So I recently bough Old World and played for about 15 hours.
My motivation for opening this thread was to talk about the combat AI, because it is SO MUCH better than the AI of the recent Civ games.
An example: My cities are in the north of a small/medium island. In the south Egypt has cities. I thought it was time to test war and wipe them out. Our military strength is similar (according to an info given freely by the game).
The island has a quite a small bottleneck in the middle, about 5 or 6 hexes wide. So I set up my army there. Basically 3-4 spearmen in the front (to counter the Egypt horsemen), 2-3 Axemen behind or in between, 4-5 archers (who can shoot up to 3 hexes) behind and 2 chariots even more behind. Later I also added an onager (first siege weapon) who can do an AoE attack with up to 4 hexes range.
So on my first try after declaring war the enemy army swept in and killed a lot of my troops. When I also killed some of their units (which wasn't as effective as I've hoped), they retreated to their next 2 cities! I guess they saw that I had the upper hand changed the general tactics. That's pretty big imho. I've never seen anything like that in Civ. (Or I forgot.)
I reloaded because I lost too many troops and wanted to play around more with setting up my troops. So I built some forts (giving defence bonus) on the front line and also placed my troops more carefully. For example the spearmen have a ZOC (zone of control) of 1 hex, which prevents regular enemy troops to cross these hexes. So with 3 spearmen units I was able to completely block the bottleneck and the Egypt horesmen couldn't reach my axemen (who are weaker against them). I also placed my archers more carefully, mostly on hills where they get boni. I also promoted some of the troops and assigned generals giving them some more boni.
Now after declaring war the Egypts didn't attack this battle-line at all. Apparently I was too strong in the open field. They just started to move their troops to their nearest cities to defend them, just like in the first try.
So now I'm sitting there.
If I try to move forward and "misplace" a unit so it can be attacked by 3-4 enemy troops, they just sweep in with some horsemen and slingers (they don't have archers yet) and kill this unit. My archers hardly manage to kill one of their horsemen. But when I try to advance with my melee troops killing off othe horesemen and thus leaving my fortified and well planned positions the bloody battle with heavy losses on both sides starts again.
My next try was to build an onager advance on their first city and align my troops around it so I can attack the city more or less safely.
However I can't manage to place up the troops in a way where they easily can defend themselves. It's enemy territory and I can't build forts. Also I can't heal. Also the Egypts just placed an onager in their city and bombard my troops with the AoE attack.
So at this point I'm more or less clueless what to do. It's definitely not possible as in Civ to build only a few elite troops and easily outsmart the enemy.
I either have to accept that the war will cause heavy losses (I guess I would loose at least half of my army) or I have to build a lot more troops, which is expensive.
One more example of good AI: Unit movement works differently than in Civ. Moving a unit (and other actions) costs "order" points. Each leader has global (so for all units) order points, which are are limited per turn. So you either can move few units by a (very) long distance or many units by a short distance. (Movement for a single unit is still restricted though, but a single unit can move a lot further than in Civ.*)
The AI makes heavy use of this: In the same conflict I sent two of my ships to the enemies shores to kill random units with ranged attacks. That didn't work out so I retreated to my own territory. One of my ships was heavily damaged. So the Egypts moved their only ship and a slinger by a really long distance only to finally sink my ship. Afterwards the 3 units completely retreated.
Perhaps it is possible to lay baits for the enemy to waste order points so he won't be able to act with units in the really important battle.
So it seems that Old Worlds doesn't only provide the strategy experience but also a very interesting tactical challenge.
(* By the way this mechanic has the effect that if you have a lot battles going on you are forced to neglect other aspects of your empire. Scouting, building improvements with workers, some political actions all cost order points. That's an actual innovation which I think makes a lot of sense considering realism. Also a new challenge.)
My motivation for opening this thread was to talk about the combat AI, because it is SO MUCH better than the AI of the recent Civ games.
An example: My cities are in the north of a small/medium island. In the south Egypt has cities. I thought it was time to test war and wipe them out. Our military strength is similar (according to an info given freely by the game).
The island has a quite a small bottleneck in the middle, about 5 or 6 hexes wide. So I set up my army there. Basically 3-4 spearmen in the front (to counter the Egypt horsemen), 2-3 Axemen behind or in between, 4-5 archers (who can shoot up to 3 hexes) behind and 2 chariots even more behind. Later I also added an onager (first siege weapon) who can do an AoE attack with up to 4 hexes range.
So on my first try after declaring war the enemy army swept in and killed a lot of my troops. When I also killed some of their units (which wasn't as effective as I've hoped), they retreated to their next 2 cities! I guess they saw that I had the upper hand changed the general tactics. That's pretty big imho. I've never seen anything like that in Civ. (Or I forgot.)
I reloaded because I lost too many troops and wanted to play around more with setting up my troops. So I built some forts (giving defence bonus) on the front line and also placed my troops more carefully. For example the spearmen have a ZOC (zone of control) of 1 hex, which prevents regular enemy troops to cross these hexes. So with 3 spearmen units I was able to completely block the bottleneck and the Egypt horesmen couldn't reach my axemen (who are weaker against them). I also placed my archers more carefully, mostly on hills where they get boni. I also promoted some of the troops and assigned generals giving them some more boni.
Now after declaring war the Egypts didn't attack this battle-line at all. Apparently I was too strong in the open field. They just started to move their troops to their nearest cities to defend them, just like in the first try.
So now I'm sitting there.
If I try to move forward and "misplace" a unit so it can be attacked by 3-4 enemy troops, they just sweep in with some horsemen and slingers (they don't have archers yet) and kill this unit. My archers hardly manage to kill one of their horsemen. But when I try to advance with my melee troops killing off othe horesemen and thus leaving my fortified and well planned positions the bloody battle with heavy losses on both sides starts again.
My next try was to build an onager advance on their first city and align my troops around it so I can attack the city more or less safely.
However I can't manage to place up the troops in a way where they easily can defend themselves. It's enemy territory and I can't build forts. Also I can't heal. Also the Egypts just placed an onager in their city and bombard my troops with the AoE attack.
So at this point I'm more or less clueless what to do. It's definitely not possible as in Civ to build only a few elite troops and easily outsmart the enemy.
I either have to accept that the war will cause heavy losses (I guess I would loose at least half of my army) or I have to build a lot more troops, which is expensive.
One more example of good AI: Unit movement works differently than in Civ. Moving a unit (and other actions) costs "order" points. Each leader has global (so for all units) order points, which are are limited per turn. So you either can move few units by a (very) long distance or many units by a short distance. (Movement for a single unit is still restricted though, but a single unit can move a lot further than in Civ.*)
The AI makes heavy use of this: In the same conflict I sent two of my ships to the enemies shores to kill random units with ranged attacks. That didn't work out so I retreated to my own territory. One of my ships was heavily damaged. So the Egypts moved their only ship and a slinger by a really long distance only to finally sink my ship. Afterwards the 3 units completely retreated.
Perhaps it is possible to lay baits for the enemy to waste order points so he won't be able to act with units in the really important battle.
So it seems that Old Worlds doesn't only provide the strategy experience but also a very interesting tactical challenge.
(* By the way this mechanic has the effect that if you have a lot battles going on you are forced to neglect other aspects of your empire. Scouting, building improvements with workers, some political actions all cost order points. That's an actual innovation which I think makes a lot of sense considering realism. Also a new challenge.)
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