Old World Commands Guide: Legitimacy, Orders, Forced March

The most unique system of Mohawk Games’ RPG-4X strategy hybrid game is the system of commands. Unlike other similar games where players have no limit to their actions when ordering units and developing characters, raw resource limitations notwithstanding, unit orders and character actions share a limited resource pool that represents the faction’s ability to act in any given year. Understanding how this system works is vital to optimizing moves and strategies.

Here are the main components of Old World’s command system:

– Legitimacy
– Orders
– Forced March

And here’s everything you need to know about the command system in Old World.

 

Legitimacy

A budding civilization requires influential and proven leaders to make their mark on history. Legitimacy in Old World is an abstract rating of the faction’s leader that represents the character’s influence, power, and political capital. It’s a passive resource that can be gained from discovering geographic landmarks, engaging in random events, building city improvements, establishing powerful allied families, and settling cities.

In essence, almost anything the player does will have some kind of effect on their leader’s legitimacy rating. This rating directly affects the amount of orders players will get per year. The more legitimacy the leader has obtained, the more commands they can give out to their subjects and armies.

 

Orders

Orders are a crucial limited resource that are used for unit movements and abilities, combat, city improvement projects, character actions, diplomacy, and random events. Orders are an abstract representation of the leader’s systems of communication, such as couriers, political alliances, mechanisms of influence, as well as their personal attention span to be able to enact specific policies (e.g. moving armies around).

This system allows for units to make several moves per turn, meaning armies have a lot of potential for rapid maneuvers, if their leader has enough legitimacy. Units can’t be ordered indefinitely, however, as every unit has a fatigue rating, which indicates the number of move orders any given unit may complete in a year. For example, workers have a fatigue rating of three, whereas scouts have a rating of five.

Regarding combat and construction, as soon as a unit performs such an action, their turn immediately ends and they can only act in the next year once their fatigue is fully restored. Instead of a fatigue limit, characters typically have an action limit of one, meaning they can only perform one action per year or until completion (for multi-turn actions).

Cities, though, don’t require orders to fill their production queue. In addition, any unspent orders will automatically be sold for gold and will not carry over to subsequent turns.

 

Forced March

Though units have a fatigue limit, all units have the option of performing additional move actions beyond their initial fatigue limit called a forced march. Unlike standard orders, forced march move commands cost double the number of orders per move, as well as an additional training cost resource. Forced march should really only be used in desperate situations or if there is a massive surplus of resources.

On top of the enticing character system and dynasty building feature in Old World, the core of the game rests on the command system. This interesting interpretation of political capital in history incentivizes players to think their turns through and prioritize some actions over others. With this handy rundown on the command system, it’s up to the player to start a dynasty for the ages and strategize their way to victory.

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