Age of the Old Ones is terrible (Spoilers for that age)

[Faray]

I want to say that despite my complaints about some of these ages, I am enjoying the game (Otherwise I wouldn’t be trying to do all these extra ages). However, I really feel like someone dropped the ball in this age. Beware there will be spoilers here if you want to find this age on your own.




So the build up to this age is pretty good, I did enjoy the age of heresy, although I literally unlocked the age of old ones immediately (I had 60 cultist on my first turn). That’s fine though I wanted to get to it.

The problem is the age of the old ones, I didn’t know much about it, maybe gaint eldritch monsters attacking, trying to survive, etc... However the age is terrible. You take over all the cultist on the map, sounds cool until your stuck moving 100+ Units one at a time until you group them up. Then the victory is conquer every nation, nothing else. There’s no summoning of old ones, nothing other than cultist, and more cultist. Your special culture ability? Summon tons of more cultist which means another 50+ moving one unit at a time until you group them up. At least age of archangels (Another end game conquest victory) you only need a certain pop %, and you get a giant laser to help out. This was just tedious and about ½ way I just gave up (There was no way I was going to lose but it was such a slog I didn’t care)

I hope maybe in the future this gets reworked. If you want to keep the cultist thematic, reduce the number of cultist but make them really strong on there own. It would have also been cool to have a ‘summon cthulu/whatever monster’ victory condition instead (Win if you summon it, everyone else wins if you fail). Anything other than 45 mins of moving so many cultist around please.

[archonsod]

The problem with the barbarian spawns in general is that it chucks out one or two units at a time who just wander around until they get themselves killed attacking a city. It tends to make them somewhat ineffectual, and as you point out when you spawn one cultist in each region then hand control of them to the player it just creates a headache of micromanagement.
A simple fix would be to have the game spawn the cultists in stacks rather than individual units. The same would work for the other spawn events during the game - rather than spawn four individual rebel units per territory in the Age of Revolution, why not spawn a single stack of four units? That way they become more of an actual threat (at least to your less developed regions) and less of an annoyance to mop up.

[езж]

I am somehow stuck in that age and cant declare war on the last remaining nation? Any ideas?

[Faray]

Originally posted by archonsod:

A simple fix would be to have the game spawn the cultists in stacks rather than individual units. The same would work for the other spawn events during the game - rather than spawn four individual rebel units per territory in the Age of Revolution, why not spawn a single stack of four units? That way they become more of an actual threat (at least to your less developed regions) and less of an annoyance to mop up.

That would help a lot, but i'm also disapointed the age is just a domination victory in disguise. Pretty much an auto win one too given how many units you can just throw around (And this on GM as well), granted it was hard for me to get there so I guess the win was deserved.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Faray:

That would help a lot, but i'm also disapointed the age is just a domination victory in disguise. Pretty much an auto win one too given how many units you can just throw around (And this on GM as well), granted it was hard for me to get there so I guess the win was deserved.

I think it pretty much counts as a 'hidden' victory age

[The Konrad]

"Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn!" my fellow Awaked.

The first turn actually was fun.
Hordes upon hordes of free cultist units I had to pull together into a nice and tidy formation so they don't get wiped out by the enemy forces.
No cost and instantly recruited meant that I didn't mind losing them or had any emotional investment.
Since the only enemy were the four players on the other continent of a huge map it would have taken ages to amass a sizeable army to cross the abyssal depths But with each full culture power unlocked more of them spawned.
So many more...
So so many...

I had to command over 300 Armies... 400 Armies or 500 Armies and merge them into their max-size mob of Cultist tearing at the fabric of reality...
So much so that the excessively poorly optimised game crawled foward making me scream, pulling my hair out like a bed ridden hallunicinating maniac.
The horror, the horror, the horror...

A rather fitting end I would say...

[xyzapip]

Originally posted by The Konrad:

"Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn!" my fellow Awaked.

The first turn actually was fun.
Hordes upon hordes of free cultist units I had to pull together into a nice and tidy formation so they don't get wiped out by the enemy forces.
No cost and instantly recruited meant that I didn't mind losing them or had any emotional investment.
Since the only enemy were the four players on the other continent of a huge map it would have taken ages to amass a sizeable army to cross the abyssal depths But with each full culture power unlocked more of them spawned.
So many more...
So so many...

I had to command over 300 Armies... 400 Armies or 500 Armies and merge them into their max-size mob of Cultist tearing at the fabric of reality...
So much so that the excessively poorly optimised game crawled foward making me scream, pulling my hair out like a bed ridden hallunicinating maniac.
The horror, the horror, the horror...

A rather fitting end I would say...

Mggoka'ai mggoka'ai!

[TheCollector]

The game actually spawns like 2-4 cultists per region on separate tiles, mostly improvements, to allow you to raze your opponents' improvements and so paralyse their economies in one turn.

It reminds me of the typical paratrooper scenario. Your paratroopers get delivered but they are spread all over the map, you have to group them, use defensive terrain like forests, avoid enemy armies ... and most of them will die. On the other side have 2-3 stacks surround an enemy large city and they will eventually take it long before your regular army arrives there.

Going through all these cultists may take more than one hour per turn which reminded me of some very old strategy games ...

In general you don't have to spawn more free cultists, you can also try winning this war of conquest with your regular army or if you want a short Age of the Old Ones, prepare for conquest and take out some of the opponents before. Probably better play the scenario on a smaller map type since you spawn cultists in every region including your own and they all want orders from you ...

"Cultist Uprising" is a Culture Power, so you could probably save a couple of uses before entering the Age of the Old Ones, then spam the Cultists button until the map is filled with Cultists and finish AI in a few turns.

Note :
The achievement "Age of the Old Ones" is granted for being the first to advance to this Age, not for completing the Age.
Eliminating all 7 players just gave me the default victory screen and achievement "Time to Die".
Is there no special ending? Not even a screen?

[chaney]

Originally posted by TheCollector:

"Cultist Uprising" is a Culture Power, so you could probably save a couple of uses before entering the Age of the Old Ones, then spam the Cultists button until the map is filled with Cultists and finish AI in a few turns.

Uh, what?!? You can save up Culture uses? I thought once it was available use was mandatory that turn ... this is astounding!?! So many times it is ready when I'd like to wait another turn or two to use it ... so I hope this is the case :) So much to learn, loving the game systems despite the lack of polish and opaque details.

Edit: played and checked this, I could not end the turn without using the Culture. It was the vanilla current release. Has that changed in the beta?