Old World

I've enjoyed my time with this and might play more if there are any interesting updates in the future. Love the focus on ancient history and the rich events and storytelling.

The order system is a great idea and it works great. As a ruler you can give more orders as you gain legitimacy, skill, etc. and you can focus those orders on tutoring, appointments, moving units, etc. The brilliant part is you can focus everything on one or a handful of units or spread it out to a many units - reduces the tedious move or sentry/sleep all units that I've started finding tiresome in Civ and allows for some interesting tactics.

I enjoy how your ruler, wife, children and everyone in your court ages and changes in character and abilities and as they do the portrait ages. However, after a few games I started noticing the same faces and names coming up again. This makes it harder to keep track of who-is-who and some of the charm of the interesting personalities also diminishes as you encounter the same or similar characters and events.

Speaking of events these are really bring the game to life, and are very fitting to the era and affect the game in interesting ways, sometimes forcing you in unexpected directions. Sadly they do repeat and when they do they lose most of their charm and I stopped reading most and just looked at what I get for my choices. I get there must be a finite number, but a lot more is needed IMHO.

Finally a warning. The combat is well considered where terrain, training, unit types, flanking, etc. has a huge impact on outcomes. This sounded great to me, but I found that playing on a large map with many units it would be incredibly time consuming and tedious to try and position all my units in the best position to win in a war. The AI is very good at taking full advantage and using its units effectively, so I found myself avoiding war at any cost.

So there are things I dislike that prevents me from putting hundreds of hours into it, but I do think it is very well made and I've had a lot of fun playing it and would recommend.

PS! The game let's you choose the style of game you prefer with more, less or no events, how characters age, etc. This is a really nice bonus. I usually find it off-putting when there are too many difficulty options, but the ability to tweak the focus and type of gameplay is a really nice bonus.

Great 4X game. Easy to get into. The orders system is brilliant for reducing the drag of completing a game you know you have won already. The victory system also helps as you no longer have to bother with world domination (unless you want to),
Playing without any dlc at the minute and it still feels complete in a way Paradox games never really do.

This game is awesome, and is totally underrated!
I'm late to the release party by a few years, and maybe that's the difference. I'm sure there were many patches along the way and there's solid DLC... But WOW!... so much fun.
Its a fantastic combination of game concepts like Civilization and Crusader Kings. Its a 4x with a back story and family drama.
I really love the art style too. Top notch!
It feels very polished, and its got that 'one more turn' addiction factor to it as well.

At first I was concerned that it focused only on the Ancient times, but my mind was quickly changed after only a couple hours into the game. It feels more immersive this way, than zipping through several ages in an hour.
I only pray that this same developer is working on a Medieval Era version.

Highly recommended by me.

One of the best 4X games around. it's quite complex and doesn't hold your hand at all. You'll need to read the manual if you want to get the most out of it, but it's also very well written.

With that out of the way, the are a lot of novel ideas in it and that's saying something for a genre that's been stagnating for quite a long while. The orders system is just brilliant and brings that chess or puzzle like feeling to doing your turns right. It's a very combat oriented game, but the combat system is very well thought out and while it takes a bit of time to get used to how everything clicks together it's very enjoyable and satisfying once it does. The light sprinkling of characters and events is well balanced and doesn't get in the way while at the same time it adds a bit more variation to the gameplay. It's certainly not a mix of civilization and crusader kings, but more of a laser focused 4X with just the right amount of role playing elements added as seasoning.

The devs have been updating the game constantly since release and so far all the additional content that was added to the game, both free and paid, has been great.

In the end this game is certainly not for everyone. If you go in and expect to click around in a CK clone with some 4X elements bolted on top you will probably not enjoy it at all. On the other hand if you are into deep complex strategies that require tens or even hundreds of hours to really get into and like to dig through manuals and spend hours fretting and thinking about each turn your play or if you are a history fan and in particular enjoy reading up on the ancient world, I would definitely recommend this game to you.

Fantastic 4X. Great mix of empire building and role playing, all in a wonderful antiquity setting. It absolutely delivers that "one more turn" feeling, building up my empires feels extremely enjoyable and rewarding. The setting and the art are magnificent. Events are somehow designed in a way where they don't feel repetitive throughout a campaign. Incredible.

When it comes to role-playing and family/character management, it hits that sweet spot where it doesn't become overbearing and can even be ignored, yet still makes you feel attached to your characters and gives room to tell their stories if you so wish.

Heartily recommend.

Fun game that you can easily immerse yourself in and completely lose track of time. Great graphics, engaging events, and overall a solid game. Only complaint would be occasionally when you go to end your turn, it will get stuck with "turn ended" and requires a restart.

This game really is a cross between a CIV game and Crusader Kings. It has the hex development of a CIV 6 game and the family and faction management of Crusader Kings. The tech tree is managed by randomly drawn cards that are still age appropriate but may prevent exactly the tech you want at the moment. There are more moving parts than CIV and less than Crusader Kings. 80/100

Overly complex with unhelpful ui. not particularly enjoyable, although may be good to waste a few hours (tho in my experience so far i come away feeling like nothing was accomplished)

Meh. Imagine a 4x game where you have little to no control. Your characters start wars for you seemingly at random. The point of 4x games is to be in control of your strategy, here you have little to no control thanks to how absurd events are.

史上闪退最多的游戏，你点下的随机操作都有可能导致闪退，而且非常容易触发

I lost about 20 kings during one game and I will henceforth refer to them as fruit flies. Still a great game, especially in multiplayer with friends who have jobs and families. I can highly recommend it. Can be sped up if everyone has time one evening and then played more relaxed over the next days again. I love the random events.

Very good game. I used to play the original Civilization series but lost interest with Civ V and VI due to the cartoonish style. Old World is a fresh re-think of the Civilization genre that incorporates dynasties. Managing leaders and their extended families is a very large part.

its not very fun. the UI is bad compared to other games. the tech tree is awful and basic functions like being able to negotiate peace are locked behind techs that you might not roll until 100 years in.

While a bit confusing with how characters work, I love this compared to Civ 6. The events and randomness makes it so much less formulaic.

A pleasant mix of the narrative flavor you'd get with Crusader Kings and the empire management we love from Civ VI. I can see us burning through this in several plays, with Old World having comparatively limited content, but they'd be playthroughs that are worth every penny. One thing my wife and I really like in this game is the orders concept. It keeps "the amount of gameplay per turn, per player" about the same and limits the times when one of us has super long turns to complete and the other is thumb-twiddling. All in all very happy we found this game.

If I have a problem with this game, is that it makes it impossible for me to enjoy a 4x that doesn't include characters.

The best just keep improving. So much value.

The most innovative take on the 4X Turn Based Strategy genre I have seen. It's familiar to Civilization but with family character elements from games like Crusader Kings, it's an event based, narrative driven game and while it has similarities to other titles it's an entirely unique game where every playthrough feels different.

This game is like a weird hybrid of Civilization and Crusader Kings, yet lacks the polish and charm of either one. The thing is, I’d rather just play one or the other rather than this, simply because those games know what they want to be and have a clear identity. I think Old World fundamentally fails as a strategy game because it tries to have its feet in both doors yet fails at making a fun game in the process. The UI is probably the worst of I’ve ever seen in a strategy game. Menus and buttons are scattered all over the screen in a seemingly random way with no logical cohesion to the layout. Moreover, the inundation of constant popups and prompts just ruins the experience. Literally every time you move or click on something, a wall of text covers your screen. And the writing is insufferable, almost like it was written by AI. The game ultimately shoots itself in the foot with its over reliance on disembodied walls of text and plethora of menus. I would just suggest you buy civilization or literally any Paradox 4X game over this.

Old world is one of those games that once you learn you can't stop playing. There is quite a bit to manage in this game, but once you get the hang of it, the game becomes rather interesting and enjoyable. Highly recommend this game to those who enjoy ancient history.

Great game. A lot of care went into it and it has so many great features.

Hot seat Multiplayer via cloud.
You sit around doing nothing while you wait for others to finish their turn.
Straight out of the 90's

Competent. Underrated. Slightly revolutionary, not completely (devs accidentally tried to oversell it?). Overall, a nice addition to the genre. 9/10.

Scratches the civ itch without some of the issues that drag down late game civ

It's like civilization but with a strong emphasis on relationships. There are more, ridiculous, restrictions on creating cities. The relationships seems to be a main part of the game in every aspect. I don't like these types of games. There are so many long confusing names, I never know who anyone is. The family can grow to absurd extensions. It's more about managing numerous intricate relationships. I absolutely hate it. Everyone starts out hating you and it's literally impossible to make everyone like you before you die and pass on your legacy to your heir. In fact, you will probably have most everyone hate you to the max. To make things even worse, the second most important aspect of the game is religion. Yay! What a clusterfck of hateful depressing family members. Everything you want to hide from irl, family drama, religion and politics, is in this game. I truly hated everything about this game. Too late for a refund. Uninstalled and forgotten.

Loving this game after giving it a chance in the sea of great strategy games out there now.

I like Civilization V and VI, but Old World surpasses them both. The reasons for that are threefold:

1. In Civ, I enjoy the first turns in the pre-modern times such as Stone Age, Classical Antiquity and Middle Ages the most. Fighting wars with Cleopatra or Tokugawa with tanks and robots simply feels weird. In comparison, Old World stays in the Ancient Times!

2. I love the Crusader King inspired system of characters, families and dynasties. It is awesome to build your own dynasty, so you're not only managing your cities and units, but are also taking care of character and family relationships respectively. Also diplomacy and your leader's reputation both play a major role. Your leader eventually dies and your heir takes over, so this feels more realistic and natural.

3. Events! Events shape your whole game and change how you play. There are a lot of interesting things happening and it feels like you actually play your dynasty's story. It's a lot of fun if you like role-playing even in strategy games.

To me, Old World is the perfect 4X game and adds what I felt Civilization has always been missing.

as a strategy game fanatic, though with my limited experience in oldworld, i think this game has a touch of magic to it, that titles like starcraft and chess also carry. Games that should never die, this shouldnt either.

Everything was going nice and steady.
The Romans suddenly wanted to take over the entire kingdom peacefully.
I refused, the Romans invaded making my king stressed.
Said king indulged in revelry to relieve some stress.
king got drunk, drunkenly sent a message to Carthage declaring war.
Carthage didn't find it funny...
In just 2 years I've ended up in a war with the Romans and Carthage...

Will have to play this a lot more to have enough insight to give a lengthy and detailed review. Suffice to say: this game is an exceptional grand strategy game.

excellent 4x game with a twist ... if you like civ type games you will love this one.

After 2000+ hours of Civ 6 this is quite a nice change. Similar in some ways but definitely different in others. 57 hours in and it was well worth taking a chance on it.

Fresh and fun take on the old 4x games. Still learning and enjoying

Even though the game is generally good, I have to give this a negative review because of technical issues which undermine that possibility.

The game itself is an interesting take on this sort of empire building sim, providing a creative way of looking at this through relationships within and between dynasties. In terms of core mechanics, it is more complex and deep than something like Civ6 but simpler than something like EU4.

However, the game's performance is a problem I cannot ignore. Just looking at it while it is idling, it needs more than 2 full cores (I am kind of impressed with how it could be wasting computational resources like that - in-game options do little to improve this). The first few hours of a game are generally tolerable but eventually the size of the world and the compounding effects of the memory leaks mean that you need to restart every few turns just so your system doesn't start having memory problems.

Seriously, this just confuses me: How are you able to use 6 GiB of RAM for a game with this few elements and somehow leak another few 100 MiB per turn?

It shouldn't be acceptable for a game with graphics/animation complexity of Civ4 and in-game element complexity of that scale to perform so poorly and just tell users to buy a better machine. No, you just need to fix your game.

Excellent 4X strategy game. There are some very nice mechanics that others in the same genre should be learning from!

I actually would rate this above civilizations now. It has a lot more soul and depth.
I was on the fence to buy this as I have been let down by CIV clones before but wow am I glad I bought it.

I just could not get through tutorials. All this unit management seems tedious. It's just a bit trimmed version of Civ without some great, life improving functions (like fortifing any unit so they do not bother you every turn or automating worker etc.)

Oh, I got to tell you, it was perfect. Perfect! Everything, down to the last minute details.

For all the love and praise Hooded Horse games get, usually deserved, Old World seems to always be forgotten.

Old World is pretty much Civilization meets Crusader Kings. I say pretty much because it really elevates the Civilization gameplay far beyond any other game I've played in the genre.

For me, the Civ games always grow stale. You pick a different leader every game, but nothing really changes outside the map and what victory condition you go for. Every game will play out roughly the same way. This is why so many games, be it Old World, Millenia, Humankind or recently released ARA all attempt to change.
First off, Old World gives you more choices when it comes to basic 4X gameplay. Troops have a certain number of moves, but using a resource (orders) you can force march units much farther, to where you need them. For instance, don't need to move your scouts, but need your spear units much farther, don't move your scouts and use all your orders on your spears. You have way more control over that.
Planting a city you pick between families to govern, each with pros and cons on how that city will run outside of the resources available.

Throw in the Crusader Kings elements of you playing AS a character, managing your heirs, having events, and trying to keep the other families happy ON TOP OF the other empires around you and their diplomacy. Old World is, in my opinion one of the best, and most diverse 4X, Civilization styled games on the market.

A few cons I'd say is sometimes the writing isn't the best, which sucks in a text heavy game.
As well I'm rather annoyed that the end turn button is on the left side of the screen rather than the right.

TL;DR: Old World is a better Civilization game (mechanically) mixed with the role play elements of Crusader Kings in one fantastic package. The tutorial is great, the music is wonderful, the developers are amazing. If you're looking for something TRULY fresh in the 4X market, Old World is my recomendation.

Got murdered by my jealous brother 20 minutes into my first game, who in turn got poisoned to death by his Mother. I clearly put the D in Dysfunctional Family. 10 and out 10.

Has potential to become my favorite 4x game due to the orders system and the role-playing features

A lot of fun. Combat and AI are much better than in Civilization and can provide ton of challenge.

Dry as hell. The developers wanted strategic elements they felt had long been missing from the Civ series, and ended up packaging it into this dizzying mess of numbers, stats, and hyperlinks. Which normally, I could like.

But I'm taking a different slant on this. It's because of the writing. This is the most unfeeling, unemotional, non-immersive text I've ever seen in a game that imagines itself as one to tell a story. Tech discoveries and unit descriptions literally read like a manual for an efficiency stove.

Imagine the new player - "hey, I'm a wide-eyed civ-veteran that wants to trawl across the ancient landscape and build a dynasty that blazes through the old world! Oo, 'Legitimacy' - Let's see what that means in this game!" So, expecting to see something in the writing like:

[Your right to rule - the respect, ambition, and ability to sway your subjects. It's the seductive force that turns your leadership from mere authority into undeniable reign]

The ACTUAL text reads:

"Legitimacy comes from achieving Ambitions and acquiring better Cognomens (...and is lost in the next generation by etc.)"

That's it - it's not what legitimacy actually is or what might be cool about it, just the function it serves, how you get it, and how the stat can diminish over time.

It's that absence of rich explanation, or /why/ the concept being explained should be emotionally or historically relevant to the game, such as [legitimacy] giving access to more [orders]. The rest of Old World continues to miss the mark in text, pop-ups, events, all disconnected from any real purpose to garner any desire to push forward and so it generally plays dryly like the brown palette it's set against. You want a complex historical map game with lot of management? Fine. But it's a GAME; dress it like it's sexy and interesting, not like a miasma of stats and functions connected through links but unlinked to any real sensation of greatness or growth. Like what happened to Spock narrating tech discoveries? What happened to "Hey, your subjects want to celebrate your rule - here choose something to add to your throne room!"

Developers - it's great that you wanted to flesh out deeper strategy elements. But - and crazy considering there's a huge dynastic element baked in - you're missing the soul of the game.

This game is an interesting merger of a 4x game and a total wall style role play. Plus the mechanics are challenging yet interesting.

rancid baby
bad gameplay
etc etc etc

Old World is a game which I feel has just found it's footing with it's most recent DLC. Obviously this game feels like Civ in some aspects, of course. All great games wear their influences proudly on their sleeve. But where Old World shines is in it's tightly focused balance of city building, court intrigue (DLC) and a punishing but rewarding combat system. I do wish that there was more variants of troops, but the edge you recieve over your enemies when you research new weaponry is very satisfying and can change the tide of the war and even the world order.

There are a ton more places this game can go and I am excited to see where that may be!

Graphics: 3/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Replayability: 5/5
Price: 5/5
Active Developer: YES
Mod Support: YES (and encouraged)

an interesting and fun game that has a few tweaks and twists on the Civ model

Really like the concept of this game.
I keep trying to come back to it after announcements of updates and changes.

Things that keep deterring me from playing:
You need to enjoy military conquest - it's hard to win without.
Also moving units is an individual / slow process.
Making workers automated is great but then it becomes difficult to find and build wonders and other culture items = it would be awesome if they were a part of the automation that a popup asked if wanted workers to build this wonder.
Research is kinda tricky too, cannot choose the options often and it seems like always waiting for the things I want to be in the card draw. (which makes the legitimacy quests harder)

The events and story are generally good - variety of ups and downs in life however the last three times I tried to play (different maps/scenarios) I had a lot of trouble with children.
1.- not having children, married with high relationship, spouse romantic or wanton and still no kids - no information about infertile. Not sure why there's such few children. 2.- bastard right after marriage - this happened twice, the turn of or directly after the marriage, a bastard child. never had a legitimate child. Not able to marry the bastard child so no grandchildren. 3. - 3 times in the same game, ruler dies young with a child under 5; there's a regent while the child grows. 4. - find/adopt a random child who then becomes ruler but again has no children. married three different people, from age 19 to 64 no kids. Not able to marry siblings to create other family member kids. 4. In the last 3 games I never had more than one child per ruler - and sometimes not even one.
It just ruins the dynasty vibe type of play

Overall, this game makes me feel stupid - that I cannot grasp the strategy to win. even on the easiest settings it's very difficult, long drawn out - slow loosing by being a few points behind other nations - even with a more powerful military, all research completed, spy networks causing chaos and legendary cities - I still don't win
I don't have this trouble with any of the civ games, solar empire games, etc

Old World is the best 4X game I've played since Civilization IV. It has well designed systems for combat, family and dinasty, events and diplomacy.

It is a difficult game as the AI does a great job of putting you on your toes and does not hesitate to engage in war.

There are several options to tweak the experience to your liking, from choosing map size to downright disabling major game mechanics such as events.

Recommend it to all strategy fans.

Great game! I like the "ancient" atmosphere (the civilisations you can pick from span many thousand years, so it's a little ambivalent historically) and the music is great! I also really like that you need a certain technology for it to start playing, nice touch. As for the gameplay, the overall 4X loop of building, exploring, fighting etc. is fine, although in this game you have a set number of orders each turn so you have to prioritize what you want done each turn, really cool idea! The many events and interactions between the characters make this more of a 4X/RPG hybrid. You can even skill characters a little! The balancing of your people, your own family, the other aristocrats, foreign nations and barbarians makes for a nice strategic challenge.
The only thing I don't like is that if you have a really big empire, the micromanagement gets super tedious. If one was able to stack military units like in Humankind for example, this would alleviate much of this problem.
So if you like 4X grand strategy, role playing and the "ancient" period then pick this up!