4X Old World - historical 4X strategy by Civ 4 designer (formerly 10 Crowns)

[Desiderius]

Sounds like high praise. I still play CivIV multiplayer with a couple of friends against Immortal/Deity AI. And even after decades of playing it's still a challenge (alcohol might be a factor here). All the other 4X games we tried over the years had absolutely garbage AI, that's why I asked.

Old World does other things to make the AI better too. They start out more advanced than you, with more cities, and they always play on The Good, so they'll have more starting resources and orders than you if you play on a higher difficulty. On top of that, you can't realistically avoid conflict in this game, so you can't ignore warfare and training units. The AI also gets updated constantly by the devs.

That depends on difficulty. Fair to say the AI is better at exploiting those advantages than they are in other games, and it’s pretty darn good even from an even start. Knows how to take advantage of the strengths of each civ.

 

[Modron]

New cheapest discount, is the base game worth it or do you need dlcs?

 

[mediocrepoet]

New cheapest discount, is the base game worth it or do you need dlcs?

I thought the base game was fun enough. DLCs add more events and such but if you don't like the base game the DLCs aren't going to change your mind. Safe to check it out and see if you want to expand it imo.

 

[Lacrymas]

New cheapest discount, is the base game worth it or do you need dlcs?

I'd get the Sacred and the Profane DLC too. It adds quite a lot to the religion gameplay. Everything else is strictly optional.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

this went totally under my radar.
quite an interesting game, but it's a bit too chaotic and everything moves too fast. i was doing everything right, everyone happy, suddenly an event which left a person unhappy with all three choices, next turn civil war. mandatory ragequit, this is not fun. i haven't really checked but i didn't see settings for game speed, and for only 8 major players, and considered the scope, the maps needed to be MUCH larger.

 

[Lacrymas]

this went totally under my radar.
quite an interesting game, but it's a bit too chaotic and everything moves too fast. i was doing everything right, everyone happy, suddenly an event which left a person unhappy with all three choices, next turn civil war. mandatory ragequit, this is not fun. i haven't really checked but i didn't see settings for game speed, and for only 8 major players, and considered the scope, the maps needed to be MUCH larger.

You can tweak pretty much everything in the advanced pre-game settings. You can also use PvP mode or whatever the name was to disable the more dramatic events. The bigger maps are seriously huge and there's probably a mod to make them even bigger. I've never seen anyone complain the maps are small, so if the biggest map is too small for you, and might be a you problem.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I rather like the random events and weird stuff they can introduce. Mostly because I find that Civ games tend to quickly hit an "autopilot phase" at some point whether in the early or mid-game and lasts until you win. So the events can add some spice to the game's flow imo.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

The bigger maps are seriously huge

"the old world" is not. scale is just a bit slightly smaller than my usual civ4 maps, which span the whole world.
only time speed setting i found is related only to characters aging, nothing about building and research.

death to the grand vizir, the fastest and surest way to lose a game is appointing one.

 

[Lacrymas]

The bigger maps are seriously huge

"the old world" is not. scale is just a bit slightly smaller than my usual civ4 maps, which span the whole world.
only time speed setting i found is related only to characters aging, nothing about building and research.

death to the grand vizir, the fastest and surest way to lose a game is appointing one.

Ah, the premade maps are set in size, yeah. The Grand Vizier is a weird mechanic and you can only get one through events. It used to be so that you can appoint one and some characters gave you so many benefits when bring Grand Viziers that it completely offset the inability manually queue things in cities. Now it's mostly downside, but you can assassinate or plot against the GV to get rid of them.