Old World Reviews

Not only does Old World give us a more refined 4x experience compared to recent 4x titles, but the developers are putting in the work to make this game more approachable and enjoyable. In terms of gameplay, this game has a lot going on under the hood. The family and character system is deeper than you might think. The family and character traits add so much depth and tie into your 4x strategy very well. They force you to consider your choices carefully, not only about the direct consequences, but also the indirect consequences that might come down the line. You need to influence opinions, and sometime you need to choose the less obvious and less helpful options to improve a influential person's opinions. The UI is great. The information you need is available when you want it, in several places. You can make pop-up windows sticky so you can reference one while looking at another. An undo button? GAME CHANGING. The events continue to be a big part of what sets this game out. These aren't just random "pick gold or science" type events, these are "your family member is crazy and unless you risk offending their family, they're going to continue to do crazy things to ruin your relationships with others" events. I love it. It really causes you to build relationships with your characters and view them as people. My extravagant heir died at a young age, and I was happy, because I didn't really like that guy in the first place. My tactician daughter became crippled and a prideful zealot. Its good, she can be a general, fighting wars away from the capitol. I haven't played on higher difficulty yet, but I can see my AI opponents moving their units around intelligently. I recently moved to take on a barbarian camp sitting on one of the last nearby unoccupied city sites. As I got closer, I saw that the AI was already fighting the barbarians a few tiles away from the camp so they could claim the site. I burned through my orders to move my own units around their little skirmish so I could get to the camp before them. They noticed my plan to beat them to the camp, and they abandoned the fight with the barb to try and cut me off from the camp. Amazing. This game is woefully underrated and deserves your money and attention. You don't need the DLC for a good time either. Highly recommended 5/5. Do it.

This game attempted to blend game mechanics from Civilization VI and Crusader Kings III, and succeeded in many ways, however the battle mechanics were reduced to "focus on killing one unit at a time because everyone attacks at full strength regardless of how wounded they are", which greatly reduced its strategic combat depth. Formations also did not seem to matter because opponents always have enough orders to move a unit anywhere on the battlefield as needed. I enjoyed the 52 hours that I played, but uninstalled it after finishing the tutorial maps.

One of the best Civ-likes at release and its only gotten better since. A unique mix of ancient age Civ and Crusader Kings unlike anything else out there. Made by legendary designer Soren Johnson who was the lead on Civ 4 and has since also made the excellent (and again, unique!) Offworld Trading Company. Worth your time and money.

Old World is a great 4x game. It's just about at the midway point between the Civ series, and Paradox grand strategy titles. It has the deep management of something like Stellaris and the relationship management (albeit less complex) of Crusader Kings. But it also has the focus and addictive quality of the Civ series. This is one of the better turn-based strategy games out there.

The game is interesting for a while but becomes formulaic where games don't really differ and on harder settings military is so important, all other factors become irrelevant. Worse, once you become bored of single player and venture into multi-player there are no in-built tools to find games, the lobbies in the game are password only with games organised in discord. I questioned this as I have a life and would just like to queue up for a game - having posted interest in a game and had no response from anyone for multiple hours - maybe because not known to the in crowd but as a new player, that will be your experience also. To my surprise on seeing if there was any response or interest a day later, i have been removed from the discord - presumably for voicing dissatisfaction at the complete lack of support for finding multi-player games, rather than address the issues, just ban people to avoid any visible dissent. What is worse, I have been given achievements for playing a multiplayer game when all i did was open a lobby which nobody joined - after a significant period of time - this distorts the true numbers of the active multi-player population. The problem with this approach is it means this is a developer i need to avoid moving forward and i would advise you to do the same. Edited below: Thanks to the Developer for a measured and professional response. I have updated this review to positive on reflection that there is enough content that is well made to warrant a significant amount of quality entertainment in single player. With regards to discord, I apologize for the error on my part, it seems the Old World discord is in a different account in my browser instead of adding to my discord servers in the application which is a discord issue, not your's. Again, I apologize, clearly the behaviour was not to hide dissent or remove me and I apologize for that.

Different enough from Civilization to justify purchase. The families and stories are fun, but not really consequential to the gameplay. The economy with multiple resources and buying/selling is more interesting, than civ. User interface and presentation are top notch. Very nice soundtrack. Tribes are fun. For my whole playthrough I had alliance with one of the tribes, and used them as a buffer from other civilizations. I wish, there were more interactions with tribes, like i.e. trade. Sadly end game gets really stale, as there is not much to do except fulfilling arbitrary and tedious objective or just destroying other civilizations.

not really that big of a strategy game player but trying Old World out made me feel things i havent felt since launching Civ V for the first time and not noticing an evening pass in a blink of an eye

Great game. I really enjoyed CIV6, but Civ7 was such a let down.. They ruined a good game. Fortunately Old World came under my radar and I tried it out. Everything I've been looking forward to in a Civ style game. Worth the steep learning curve. READ THE MANUAL!!!

Really delightful. It's a "civ-like", but about 1000x more innovative than any of the last several brand-name-Civ releases. tl;dr: Give this developer money, IMO. The emphasis on the ancient eras -- and _absense_ of any shift to the modern world -- feels great. It lets the game get in-depth and be balanced in the mechanics and the scale that make sense for the time periods it's focused on. And the multiple different resources in each city -- growth, training, and civics -- used for workers+settlers, military, and features and improvements, respectively -- is a huge innovation of the genre. It makes each city distinctive, and means you give more consideration to where some work should happen than just "okay, which city has the most production". Furthermore, each of those has local applications *if you're using them*... *or* contributes to a global, similar (but not interchangable) resource... meaning, for example, that if every city is working on local civics improvements, there's an opportunity cost, whereby your ability to afford to push through civilization-wide laws will be reduced. Really sublime balance in this. A global count of "orders" per turn also keeps things moving and provides another nice piece of balance. It's very typical that you won't be able to move every single one of your units their maximum distance every turn, because you'll run out of orders. This presents the player with prioritization choices that result in a lot of excellent balancing. For example, sometimes you might choose to avoid a war, even if you have plenty of soldiers, because you don't want to pressed to spend lots of orders every turn that you'd rather use to continue moving workers around to improve your terrain at home. The presence of characters with their attributes and agendas and events adds some spice to the game, but doesn't completely overpower the other familiar 4x mechanics. My only complaints would be that the UI is a little... heavy. Making sure characters are adequately busy at all times, that governors are assigned, etc, can be a little hard to see. Sometimes I go several turns without realizing some role with huge potential bonuses is simply completely unfilled. It's not a game killer, but it could be improved. Overall: Great game. Tons of innovations. And it just plain plays well. I'm spending tons more time on this than I have on the last several Civ releases combined. Give Old World a spin!

I was holding out for Civ 7 - but after reading the review, I decided to look at what else could scratch my 4x itch. I like how Old World is familiar yet it has it own mechanisms and systems which make the game feel fresh and provides me the "ogg, just a bit more" vibe that I remember playing civ for some many years.