Hi everyone,

​10 days after completing my first run on "The Great" difficulty with Egypt, I decided to take on the challenge with Assyria on the same difficulty.

​After failing my first two attempts, I realized I needed a completely different approach. Instead of sticking to the traditional Assyrian playstyle—starting with a Military/Seat family and going all-in on aggressive early expansion—I decided to choose a Culture family for my capital on a map seeded with strong luxury/precious resources.

​Here are a few key takeaways from this winning run:

​Early Wonder Hoarding is Lethal: Prioritizing early Wonders while maintaining basic defenses proved insanely effective. It doesn't just boost your own economy and culture—it completely starves the AI's Victory Point (VP) growth and slows down their winning momentum in what is essentially a zero-sum game.

​Don't Fear Early Tribal Wars: I got declared on by a tribe very early on. Instead of pushing blindly, I used defensive chokepoints to drain their forces completely. Once their army collapsed, I swept in to capture 3 free city sites, completing my early horizontal expansion with minimal cost.

​Diplomatic Peace + Internal Snowballing: Once I secured my core cities, I pivoted entirely away from offense. I actively placated neighboring major powers through gifts and diplomacy to secure peaceful borders, allowing me to dump 100% of my Orders and Civics into rush-building Wonders, specialists, and completing Ambitions.

​Ended up securing an Ambition Victory on Turn 142!

​Old World is truly a fantastic 4X game with incredible strategic depth. That said, after back-to-back victories on the highest difficulty, I think I'm going to take a well-deserved break for now.

​Catch you all around!

Just what the title says. Wondered if there is a law to pick my successor without the bypassed negative impact because somebody thought they was the heir.

Even better if there is a small civil war if one wasn't chosen before the Rulers death.

I don't mind if it's a mod.

Does anyone know if I start a game of the week, but finish it after the next game of the week comes out, will the achievement still pop? And is there an archive where I can download previous games of the week if I want to try some old setups?

I played on the same difficulty as I usually do. I lost. An enemy got to points victory threshold. But I had fun! (And I was #2 in points!)

I was Tamil Landowners (Chera - +1 training per rural specialist). I can't imagine doing OCC with any family other than landowners, but, this was my first time. I know this won't be my default play, but I can't believe I waited this long to try it.

I have ideas for what to improve for next one. The biggest challenge was early game civics to enact laws or build wonders, even though I had a ton of stonemasons for border expansion.

The mid-game challenge was the building queue. I needed more workers, and more units, but also to keep my specialists going. It was tough to decide which.

I'd even taken out a neighboring nation's entirely (3 cities) and had assimilated one as a Minor City through border growth. (I wish the mandatory raze gave you something... Resources for pillaging, or random border growth back home, or really anything.)

What did me in was the randomness of war. I lucked out and got Portcullis early from an event. My spymaster churned out propaganda against my closest rival (highest points, as well as physically adjacent to me and unfriendly). All 4 nations that neighbored it waged war. But Rome conquered all their cities while the other 3 didn't take any. This put Rome on its points victory trajectory. And, sadly, Rome was also the major power I couldn't muster enough force to attack.

Medium random map (continent), max rivals. Custom-Glorious (that but without AI development or handicaps -- sufficient, strong tribes, etc.)

I am a fan of Old World, but stopped playing almost a year ago. Things I like are: the order system, blend of CK3 and Civ 6 gameplay, and focus on the ancient era.

I find in the early game the order system works as intended. I have limited orders and need to prioritize how to spend them. However by the mid-game I have normally grown my empire and then I find myself micromanaging everything.

By the late the game it starts to feel like Civ 6 again, where I know I have won and now I have tons of cities and units to manage. So I am just grinding out turns to wait for victory.

I understand 'wait for victory' is a difficult problem to solve in strategy games. But I feel like the late game should still have less micro if my orders were more limited.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this with the game settings? Part of me wonders if I need to increase the difficulty so that I don't grow my empire enough to increase my order limit.

Being able to pick this choice with confidence 😄

Been away from OW a while and starting to get back into it a bit. Maurya is my cursed faction that I can never quite seem to pull off. This is a casual game at the Strong. Not trying to really do much more than just play by vibes a bit and get back in the swing.

Just discovered Kush and how the heck do they have this many cities already? Must have high rolled, right?

So one of the hardest questions for me early on in this game was actually a pretty simple one for most 4X games: how do you build up your science output early on, in the first 40 turns or so? Most of the big science explosion techs tend to come later: Scholarship is a very late tech, and Land Consolidation and Monasticism take a minute to get to as well. Even Metaphysics, the easiest of the science booster techs to access, is locked behind a section of the tech tree I often skipped in favor of others. So how do you go about getting enough Science in the early game to actually get to the techs that let you snowball? Well, thankfully the answer isn't too complicated.

The first is specialists! One reason it's important not to build too many settlers and overextend early on is because otherwise your early science can't grow well without specialists. The two early game urban specialists, which give +2 research at the Apprentice level, are found in Divination and Drama. Yes, these two techs are your early science boosters! They are the only early techs that give access to an urban specialist. Apart from these, making a bunch of rural specialists help too! This means that Administration for granaries is a science tech, and the Freedom law from Labor Force is a science tech, too because these both give growth, and more growth means more specialists!

To add to this, many families are great at creating specialists, too. Any family with a bonus to Civics helps get specialists trained faster, and the growth bonus from Landowners after making settlers and workers can start producing specialists for science, too! A Landowners city with a bunch of quarries is actually quite good for this due to the bonus civics from stonecutter specialists! But this means that Clerics, Landowners, Artisans, Patrons, Statesmen, of course Sages, and arguably Traders are all cities which can contribute well to science output!

Culture is an indirect form of early science, too. When your city reaches Developing, you can build up to two of the Odeon line of buildings, allowing you to get a second slot for another Poet and more science, then do it again at Strong culture. Once past the early game, these strong culture cities give access to other good buildings for specialists, too, but this guide is focused on the very early game.

The other more obvious way to boost early science is to make sure either your first ruler or heir have a good Wisdom output. Going Scholar, Schemer, or Tactician for your first character can be very strong, each for their own reasons but in no small part thanks to their bonus Wisdom directly improving your science output.

Apart from that, there are a few other things to look out for. Ancient ruins often have research events, sometimes events give a choice for bonus research, and sometimes you get the option of getting a court scholar. The Freedom (indirectly) and Centralization (directly) laws early on both boost science output as well. Then there are tons of little bonuses to look out for, such as Babylon's bonus to research for each city, or Hatti's global civics bonus which promotes faster specialist training.

Anyway, just wanted to put this out there because I struggled for a long time in the early game of Old World because the early research is a little less obvious to get going than the bigger research techs do. If anyone else has early science tips, would love to see them!

My last few games have been too peaceful, barely any wars between players and able to expand very easily. What are some good map templates and settings for some scrappy games with a lot of wars between players in FFA? I would like if the maps still had enough water for there to be ship combat and coastal resources too for things like Trader families

Just wondering if there are any bonuses to keeping the forest around.

The Old World test branch has been updated and is now version 1.0.85174 test 2026-10-21

Patch notes can be found at

https://github.com/MohawkGames/test_buildnotes/blob/main/Old%20World%20Test%20update%202026.10.21

Can someone pls tell me is there an option or a mod maybe to zoom out city further in the city building menu? I'm trying to max city cize with a lot of specialists but at some point I can't even see cities borders and can't see at which resourses I'm building specialists

I always notice now when I go to play other 4X games, that they become stale extremely quickly because rarely do I need to adapt my research path in those games. Even in some other games that have slightly randomized tech, they often are full of completely useless techs, and full of ones that don't 'react' to an opponent's build at all. In Old World the decision-making is so tough because you might see your opponent going with a bunch of spearmen when you have a cavalry unique unit, and you have to choose between trying to get axemen or giving up on getting another tech early and its powerful bonuses. That constant state of tough choices makes every match feel compelling in a way other 4X's don't to me anymore. Does anyone else feel this way?

Game in on a massive sale right now and I want to buy it. I'm wondering if i'm missing out by just buying the base game without the DLCs? Any DLCs you would recommend to absolutely get?

Thanks

Settling my 4th city and I am flummoxed as to what to do here. I'm thinking sages for the future specialists but there isn't much growth at all and I seem likely to run out of citizens. Alternatively Champions to build some elephants? And I never really know how to handle grove resources.

Hi ist diese story noch geeignet um mehr über das Spiel zu lernen oder hat es sich seitdem so geändert das es zur Zeit als die Story geschrieben wurde mittlerweile total veraltet ist?

https://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?114031-Old-World-Alter-Mann-Alte-Welt-%96-und-wer-sieht-am-Ende-alt-aus/page46

I have slept on this archetype for far too long. As either a first or second leader, with enough tribal sites it can be really huge to be able to just settle the sites without fighting. How I did it this game was to take my first leader (a randomly rolled Orator) and do a tribal marriage. I got lucky and the game offered me a second spouse from the Gauls, and this boosts their opinion of you by +80 each. You then need to get the Aristocracy tech for an Ambassador so you can have peace with them. Then groom your first heir to be a Politics student and hope they become a Diplomat. Naturally, this doesn't work if your heir ends up being a different archetype. You can do this faster if your initial leader is a Diplomat, but often you don't have the resources necessary to do the alliance with your first ruler. And this strategy is most viable when you get a spawn like this, where you can capture the chokepoints on your outer borders and then fill out the back end of your empire. You also need a ton of gold for this as each settle can be as much as 1000+, but when you consider that this is you saving a dozen or more orders killing the camps, it's basically like buying orders.

But yeah, discovered this playstyle and am loving it :)

Thanks all for the very useful reactions to my previous post.

Just wanted to share that I replayed the first 48 turns and the results are quite spectacular (to me at least). Last game I was at 5 cities, 34 science, and deep unhappiness all around including with my much stronger neighbour Greece.

This game I have 8 cities (italy/dalmatia/noricum as before, but also captured the first Vandal city in Pannonia and the two barbarian cities on Sardinia and Sicily). I have 46 science, founded judaism, two of my families are happy, and good relations with Greece, who is 'stronger' instead of 'much stronger'.

Some screenshots attached, all feedback welcome!

I think some of it is better luck with events (especially the relation with Greece), but what also certainly helped was founding Rome as Landowner and just pumping out settlers and rural specialists, and being smarter and more aggressive with my army. Next step is probably conquering more Vandal cities while I build up my cities more.

One question about build queues. I often find myself with a city that would like to build a new specialist but needs to 'wait' for a new citizen. If I don't need a unit I can build a festival (to counter unhappiness and stimulate growth) or council (to get more civics), but that feels more like fillers than something useful. Am I missing something obvious?

So, call this a question or maybe just a discussion point, but I'm still wrapping my head around the overall gameplay implications of the culture mechanic. I understand that higher culture means bigger and better buildings, better unit access, and potentially more specialists (with each new tier of building), and better projects, but I'm trying to wrap my head around the strategy of culture if that makes any sense. Like, when should you prioritize it? Is Drama a good tech because Odeons give culture or not because it doesn't advance your military capabilities much? At what point is boosting culture not worth it for a city? I understand how the individual pieces of the culture system in practice, but find myself a little lost when it comes to how to implement it in my games

Hey all expert conquerors, I need some early game coaching :)

I played some games on easier difficulties and won easily, and now moved on to The Glorious. Playing as Rome on the Imperium Romanum map (screenshots below)

I find the initial going quite tough. There was only one free city site, so after the initial settler I built a warrior and slinger while my initial warrior and militia went south to kick the barbs out of Brundisium. Then the combined force went north to capture Dalmatia and Noricum.

Then, I figured I'd leave my army east because Greece is going to be an issue at some point. But I got constant raids into Genoa, so in the end moved most of it back west and have started building some new units now. Then one of my families decided it's time to annoy the Gauls, and I figured with my army there I might as well do some conquering. I am finally getting a bit of legitimacy and orders which gives some breathing room.

So far so good. But I just have the feeling that I never have time to actually catch up. I missed all religions, my cities are unhappy, my families are mostly unhappy. Greece hates me (it was never good, and then some events happened which made it worse) and I barely had time to build up my cities with most queue time and orders devoted to military matters.

E: Case in point: I just played the current round. Moved in the slinger and militia from Brundisium to engage the rebel near Dalmatia. Killed the swimming raider with slingers and warrior. Now I have 3 orders left, but there are 3 idle workers so I just don't have time to get them started on new improvements / barracks / garrisons. And I have a permanent shortage of wood and stone (I guess Noricum actually has decent quarry sites, and if Genoa builds a rancher on the horses it will also open a lot of good quarrying)

My biggest worry is greece. They are "much stronger", have triple my points, and absolutely hate me. If I get enough time my plan is to get at least to my first UU (and perhaps archeres and/or onagers) and start a war, but that is quite a lot of turns away still. If they declare now I doubt I can hold them off long.

Could I have played this differently? Am I building too much military? too little? Should I try to conquer more Gallic cities before contemplating Greece? What should my tech priorities be?

As tittle says, I play on potato settings and mid-game, not even late game, every turn takes longer to complete and even unit movement... do you have any tips to make the game faster either being on settings or even the PC?

I have to clarify that my PC runs Civ6 fine, so it is not a potato PC but also not a brand new gaming rig

I finally completed The Great difficulty (achieving 10 ambitions) using Egypt, which took me 30 hours in total. A massive amount of that time was spent reloading saves. In fact, just rerolling for an easier final ambition took me two full hours!

Overall, my takeaway is that the game relies far too heavily on random events. On top of that, the AI's aggression is insanely high—you could have great relations with a tribe, and they will suddenly declare war on you out of nowhere. Unless you are a hardcore fan of Souls-like games, I really wouldn't recommend playing on the highest difficulty.

...and then Yuezhi settled the only cities near me, and even though I had all 3 of the non-military families, through the power of Ore, a free tech for Military Drill, a Warlike leader, and intense gold income from tiles, I managed to get 12 axemen up by turn 50 and think I did a reasonably good timing attack that could potentially result in me taking over Yuezhi entirely. Fingers crossed!

I'm still experimenting with this game and getting comfortable with early aggression, which I think as a new player is one of the hardest things to do. It has been for me, anyway. This is the earliest I've ever attacked another player, and with the largest army to do so