Old World

I really want to like this game

All the ingredients are there for a really cool and unique game. The issue is they are spread too thin. I feel as though this game has a bit of an identity crisis, it uses a civ style 4x4 medium to play the game what makes it cool is its way more than that, theres a million games that use such a medium go play them if thats what you want. But the systems and dynamics theyve laid on top - politics, interpersonal relationships, etc is what sets this game apart. unfortunately these systems lack depth, every new DLC that comes out i get excited that it will flesh out these systems but am consistently disappointed. Sacred and Profane was a step in the right direction but it still mostly an event pack. What this game needs is more direct control and management of such systems and in a much deeper manner.

Very good game. With more improvements it could be a solid replacement for Civ games.

Highly replayable, much less sucecptible to end game snowballing than most 4x games.

There are enough similarities to Civ to satisfy fans of the game, but more than enough tweaks and enhancements to make it a very different game. You'll focus on a small 200 year span of history that isn't directly tied to actual human history, but basically takes place within the 2000 BCE to 0 time window. Civs begin with individual characteristics with different starting conditions and advantages, but will take shape much more based on the strengths, weaknesses, and personalities of key leaders and your decisions about where to take your Civ. Your strategies, too, will need to adapt to the realities of your situation and your opponents. You can't (or probably shouldn't anyway) follow a formula to apply to every game. Can't just take the same Civ, build the same war machine or economic power, and smash your opponents every game. You'll have to adapt to the realities of each game, and determine your best approach.
I didnt expect to like this game this much, I expected just a re-hash of Civ. It is much more than that, yet there are enough similarities that you'll understand the gist of the game pretty quickly. I highly recommend this game - but only if you have a lot of spare time for your new obsession lol.

Eat a plate of feces OR Drink a jug of urine: every "event" in the game.

Also, you want to make your third child an Ambassador? Ha ha, despite their education subject having 4 career options with 2 of them being for that role, you better believe when they graduate the only 2 out of the 4 options the game will give you will NOT be for the role you want; even after the tedious save-scumming and cheesing you gone through the last decade to get alright outcomes from the education events this whole time, your "choice" always goes back to eating crap or drinking piss.

Ridiculously frustrating. And this is essentially baby mode, no issues with rival realms or barbarians or tribes, no threats there to the nation; all gameplay hamstring lock-outs for just character management and development. It wouldn't be so bad if all these lock-outs and restrictions on player choice didn't feel so random and arbitrary.

It is sad because what the game tries to do is incredible. I love Civilization, and I love Crusader Kings (genealogical aspects), and Old World is a game that has both of these, and does actually do it. The interface is solid, and the aesthetics of the game are great. But this hamstringing of choice and allowed player actions is just completely infuriating and undermines any enjoyment of the game. I would NEVER purchase this game full price (I got it $10 deep discount Spring 2025).

To new to it to really give a detailed review. But I do really enjoy the layers and depth of play. The Families really make a difference as well as assigning Ambassadors, Chancellors, Spymasters and Trade. The game has a lot going on and that's appreciated.

Best of the "civ-like" games that I've tried. Mix of Crusader Kings-style character mechanics with classic 4X empire building gameplay. The games focus is on iron age antiquity so the nations and tech stays centered on that. More granular than civ, with many resources to collect and spend on units/buildings/government actions.

The most interesting and unique resource is orders, and orders economy is what really sets this game apart. Every action you take uses its own resource, orders, making this the most powerful resource in the game and leading to many interesting decisions.

Bit of a learning curve and the event/character RNG can be a bit punishing at times, but once you wrap your head around it this game is becomes very good. Best civ-like game I've played since Civ 4.

If you want to play in a proper 4A game - this should be your choice. It keeps good balance of amount and quality of mechanics. It's not a gazillion of stuff that impossible to balance, like in Civ.

And it has unusual stuff, like families, etc.

I wish I could give a rating that's between yes and no. This game is such a cool mix of new and borrowed ideas and I want to like it. Unfortunately, every run turns into a micromanagement slog mid-late game and there just isn't enough differentiating the factions to keep things mixed up. I feel like I've gotten everything out of this game I can get.

Excellent game with enormous depth. Takes time and patience.

Similar to Civ. I like it. Almost a narrative game, if you're into that sort of thing. I actually am not, but tolerate it. A lot of the same things are repeated often between turns.

I wanted to like this game as I used to love the Civilization series but have been disappointed with it from Civ 5 onward. Unfortunately Old World (OW) ends up leaving me with a "meh" feeling. To explain, I find the game forcing you into certain city build areas takes away strategic planning. So too with workers ... there is rarely a need to override their recommendations so that takes away any need for planning. Like Civ you need resources to build things which you get through worker developments (technically Civ gives you them with the terrain as well but you optimize with improvements) but in OW there is some sort of "god" market from whence you can buy and sell unlimited resources, which magically appear or disappear from your inventory. Sadly, that's just silly and doesn't encourage a player to strategize resource development ... you just need lots of one resource or money to buy/sell your way to where you want to be. Empire building I also found less than stimulating. You start out building as many settlers as possible to scoop up all the empty city sites, then you focus on taking over the nearby tribes because there isn't really any benefit to keeping them around (I was allied with one and they didn't help during wars and didn't send me any resources that I could tell). After that there seems little reason to fight any major civilizations as you walk to a simple points victory. I could point out other things that made the game "meh" but I instead decided to play Civ 4.

I really wanted to like this game, but ultimately I can't recommend it. It does have a lot of nice touches in it, but the tutorial does not do a great job of explaining all of the various mechanics, and on some level it's just too busy. I don't need all of the shrines to build, and the family dynamics feel like they get in the way, and aren't totally explicable. I wanted a better civ, but I got something fairly different.

A lot of the standard things for games in this genre, but what I really enjoyed about it is the family/succession management. It's like the Sims meets Civ. Lots of fun.

This game is so deep, but it wears its depth so lightly. Everything interacts with everything else, but you can choose how much you want to immerse yourself in it all, and for me it was only at the upper difficulty levels that it really became necessary to study the systems. Yes, in many ways it's just Civilisation meets Crusader Kings, but I prefer it to either of those games: the characters and events give it so much more narrative interest than Civilisation, but equally the 4X structure gives it so much more direction than Crusader Kings. My biggest criticism is what a lot of other people have said: the gameplay differences amongst the nations are trivial, which means tomorrow's run with Greece is going to feel pretty much the same as yesterday's with Rome. Also, it's not exactly rich with visual spectacle, but then again I wouldn't choose a big-budget game with a bunch of loose ends and missing pieces over a mid-budget game with an obsessive attention to detail.

If you want a Civ-style game that is head-and-shoulders above Civ and is focused on classical antiquity of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, buy this game. I hope this developer goes on to make more games in this vein and look forward to buying them. There are innovations and quality of life improvements here that should have been in all games of this type years ago. The AI is shockingly competent, especially for combat. This game goes to show just how smaller and more focused developers can vastly outproduce major game studios these days.

All right, was sitting on this game for a long time, and admittedly kinda found it a tad hard to get into at first. But this little gem had that spark that pulled me closer. And part of that was, for me, the soundtrack.
It combines Greek orthodox church chants in both Greek and Arabic, and other middle eastern bangers that boldly link the Middle-East of the bronze age to that of more recent times. And that is not to mention the peppering of some of Phillip Glass' violin concertos, making the gameplay loop nigh unstoppable as the constant stream of pure musical gratification is bliss, and stopping that is just painful. The score sets a tone that proudly shows a love for the setting of this game, despite any historical mismatches. Frankly the only thing missing is Peter Pringle singing the Epic of Gilgamesh ;)

I'm not sure if soundtrack is something most players think a lot about, but it was a huge part of why I enjoyed spending so much time playing Civ 5, something that it's descendants in the series have blundered with tonal mismatches, non civilisation specific music and an almost offensive orchestral tone. Old World on the other hand solves this by scaling back its width and deepening it's scope. And that approach is insightful in more ways than one.

Another aspect Old World deeply understands is the desire to experience the story of your empire. The character driven gameplay intermingled with a surprisingly rich event system immersed me into the game, worrying about schemes against me, cheating on my married partner with some power-hungry up and comer, assassinating my heir because another royal succeeding me would be better for the nation... The order system adds to that in the sense that you're not some disconnected all controlling entity moving your pawns, but a ruler of an ancient kingdom trying to coordinate its expansion within the limits of your command structure.

Frankly, if you've been reading until here, just try it, start a game, restart when you realise you fucked up, and keep playing. Learning the mechanics of this game can be a bit daunting, but once you get it you start to realise how all of the resources dance together in what I consider to be one of the better balanced 4X games I've ever played.

fun enough for a while, but the base game gets fairly dull.
sadly, the mod system does not work. you are stuck on an infinite loading screen "please wait, checkng mods"
don't check the mods just load the freaking files, how hard can it be?

It's a proper turn-based strategy game. It's well optimized so it can run smoothly even on low-spec computers.

Great game, the user interface is really amazing and made for PC, mouse and keyboard ONLY, like it should be in every 4x game.
It is really a pleasure to use this UI with a mix of detailed nested tooltips and clever shortcuts. Encounters and events are always meaningful and keep you engaged, there are many clever mechanics like : orders, different type of resources for different ways of spending, the very well done blend of several RPG elements.
The game constantly teach you new mechanics while you play, in that way it is never boring and you always have something new to discover as you progress in the learning. For this reason the game is on the easy side but without lacking depth, actually there is a lot of depth to discover here.

Great mix of early stages Civilization and Crusader Kings. Strikes perfect balance between the two and is superior to both in my mind. Also very customizable and has quite good AI.

I've been a Civ player since the first game. I've enjoyed the various iterations of that game over the years but didn't realize I was looking for something to come along and improve the 4X formula in so many different ways. Brian Johnson (lead designer for Civ IV) and Mohawk Games created a 4X masterpiece. There's a great talk by Brian (at a gaming convention, I think) on YouTube where he breaks down all the aspects of Civ that were not ideal to the gaming experience and how he and his team improved specific mechanics or changed fundamental Civ concepts. This has become my go-to stategy game and will be for a long time. The game is well supported with continuous updates and meaningful DLC that just keeps expanding on what the game has to offer. What I enjoy most of all is how this game creates an emergent narrative to your character's leadership and how that changes and develops from generation to generation. Just solid fun.

Don't buy civ 7, buy this instead. It looks better, it actually tries something new with the tile based 4x formula.

Old world is a must for all 4X sandbox fans .

As a turn-based strategy game it's excellent with many layers to it's intriguing events system

It has so much to like, if it ever moves up the ages and out of the "Old World " it will be awesome and simple the greatest 4x game ever including Civ 4 ( thou not SMAC!)

Picked this one up on sale with all the DLC for like $30.00. Totally worth it. A deeper experiance than Civ and not as cartoony. You stay in the ancient times but it is named "Old World" so yea. The dynasty mechanics are challenging and fun. This game is not easy though.

People call this a cross between Crusader Kings and Civilization and they're not wrong... Leaning more on the Civ side with a more focused time period and location.

War is a big deal, it feels massive and although you can't doom stack, it still feels more epic than Civilization.. and with the limited orders you get to pick between developing and fighting when a war rages.

This game may be better than Civ... But not as mindless. Even on easy modes I don't think you could mindlessly just auto-play without thinking.

this game rules. the border expansions are interesting, and the family lineages are full of cool stories.

9/10
A solid 4X game that perfectly combines Civ 6 with family dynasty elements from CK3. Mohawk actually designed every mechanic in this game correctly, unlike Civ where some systems make you wonder if they're just bad design choices or if they're incomplete to sell you DLC later. Honestly, the base game of Old World feels complete already. I don't even find myself wanting more DLC, which is pretty rare these days.

Absolutely lovely 4x game. Way more creative than the last few CIV games, and it has that "special something" which will make you suddenly lose hours when playing. Love it, I hope the developers continue supporting it going forward.

was really enjoying the early + mid game, then got into first empire war. It was such a waste of time, hated it so much didnt even make it to the 10 hour mark. Units can just fly across the map, so if you move any of your units to your border city watch them get picked off every turn, the AI can and will send units from 40-60 tiles away to snipe your units and you can't build anywhere as quickly as they can

Starting off if you are looking for a historically accurate game. This game is not. If it was I would recommend this game. Just for that, but the age of marriage and the age that characters tend to be before passing away is heavily exaggerated. The game feels like it takes a modern rewrite to history. Which believe it or not is fiction. So this game should be described as historical fiction.

The games starts off as a new interesting take on 4X with lots of new features that are intriguing, but end up falling short because of the balance of things. With little clarity given to how things work. For example I can't tell you what causes one city to build things faster then another city yet it happens. Essentially every new feature it adds feels poorly executed.

The succession system feels more of a hindrance to the game then intriguing addition. It's pretty simple get married have kids and raise them. Who you get married to doesn't really matter, dowries are small and it can be really frustrating because your heir can get a detrimental trait that you don't with no way to fix it and you are punished more for wanting to swap heirs. The whole system is interesting, but poorly executed.

City culture level is by far the worst thing in the game. As you really only get punished for building up your cities with this function. The only boon is you get to build more types of buildings. Which means nothing when it just cost you more resources to run your city. This game continuously punishes you for building up your cities. It much better to focus on expanding then making a mega city. One easy fix is to provide cities with more construction queues every culture level. Developing can craft two things at once. Strong three and Legendary four and so on. This would make upgrading a city a serious boon that speed up your ability to construct armies and other things. Rather then the current state of the game where it's better to spend most of your resources building an army then making your cities more prosperous. This would also fix the heavy pacing issue this game has. Where early game is fun as you start to build up, but as you get deeper into the game. The game feels slower and more of a slog. A lot of this is because even if you are ahead in this game.

Other issues are the order system. It can feel impossible to have enough orders at times as their is no reliable way to build them up early. Not to mention you are punished for upgrading your cities again. As every worker actively building something reduces how many orders you get. I really like the order system, but their needs to be a system overhaul that makes it easier for people to get more orders without punishing themselves at the same time.

This game also has no since of progression. I know this is common in 4X titles, but with more and more games coming out these days. People are less likely to want to stick to one game. So giving your players goals to feel like they completed the game is a great way to do this. Achievements outside of game is not a good way of doing this.

Lastly difficulty settings. These almost never add to the experience of a game. Especially in this game and many games like it that. use difficulty settings as an excuse to not actually balance the game. Most people want to hop in a game and just experience it. Most people don't want to have a game perfectly cater to them. To be honest if it wasn't for the learn to play section I probably wouldn't have gotten around to playing this game for a few years. As trying to fiddle around and find the difficulty setting that is best to play on is not worth it. Not to mention it creates unhealthy mentality of either always playing it on easy or always playing it on hard or if things are to hard I'll just make it easier. Difficulty settings aren't always bad, but when they are just added to lazily not balance your game or to cater to people who want an easier or harder game it never is good. Rogue-likes are the biggest example of difficulty settings done well. Where harder difficulties are more rewarding. Heaviest example is Against the Storm. If you add difficulty settings you should always incentivize people to challenge themselves. Let them decide if the reward is worth the extra hassle. Alternatively you can just not add difficulty settings and make a fun base experience.

I really enjoy how you expand city borders in this game this is probably the best things about this game.

All in all this game needs a lot of work sadly and I can't recommend it to anyone. The game isn't historically accurate enough to get the game for a historical stand point. Which I'm looking for games that I can let my kids play that will teach them history. The Last Train Home is a great example of being historically accurate, but still being a fun game. It's honest about history while still making a game out of it.

Great game for a fair (maybe too low) price with a lot of really good additional content.

If you have any questions the community and the developers are really helpful (on the forums and on discord).

It takes some time to understand, due to the many complex mechanics. I recommend playing the tutorials. Once it clicks, it's one of the best 4X games out there. The mixture of classic 4x gameplay, dynasty management and role playing elements just works really well.

For years I skipped this because I thought it was a cheap Civ clone.

It's not.

I've played hardcore grand strategy games to death. HOI4, EU4, Stellaris, Civ4/5/6, Total War, Frostpunk, Dominions, etc etc etc...

This is fresh. The different systems are meaningfully interconnected & weighted together; almost all actions are complex trade-offs.

I am in love. This game is IT. That it has a lower rating than it should pry reflects the misalignment of kinda casual marketing vs hardcore deep reality.

The baseline of a civ-like game is pretty good, but there are a few things that make this game bad in my opinion.

The economy is weird I had so much basic resources (gold, food ect.) that I didn't know what do with and I really couldn't spend it on anything, and let me tell you when you have so much resources any of the story bits happen when you have to choose what to do or there will be consequences.. Its just laughable that someone wants 500 gold or else.. and you have 10k in the bank and 400 per turn.

You can settle only in pre-defined city spots, which doesn't sound that bad at first but there are too few of those and it basically will mean that realistically you will be locked to 4 maybe 5 cities for the majority of the game - if you want more you need to conquer some from the enemy, which brings me to the other even bigger issue. The combat..

The combat.. it is such a slog.. and since combat is such a crucial part of the game if its bad the game is not worth the time. Basically the enemy will spam units, and I mean spam - one or two per city per turn, that will move all over the map and attack you (and I mean literally from the other end of the map), and this was on normal difficulty also.
You will will probably lose 2-3 units per turn this way, the enemy as well but they will constantly reinforce and simply out spam you because its impossible to keep up even if you try to rush production.
The dmg amounts are kind of weird to predict you are not sure if the enemy archer will deal 3 or 8 dmg for example.
Also, since the units can move so far, its difficult to get a good defensive position, for example in civ a unit can move one or two hexes on the enemy territory, here you can basically flank the whole army trough the forests and hills and still attack.

A lot of very elegant design went into Old World with the singular purpose of making you have interesting choices while playing this magnificent 4X. It will keep you adapting to new conditions. This game went back to re-evaluate a lot of design that permeates the genre down to its more core mechanics and emerged the other side with new exciting ideas and executed them perfectly.

You play as a dynasty, throughout the course of the game individual leaders and their special traits will come and go, it works very well because you can assume each leader will live a certain amount of time, letting you plan ahead and use their unique stats, when there's a succession things will be switched up on you, new problems and benefits will arise, take interest in how your hiers develop to take advantage of the next succession, maybe you want a smooth transition, maybe you want someone with very different traits, maybe an event will make you consider someone else as hier, it's a very nice balance between planning ahead and changing your conditions. Other recent 4x games have tried similar things to keep things fresh but not only is this the only one that truly succeeds, I can't imagine old world without it, every run feels different.

The events in the game are probably landmark and singular most differentiating feature from this particular 4x, events are moments where decisions will impact the current state of affairs or future events, they come in at a steady pace and again, break up samey habits players might develop from game to game, even during times where not much is happening, these always keep things fresh and lead to very entertaining gameplay, both mechanically and story wise. Perhaps someone accuses you of betraying your spouse, and you decide to jail them, or let the rumors spread because you can't afford the political resistance that jailing a prominent figure will attract.

In order to win the game your leaders will choose periodically between different ambitions, completing 10 of these will net you a win. These ambitions change every game, they are mostly mid-term goals that require some effort to complete bust most likely won't change up your plans drastically. These will prevent you from planning for the same strategies every game, always give you small goals to strive for, make sure theres always something to do in Old World while progressing you towards victory, they are very satisfying to complete.

The research tree is semi random, again, the game is trying really hard to prevent you from going for the same game plan before you even start the game, it's just more fun when you need to consider your current goals and options, evaluate your priorities. Whatever tech you don't research will take longer to cycle back, an interesting choice and a way to cut back on sameness. You can plan ahead since its randomness is limited.

The order system changes how you give commands to your units on the map, you usually don't have enough of them to move all your workers and military. Which also makes you think if you really need an extra worker at this point in time if you won't have the extra orders to give them tasks or if you really can afford to go to war, if all your orders go out to moving and attacking with your military, your workers might not develop your nation as fast as needed, It both gives you something to think about and cuts down on uninteresting moves.

The production queue is excellent, cities instead of using one singular resource for production they use 3 distinct ones, you can have a city that is excellent at creating soldiers and poor at building settlers, but most importantly, when a city isn't using one of these resources to build something, they get stockpiled as a global resource that you will also need for different things like passing new laws or sustaining specialist workers. Therefore, if you make all your cities build military units for several turns, you won't stockpile any of the resource to upgrade them during that time. Again, this makes the decision on what to build more interesting.

The most basic mechanics in the genre have been readjusted with the focus on cutting down on automotive habits and meaningless moves that one develops after a number of runs in any 4x game, it succeeds beautifully, then old world opens up possibilities by building on top of this lovely foundation.

The developer has definitely been busy polishing the game over the last few years. Playing now is much more enjoyable. Some annoying features like discontent are easier to manage, and the fun parts like all the family infighting are more realistic. Many of the newer events are very interesting.

A great civilization game. It has a little bit lower pace than Civ6 but you can get used to it. I really enjoy it!

Pros:
- A good, realistic graphic
- Interesting narative system
- Cool leaders system, it feels like roleplay sometimes.
- Victory conditions fit your play style
- Order system makes you think about the priorities of your needs

Cons:
- Only old world era (but you can understand it by name :) )
- Some mechanics are not intuitive (like water movement)
- Not so much mechanics (comparing to Civ 6).

A refreshing take on the 4X genre! The game offers a unique and engaging experience. It’s clear that the developers are passionate about their work, consistently improving the game with thoughtful updates. Well done!

Honestly, this is the best 4X game out right now. It doesn't get enough love.

I don't often review games, but I really wanted to add a thumbs up for this lesser known title. The best way I can describe Old World is "lovingly crafted". You can tell the devs are passionate about every little corner of this game. If you like 4x style games, you need to try this.

I fell out of love with 4x games after falling down the grand strategy rabbit hole and this one has been the only one that managed to still hold my interest and enthusiasm, highly recommended

Loved what I've played so far, had lots of fun learning the different maniacs unique to the game. It's also the PERFECT title to get into while we wait for civ7 to be playable.

A very elegant design in so many ways. Good atmosphere pushing you to take just one more turn. However, the constant barrage of decision making required can be exhausting.

If you're looking for a fun-to-play strategy game that is easy to jump in and out of without lengthy commitments then this is the game. I weekend binged my first time out and now jump in for a couple of hrs at a time. The customization menu allows you to tweak the game to your liking which is a huge plus for me. It does have a Civ-like feel (granted I stopped playing after Civ 5 for same reasons as many others) There have been a few good updates so far (as recently as Feb) and this game can only get better.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I really dislike that you can only settle cities in pre-defined spots. It takes a lot of fun away from the 4X framework.