Old World can be a daunting game to get into due to the myriad of systems at play and a not entirely user-friendly UI. However, once you get the general flow Old World takes shape and is quite similar to other 4X strategy games with its steady pace and familiar rhythm. Here are a selection of strategies and tips to help players find their stride and march on to victory.
1. Exploration is Key
Exploration is the first hallmark of any 4X and it’s no different with Old World. In fact it’s even more vital to be highly active and efficient with exploration in order to discover landmarks and find city sites. Not only that but getting a lay of the land can help with understanding the geography for potential future wars.
Discovering landmarks can be as simple as finding and naming a river, sea, or chain of mountains, but the benefit is that players build early Legitimacy, which in turn increases the amount of orders players get per turn. The more orders, the more players can use their units to move.
2. Secure City Sites
As mentioned previously, exploration leads to finding city sites, which are necessary to expand the player’s empire. Old World has a nifty mechanic in place where if a unit stands on a hex labelled “City Site” it will prevent any other faction from using nearby urban city sites tiles to settle.
Any friendly unit will do to claim a city site so there’s no need to produce an early army to specifically claim sites. A claimed site does block others from settling, but it won’t stop players from declaring war to take it back, so be wary of neighbours bringing up troops close to claimed city sites.
3. Harvest Resources While Exploring
Mohawk Games have made Old World’s exploration phase of the game far more active than other 4X strategy games in that valuable resources can be harvested for small yield by scouts. A series of tiles with special resources on them in fact can provide a great hopscotch style path for scouts to take. While no single harvest yield is game changing, it still makes a minor difference in getting a head start.
4. Expand Quickly
Expansion is the name of the game in Old World. There are few if any penalties for sending out settlers left and right and plopping down cities on every in-reach city site. More cities means more units and resources can be produced, which will directly lead to greater success.
This also means if there are barbarians or tribes occupying particularly valuable sites, it’s a good idea to forcefully evict them with an army. A large number of cities also means strategic depth where if one city falls far away from the capital or other profitable cities, there will be time to prepare a defence for unassailed cities.
5. Optimize City Placement
When settling a city, Old World will give a preview of the newly founded city’s borders before the player makes a final decision. City sites usually have a bundle of urban tiles, giving players some flexibility in placing down their city center. Ideally when settling a city, it’s best to aim to have the initial borders encompass as many special resources as possible or at least have borders extend far enough that a future recruited specialist could expand the city’s borders to encompass special resources.
6. Plan City Improvement Layouts
The premier way of establishing a flourishing economy in Old World is to maximize a city’s resource yields with improvements. There’s a huge variety of improvements and almost every single improvement has an adjacency yield bonus of some kind. It’s wise to study the terrain, learn about improvements, and plan out construction projects in such a way to get as high a resource yield as possible.
7. Specialists Are Highly Valuable
All improvements can be worked by specialists. Specialists are civilians converted into a worker role and locked to a specific tile. On top of the previously mentioned border expansion that specialists provide, they can provide massive resource yield bonuses. Some of the bonuses are equivalent to one or several improvements wrapped into one construction project. Getting specialists up and running will ensure a healthy economy and long-term success.
8. Families Can Specialize Cities
Every city in Old World has to be given to a powerful ruling family. Each family is associated with a type that gives the specific city various bonuses. Depending on the presence of special resources or lack thereof, families can help define the strengths of a city and specialize it towards one mode of production or another.
9. Have Lots of Children
Families and dynasty management is another major component of Old World and is directly tied to victory. Mainly, if at any moment the player’s ruling family has no heirs when their leader dies, they lose the game.
Aside from the sudden death loss condition, having lots of children also provides players with valuable political, economic, and military figures that can significantly benefit the faction’s strength. It’s highly beneficial for all successful and important members of the family to marry and have as many children as possible as that basically creates a free source of characters that can, in turn, benefit the empire and continue the cycle of dynasty building.
10. Maintain a Wide and Flexible Family
Where families can specialize cities for a particular production direction, managing an empire requires a broader and more flexible approach in the ruling family. Every character is given an Archetype, which roughly defines their role and specialty. In addition, many important political actions, especially diplomatic ones, are tied directly to character Archetypes.
There are of course some benefits to specializing if player’s have a particular path to victory in mind, but even in such situations there’s a benefit to having a wide range of characters with different abilities to keep options open at any given moment for maximum decision-making flexibility.
11. Go For the Easy Ambitions
One of the main victory conditions in Old World is to complete ten ambitions within the allotted time. Some ambitions may sound interesting on paper, but due to the uncertain nature of geography, faction proximity, character development and city placement, it’s most fruitful to pursue easily and quickly attainable ambitions. Not only does this bring players closer to victory, it also increases legitimacy, which increases the amount of orders players can utilize per year.
Two particularly useful ambitions are to control four cities and five workers. These two are some of the earliest ambitions available and are extremely easy to attain, especially with efficient exploration and rapid expansion.
12. Always be the Attacker
War is a bloody business in Old World and it always benefits the belligerents to finish wars quickly and decisively. From a strategic perspective attacking is almost always beneficial due to how the orders system works, where units can make multiple moves in a turn and then still attack. This means that with the right number of units and amount of orders players can make large sweeping maneuvers without opponents noticing and deliver devastating and unpredictable offensives.
On a tactical level it also benefits the player to be the attacker as they can choose which enemy unit to attack, where to attack, and with how much force to ensure the enemy is defeated. Moreover, bonuses of pure offensive strength for units are generally easier to come by than defensive buffs, with exception being particularly difficult terrain, chokepoints, and prepared urban defences.
READ MORE: Old World Archetypes Guide: Commanders, Zealots & More
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