Hey All!

Since this is the first time you get to try out the Neolithic Era in an OpenDev, we'd really like to hear what you think about it! Did you enjoy it? Was there anything you particularly liked or disliked?

Let us know your first impressions here!

I couldn't get the hunting stars despite killing enough critters. Is this a bug or do I need to kill specific things?

Mausklickmoerder wrote:

Neolithic era was cute, but I hoped to find more natural wonders or interesting landmarks. Meeting other tribes was weird, though. I couldn't interact with them in any way but combat and they automatically respawned even if I wiped them out. I also met them way earlier than I think I would.

I would have liked a bit longer in the Neolithic era - I had a fight with one mammoth, placed two outposts and discovered 2 knowledge points and then moved swiftly onto the next era - would have been nice to have the time to explore

I liked the Neolithic era. It looked like there were some neutral dark red tribes running around as well and I think I saw one spawn from a Sanctuary, and they also counted towards my hunt animals star because I didn't hunt any animals that playthrough and still got it. Additionally, I wasn't able to actually select a legacy trait from that era. I got the knowledge and did the event decision, but in my empire screen it had an x through it. Was this feature intentionally cut from the OpenDev and did anyone else have this experience?

I've found because of the pace of the game it is more beneficial to plop a city out ASAP rather than take the time to scout around much in the noelithic. Curios in particular felt useless as a result - I'd never be close to having the required number before going into ancient, and the super small amount of fame isn't worth the turns I'm losing developing my cities.

The Neolithic era is very, VERY short. Assuming you play optimally you can be out of it in 5 turns (ignore curios and rush food spawns, or bullrush a tribe and hope they stand and fight but weaker start for your civ). While I understand that it shouldn't be a huge odyssey given that the "real" gameplay starts in Ancient era, it is pretty jarring. You can also get monumentally screwed if you run into bad terrain (for example starting your movement turn "entering" a river)

I love the idea and it reminds me of old "pipe dream" suggestions I saw for Civilization (adding an era before Ancient instead of settling immediately on game start), but right now there is no reason to take your time and you can rush out of it very aggressively. As far as using it to scout for city locations, this feels like a bad idea compared to just taking your start location (it's fixed for everyone so it should be no secret that settling on the river a bit south from starting is a REALLY good starting location)

And also, some AIs seem to have a LOT of trouble getting out of Neolithic. I had AIs only get out of Neolithic like halfway into the game, I presume because they took a bad fight and never recovered, or got trapped by Ancient civilizations enforcing their territory

I agree that the pacing is too quick (but it's not just the neolithic).

There is an advantage to stay at Neolithic a bit more than necessary, though. You can start with an insane number of scouts this way, while later you need to build units in cities (and they cost citizens which grow a bit slow).

I love that you integrated the Neolithic era into the game! What a fantastic way to start your journey, as a nameless hunter-gatherer tribe. While I overall enjoyed it, I have a few points of critique as well:

1. In general, I think it was a bit too easy. There was no real threat, even big animals like mammoth were easy prey and I was able to advance to the next era within 5 or so turns - without any previous experience about what I have to do.
2. Related to 1., I think mammoth give too much food. I had to kill 2 mammoths and together with one or two curiosities, my tribe was already at full capacity (4/4 units).
3. The respawn mechanic is weird. I wanted to find out what happens when your tribe gets killed in battle, and it just respawned. This seems a bit anticlimatic. It would be great if you could maybe implement a mechanic, where the last unit of your tribe can't be killed. Instead, when it looses a battle, it automatically retreats, albeit severly injured. This makes it more realistic and challenging to come back from a bad encounter.
4. When you found an outpost in the Neolithic age, the outpost would automatically build farms around it and start exploiting these tiles. This was very immersion breaking for me, since there was not a lot of farming going on in the Neolithic Age. It also directly contradicts the hunter-gatherer playstyle you are trying to emulate. Please change neolithic outposts so that they do not exploit the surrounding tiles - or change the graphical representation on the map.
5. Maybe outposts should also cost food, to make it a more interesting decision whether you focus on early expansion or units/pops? I currently don't see a downside to grabbing as many territories as possible as early as possible.
6. You have these nice artworks for curiosities, but they are easy to miss if you don't pay attention. Why not display them in the notification bar instead of the general "you found a curiosity", which does tell you anything about it, in case you missed the popup on the map?

Gaining tribes in Neolithic is too easy and since you can turn them to scouts or extra population in Ancient I feel like delaying culture pick is a too strong strategy. Perhaps the cost of new tribes should increase exponentially and number of tribes required for era stars should be lowered.

I find idea of Neolithic Era very interesting and liked it implementation in general. Here are some of my thoughts about it:

1. It's really hard to reach 10 Knowledge currently. Curriosities with appropriete resource are pretty rare on the map. As result ability to get Knowledge star is unreasonably harder then star for hunt or pops. It would be great if we could get some through events, outposts and interactions with other tribes (be it battle or some primitive diplomacy).

2. It would be great if foundation of first outposts weren't as easy and felt more monumental. Maybe they could cost hunter unit or two and be prerequest for progressing into next era. 

3. I would love to see little bit slower Neolithic Era progression. Pops and hunt star could need little bit more to slow thing down a bit.

LunargentThorn wrote:

2. It would be great if foundation of first outposts weren't as easy and felt more monumental. Maybe they could cost hunter unit or two and be prerequest for progressing into next era. 

I think it would be a good idea to sacrifice a unit to plop an outpost. I actually think this would be a good way to slow down the game by requiring you to use a unit for every outpost in the ancient era as well (which gives you a reason to make the scout unit).

Hi'

I have tried playing the game and got a little way into the game, but it just more or less sticks after a couple of turns. Exploring a bit I find my laptop GPU is the one below the minimum required which is a great shame. I did note while using task manager that the game used 100% of the GPU ram, yet none of the shared ram.Is this an oversight?

 Now I've been play computer games for long time my first machine being a Sinclair ZX80 and when younger (chronologically) I could upgrade machines frequently, even to the extent of building my on rigs. Nowadays things are different. The machine specs for games is getting higher and higher that a part of the consumer base is being left behind by the specs. In the early days of games the coding had to be so much tighter than now in order to get the absolute best out of machines due to the limits of the hardware that was available.

coloneluber wrote:
I think it would be a good idea to sacrifice a unit to plop an outpost. I actually think this would be a good way to slow down the game by requiring you to use a unit for every outpost in the ancient era as well (which gives you a reason to make the scout unit).

Yeah, but the hard part is "which unit?", especially when you have an army with different ones. It might need an extra screen after you click to set the outpost to select it?

Elhoim wrote:

Yeah, but the hard part is "which unit?", especially when you have an army with different ones. It might need an extra screen after you click to set the outpost to select it?

You could do that. You could also have a separate unit for the ancient era like the colonist in later ages, except it builds outposts with an influence cost.

One idea could be that military units can build outposts, but you need a "settler" unit to actually build a city.

Also had issues w. not gaining hunting stars in spite of successful hunts.

Will also agree that mammoths are too easy to kill.