Old World from Soren Johnson

[Barthheart]

Can you give custom names to military units?

Hmmm... haven't tried that. You can rename all the members in you family...

That's cool.  Of course you might not want to get attached to family members in this game.  It sounds like you might have to "off" one every once in a while ........  ;D

This is true, playing as Romulus of Rome I've had kill my brother Remus for conspiring against me...

[Gusington]

Are there unique military units for each faction?

[Jarhead0331]

Are there unique military units for each faction?

Yes.

[al_infierno]

This might be a record time for my loins going from dry to fully emoistened.  This game might actually distract me from my latest Dom 5 binge...

[Gusington]

Dammit I was hoping the units were generic. I'm running out of reasons to not buy,

From screenshots it looks like there is specific geography for each faction too, and architecture.

[Barthheart]

Well, specific architecture for sure.

[Martok]

I can hold off and wait for the Steam version.  I already have plenty of games to play in the meantime, plus it guarantees there's at least one game I can look forward to next year  :P  It is looking damn good, though. 

[Gusington]

By geography I mean it looks from the screenshots as if you get faction specific features. If you choose Rome, the Tiber runs through your territory, etc. No?

[al_infierno]

By geography I mean it looks from the screenshots as if you get faction specific features. If you choose Rome, the Tiber runs through your territory, etc. No?

Yeah, river names seem to be aligned with the city they're close to.  Civ 6 does the same thing I think.

So far I'm quite impressed with this game.  It's rough around the edges, but already feels like more than the sum of its parts.  One thing that pleased me to realize is how how cities, and the units they produce, are color-coded to the owning family within your faction -- I assume this will determine ownership in the event of a civil war.

I read Love Thy Neighbor, a book about the Yugoslav Wars, which talks about how one summer communities from neighboring villages helped tend each other's farms, and then the next year they were killing/looting each other.  It's quite interesting and poignant to see this dynamic replicated in game mechanics where I sent workers from Roma to help develop the lands around the new city of Antium -- which happens to belong to the faction led by my rival brother.  So far I have two female children and no male heir, so I'm semi expecting my dick brother to declare a succession war upon my character's death, leading to said Roman and Antium(ian?) neighbors slaughtering each other and burning/looting the very settlements they themselves helped build.   

[Tpek]

Does the game have a Hotseat option for Multiplayer, or is it online only?

[RedArgo]

I looked around for hotseat and I didn't see anything.  There is an option under multiplayer to turn off the network, but then there is a box to enter the player's e-mail address, so maybe that is just PBEM?  Not really sure.

I've played about 50 turns as Rome, Romulus died at age 76, his son had already died, so his grandson became the new leader.

The AI expanded a lot more than me, i don't know what I doing particularly.  I fought two wars against the Egyptians and both times they did not aggressively move against me, but I am playing on a lower difficulty level, so that may be it.  It was only when I moved a unit in to their territory that they responded by moving a bunch of units to attack.

There are a lot of bonus and upgrades to tiles and units similar to Civ, so it feels familiar, but it adds new dynamics with the CK2 type of mechanics for families.

For a game just into early access, this is already polished and other than a few placeholder graphics and some messed up pronouns on text blocks, I am really impressed.  I think it will be well worth the current sale price of $30 if you don't mind buying on Epic.

[Yskonyn]

Excellent news. As I've already bought MW5 from them I might as well buy this after all your recommendations... so I did! :)

Looks like a great game indeed!

[glen55]

I'm having a blast with it. It's like Civ, but tense.

[Martok]

I'm curious how the game compares/contrasts to Civilization IV.  Not just because Soren Johnson also was the lead dev on that one, but because it's the one Civ game I've enjoyed. 

[Barthheart]

I'm curious how the game compares/contrasts to Civilization IV.  Not just because Soren Johnson also was the lead dev on that one, but because it's the one Civ game I've enjoyed.

It's nothing like Civ IV realty, other than you build cities and expand your empire.
It's got hexes and single unit per hex just like Civ VI, only workers scouts and religious units can stack with military units.
Ranged units can fire 2 to 4 hexes.
You build cities with settlers, but only on designated city sites, some of which are occupied by barbarians and lesser tribes.
You build improvements around your city like Civ IV and Civ V. But this does not consume your worker, just resources and time.

Other than those Civ-like things the game departs quite a bit from them.