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Going through my first run, I’m coming up on the Iron age. I’m enjoying it, but I’ll hold off on any major recommendations. So far I really like how the terrain is defining early gameplay. I’m locked in by a desert in the south, a mountain range to my north-east and a huge forrest north-west. Egypt may be on the other side of the forrest but it’s unfeasible for us to to fight, as potential cities would by too far from our capitals and the barbs are keeping everyone busy. The civs are disappointing- it doesn’t seem it makes a difference who you’re playing as and you can choose a bonus from a long list at the beginning so ultimately it doesn’t make a difference if you’re. Combat so far is also underwhelming - I don’t see any info on terrain bonuses or even combat odds so it’s just about trying to have a bigger stronger stack I guess?
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Mar 27, 2024 18:23
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:30 |
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Thanks for the tips! Yeah, now I see the battle odds info. It's hidden pretty well! I got my rear end kicked on the first playthrough. The plague kept me from growing - my glorious capital's population all but perished, and those left announced independence. Then the Egyptian armies finally crossed the Great Forest and that was that. Granted, I am a poo poo strategy game player but I've had my 5 hours of fun with this playthrough and I see myself putting in at least another 40 hours.
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Mar 27, 2024 20:37
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I don't think it's a chore. It's mostly about design choices, less about things being outright broken - I'd say the game is as polished as I'd expect from a new full price release. It's certainly not what I'd call janky, but it could use some improvement in very particular areas, like the system on the right that keeps a tally of your "currencies". I will say, not having played it, that Old World looks more polished and better designed. However, if you've played a CIV game, or, as you said, Old World or Humankind, there's nothing particularly off-putting here when it comes to the interface. As a Paradox game, it could benefit from better tooltips.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:07
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I’m reviewing my first game in my head. The good thing is it’s clear why I lost and that it wasn’t just one thing, but a series of events coming together. First thing is I went militaristic at the start which encouraged a quick expansion through conquering of barb cities. By the iron age, I started becoming stagnant and my culture started regressing, resulting in the lack of expansion in some key areas - namely, I couldn’t purchase more Spartans, meaning I couldn’t complete the relevant militaristic spirit tree. Still, my army was big and experienced from all the barb fighting. Unfortunately some cretin kicked off the plague age. With my core cities loosing half of their population, I was still chugging along, but then my neighbor from over the giant forrest actually made it over to my civ with a two-pronged attack. At this point I missed my capital was down to 1 pop, at which point it flipped and became independent. No coming back from that. The plague is a bit poo poo. It’s hard to discern which squares are plagued and what it means, exactly. You get a plague doctor unit, but for some inexplicable reason it uses exploration points to cure plague hexes. I lost my scout and couldn’t build new ones, and even if I had, undiscovered lands were too far at this point to generate enough exploration points. Still, if it wasn’t for the AI choosing the perfect time to strike, I could have pulled through. In the next game I’ll need to keep a closer eye on the overall balance of tall vs wide, and possibly try to do more diplomacy, as I’m not sure having open hostilities on neutral grounds with all neighbors is supposed to last into the fourth age.
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Mar 27, 2024 23:09
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Jossar posted:Unfortunately the lesson I'm quickly coming to learn is that unless the AI is explicitly coming over to your house with a gift basket and offers of open borders, it's always secretly planning to kill you and thus you need to always have a much larger back-pocket defensive army than you'd otherwise have if playing "optimally". That and sticking to your borders absent a specific goal that involves moving out with a bunch of troops apart from a few Scouts. Yeah, this is a good analysis. I explicitly did not go Raiding, choosing the Army route instead, but actually did push my armies too far out. I also did not go for the vassal friendly trees, opting instead for the dynastic kingdom based around a main city (that lost its population in the plague and took my palace when it revolted)
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Mar 28, 2024 00:14
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The game hangs for a second or two every time a new turns loads. It’s not gamebreaking, but noticeable. Feels like smth they’ll patch out by tomorrow. Runs smooth on a 2080ti though.
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Mar 28, 2024 00:32
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Second game today instead of working. Got really hemmed in by settling on a narrow peninsula - while fish are abundant, I am lacking space for any infrastructure development. Got to do a bit of the naval game, too. It all feels very Civ 4 mod, especially with how you put armies together from smaller units. It's hard to consider anything Paradox is involved with as indie, even though they're just the publisher here, but I'm fairly sure if you're into Civ games, you'll get your 40 hours easily. The biggest innovation for me is the resource system. Every resource will give you a benefit, but plugging it through a dedicated building will transform it into something even more valuable. So you've got your cotton plantation, but no space in the parent city for a mill - you need to build a warehouse in both cities, and send it to the other one for manufacturing. Now, you can ship the silk back to the original city or let it generate income where it was manufactured - I assume you can also export it, which you do through using another building with an international export slot. I assume these buildings will come with more slots in future ages. This screen... is not great but I can sus out 80% of the information I want from it.  The biggest challenge so far is tracking all the different currencies and remembering which one buys what. I struggle to see which plots are worked on (it's denoted by little brown dots). The manufacturing and resource screens are not very clear and there's an overall lack of charts and flows that would make getting an overview of how your civ is running easier. This is where the indie characteristic is coming through - the base game is solid, but there's a lack of polish, though I have not encountered any horrible bugs or anything.  Here's my situation. Initially, the location is pretty good. The forests especially provide a good manufacturing bonus, and all the fish are great for feeding both the capital and the second city north. You can either improve the fish plots or send fishing boats, which are great, because the operate outside your borders. The tiny filled and unfilled dots represent if a hex is being worked on. As you can see, it's also hard to discern what improvement is built where, but that's the matter of getting used to the visual representation. As Zhengzhou grew, I had to clear the only free hex that had a mill on it and make space for communal housing so the city could grow further. The forests that were a boon are now problematic, as I can't (yet) remove them. There are two outliners on the left and right. The right one is done really well and tells me everything I need to know about my cities, outposts and armies. The one on the left is not very good - the red numbers mean I have enough points to perform an a action in this domain, and these actions can be very varied - anything from spawning units, to launching local initiatives. The sub-domain things are different national spirits, and each one is a tree you progress with through using the same points you also buy some units with. It's not great!  This is one of the many tress you'll be spending your currencies in to guide your civ and to define what it is. Mokotow fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 16:41
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Yeah those placement are super important due to the stacking adjacency bonuses, and I find it challenging to keep track of all of them. Civ 6 also had this issue, and I guess letting modders add "lenses" like they did there would help.
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Mar 28, 2024 17:16
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I made it to the other end of my continent that was sealed off well enough from everyone else and by age IV it had hex to hex barb fields taking up the whole screen. As mentioned, it could use some tuning but they do serve their purpose and make far away lands extra risky for scouts.
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Mar 29, 2024 00:38
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Yes, Milennia is much less forgiving than Civ and requires you to have a large standing army at home. aI will also use ships to drop crap on your rear cities so you need a good unit spread. The upside is they all contribute to unrest control.
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Mar 29, 2024 09:08
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It’d be a great spin and somewhat realistic if the Raider spirit would come with some sort of a big disadvantage in later ages.
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Mar 29, 2024 11:43
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If you complete the dynastic tree, it opens the peaceful revolution option. I recon other trees do that too. I think the idea is you evolve to a new government by completing a tree or you bail out and thus have to pay the bloody rev tax.
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Mar 29, 2024 19:19
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It took me very long to understand properly how the outpost and town system works and how to make the best of it. It’s a bit complicated, but not impossible. I’m also just understanding to resource juggling system and realized how I was massively overfeeding my cities - plopping down an improvement on every deer and fish you see is only necessary in the beginning, and even then you need pops to work it. This is the Civ way, but other improvements quickly outperform the camps - a plantation gives +6 food on top of the resource. That camp plot can often be better used for a factory, housing or midden. Huge map feels properly huge! I love how unlike in Civ, the terrain is such a hindrance here. Gonna put it on my Deck next, apparently it plays well there just in tine for my holidays. Mokotow fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Mar 29, 2024 |
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Mar 29, 2024 22:30
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Quick Steam Deck report - game runs fine and the interface works on the OLED. Might be a tad small on the old Deck. No special control scheme, but the Deck control are ok.
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Mar 30, 2024 01:08
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You build it like any other terrain improvement but it needs to be on a grassland
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Mar 30, 2024 21:42
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How do I get vassals to go over 5 pop? Some tech?
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Mar 31, 2024 00:14
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Yeah, building the town allowed the vassal to grow.
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Mar 31, 2024 08:25
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I’m on huge maps and it’s just insane how slow and huge the game is. While the early game is tough purely due to how much space there is for barbs to spawn, by the middle game all the space starts to make running the economy trivial. I can see how this will turn into insane plate spinning by the industrial era.
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Mar 31, 2024 13:59
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The plague age is interesting from a game design perspective. Everyone hates it but it’s a good representation of the evolutionary slowdown and it’s using the available game mechanics well to that end. I suffered a huge bottleneck when his playthrough with the plague halting my population growth and infrastructure development for a century. The problem with the plague age is that it comes up fairly early in the game and most fresh players will slam their head against it. The poor way miasma is shown and the somewhat illogical or hard to understand mechanics are not helping. The age system is great, especially with the variety it introduces. I wonder how hard it will be to mod for it - I imagine coding AI to handle custom ages might a handful.
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Mar 31, 2024 19:43
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Yeah, you can play yourself into a corner with faith. I did not expect I’ll need faith buildings for my growth and ended up just scraping by thanks to my robus timber/paper industry and religious scribes.
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Mar 31, 2024 20:54
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:30 |
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Zurai posted:I think the preorder bonus has some alternate arts for specific units. The next DLC introduces a whole new pre-tribal age, right?
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Apr 3, 2024 20:41
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