Orders

[Just dont ask]

It it just me or are there to few orders in the late game? and shouldn't be the orders be spread over the region/cities instead of land??

[The Doctor]

There are never really enough orders throughout the game. Order management is an important aspect of the game - you start out with not enough orders to do everything you want and that situation remains the same for much of the game. It scales up throughout the game but you will never have enough for all of your units to do everything. If there were, this whole layer of decision making would be meaningless. This is a 4X+ game where you can't give orders to every single unit each turn like you can in other, simpler 4X games.

Of course during peacetime when you're basically just scouting and giving orders to your workers to build things, you may end up with some remaining orders at the end of the turn but most of the time, there are just not quite enough to do everything. If you end up with a surplus all the time, perhaps you need to build more workers or you should be taking on those barbarians and tribes a bit more aggressively.

There are many, many different ways to generate orders throughout the game as well so make sure you're doing that. Building that specialist in that camp might not be as appealing as more culture or iron etc per turn but orders are the oil that keeps everything going and no matter how small the benefit appears, it all adds up.

Late game, there is a Law which allows you to bank up to 100 orders which means you can build up a large stock for use in a war. The first strike in this game is quite powerful and so this law is very useful if you're planning some late game aggressive expansion, or to react to such if you're the target of such a strike.

Workers tend to consume a lot of orders when you're reassigning them so perhaps if you don't have enough orders to manage an active war, give orders to your military before you assign new tasks to your workers.

[Twelvefield]

I keep thinking I should check this out for myself, but I'm too Big Picture/lazy - do automated units use up orders?

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

I keep thinking I should check this out for myself, but I'm too Big Picture/lazy - do automated units use up orders?

I'm not being snarky but isn't the answer obvious? :D

But since you asked, yes, they do. However, they receive their orders AFTER you have finished your turn so if you haven't any orders left, they will get nothing. There's not any good reason to automate scouts, missionaries or workers unless your empire has grown so big that 'microing' it has become tedious. But I find I make much better choices whene building improvements than the AI does so I never use this option.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Do automated units use up orders?

Once you stick all of your units on automated, orders are then free for those units for the rest of the game, and you can cruise to victory.

Kidding.

Originally posted by BMW 118i MSport Owner:

Are there too few orders in the late game?

I never have enough orders. I always favoured spending mine on military moves as the game progressed. That's just the way the game is.

If you want to be an orders wh-re, there are several ways to increase orders, but I've never played that way.

[endoric]

please, how do you increase orders other than the garrison? I did not do well my first game, 70 turns in my leader died and i resigned. the stats showed my orders to be less than 20 and the other rivals had over 20 up to 30.

how do i get those orders up?

[Salty Biscuit]

Every 10 Legitimacy gives you 1 order; you build that in part through early game exploration. Anything that builds legitimacy eventually increases orders, though sometimes with events there's a trade-off. Hell, there are always tradeoffs. That's part of the fun. Garrisons, Strongholds, & CItadels give .5 orders each. Elephant Camps & Horse Pastures give 1/2 an order; each Trapper/Rancher bumps that to a full order. (Some nations get even better bonuses here.) Shrines with Master and Elder Acolytes get .5 and 1 orders respectively; couple this with Polytheism (lets you build each shrine in every city) and you can boost your orders rate significantly. Governers with the Robust trait give one order per turn, so if you can give a governor that trait via events, do it, otherwise keep an eye out for them - characters sometimes are "born" with it. There's some other methods but those are my go-tos.

[Salty Biscuit]

I should add that all this takes time. As with every other nation stat you build, like Food or Civics or Science, small things eventually add up to big things. The game is structured to reward the long term view.

[endoric]

i was playing on the noble level and neglected all of this. War happened, thought i was ready, and while i technically was i could not get things done due to lack of orders.

Thanks

[jotwebe]

Statesmen families also provide a lot of orders as long as they are happy (I think one per happiness level per city). Their family seat gets access to a project that transforms civics into orders - I like it for wars, you can then prioritise the military for orders and move workers around on the turns you get extra orders.

[The Renderer]

If there were "enough" orders, they'd be pointless. The only reason for them to exist is so you have to prioritize because you cannot do everything.

[💖⎛⎝Silver Knight⎠⎞]

Orders are a bad mechanic and should be removed

[Salty Biscuit]

Originally posted by 💖⎛⎝Silver Knight⎠⎞:

Orders are a bad mechanic and should be removed

Why? Civ already exists.

[Siontific]

I disagree there aren't enough orders by the end. By the end game I have enough orders to force march units nearly clear across the map in some cases; certainly from one part of an empire to another.

Consider, there becomes a point where doing literally any single action with a worker becomes pointless. I'd say this point is around turn 100-120 depending on game state. Unless you're plugging up resource shortfalls, or you economy is so broken that you can't rely on gold, there's just no point.

why start the library line on turn 100? or build an odeon, or a barracks; or literally anything? Quarries perhaps because the price of stone can get expensive; but you just need to keep things even, and generally you're fine as long as you bring up income to +100 per turn of any given resource; exceptionally easy to do with Mills. Also, you certainly don't need to **keep** building as the empire expands; a core of 3-6 really great cities will sustain a massive empire of useless ones just fine; so after a certain threshold in the game it's just not a good use of orders to try and spread the development to all of your cities. For this consideration, keep in mind by the end game you should have access to plenty of ability to slam the "rush buy" button in various currencies. Extra cities don't need to be developed well for you to utilized their build Que to pump out units or certain key specialists you might have specialized in the city.

So, this means, by the end game not only have your orders scaled if you've optimized your orders economy well, but it also means you get a surge of orders from no longer needing to use your any for your civilians.

Looking at the mid game, you can be -10, or even upwards of -30 orders per turn going into worker turns.

In the end game, you shut that down and you're looking at 60-100 orders per turn. which I think is more than enough.

[Siontific]

I think that's one of the things I enjoy about Old World; the forward momentum gets so overwhelming that there's very little "end game slog" because eventually you're cranking out dozens of units per turn, the simplest events give you 1,000 civics because you have a dozen cities - most percentages that matters scale on inflation and number of cities, so even a massive empire of garbage cities can still give you a hold court [judge] of 800+ civics; convert this into rushing out units constantly.

Or if you have an end-game builder, you can stack all of the workers you build up over the game in order to build legendary wonders in just one or two turns.

End game Zealots? you can recruit off of literally every kill.

Heroes? Launch Offensive nearly every turn.

Sure, sometimes when it's over there's a bit of cleanup to push the VP threshold, but it's much quicker than a game of civ because everything in the game that scales will just absolutely balloon out of control by the end game. I consider this true of Orders, as well. One thing I left out of my previous comment; conquering.

Once you absorb one empire in the mid game you're gonna have a bunch of extra orders coming in; your empire size has doubled, and you have cities you don't need to bother spending any orders or workers to develop; so it's another surge of orders to the player.

[mk11]

Late game you have Trade League and Coin Debasement which means you can have all the orders your economy will afford.