Headline changes

• Major Unity and rendering system update
• Improved graphics performance and memory optimization
• Unique Unit (UU) tech bonus cards are now unlocked through culture instead of tech

Known Issues

• Portrait Age Interpolation is not working and has been disabled regardless of the player setting
• Fog of War can flicker on and off following movement in some cases
• Unit models and banners can fail to display consistently during AI turn
• Free promotion icon partially hidden
• Cycling to a stacked unit can show their icon behind other units
• Volcano display issues

Design

• Unique Unit (UU) tech bonus cards are now unlocked through culture instead of tech
• First tier UU bonus cards have had their cost increased from 100 to 200, give 2 units, and require a city with Strong culture
• Second tier UU bonus cards require a city with Legendary culture
• Zealot leader general now performs a Heal action after each kill, instead of being able to Apply Enlist
• Fervent (Piye’s unique trait) now enables Apply Enlist as a leader general, at a cost of 100 civics (Wonders and Dynasties)
• Ballista strength reduced from 6 to 5
• Carthage city founding bonus reduced from 200 to 100 civics
• Founding Christianity no longer requires ownership of a Jewish city, now requires 3 Jewish cities globally
• Engineer promotion and general trait allows road building instead of bonus against siege/ships
• Added new national ambition – Control three of each Legendary Improvement
• Changed Control Six Legendary Cities national ambition to Control Five Legendary Cities
• Send 20 luxuries is now a tier 9 ambition instead of a national ambition
• Disciples can now clear vegetation
• Cannot build an improvement that removes vegetation if the unit cannot clear the vegetation
• Traders no longer get a court merchant when founding their seat
• Prevented building improvements on Marsh, except for Farms with Centralization
• All fresh water sources supply fresh water to their own tile in addition to adjacent tiles
• Remove Free Silk and Free Ebony bonus tech cards
• Moved Free Porcelain bonus card to be unlocked by Coinage and reduced tech cost accordingly
• Free Porcelain and Free Perfume bonus cards now give 2 instances of their luxuries
• Autonomous Rule project is removed when a city is breached
• Characters cannot give birth more than once a year (relevant for non-yearly turn scales)
• Free laws that replace an existing law do not increment the law change count
• Raiders can capture empty cities and city sites
• Adjustments to Family Archetype character tendencies:
• Champions have more Zealots and less Heroes
• Riders have more Heroes and less Zealots
• When randomly assigning archetypes, characters with governor effect traits are much more likely to be assigned a governor archetype, and similarly general archetypes for characters with general traits
• Killing Raiders now contributes towards goals to kill units of their original tribe
• Raiders are less stubborn about raiding, if the shortest path is blocked, and will hit opportunity targets instead
• Doubled Master/Elder Scribe money per Citizen, to +2/+4
• Anchoring and Unlimbering states are not interrupted by attacks that apply new cooldowns (i.e. Immobilize, Stun)
• Killed civilian units now count for Assyrian orders, Hero Leader Training, Epics Culture, etc
• Units can pass through hostile civilian units, as long as they don’t end their movement on their tile
• Families and Religions suffer -40 opinion for 20 turns when their Workers and Disciples are killed
• Improvements to Carthage campaign persistency
• Increased maximum effect of god opinion on religion opinion in Wrath of Gods scenario (200 -> 500)
• Reduced Tribal raid range in Wrath of Gods scenario
• Disabled Venerate mission for and demands being given by Abandoned god in Wrath of Gods scenario

Programming

• Unity updated from 2022.3 to 6.3
• Graphics code converted to Unity’s Universal Rendering Pipeline
• The URP upgrade improves graphics performance, letting the game render with fewer draw calls and use fewer shader variants
• Many UI optimizations
• Memory leak fixes
• Improvements to Safe Mode
• AI border expansion tweaks
• AI law value correction to avoid frequent changes
• Better AI legitimacy evaluation
• AI builds slightly fewer units
• Updated unity packages (relay and lobby replaced by multiplayer services)
• Added Latin supplemental characters U+100 to U+17F to Avalon, Trajan and Judson assets, to assist Polish translation mods
• Added support for bonus cards to use bonus names in tooltips (affects mods only)

UI

• Families are now shown before Religions on the tab panel
• Swapped Worker Filters and basic actions panels on Selected Worker UI
• Valid Improvements, Rural, and Urban worker filters show improvements valid anywhere in the city rather than just for current tile
• Restart Game button renamed Reroll Game. This keeps the same map and preserves nation/dynasty of random AI opponents but now rerolls the random seed
• New Map button renamed to Reroll Map. This button is not shown for games on predefined maps
• End Turn button can now always be clicked on your turn, will cycle to required items if needed
• Added hotkey for suppressing tooltips (hold Ctrl + X)
• Added hotkey for extending turn time (Alt-E)
• Added Reset option when editing hotkeys
• Added Unimproved Resources overlay to Overlay Customizer
• Character XP is now shown when they have upgraded at least once but progress to next level is 0
• Added Peak Legitimacy and Peak Legitimacy per Leader to Hall of Fame (requires regenerating HOF for existing games, won’t display on very old saves)
• Added on-map icon to units that have been disarmed
• Updated ZOC help text
• Enabled gold cost to buy yields for recommended improvements tooltip
• Added color-coding for Send/Return text in Luxury Management
• Improved consistency of city build production cost tooltips
• Trait opinion of leader now shown in trait tooltip even without advanced help text
• Pagan religions are shown in the Adopt State Religion menu even without Divine Rule, with explanatory text
• Yields from disciples on improvements are shown when disciples are selected
• Anchor mission help text includes water control range
• Condensed enlist ability help text
• Greyed out effect for dead character portraits applied more consistently
• Improved Settler Found City tooltip
• Cities with zero yield are included in the nation yield breakdown
• When a non-server network game has disconnected human players and the turn timer is counting down, a warning is displayed next to the turn time
• Improvements to Citrus resource, Grove, Ruins and Alter of the Aten models
• Improvements to Luxury Management display, especially when no luxuries available
• End Turn button now always active, clicking it will cycle to decisions preventing turn from ending
• Free improvement bonuses now show as normal event popups first
• Place improvement overlay not shown while bonus event is active
• When placing free improvements, ctrl+click is required to replace existing improvements
• Games with custom victories are skipped for unloaded scenario mods in Hall of Fame
• Improved fidelity of shadows on high settings

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed Valid Improvements worker filter
• Fixed map generation sometimes placing trees under water
• Fixed Hall of Fame display for scenario custom victories
• Fixed units passing through hostile civilians cancelling under construction improvements
• Fixed Dynasty being displayed as “default” with selected Archetype
• Fixed starting a game with more instances of a nation using a preset leader than existing dynasties for that nation
• Fixed hotkeys not triggering unit cycling
• Fixed per citizen generic specialist help text
• Fixed Timeline screen display issues
• Fixed Marshes affecting display of adjacent tiles
• Fixed Rebel units from events sometimes not being assigned to a player
• Fixed some popup scaling aspect ratio issues
• Fixed exception during loading of incompatible asset bundles
• Fixed Coastal Rain Basin boundary mountain range
• Fixed Hardwood Forest player start position issues
• Fixed missing clutter materials on Honey groves
• Fixed opinion graph hover exception
• Fixed hotkey assignments sometimes incorrectly being labeled as conflicts
• Fixed inaccurate opinion sometimes showing in city governor tooltip for Grand Viziers
• Fixed some Chinese text localization issues
• Fixed stun, immobilize, and panic effects sometimes being applied to units inside cities
• Fixed events that kill units not incrementing stats and goal counters
• Fixed temporarily hidden unit pathfinding
• Fixed some AI unit movement cases where it would trip over itself when there were units in the way
• Fixed some minor AI combat issues
• Fixed audio bug that occurred when only one music track was enabled
• Fixed some unit panel icon issues
• Fixed some tribal events incorrectly remaining after tribal elimination
• Fixed Caravan mission button saying that there are no players when out of orders
• Fixed some cases where city effects were not displayed
• Fixed boundary tiles in Caucasus on the Old World map
• Fixed character opinion load/save bugs
• Fixed family seat icon data bug
• Fixed State Religion reminder not opening submenu
• Fixed build specialist tile highlights not showing with border expansion
• Fixed Foreign Marriage mission in No Events mode
• Fixed temporarily hidden units sometimes still being rendered for other players
• Fixed village upgrade turns and improvement help text with Lighthouse
• Fixed Bulwark Cuirass UI issue
• Fixed Unyielding Banner reassigning general to non-player units
• Fixed scores not updating after effectPlayers change
• Fixed event decisions not getting restored after clearing selection
• Fixed tutorial videos not showing in the encyclopedia on Linux
• Fixed missing theology info on tech tooltips
• Fixed bonus yield text bug
• Fixed Unit Seen notification not firing if unit becomes visible mid-move
• Fixed Default Governor bugs
• Fixed Peaks adjacency requirement being ignored by Clerics on Sand tiles
• Fixed Encyclopedia display issue
• Fixed Research UI not showing after renaming landmark
• Fixed MP games with one human team getting stuck after victory
• Fixed Ask to Declare War mission helptext
• Fixed tile tooltip to show improvement defensive modifier in neutral territory
• Fixed overlay customizer issues
• Fixed load/save error that was possibly invalidating replay data
• Fixed scenario selection getting cleared when moving to MP setup screen
• Fixed Occurrence effects not being removed when ended by an event/bonus (Wrath of Gods)
• Fixed Veneration jealousy penalty being applied to both religion and god in Wrath of Gods scenario
• Fixed tech helptext not listing non religion-based project unlocks in Wrath of Gods scenario
• Fixed Carthage scenario 3 load/save bug
• Fixed ModManager panel trying to update when not active
• Text and event fixes

Old World is available on Steam, GOG, Epic and Stove

About Old World

Set in classic antiquity, Old World is a historical 4X strategy game created by Soren Johnson (Lead Designer, Civilization IV). Players select a historical leader and use the innovative Orders system to dominate the competition. Leaders are mortal; once they die, the nation’s future depends on their heirs.