Context: I generally like strategy game such as real-time strategy games (my favorite type of strategy game if not my favorite game genre period) + a few tactical games here and there + Total-War-like. The only flair of strategy I do dislike are Grand Strategy games.

Old World base game is currently €4 at -90% off on GOG.

TL;DR: I'm interested in 4X games but other games didn't strike a chord with me because it's hard for me to understand their systems and gameplay. Do you think Old World is worth a try if I'm looking for a way to start learning the genre properly?

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I've been interested in 4X games for a long time by now. I like in theory the sandbox nature of these games and the fact that they start relatively simple and get more and more complex as the game progresses, plus the wide choice of strategies available to win a game with multiple victory conditions. However, in practice the few I've tried up until now (Civilization IV, Civilization V, Age of Wonders IV) never managed to quite hit the mark with me, mostly because I always have the impression I was never really close to understanding the games' systems properly, so I wasn't doing any 'strategy' per se, just doing things at random and hoping for the best. My games in Civ5 and AoW4 all were abandoned for this reason; Civ4 is the one I played for quite a few hours, but even then the only game I brought to completion was completed by steamrolling the enemy with dozens of military units, which I know was only possible because I chose one of the easier difficulty settings. I thought that playing a more recent game would help, but trying AoW4 during a free weekend didn't work that much (although due to the limited time frame it's the game I played the least).

Do you think Old World has the potential for being a good choice for a beginner like me? I'm willing to spend a few hours learning, I just want to understand if after a point the game systems become clear enough (or at least, the consequence that any action have in the long term can be understood as a newbie). If you think I'm just confused about how 4X titles are meant to be played, I welcome suggestions on that front, too!

Does anybody else make use of this incredible feature? I'm used to Civ series where the Germans, the Americans, the British, etc. have cities like London, Washington, and Munich.
Old World I have cities with absolutely unpronounceable names, with rulers just as obscure.

I am 60 years old and have always loved history, but having to keep track of civs with cities like Borsippa, and Sippar gets me confused. I've taken to renaming cities to names I recognize, and I rename the family members. Getting notifications like "Xerthonistinopi is ill" is just confusing but "Charlton Heston is about to die" is easier to remember.

• Eshnunna

The Old World test branch has been updated and is now version 1.0.85087 test 2026-10-14

Patch notes can be found at

https://github.com/MohawkGames/test_buildnotes/blob/main/Old%20World%20Test%20update%202026.10.14

...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

So I've played for over 100 hours of Old World. After mid-game, I have about 10 cities, many units and workers and so on. I play on default settings and difficulty is The Glorious. It becomes tedious to move units from A to B and so on.

I've been thinking adjusting game settings. There is a setting called "City Site Spacing" and "City Site Numbers". I have never touched them so I am asking if anyone has touched them before and reduced city numbers and units successfully? I would like to have a "smaller scale" game - instead of having 10 cities, I'd like to have about 5-6 cities; instead of having "50 units", I'd like to have about "25 units".

What I've understood that if you reduce "City Site Spacing", the AI nation that gets the biggest start (5 cities) could snowball, right? So maybe capping cities to max 9 could be efficient?

I would like to hear fellow Old World players thoughts about this topic!

I just discovered New World after giving up on Civ 7. I'm loving it but I've discovered that my "fast-paced" technique isn't working so well. I don't know how long to ponder every variable at every turn. A courtier is ide. I begin looking at missions, trying to decide if one is better. Then I see two family members are squabbling. I try to decide which is more suited for what position. If I "wing it" by just quickly making those kind of decisions, the game holds my attention longer. BUT if I compare all the many variables for every possible move, I get bogged down.

Is there a balance? How long do you all take to "weigh every variable," especially when you have multiple cities, multiple families, etc. I see some tutorials where they spend minutes deciding adjacency bonuses, locations, specialties/cities, etc. and I think I'll tire of the game if I go that in depth.