Old World Official User Manual

[Uberfrog]

Thanks for a great manual @Velociryx ! It’s just what I needed in terms of a detailed, well-written introduction to how the game’s systems work.

I have fond memories of paper manuals. But sadly they were always going to go the way of the dinosaurs. Physical releases of PC games are rare beasts these days (I don’t even have a DVD drive in my desktop…), and games change so much post-launch with patches and DLC. A paper copy of the Civ 6 manual from launch would be useless in 2021.

Still this puts all the more importance on quality and up-to-date digital manuals and in-game encyclopaedias, and it’s great to see an excellent one for Old World.

 

[Velociryx]

Much appreciated, Uber, and glad you've been finding it helpful!

 

[PiR]

Hey, I made a search about OCC / challenge but I couldn't find anything about it. Did I miss the section?

 

[Tarquelne]

So glad to find this! Thank you.

Still on my first game, and feeling like the sequel to Civ4 has at last arrived. I was happy to see all those little numbers and icons ... But what do they mean? Like, really mean. Finally: Details!

Now I'm going to go see if the stuff I've already learned from the manual is in the in-game help, but I simply missed it.

 

[Verrucosus]

I'm always delighted when the manual gets updated. The most recent version adds more detail about the various expansions. I might not have avoided the Greece & Egypt campaigns for being too much focused on combat as long as I did, if I had been teased about some of the locked scenarios like this.

Back in 2022, learning that "Old World" had a manual was a huge selling point for me. It helped me get into the game a lot faster than I would have if I had had to learn it tooltip by tooltip. What's even more amazing is that the manual keeps getting updated. This used to be highlighted as the huge upside of abandoning printed manuals, but I can't think of another game that actually did it. Given the way the game itself keeps getting tweaked on the one hand and the way the manual discusses various mechanics in great detail on the other hand, I really don't envy the author for having to revisit his writing again and again. I appreciate it all the more that he does.

Using the opportunity for a minor nitpick, the section about rush-buying via orders might benefit from a quick review. Before changes were made to the game, there were three different "scenarios" (distinct requirements depending won what is being rushed) both for rushing via gold and for rushing via orders. From the current text (p. 111, 112) it appears that there are now just two scenarios for those two payment methods (judge governor/Holy War for gold rushing, orator governor/Orthodoxy for order rushing). However, using Orthodoxy to rush any kind of production via orders is presented as "Scenario 3". Also, the player-created table included on page 206 no longer mentions the orator governor, so the rules are somewhat unclear. However, that's a small point in a manual that has grown to 250 pages and that was a joy to reread ahead of diving once more into another winter of Old World!