4X Old World—player experiences

Anyone played Old World…
…released on Epic last May? How is it?

Old World is from Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civilization 4 and Offworld Trading Company, so it's certainly got good pedigree.

With a high score of 82 from both reviewers and players on MetaCritic, it's currently burning a hole in my wishlist :)

More info:



 
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Sorry all, meant to get back to y'all sooner and answer all your Qs. But first—Old World is out of Epic exclusivity and just released elsewhere:



With the seeming universal acclaim it's received since release, I'm surprised no one here has played and commented.
 
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Zloth

Community Contributor
Those videos are always fascinating. "Infinite City Sprawl" is countered by the limited number of planets in a space 4X - yeah, I guess so. By dividing up a world into sectors (a la Endless Legend or Age of Wonders: Planetfall) and colonizing those instead of single hexes, world 4X games get to use that same method of limiting ICS? Ooooooohhhh!!!

He keeps talking about how automation is a warning sign that your system isn't fun. Every time he does, I think of Distant Worlds, which lets you automate everything! Essentially, you pick the parts of the game that you really enjoy and do those, then let the AI handle the rest of the systems. He's just talking in general, of course, but still...
 
automation is a warning sign that your system isn't fun
He has a point for sure. Take loot gathering in Far Cry 6, it's a complete PITA because there's so much of it around and you have to maneuver just so for the 'E' prompt to appear, then press it, move a foot to the left, repeat…

They automated ammo and money collection from enemies you shoot, just run past them. So what's the deal with the loot—do they think that mechanic is fun?

I would've dropped Civ4 after 1-2 years without the BUG/BAT/BULL mod, which automates so much of the info gathering in the UI. The longer the game goes on, the more info to process, which is a big part of the late game drag he mentioned.

pick the parts of the game that you really enjoy and do those, then let the AI handle the rest of the systems
Yeah, that's the ideal, isn't it? Then your game can have wide appeal for both loot lovers and loot haters. For an easy game in Civ4, pick say France, Noble difficulty, automate Workers, and click on Gunpowder tech like he said—then go stomp with Musketeers and Knights :)

Infinite City Sprawl
I think maybe he's too close to it on this… or maybe he's right, that devs should design for the fanatics in their customer base, the ones who will figure out how to optimize the game. I figured ICS out pretty early, but chose not to play that way—I feel like I'm being automated then :)

Whenever I get the game, I'll be very interested to see how the orders system changes gameplay—that's the BIG change as far as I'm concerned. I hope the family politics won't bog things down too much—now that I'd like to automate! Or I guess that would be auto mate… ;)
 
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