I wanted to like this so bad.
There's a lot of good ideas in here but they're all poorly executed and the game is worse than the sum of its parts. It's oddly opaque, even by 4x standards, it's somehow too slow and too fast at the same time and there's just much too much going on. On its face the idea of pushing CK's familial dynasty manager inside of Civ-style gameplay seems brilliant. Sprinkle in some events, which have always been a common community mod idea for Civ, and you'd expect a real homerun.
But in the end, Old World feels a little like putting hot dogs in ice cream. I love hot dogs and I love ice cream. But it's probably best if you eat them separately.
The family management is hard to follow and gives you nowhere near as much easy control or agency as Crusader Kings. It's also really hard to navigate and it's tucked into these small, hard to see menus in the corners of the screen. And while you can game over if your dynasty doesn't have a dynastic heir, you can't cause AI empires in the game to lose via this method.
There's also an Amplitude-inspired mechanic for dealing with local tribes that makes them more involved than Civ style citystates and more like the minor civilizations you find in Endless Space or Endless Legend. It's a nice touch but it's yet another set of fiddly missions with another set of fiddly goals that follow different than each other major nation. If it was as simple and scaled back as Civ's city states it wouldn't be so annoying. If everything was as streamlined as an Amplitude game then it wouldn't be so annoying. If it was like CK where the interactions between leaders are the same each time it wouldn't be so annoying. But it's some weird amalgamation of the worst parts of all these.
It's just hard to follow. It's hard to follow all the characters while following all the units while following all the diplomatic relations while wrestling with the weird "City Site" city-settling mechanic. There's a lot to follow all the time and not in any way that makes the game feel particularly deep or engaging or connected. You can be successful by even ignoring several of these mechanics. Realistically, you're not given enough control over the courtiers and court members to bother with it much outside of just letting the computer suggest and auto appoint characters for you. Just make sure you stay married and produce heirs. You can even pick who you want your heir to be! Marriages give truces and even on higher difficulties, securing marriage with other nations in trivial.
It's just too much. And pieces of it aren't fleshed out enough. And the systems don't connect well and they're hard to navigate. There's a million symbols but only ten things to care about. It's just a messy. it's all just so messy. It's really unfortunate.
There's a lot of good ideas in here but they're all poorly executed and the game is worse than the sum of its parts. It's oddly opaque, even by 4x standards, it's somehow too slow and too fast at the same time and there's just much too much going on. On its face the idea of pushing CK's familial dynasty manager inside of Civ-style gameplay seems brilliant. Sprinkle in some events, which have always been a common community mod idea for Civ, and you'd expect a real homerun.
But in the end, Old World feels a little like putting hot dogs in ice cream. I love hot dogs and I love ice cream. But it's probably best if you eat them separately.
The family management is hard to follow and gives you nowhere near as much easy control or agency as Crusader Kings. It's also really hard to navigate and it's tucked into these small, hard to see menus in the corners of the screen. And while you can game over if your dynasty doesn't have a dynastic heir, you can't cause AI empires in the game to lose via this method.
There's also an Amplitude-inspired mechanic for dealing with local tribes that makes them more involved than Civ style citystates and more like the minor civilizations you find in Endless Space or Endless Legend. It's a nice touch but it's yet another set of fiddly missions with another set of fiddly goals that follow different than each other major nation. If it was as simple and scaled back as Civ's city states it wouldn't be so annoying. If everything was as streamlined as an Amplitude game then it wouldn't be so annoying. If it was like CK where the interactions between leaders are the same each time it wouldn't be so annoying. But it's some weird amalgamation of the worst parts of all these.
It's just hard to follow. It's hard to follow all the characters while following all the units while following all the diplomatic relations while wrestling with the weird "City Site" city-settling mechanic. There's a lot to follow all the time and not in any way that makes the game feel particularly deep or engaging or connected. You can be successful by even ignoring several of these mechanics. Realistically, you're not given enough control over the courtiers and court members to bother with it much outside of just letting the computer suggest and auto appoint characters for you. Just make sure you stay married and produce heirs. You can even pick who you want your heir to be! Marriages give truces and even on higher difficulties, securing marriage with other nations in trivial.
It's just too much. And pieces of it aren't fleshed out enough. And the systems don't connect well and they're hard to navigate. There's a million symbols but only ten things to care about. It's just a messy. it's all just so messy. It's really unfortunate.