That Soren Johnson, the lead designer of Civilization 4 and Offworld Trading Company, is returning to the 4X genre should excite every 4X fan.

Today, finally, Mohawk Games has peeled back the curtains on this highly anticipated game and we’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with it in its current state. Mind you, the game is still in an early beta state, but I’ve spent about 40 hours with this one and have seen more than enough to form an early opinion on what is now called Old World, formerly 10 Crowns.

Old World takes place in a historical time period that will be familiar to many Civilization-series players. Set in a pseudo-alternate classical antiquity time period, Old World pits the likes of Egypt, Rome, Greece, and Assyria, among other nations, against each other in a 4X game that employs some unique and even innovative gameplay mechanics.

Among the most obvious innovations to the 4X formula is the addition of family/dynastic mechanics that are a core system of Old World. You play as the leader of your country and your characters marry, have children, and live their lives in ways that play out through Old World’s event system. We’ll get more into that system soon.

Old World’s character system is reminiscent of games like Crusader Kings 2 and adds a layer of personality and flavor absent from other historical 4X games. Take, for instance, your start as Queen Hatshepsut from Egypt. You begin the game with a daughter who you can quickly “marry off” to a provincial family in your empire, strengthening your relationship with that family.

Your country’s families are unique to each nation, and each of them is a distinct faction within your empire that has its own strengths, weaknesses, and desires. Keeping them happy is important for both the empire and for your own wellbeing, as angry families will revolt and try to usurp your rule.

Beyond that, each of the characters in your empire plays a role that comes through in the aforementioned event system. Throughout a typical game of Old World, you’ll face various events that center on these characters, forcing you to decide how you’ll react, further changing the characters’ opinion of you, training, capabilities, and more.

You can also invite these characters to your court, bestowing titles like Ambassador or Spymaster to some of them, while assigning others to govern your cities. An Ambassador acts as an intermediary between your empire and others and performs diplomat-like services, while the Spymaster can infiltrate other empires and perform some rather dubious tasks.

As it sounds, Old World has a focus on characters that no other 4X game does. Don’t expect Crusader-Kings-2-like depth here, but it’s absolutely more involved than any other 4X game I’ve played.

Next on Old World’s list of unique gameplay mechanics, and something that may seem a bit simple at first, is an action system called “Orders”. Each turn, you accumulate Orders to move your units, perform tasks, and more. This means that you can use those orders to move a particular unit multiple times (until they become exhausted), have workers build improvements, command military units to attack foes, and more. You have a limited amount of orders, which can be increased through a variety of means, including increasing your leader’s legitimacy, through certain technologies, and more.

You’ll notice the remaining orders left (0) in the lower left of this screenshot (large white number below the scroll icon). The green number (+18) below that icon shows how many orders you’ll regain next turn.

Unspent Orders during a given turn are converted to gold income, so sometimes it’s best to not spend them all in order to add to your coffers. Other times, especially during combat, you can use “Training Rate” to further increase your orders, allowing for additional movement of your troops and increasing your ability to outmaneuver them, but at the cost of this slow-to-accumulate resource.

Using that same “Training Rate” resource, you can also promote your armies, providing them bonuses to a variety of skills and attributes. In fact, it’s this investment that you’ll need to delicately consider, as armies that have leveled up are a huge asset to your military capabilities, but doing so costs them their turns in addition to that “Training Rate” resource.

The Event System in Old World is also a noteworthy feature that adds a great deal of personality and liveliness here. Often, you’ll find yourself making decisions based on a large variety of events that can transpire. Some of them relate to your family, others relate to other empires, and yet others are made in reference to your empire’s people or its direction.

It creates a sense of a living, breathing world, filled with people and personalities, that very few 4X games have, or hell, even the broader strategy game genre has accomplished. I can imagine that with more time in development that even more of these events could be added and give the player even more opportunity to be met with events that they hadn’t seen before. The whole system reminds me very much of Crusader Kings II’s event system and that’s a very good thing in my book.

Furthermore, your exploration will lead you to a variety of “goodie huts”, most of which will require you to make a choice in how you handle a particular issue or event, very similar to a short “choose your own adventure” type quest. Your choice will provide different outcomes, ranging from a bonus to your resources, or a character developing new traits.

Those shining ruins are Old World’s “goodie huts” and are pretty exciting to find!

Old World‘s research system also manages to be pretty unique, too. Instead of being given a linear choice of technologies, you’re provided a selection of four technologies that you’ll choose your next focus from. They’re not always technologies, either. Sometimes, you’ll be able to select a boost to your resources, a free military unit, a settler, among other random possibilities. A typical (though nothing is typical in this game) choice looks like this:

There’s much more to talk about here, but as things are still a work in progress, we’ll save the rest for future preview articles (and video in the future, too).

I’m trying to manage my hype here, but 10 Crowns, err, em, Old World, is oozing with personality and potential and despite being in Beta still, it plays like a full-fledged game (with maybe some missing assets).

Old World is being developed by a group at Mohawk that clearly knows their 4X games and knows how to make them exciting again, adding a healthy dose of fresh, brand-new mechanics to an otherwise worn-out genre. At nearly every turn, Old World alters all-too-familiar 4X gameplay in a way that makes it dramatically more interesting.

If it sounds like I’m already lathering on the praise, it’s because I am. Old World sits at the very top of my personal “most anticipated” list because of all the way it blends 4X games with games like Crusader Kings 2 and even real-time-strategy in its fast-paced Orders system.

We still don’t have any word on when Old World will release, but it still sounds like there will at least be an Early Access period this year. Frankly, it can’t come soon enough, as I’m all too eager to share this experience with more of my like-minded brethren here at eXplorminate!

In the meantime, here are more screenshots to analyze and drool over:

Those are barbarian tribes in the upper right, yet another aspect of gameplay that adds to the experience.

Which option will you choose?

City management is reminiscent of the more recent Civilization games.

Combat chances are clearly laid out and plays out like Civilization combat, with its “bumping heads”.

The fog of war is beautiful in Old World. Something I thought I’d never take the time to highlight…

Which choice do you make?













Rob founded eXplorminate, and quickly brought on Nate, as his passion for 4X needed an outlet. You can find Rob in just about every 4X game beta and 4X game forum, too. He’s equally obsessed with the strategy and tactics genres and constantly combs the internet for new and exciting titles in those genres. He’s proud to be a member of Amplitude Studios’ VIP program and the concept creator of Endless Space 2’s Unfallen.