> why on earth choose a non-OO language for a boardgame
Lua has usually been a very popular choice for game developers. One reason is that it gives you an easy way to embed a scripting language in your game.
You can do OOP without classes [0].
> Can you please please please integrate with Python on the server?
You expect the developer to port and maintain their entire project to Python because you can't be bothered to learn a new programming language?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(programming_language)#Obj...