable. Pretty dissappointing.