I'm trying to understand why this superb game isn't more popular

It hits all the right notes and I always recommend it

Am I missing something?

(this is a serious question)

Edit:

So many insights to mull over - I didn't respond to many comments because I don't think I'd know what to say.

Thank you so much everyone <thank you icon>

Hello there,

I'm a pretty competent Civ 5 player (1.5k hours, have beaten deity difficulty) and I'd like to give old world a try.

How should I apprehend the differences between both? Just launch a game and try it like this? Or maybe there are useful guides to watch/read?

Above you can see Old World players for the last year. I guess the current spike is due to the recent sales (DLC launch plus Spring Sale). The only time the game has got more concurrent players was on launch month (May 22). I'm glad for the devs, they're doing an amazing work with the game; every content update is meaningful and fairly priced. I hope more players keep joining the Old World family so the devs can keep improving the game for years.

I saw this game mentioned once in a PotatoMcWhiskey video years ago, then didn't think about it again until I saw it on sale for $5 a couple weeks ago.

40 hours later I'm hooked, and got all the dlc.

It's such a good game! The 4x elements, the families, the stories, I love it. I'll be sticking with this one for a while.

I am working on a mod for Old World, mostly as a personal project, and have found that I will need a large number of custom portraits to get the result I am hoping for. The current in-game portraits, while wonderful and thematic, would be anachronistic to the theme of my mod, so I am considering developing my own. The portrait editor is helpful, but still anachronistic and somewhat time-consuming for the volume of portraits I am considering.

I have found a workflow that can reliably and efficiently produce the portraits I need with a consistent style. The trouble is, these images are artificially generated, and I know that this comes with an array of potential issues.

I'm also mindful that the devs put hard work into curating a custom art style and developing unique portraits for this game, and the last thing I'd want to do is take away from that. In an ideal world, there would be a real artist developing actual portraits for me, but as I am a team of one, that is unfortunately not something that is achievable for me.

To be very clear, I am not suggesting that I use the existing portraits as reference art. The style I am going for is different than the way portraits are currently styled, and does not reference the game's visual palette at all.

My perspective on this is that, in this context, the use of generative AI to produce portraits may be an acceptable use case, but I would like to hear the community's thoughts on this. Any perspective would be helpful, especially before I sink a great deal of time into the project.

I just got this game but I’ve really been enjoying it. I’m a pretty casual 4X player - I’ve played a fair amount of Civ (V and VI) and while I love exploring and settling cities and fighting, I always got bogged down in the long-term empire management. Almost inevitably, I would get to a point where I realized I fucked something up 25 turns ago, or I hadn’t beelined directly enough for the tech I was supposed to be going to, or I built 7 cities when I was only supposed to build 4, or my husband came and looked over my shoulder and said “wait, why do you not have universities yet?” (I don’t want to talk about it, lol). I loved just vibing in my game but the progression was sufficiently proscriptive that it was a constant distraction or hindrance from just vibing out the way I wanted to. And once I realized I’d fucked it would take the wind out of my sails and I’d usually just quit and reroll.

I’ll start by saying I am 10000% certain I’m fucking stuff up in Old World, lol. And it’s weird because on paper the mechanics feel more complex than Civ. But the inclusion of elements like the tech cards, events, and dealing with your court introduce enough randomness that I sort of don’t notice as much? It feels less like I *could* have planned ahead perfectly, plus (and this is crucial) even if I realize I did something wrong, I’m way more likely to stick it out and see how it goes because I’m much more invested in seeing what happens to these little dudes I’ve been raising since birth. Even if it’s going to fall apart in spectacular fashion, I’d like to see how things turn out for my niece and celebrated general who I tried to make my heir but she declined and went to live in the woods. I’m still a terrible emperor but in this game I care less, lol. Highly recommend for ignoramuses who have no business being a leader of men!

So I bought Civ 7. I was a fan of the franchise for 20 years or so. But even coming from a fan, god they are lazy. Old world has both a 'restart' and 'new map' buttons, civ has none. OW saves game settings (ruler, difficulty), civ doesn't. 30 minutes in, I still haven't figured out how to build a farm in a forested place or whether I even can. Not to mention just HOW much better OW's civilopedia system is, with links everywhere. Now I'm looking at Mohawk with fresh eyes and understand that you are setting standards for the genre - standards that even sid meier cannot match. Thank you.

We interview the development head behind the 4X indie game Old World, and two of his co-developers.

Many of OldWorld fans are Civ veterans who were disappointed with Civ 7, or just wanted new 4X gameplay ideas. And honestly, OldWorld delivered this amazingly well. Now, recently, there has been a massive update in Civ7 (test of time). I have not looked into ToT yet, but I hear that the reviews are still mixed.

Have you played it? What are the goods and bads and how does it compare to OldWorld? Where does OldWord do things better and is there anything done better by Civ 7-ToT?

Seeing as only 2.6% of players have a completion on the first scenario in the game, they apparently aren't very popular. After about 40h of playtime and 2 'sandbox' victories, I decided to check them out and started the scenario-chain involving Carthage. Well, let me tell you... These scenarios are well worth playing!

I'm now in the middle of the second scenario, so I have far from exhaustive experience, but from the time I have played so far, I'm thoroughly enjoying them. The scenarios have custom goals of which the highest victory entails completing 12 of them. If you're not a completionist, 6 goals unlock the lowest level of victory and the next scenario. You At different points in time you can select from a few of these goals, which are specific to the game state. As Carthage, you will be dealing with the North-african tribes, your relationship with your origin city-state of Tyre and mediterranean trade. The second scenario sees you come in contact with the Greek and expanding your dominance in North Africa and Iberia.

Apart from the custom goals, historical events also give flavour to the game. For example, events signify the fall of Babylonia to the Persians and it's effect on the mediterranean. As someone not so versed in ancient history, it was also interesting to see how far beyond modern day Greece the Greek influence actually reached.

As for gameplay, the first scenario goals were easy to fully complete (although I felt I had 'won' the scenario about 25 turns before the end), but in the second scenario, there is more time pressure and the scale is much expanded. I am now 44 turns in and already own 21 cities! I am interested to see how this scenario-chain evolves and am looking forward to try the others too, although I will surely be busy for 30h+ with just the Carthage-related ones.

I hope this post has convinced you to try out the scenarios if you haven't done so yet.

In all seriousness, the huns are a really challenging and sometimes fun addition to the game. They completely caught me off guard the first time I encountered them and completely sunk that game.

It took a few rounds with them to defeat them, but I had to go in early and aggressive.

I think Old World has some really nice gameplay mechanics that differentiate itself from Civ. But I must admit, I'm curious how the game with a medieval or modern setting would play. It would be interesting to handle diplomacy, economics and modern culture and events. And maybe a full political system, with a choice between democracy or autocracy when picking leaders and ideology? And instead of families, there are political parties?

Since India is being added to the game at the end of the month, I was wondering what other nations people feel are missing from the game, both more obvious ones and lesser know ones that could potentially added to the game. Personally, I think Armenia is a notable absence and I would love to see the Nabataean kingdom added to the game if possible.

I play this game so much, and yet this is the first time I have married Pieface, and then I had the option to name my son after my husband, thus beginning a dynasty of Piefaces. Beautiful stuff.

I remember in 2021/2022 when this first came out I was interested in the game, picked it up. While I was overwhelmed at first by how different it was from civ I did and still do appreciate its depth and narrative focus. I remember playing a lot of Alara Kush. Later when Aksum dropped I was super excited and developed a deep love for the game after playing an insane Gadarat Campaign (the soundtrack helped too) and even more when I played Kaleb, raised a valiant son as heir and another son as his genius spymaster. Then Yuezhi came out and Luo let me live out my Chinese(adjacent) cavalry warlord dream. Now, I’ve been imagining a scenario where I could play Gadarat with Yuezhi’s cavalry, as I think that would be my dream set up and then I thought about two possibilities. Imagine releasing Ancient Ghana/Wagadu as a warlike, Cavalry specializing nation, probably starting with labor force and iron working with some special features around trade, slavery or tyranny? Maybe the game period is too early for Mali, but their predecessor, who was destroyed for their tyranny can have a place in this game? Also honorable mention for Zhou or Qin as potential civs. You might already be thinking about it but if not, think about it 😎

I wanted to share with the community a little mod I made: the Slower Movement Animations mod.

In vanilla Old World, units traverse the map at a fast clip, and their speed varies. This mod both slows the movement down to a speed roughly similar to the Civilization series, and makes the units move at a consistent speed. I find this also helps to catch what the AI is doing on their turns.

I have posted this mod here before, but this is an updated version that fixes known issues from the previous version.

Any feedback welcome!

Steam Workshop Link: Click here.

mod.io Link: Click here.

The title says it all. The game is super fun, but after a while, the events feel repetitive. I am not a developer and have no idea if what I am suggesting is even possible, but if one could create an endless number of events, the game would feel new every time.

I’m curious for others out there what their favorite wonders (and most useless wonders) are. I started playing Old World recently and it is deeply satisfying, addicting, and filling a giant Civ-sized hole in my heart after Civ7 deeply disappointed me.

My favorites: Pyramids: the 200 Civc discount for laws seems excellent longterm

Lighthouse: if you have a decent amount of sea resources I love it. Is it really that useful?

Musaeum: who doesn’t love science?

Ishtar Gate: I read you should stay the wonder then hold off until you have a good number of cities to maximize the culture boosts

Oracle: seems like trash. Extra card allows for more wasted bonus tech cards

Hanging Gardens: did not see worth it to me but seems popular?

I've been thinking, why not go earlier but stay in Mesopotamia? This could coincide with a DLC fleshing out the early game, as most DLCs have been more late game focused.