The average attention span is 4.8 seconds nowadays so here's a quick shotgun blast to the face with three pellets that might convince you that Old World (OW) is worth a closer look:

• The designer of Old World is Soren Johnson, who was the Lead Designer of Civilization IV (by many players considered peak Civ). The many radical design changes he made to the tried and tested Civ formula in Old World are on close inspection very clearly though-through, well-balanced, and overall HUGE improvements that solve or at the very least ease core problems which ALL Civ-like games suffer from (more on his genius design decisions later!).
  
  
• Some of the best Civilization players have discovered Old World and claim that it is significantly better than Civ (this is what made me give Old World another chance after I bounced off of it at first!)
  See Filthyrobot's extremely energetic and passionate take on OW here:

Click here for an exclusive 15 second Twitch Clip[www.twitch.tv]

• Old World is developed the proper way around, not ass-first like the Civ games were/are. This means OW is developed and balanced from its very core around the competitive multiplayer experience and then a solid single player experience just naturally flows from that as well. Instead of doing it the Civ **** way of doing single player first and then bolting Multiplayer on as an afterthought. If a bug with significant impact on the multiplayer game was discovered in Civ 5 or 6 it would take half a year to be fixed (if it was ever fixed!). In OW it takes two weeks tops. In general you can expect a really really good multiplayer experience here (in addition to the single player vs AI of course). And you know what? Soren actually plays his own damn game! Yes even in 2v2s against Filthy on twitch. Soren sees an issue or someone simply articulates and motivates an intelligent improvement to the game and then boom it's done in the next patch or so. Suck on that lemon Civ VI.

Don't just jump into a new game and think that you can wing it as an old-time Civ player with loads of experience in these games. Be a good boy, make your life easier and prevent suffering by doing the tutorials. Yes, all five of them. Yes, even if the first one seems too easy and obvious.



They really are quite well-made and well-paced. Definitely the most efficient way to learn the game and take off those training wheels asap.



And if you need to know anything at all about ANY game concept then start typing in the fully integrated in-game wiki and related results pages will pop up. Go ahead, ask the really important questions in life: Ask what is a "tree"? Ask what is "stone"? What really is "Money"? Become enlightened.

What "ruined" the game for me the first time I tried it is this: I started on the Mediterranean map as Rome and because I vaguely know what this planet looks like I knew exactly where I was in relation to all the other civs and even worse: I started on the very very easiest difficulty where the enemy basically never even attacks. (Back then there was no tutorial yet!)

It was the most boring experience I could have possibly chosen for myself and you know what the issue was? I didn't simply restart because for some inane reason felt this compulsion to end my first game instead of just starting a new one and sparing me the misery. Don't be like that! As soon as you get bored by how easy it is getting then you're ready to level up. Just ditch that game and start a new one with higher difficulty once you get bored when you dominate the game. Take it from a fellow psychologist (respectful nod to my colleague Filthy): the most and funnest learning is to be had in the "zone of proximal development" (aka.: just out of your comfort zone where you have to work for it).

Example: In my second attempt (this time at a random game at medium difficulty) I was still very Civ-inspired in my mindset and approach to the game. In Civ VI on the highest Deity difficulty the almost always correct opening play is to go mega hard into early aggression and take at least one other civ out to get all their stuff while at the same time having a big army to deter the other civs from eyeballing your stuff. Makes sense, yeah? Well - this is essentially impossible to do even on medium difficulties in Old World. And even if you were able to pull it off the gains would be so low compared to the astronomical cost of getting your army butchered that even if you took out one neighbor civ early, the others who invested in other things than army are now miles ahead of you so maybe you won the first war but you already lost the game!

Solution: I just learned my lesson ("This ain't a Civ clone") and then just restarted to save myself from a miserable game of catch-up due to a severe mistake in my opening moves. Boom - I was having lots more fun already in my third game!

Protip: So, on higher difficulties you definitely need to make friends and play nice with the other civs first. Yeah maybe one guy rolls up to you and even demands tribute from you. Seriously consider paying it. The daggers come out a bit later, otherwise the other civs will wipe the floor with you.

If you are not enjoying the game, chances are you need to twiddle more with the settings. Hell, if you want a peaceful game with just building you can even arrange that. My point is: read what the options do and then decide what you may consider fun. And if it's not - then just twiddle again and restart. Could I go over all of these options? Yes I could but I don't have to because the game is not developed by imbeciles so obviously there are tooltips for all of these options. And if you still have questions (and I mean any questions) go on and head over to our official Old World discord server to hang out and chat with the cool big boy kids who already graduated from the Civ VI school for special needs children.



By the way: Here's the button you need to press to enter the miraculous world of "discord" where many indie devs tend to hang out and bond with their core player audience:

Yeah that's right, the game has mods.
Here's two [EDIT: One] that from my point of view are almost mandatory:

See, this is what I'm talking about. I posted that I just uploaded this guide on our discord server and half an hour later one of the other lovely and helpful core members respectfully told me that I was wrong and that you don't need the toggle hex grid mod at all anymore. There - I just got schooled and so did you.


And indeed, here it is in the controls menu:

So here we are. Remember in the beginning I said "more on the genius design decisions later!"

Well I could write a lot more about them but why should I when Soren Johnson himself already did all of that excellent work for us?

To partake in this man's genius: Here's his mind-boggling blog that talks about game design and the rock solid reasoning behind his design choices in Old World.

https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=1679



Example: Many players initially feel this game is more restrictive than Civ VI because they can't settle anywhere they want but only on specific suitable city sites - all I'm gonna say is that there are many good reasons for this design, including that the AI can now act and react a LOT better to war than the... erm... mediocre... AI in Civ VI.

And if you think that's all - Soren has even more wisdom to bestow upon the world of game design! So all you aspiring indie devs out there put your pen15's back in for now and get your best writing pens out:

Yeah, so play the game the way YOU want and then if you find two minutes of time please write a sweet positive review (even a super short one!) to drown out all the deluded plebs who think this game is unworthy of a ranking that is anything else than "overwhelmingly positive". Many players were denied the pleasure of Old World because it undeservedly ranks below "positive" or "very positive" so they never picked up this gem of a game out of fear they would not enjoy it. These people are wrong. Show them.

OH YEAH, THERE'S ACTUALLY A FREE DEMO:

Please like and favourite this humble guide to spread the word and so it stays on top.

Or like don't.
Whatevs man.
Or woman(!)
Or whatever you choose to be.

I choose to be this man and I choose to have fun with Old World: