Old World

Obvious comparison is the Civ series, which basically devolves into micromanagement hell the longer it goes on. However old world is *not* a civ clone. Old World solves many of the issues the Civ series has been stuck with forever. You only have a certain number of orders per turn, so you need to decide which units to move instead of brainlessly shuffling every unit. It does 1UPT without devolving into a traffic jam or carpet of doom. Cities can only go in fixed locations (much like a space 4X) solving the "infinite city spam" that high level Civ devolves into. The research system borrows heavily from deck building games shaking up rote research paths. Then there's the character and event system that Old World has. Solves the "Eternal China" thing that you have going on in civ, makes diplomacy much more dynamic, and overall provides much more meat to the standard 4X skeleton. On the less than positive side, it's not really viable to play as the peaceful builder. While the economy is very well done, combat is pretty much required. To address some of the criticisms I have seen. "It's only 200 turns". There's a couple of ways to address this. Firstly the turns in Old World are far meatier than in most other 4Xs. Most of your decisions actually matter. Secondly, any seasoned 4X player knows that 4X games are "over" before they are over, so turn count isn't a great metric for how interesting a game is. "Units can teleport". On the surface this is true. Units have a soft movement cap which can be exceeded by spending "production" and then spending double orders to keep moving, letting a unit move a really long way in a turn. The criticism overlooks the opportunity cost though of other units sitting still, economy not advancing, character relationships neglected, etc. "Units only do damage on attack". This is sorta fair. It mostly comes from the "orders" system, doing damage on defense would be like getting free orders. Also discourages a defensive stalemate.

Old World is an interesting game to say the least. A ton of options and with an added character system it looks and feels overwhelming at first. The rather clutered tool tip and lack of clear explanations doesn't help much when you are a new player but at least the ingame encyclopedia is easy to navigate an use. The economy is fine, with various resources needed to support, build and create units leading to you having to create a large number of improvments across your cities. The limitation of not being allowed to build cities anywere except on dedicated city sites is interesting and while I didn't have an issue with it I also don't really see what it adds to the game. Especially since cities in this game is kind of empty, most of the improvments are now built with workers on the actual map rather than from the city itself. The much praised character system I don't care much for, the characters are bland and uninteresting and I find myself not really careing about my own character's actions and events much less that of all the other characters I barely bother to keep track off or learn to remember. Frequently I find that characters that I actually do notice die within a couple of turns before they made much of an impact. As for combat, not my cup of tea. I find it too fast phased with units frequently coming in from across the map and due to how little damage my defending front line deals the attacker have a huge advantage. While I understand this is due to attacking in this game carrying a resource cost it also means that frontlines never seems to form and it turns more into random units being all over the place. I rather have a limited number of moves and actions per turn and leave it at that. All in all I can't recommend this game based on my prefrences.

If you like Civilization, this game is a pretty safe bet. There's a couple of differences with civ that make it that each turn is filled with interesting decisions. There's barely any turns where you do nothing. I particularly like the following: - It adds a few new types of resources. For example, now you have limited number of Orders to spend on your units. If you want to invade your neighbor, fine; but you probably won't have the Orders to build improvements in your cities. - There's now families and people with relations to eachother. So if you and your neighbor don't get along, it may pay off to start buttering up your neighbor's heir. If the head of a major religion is mad at you (for example, because she is your ex-wife) that can cause a lot of problems for you. - The AI actually knows how to wage war. You need to bring a large army and plan your battles well, using terrain and unit abilities to your advantage. Every detail in the game has a lot of thought put into it, and it's a joy to play because of it.

As many many many pepole already have written everywhere on the stores (not only GOG) this game is the NEW masterpeice by Soren Johnson, leads designer of Civ IV. It's an incredibly deep game with a wealth of game systems that ALL fit and click incredibly well together. The team working behind this is AWESOME form Soren and Leyla down to everyone of them, and the game is just *showing* that, the level of polishing and completeness of the game is just WAY over nowadays market standard, and no other game in my experience has been followed this closely by the developers which really listen to the community, in the end this game is just awesome as the people who are (still) making it. I already sinked *1250* hours in the game since the early days of EA, any comment would be biased enuff to not matter beyond what I already wrote, gameplay will most probably off-put you if you come from the Civ series, and that's all for the better. The game has *new*, fresh ideas and is a blend of characters grand strategy and tactical gameplay with a very heavy narrative, which does NOT get in the way but instead enhances your experience. And you'll find one of the *best* AIs out there to challenge you, its extremely well refined....of course, not perfect, as that's utopia, but still a VERY VERY challenging game, you'll sink many hours to master it. Note on Multiplayer: OW has been developed with a very clear idea of it being playerd in multi, and (again) it shows. This game is so good that even when you eventually lose (either against AI or other fellow humans), you'll probably be like "now that was FUN, let's go at it AGAIN". 5 stars, no one less.