I was holding out for Civ 7 - but after reading the review, I decided to look at what else could scratch my 4x itch. I like how Old World is familiar yet it has it own mechanisms and systems which make the game feel fresh and provides me the "ogg, just a bit more" vibe that I remember playing civ for some many years.

Really delightful. It's a "civ-like", but about 1000x more innovative than any of the last several brand-name-Civ releases. tl;dr: Give this developer money, IMO.

The emphasis on the ancient eras -- and _absense_ of any shift to the modern world -- feels great. It lets the game get in-depth and be balanced in the mechanics and the scale that make sense for the time periods it's focused on.

And the multiple different resources in each city -- growth, training, and civics -- used for workers+settlers, military, and features and improvements, respectively -- is a huge innovation of the genre. It makes each city distinctive, and means you give more consideration to where some work should happen than just "okay, which city has the most production". Furthermore, each of those has local applications *if you're using them*... *or* contributes to a global, similar (but not interchangable) resource... meaning, for example, that if every city is working on local civics improvements, there's an opportunity cost, whereby your ability to afford to push through civilization-wide laws will be reduced. Really sublime balance in this.

A global count of "orders" per turn also keeps things moving and provides another nice piece of balance. It's very typical that you won't be able to move every single one of your units their maximum distance every turn, because you'll run out of orders. This presents the player with prioritization choices that result in a lot of excellent balancing. For example, sometimes you might choose to avoid a war, even if you have plenty of soldiers, because you don't want to pressed to spend lots of orders every turn that you'd rather use to continue moving workers around to improve your terrain at home.

The presence of characters with their attributes and agendas and events adds some spice to the game, but doesn't completely overpower the other familiar 4x mechanics.

My only complaints would be that the UI is a little... heavy. Making sure characters are adequately busy at all times, that governors are assigned, etc, can be a little hard to see. Sometimes I go several turns without realizing some role with huge potential bonuses is simply completely unfilled. It's not a game killer, but it could be improved.

Overall: Great game. Tons of innovations. And it just plain plays well. I'm spending tons more time on this than I have on the last several Civ releases combined. Give Old World a spin!

Civ VII should have copied this instead of humankind.