Is this game for me?

[Pucho_03]

I love history, simulation, management games, and I enjoy the Civilization Franchise. What makes this game different from Civ 6, that would make me pull the trigger.

[Twelvefield]

Ōld World is much, much, better than Civ. You're comparing apples to Ferraris. A lot of people come here from Civ. Strangely, some of them even seem to like Civ, but I don't get that.

With ŌW:

You run a Dynasty, a family of characters that rules your Nation. The people are born, they grow up, they gain in wisdom and power (hopefully), and they die. No stupidly immortal Gandhis.

The game AI understands the rules of the game and plays by them. Ōld World doesn't let the AI cheat, and it understands the roles of melee, ranged, mounted, and artillery units. It also understands terrain, naval warfare, and espionage. It will feint and bait you into its killing zones, and it will use scouts to evaluate your nation and probe your weaknesses. It will flank, blitz, and perform co-ordinated attacks. Show me a Civ game that can do that.

ŌW will present you with a wide variety of events that will shape your Nation and your characters. Each event is a decision-point, you can roleplay or min/max it. You can further refine your Nation through research, laws, buildings, and culture.

Like Civ, you can play randomized maps, or you can play pre-made maps and scenarios.

Civ is dead to me. Firaxis has minimal interest in innovating or improving their game, and they seldom make enough of an effort to fix their bugs. Their Civ system is based on stereotypes that verge on racist. Their in-game dialogue has become snarky. The AI is iterative at best, and far from the cutting edge. It's one of the few AIs I can think of that aren't a threat to humans. So, maybe that's a plus for Civ? Keep playing Civ and you won't have to worry about being replaced by its intelligence.

[Soteria]

Is the Old World AI a threat to a human player? It seems pretty trivial to keep them pleased with you.

[easytarget]

It's hard to detect sarcasm in steam forums.

Perhaps wait for someone else to drop by and talk to you about the AI that takes your comment seriously.

[makor]

To me, this is the best 4X turn-based game. All the game mechanics just work so well together. once you figure our how to use the orders it just clicks. It's a game that the more you play, the more you get into it.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by Soteria:

Is the Old World AI a threat to a human player? It seems pretty trivial to keep them pleased with you.

If you were a Hittite, you'd be sacrificing your virgin sister to appease it. I'm assuming you aren't a Hittite, though. (If you are, then Merry Hittite Christmas! I don't seek to offend.)

[omnius]

I like that Old World only deals with the ancient world, one era. You don't see silly tech mismatches like in Civ where you see corsairs attacking battleships and scoring way too much damage because their unit scales are unrealistic. I like the more character driven game of Old World better than the skimpy characters in Civ. I can't stand Civ but like Old World.

[Raligan]

I've played every Civ since the original and after OW I don't think I'll go back. The events and dynastic systems add such a human element to everything that makes it so much more compelling- you might find yourself hating the head of a certain religion and maybe attempting assassination missions on them to find a suitable replacement, for instance. That comes with consequences too, of course. The orders system also limits how much you can do in a turn, which means you can't just spam units to win a war. Your turns grow with the improvements you make in your empire. The only problem I have is that the game doesn't extend into the modern era- so cataphracts and mangonels are some of the highest tech you'll see. This helps keep matchups realistic, though, so you won't just steamroll even a much more primitive empire. You'll probably win, but you'll likely pay for it as the AI is WAY better at tactics than Civ, and a concerted attack by inferior troops can pick away at your more advanced ones.

[Ecliptic]

Civ VI felt to me like a bunch of systems designed in isolation, rough corners sanded off to blandness, tacked together by a commitee of designers. No risk, no edge, no innovation. This is the opposite and oozes with personality and charm and clever game design choices to eliminate tedium and add weight to what could otherwise be a chore in a less capable developer's hands.

[Gregorovitch]

Old World is just a great historical 4X game. The big differences to Civ are:

1. The mechanics of Old World are deeper and more interesting (which also means they take a lot more learning before you start to get the most out of the game).

2. The Old World military AI is very clever, very sneaky and utterly ruthless. If there's a way to roflstomp you it will find it ...... and roflstomp you. It is better than Civ's by quite a stretch.

3. Old World only covers the classical era.

4. Old World contains some CK3-lite aspects of family, character and court drama which you have to pay attention to or you will get your backside bitten.

[Ellye]

On the flipside, since people really already gushed over the pros of OW (which I mostly agree with):

- Warfare in Old World is a chaotic mess. Players and AI can spend resources to make units "force march" for extra movement per turn, which means that units can, no exaggeration, walk one third of the world map in a single turn. It will feel like armies are teleporting all around, there's zero sense of tactical positioning, there are no "fronts", units just appear and disappear with their turbo movement speed. You can disable Force March before a game starts, and that helps a lot, but the default movement range of units is already massive too.

- Related to the above, the "Orders" resource is a great idea, but I feel like it's under-utilised. Orders become too abundant too quickly and stop really mattering as a limiting factor.

- Like any game with a focus on events, the immersion on replays suffers quite a bit when you start seeing the same event window for the 500th time.

- Cities never get visually appealing, buildings all kinda look the same and share the brown-and-beige color pallete. Might be realistic, but it isn't nice to look at and isn't strategically informative when looking at in a glance.

- The beginning of the game is a mad rush to secure the close city sites, even more so than in other 4X games, because city sites are a limited resource in this game.

All in all, I think OW is a better game, especially so if compared to Civ6 instead of the better civs (Civ4 or Civ5). But it's obviously not a perfect game either.

If we allow mods into the talks, personally, I'd take Vox Populi, Realism Invictus, We The People or Codex over it - but if you're already had your fill of those, then Old World is the next best thing, for me.

[jotwebe]

Trying not to be too nitpicky, since that's a valid experience and such, but some of those I want to give a second opinion on:

Originally posted by Ellye:

- Warfare in Old World is a chaotic mess. Players and AI can spend resources to make units "force march" for extra movement per turn, which means that units can, no exaggeration, walk one third of the world map in a single turn. It will feel like armies are teleporting all around, there's zero sense of tactical positioning, there are no "fronts", units just appear and disappear with their turbo movement speed. You can disable Force March before a game starts, and that helps a lot, but the default movement range of units is already massive too.

You get used to it. It's why OW vets love them their scouts.

Originally posted by Ellye:

- Related to the above, the "Orders" resource is a great idea, but I feel like it's under-utilised. Orders become too abundant too quickly and stop really mattering as a limiting factor.

Depending on difficulty and playstyle, that can be true. I'd say on the higher difficulties it generally isn't.

Originally posted by Ellye:

- Like any game with a focus on events, the immersion on replays suffers quite a bit when you start seeing the same event window for the 500th time.

On the other hand you start seeing the connections between the events more, and they become much richer mechanically.

Originally posted by Ellye:

- Cities never get visually appealing, buildings all kinda look the same and share the brown-and-beige color pallete. Might be realistic, but it isn't nice to look at and isn't strategically informative when looking at in a glance.

Yeah I'll give you that one, at least the second part, and the first part for the cultures with the brown-and-beige cities.

Originally posted by Ellye:

- The beginning of the game is a mad rush to secure the close city sites, even more so than in other 4X games, because city sites are a limited resource in this game.

I'll give you this one, too. Although effectively city sites are just as limited in all 4X games, it's just that with free city foundings you can squeeze in two meh cities for one great one.

[Flickmann]

Originally posted by Ellye:

On the flipside, since people really already gushed over the pros of OW (which I mostly agree with):

- Warfare in Old World is a chaotic mess. Players and AI can spend resources to make units "force march" for extra movement per turn, which means that units can, no exaggeration, walk one third of the world map in a single turn. It will feel like armies are teleporting all around, there's zero sense of tactical positioning, there are no "fronts", units just appear and disappear with their turbo movement speed. You can disable Force March before a game starts, and that helps a lot, but the default movement range of units is already massive too.

- Related to the above, the "Orders" resource is a great idea, but I feel like it's under-utilised. Orders become too abundant too quickly and stop really mattering as a limiting factor.

- Like any game with a focus on events, the immersion on replays suffers quite a bit when you start seeing the same event window for the 500th time.

- Cities never get visually appealing, buildings all kinda look the same and share the brown-and-beige color pallete. Might be realistic, but it isn't nice to look at and isn't strategically informative when looking at in a glance.

- The beginning of the game is a mad rush to secure the close city sites, even more so than in other 4X games, because city sites are a limited resource in this game.

All in all, I think OW is a better game, especially so if compared to Civ6 instead of the better civs (Civ4 or Civ5). But it's obviously not a perfect game either.

If we allow mods into the talks, personally, I'd take Vox Populi, Realism Invictus, We The People or Codex over it - but if you're already had your fill of those, then Old World is the next best thing, for me.

Some good criticisms here. Old World is fantastic, but I do feel like I'm reaching the end of my time with it for many of the reasons given above. The game boasts a bazillion events, yet I seem to get the same ones game after game after game. The opening to every game is the same - produce a settler, find your other city sites and settle them ASAP. Civ IV was representing individual buildings in cities back in 2005, so it's disappointing it can't be done in this game. Some events are also clearly designed to shaft the player. Sure, if you squeeze your eyes shut and use your IMAGINATION you might fool yourself into thinking it's "immersive storytelling", but when unremarkable courtier #23 decides to wander into Carthaginian lands and fart into the King's face, provoking all-out war unless you hand over control of your cities to a grand vizier of their choice, it chafes your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ somewhat.

[Siontific]

Originally posted by Flickmann:

Originally posted by Ellye:

On the flipside, since people really already gushed over the pros of OW (which I mostly agree with):

- Warfare in Old World is a chaotic mess. Players and AI can spend resources to make units "force march" for extra movement per turn, which means that units can, no exaggeration, walk one third of the world map in a single turn. It will feel like armies are teleporting all around, there's zero sense of tactical positioning, there are no "fronts", units just appear and disappear with their turbo movement speed. You can disable Force March before a game starts, and that helps a lot, but the default movement range of units is already massive too.

- Related to the above, the "Orders" resource is a great idea, but I feel like it's under-utilised. Orders become too abundant too quickly and stop really mattering as a limiting factor.

- Like any game with a focus on events, the immersion on replays suffers quite a bit when you start seeing the same event window for the 500th time.

- Cities never get visually appealing, buildings all kinda look the same and share the brown-and-beige color pallete. Might be realistic, but it isn't nice to look at and isn't strategically informative when looking at in a glance.

- The beginning of the game is a mad rush to secure the close city sites, even more so than in other 4X games, because city sites are a limited resource in this game.

All in all, I think OW is a better game, especially so if compared to Civ6 instead of the better civs (Civ4 or Civ5). But it's obviously not a perfect game either.

If we allow mods into the talks, personally, I'd take Vox Populi, Realism Invictus, We The People or Codex over it - but if you're already had your fill of those, then Old World is the next best thing, for me.

Some good criticisms here. Old World is fantastic, but I do feel like I'm reaching the end of my time with it for many of the reasons given above. The game boasts a bazillion events, yet I seem to get the same ones game after game after game. The opening to every game is the same - produce a settler, find your other city sites and settle them ASAP. Civ IV was representing individual buildings in cities back in 2005, so it's disappointing it can't be done in this game. Some events are also clearly designed to shaft the player. Sure, if you squeeze your eyes shut and use your IMAGINATION you might fool yourself into thinking it's "immersive storytelling", but when unremarkable courtier #23 decides to wander into Carthaginian lands and fart into the King's face, provoking all-out war unless you hand over control of your cities to a grand vizier of their choice, it chafes your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ somewhat.

well, yea, otherwise the game is easy and boring or disinteresting. Personally, I think the event system offers too much GOOD stuff and not enough BAD stuff. More bad stuff needs to happen to the player.

That said, there's an option for everyone; you can actually turn off the events and keep the characters in the game, and then Old World plays exactly like your average classic 4x game. It speeds up the game too since you're not bombarded with the constanty decision making process of events.

In the recent mowhawk stream, though, the success of the game depended on keeping good diplomatic relations with the danish tribes and the persians... and then around turn 50 or so, the player got an event with only two options: Declare war on the danes, or declare war on the persians.

It was the highlight of the entire video and grand entertainment. "The shaft" creates interesting challenges in the game, and the player navigated that massive curveball quite nicely.

If that one event hadn't happened, I'd assume that entire game would have been so much easier.