4X Old World - historical 4X strategy by Civ 4 designer (formerly 10 Crowns)

[JarlFrank]

Yeah but Steam still offers HUGE reach for indie devs. GoG also offers some reach but not nearly as much as Steam does (and GoG is curated so good luck on getting in with your one-man indie project). Other stores like itch.io only get traffic from people who specifically search for obscure indie games so you got exactly zero exposure to the common player.

Being on a major store such as Steam and GoG is an advertisement by itself. And then you get all the fancy bonuses those storefronts offer you. As I already said in Steam's case: forums, in-store reviews (both of these also apply to GoG), integrated modding workshop, easy way to distribute patches, easy way to distribute DLC (which includes stuff like selling the soundtrack separately), achievements (which some players enjoy AND which lets you track player engagement with your game: main quest achievement rates are used to see how many people finish your game and at which point most players quit, which can help identify frustrating stages of the main quest for example), etc.

If you were to sell your game only on your own website as an indie dev, you'd have to:
- host the installer on your own server
- upload separate patch.exe for each patch
- run your own forum on your own website and moderate it yourself
- collect reviews which you link to on your own website
etc

Those 30% are justified considering all the features Steam offers you for free.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I agree with you and Steam's service may be very well worth 30% or even more and many Indies don't have many options anyway because GOG and Epic are curated. But that doesn't mean that Steams margins are locked in for eternity.

 

[Jarpie]

Steam's 30% cut being unfair is a very recent complaint among developers, mostly indies. It's industry standard in several branches of the entertainment industry, not only games. In fact, in book writing it's considered a super good deal. Amazon's self-publishing service, for example, pays 70% royalties to the authors and that's way better than you could ever expect with a publisher. (also it's framed positively as "author gets 70%" rather than negatively "storefront takes 30%)

It's a damn good deal compared to old brick and mortar stores. All things considered, getting 70% of the profits directly into your account is awesome especially for indie devs who have no publisher middleman.

Add to that all the cool stuff Steam offers developers. Regular sale events where people buy tons of games, frontpage features if your game gets a lot of traffic, early access, wishlists, workshop integration for modding, easy distribution of patches, integrated user forums, in-store reviews, etc etc.

This is much, much better than anything indie devs had access to in the 90s and 00s.

I know game dev who says that indie devs now have no fucking clue how good things are for them, back before steam appeared, they'd been fucking glad if they'd gotten a deal in which they get 30% of the sales, let alone 70%. Steam also offers free forum for them, they can get as many keys as they want to be sold on their own or on other platforms, and if they manage to get into the front page of Steam, it's worth much more than the 30% steam takes.

 

[barker_s]

PotatoMcWhiskey's preview stream. Haven't watched the whole thing yet, but what I've seen looks promising so far.

 

[Starwars]

This is now out on Early Access. I just played a couple of hours. Seems quite good so far, definitely getting a Civ IV + CK2 lovechild vibe. Well, the CK2 side of things is definitely lighter, at least earlier on in the game. You'll definitely notice quite a few things from Civ IV though.
Wasn't quite sure about the Orders system at first but it feels pretty damn good once the game gets going. Once you start warring and getting a few more units, you definitely have to make some choices as to what to focus on for each turn.

Feels good so far but far too early to make any real judgement of course.

 

[cvv]

Yeah I watched Potato for about half hour and it does look promising, especially the order system. Really interesting.

The UI is hateful tho, even one-man projects like Banished have better UI.

 

[Starwars]

Yeah I watched Potato for about half hour and it does look promising, especially the order system. Really interesting.

The UI is hateful tho, even one-man projects like Banished have better UI.

What is it that you don't like about it? I actually quite like it personally. Granted, it does not feel enormously intuitive at first but once you settle into the game, it's pretty damn good I'd say. Especially the tooltip system is really fantastic for looking things up quickly. A lot of the relevant info for when you're making decisions is always there for you to check. Though I will say that, with the event system, the gameplay can get quite "clicky" as you get further into the game. You get more events and if you want to make informed decisions, you check your various screens a lot and it can bog the pace down a bit. I like the event system a lot, but I hope that they maybe rework some of the choices. Like in CK2, choosing education for heirs (as an example) get pretty samey after a while.

Also, what I don't like about the presentation is that I think there are some visual clarity issues, especially when you're looking at tiles around cities. It's very "noisy" and not easy to see at a glance what you're looking at. Mousing over a tile will give you the info but visually it could be a lot clearer. It's hard to get a good overview just from looking at an area. I like the general artstyle and visual direction for the game but yeah, that's definitely an area where I think they could improve.

I hope they improve performance down the line. I'm not sure if there's a memory leak or something else going on right now but once I get into the game the game really starts to stutter and lag.

 

[fantadomat]

So is the game finished?

 

[Starwars]

It's feature complete but in Early Access for a year still. Lots of polishing, balancing, art stuff, bug fixes, events, optimization still to be done

 

[Sranchammer]

Chinese investors, and there is no such thing as an independent "free" enterprise in China, the state always has a say.

It's cute that you believe China is the only nation that does this

Especially during an extended global lockdown

 

[thesheeep]

Those 30% are justified considering all the features Steam offers you for free.

It would be if you could opt out of them.
What if I don't want to use their forums?
What if I don't want to use their multiplayer tools & matchmaking?
What if I don't want to use their achievement system?
What if I don't want their "review bombing" protection?
What if I don't want to use...

This can be done for every single service they offer, except the bare download/installation/storepage, at which point they aren't that much better than itch.io. And their services are all pretty good, no doubt. But especially indies aren't interested in even half of what they offer.
I say they are ripping devs off most of the time as almost nobody uses all of their services, yet all have to pay the same cut.
I'm not even convinced their reach is worth a damn - since they opened the floodgates, it has basically become impossible for indies to get any visibility at all from the fact that they are on Steam.
And if you gotta do all the marketing yourself anyway, what's their "reach" still worth?

What would be fair: if they started at a much lower cut, say 10-15% and then the cut increases as you opt in into the services you actually need.

And with Epic sometimes just offering a vastly superior deal (for developers, that is) - I can more than understand devs who don't hesitate too much looking for alternatives.
In the end, I have no doubt they'll have to lower their cut if EGS finally becomes a usable piece of software, for example.

Chinese investors, and there is no such thing as an independent "free" enterprise in China, the state always has a say.

It's cute that you believe China is the only nation that does this

Especially during an extended global lockdown

Well, "China bad!" is always an easy cop-out in the West...

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/06/03/old-world-review-early-access/

Old World review (early access)
It's an old world after all

Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which Steve Hogarty explores the wilds of early access. This week, he’s being married off to a plucky young Dane in generational empire simulator Old World.

Old World has been developed by a clutch of Civilization vets. So it’s hardly a surprise that, at a glance, it appears to be a very familiar strategy epic. You’ve got your usual slate of hexagons, littered with 100 foot tall soldiers and crabs the size of mountains. You’ve got your turn-by-turn freestyle jazz remix of ancient history, a revisionist mess in which the Romans can build the pyramids and the Babylonians can take their chances with Jesus. But there is one critical difference between this game and others like it – you can have a pet monkey.

And not just any old pet monkey, this is a pet monkey with the capacity to alter the course of history at any given moment, its idiot monkey paws tipping the balance of power one way or the other, determining the fate of epochs and chaperoning the fortunes of generations. When Old World is not being a typical 4X game – in which you build out your cities, develop tiles into resource-producing farms and quarries, and send scouts out to explore the map, scraping away the fog of war like fingernails on a continent-sized scratchcard – it plays more like an interactive novel. You’re living the private life of a ruler, as much as you are doing the actual business of ruling.

Decision points come thick and fast, but the pet monkey is a real wildcard. I’ve no clue what the chances of him appearing are, but if you choose to adopt him from a travelling salesman he might later show up during trade negotiations with visiting dignitaries, snatching a priceless totem from the bejewelled headdress of a high priest and scampering off with it. This sours relations for years to come, but nets you a rather heavy piece of jewellery for your palace coffers. On one occasion the monkey escaped into the streets of my capital city and caused so much havoc that I somehow lost an entire lumber mill.

At each of these junctures I could either vehemently defend my monkey’s unruly behaviour, chalking it up to his peculiar brand of simian ingenuity, or give him the boot. I never could bring myself to fire him, and so each passing year became another throw of the dice. What would the monkey do next? What might he be capable of? It’s exactly the kind of mythical, colourful detail that brings actual history to life, this idea that powerful rulers were ever beholden to rude little monkeys or petty grudges with uncles. Old World delights in the roleplay of rulership, the conversations and meetings you imagine having with your AI opponents in Civilization are depicted here in rich, funny and sharply written dialogue.

Spoiler

These events aren’t completely random, but driven by the specific circumstances of your game. What could have felt like forced, sporadic storymaking instead feels sensibly applied. This isn’t like pulling a chance card to win a beauty pageant in Monopoly, instead Old World tracks your relations with dozens of foreign leaders, family members, generals and courtiers, the contents of your tiles, your stockpiles and the state of the map, before presenting you with scripted events tailored to your situation.

At a banquet with my firm ally Queen Xanthippe, for example, her young heir Prince Attalus boasted that he would make a better leader, and I was pressed to take sides. Attalus – who looks like he was fired from season two of the The Apprentice for failing the challenge where they have to make and sell a new kind of sorbet – was a liability, but old Xanthippe was getting on in years and it wouldn’t be long before her idiot son ascended to the throne. So I joined in on the mum-dunking, figuring I could easily manage the fading queen’s anger until she expired. Old World is at its very best when its leaders are approaching the grave, articulating through these dynamic events the machinations of treacherous heirs and decaying loyalties.

When you die, you embody your successor. If this is your son or daughter, the decisions you made as their parent are returned to you. Had my Babylonian king father sent me away to study rhetoric, and not sent me so much wine while I was in college, I would have had the required eloquence to appease both Queen Xanthippe and her son with some distracting wordplay. Small, seemingly inconsequential decisions shape future chapters of your empire’s expansion. It’s your basic chaos theory. A monkey doing a funny little dance in Babylon can cause Judaism to flourish in Athens.

Back in the strategy part of the game, almost everything is determined by an overwhelming array of countable resources. Food, wood, stone and iron are all here, but so too are less tangible assets like civics, legitimacy and orders. Unlike the leading brand, each unit in Old World doesn’t get its own dedicated turn. Instead you’ve got a shared stockpile of orders to dispense, allowing you to focus efforts where they’re needed or pocket leftover orders to be used in other areas, such as promoting units.

This means that during peacetime you can effectively lend your military’s turns to your workers and scouts, developing your cities and exploring the world. When the fighting starts you can funnel orders into your armies to send them pinging across continents at lightspeed. Combat is one of the least developed parts of the game. Far from the extravagant detail lavished upon the tiniest aspects of diplomacy – whole paragraphs dedicated to the antics of the court monkey – battles are your run of the mill fish-slapping fights between two adjacent tiles.

The growing and shrinking pile of orders makes each turn feel strangely elastic, and the movements of enemy units unpredictable. It takes a bit of getting used to, but by treating orders as a collectible resource like any other, Old World neatly plugs its top-level strategy game into its detailed empire management simulation. The rate at which you produce new orders is broadly tied to your legitimacy as a leader, and becomes a direct measure of your ability to effectively rule.

The deeper you wade into Old World the less like Civilization it becomes, until soon it’s only really the hexagons and the race to build a Parthenon tying them together. It’s a story engine as much as it’s a strategy game, one that revels in the playful details of the past, and represents history’s ancient rulers not as the pompous set of weirdos we’re all familiar with, but as capricious drunks, disastrous idiots and beautiful freaks with monkey butlers.

 

[Starwars]

As much as that review is about the "storytelling" and events, I find the real strength of the game is in the mechanics. They are not enormously complex, and they have a ways to go in some areas, but they make for an addictive game. After playing the game for quite a while now, I have to say that I really like how the orders system works.

Saying that it's a "story engine" is HUGE exaggeration if you ask me. As it stands right now, the events are not numerous enough to really surprise you. All of the ones mentioned in that review are like "oh yeah, it's that one." The one with the heir criticizing the leader for example seems to pop up pretty much every game. The one about pets is also not extraordinarily rare or anything. So that takes the edge off.
CKII is a game where I would maybe classify it as a story engine given that it's so much about the characters and lineages. Old World is not even close to that level.

But, with each patch they are adding a lot of events so hopefully they will be numerous and interesting enough in the end that they will serve to make the playthroughs really different from one another.

 

[Doktor Best]

So will this game have multiplayer available? I googled a bit but nobody even mentions it.

 

[Starwars]

Yes it will.

 

[cvv]

Saying that it's a "story engine" is HUGE exaggeration if you ask me.

It's not an exaggeration, it's utterly pants-on-head retarded. Altho what can you expect from the blue haired hipster vegans at RPS.

 

[Space Satan]

It is an exact copy of CivV with some differences. And without taking notes on CivV flaws... moving on.

 

[Space Satan]

You can place cities on predetermined spots, you are not wasting a worker like in CivVI but you waste resources to build improvements. UI and city management are the same as civ5. Combat is very clunky, and research is VERY primitive, not even on retarded level of CivV

 

[covr]

UI and city management are the same as civ5. Combat is very clunky, and research is VERY primitive, not even on retarded level of CivV

That's not true. I've bought the game today and I find it very appealing in the non-civ V/VI way. There are many innovative mechanics, city management is vastly different vs any Civ game and I believe that I've just fucked a hunter during some random event. Was hoping for a sweet gay action, but the next turn that hunter gave birth to a boy, so she might be a hunter woman after all. Wife is pissed now. GG.

 

[sser]

Wow. I just heard of this game and I buy strategy games like every week

That's also something about Steam -- it tracks things really well through the tag/id usage so that if you buy a bunch of shit with 'turn-based' in it, then Steam will start loading the front page with turn-based games instead of just smooshing AAA-game #55 into your face. Steam's platform isn't just having a bunch of eyeballs, it's making sure those eyeballs see your game which is actually the most important element of selling online.

 

[Tigranes]

Still Early Access, right? How is it coming along?

 

[Xamenos]

I've played a bit. They've only allowed us to play through the first few dozen turn of a specific game and some combat scenarios so far. It seems pretty much what you'd expect from a historical game based on the Endless Legend engine. There might be some interesting possibilities with the refinements they've made to city management with specialized districts and perhaps with the unit abilities. But it is far too early to tell.

 

[covr]

I've played a bit. They've only allowed us to play through the first few dozen turn of a specific game and some combat scenarios so far. It seems pretty much what you'd expect from a historical game based on the Endless Legend engine. There might be some interesting possibilities with the refinements they've made to city management with specialized districts and perhaps with the unit abilities. But it is far too early to tell.

You are confusing Humankind with The Old World.

 

[Xamenos]

I've played a bit. They've only allowed us to play through the first few dozen turn of a specific game and some combat scenarios so far. It seems pretty much what you'd expect from a historical game based on the Endless Legend engine. There might be some interesting possibilities with the refinements they've made to city management with specialized districts and perhaps with the unit abilities. But it is far too early to tell.

You are confusing Humankind with The Old World.

Fuck, you're right.

 

[Starwars]

This excellent game is getting released July 1st. Unfortunately only on the Epic store for now.

Highly recommend the game though.