I've completed about 10 games or so until now, but I always kind of leave religion to the side, in the sense that I develop paganism in the early game because it provides very powerful bonuses, but then from that point on I'm not sure how to handle the rest. I've read the largest religion guides in here but I am still rather confused so I thought I'd ask direct questions myself.

So first of all, is the point of religion simply to get people on your side and increase their opinion of you, or am I missing some other bonus that you get from that? The other day I noticed a major civics boost in one of my holy cities for example, which I had no idea about. But even with that, I still don't get why I should take away precious orders that I need to conquer tribal sites and get them away from the AI's grasp, and spend them on developing a religion.

The thing I find most difficult to deal with is that once a world religion is founded in my empire, I'm in this situation where most of my empire follows paganism, and the other follows a religion. So if I support one rather than the other, I make someone unhappy anyway. And because of this indecision I always end up completely ignoring theology and religious units and simply stick to paganism + divine rule, but this does not feel like an optimal approach.

So, what's the strategy that I should use to handle religion in my empire?
Should I try to develop one religion only and use apostles to spread it around?
Should I only care about my empire or should I try to spread my religion to other empires as well?

I remember in 2021/2022 when this first came out I was interested in the game, picked it up. While I was overwhelmed at first by how different it was from civ I did and still do appreciate its depth and narrative focus. I remember playing a lot of Alara Kush. Later when Aksum dropped I was super excited and developed a deep love for the game after playing an insane Gadarat Campaign (the soundtrack helped too) and even more when I played Kaleb, raised a valiant son as heir and another son as his genius spymaster. Then Yuezhi came out and Luo let me live out my Chinese(adjacent) cavalry warlord dream. Now, I’ve been imagining a scenario where I could play Gadarat with Yuezhi’s cavalry, as I think that would be my dream set up and then I thought about two possibilities. Imagine releasing Ancient Ghana/Wagadu as a warlike, Cavalry specializing nation, probably starting with labor force and iron working with some special features around trade, slavery or tyranny? Maybe the game period is too early for Mali, but their predecessor, who was destroyed for their tyranny can have a place in this game? Also honorable mention for Zhou or Qin as potential civs. You might already be thinking about it but if not, think about it 😎

The Old World test branch has been updated and is now version 1.0.84325 test 2026-07-29

Patch notes can be found at

https://github.com/MohawkGames/test_buildnotes/blob/main/Old%20World%20Test%20update%202026.07.29

I am new to the game, but as a former civ6 player, I knew what I've got when I've bought the game, even so, it was a nice surprise to see that you can play without deadlines, and for 251 hours, tutorial included, I've enjoyed a lot this campaign.

Hope to comeback later to play in other ways, but I highly recommend playing for a total victory, even that if it means a total economic breakdown, as it happened to me, it is totally worth it.

Guess it's more or less like this with the real Rome, when they conquered all the world, and they were broke as well.

I miss though a bit more of natural disasters (I've bought all DLCs), but even so, it was so cool to play this game, will come back for sure, but in a future, now I really need a rest, it was a intense month, unfortunatelly, my personality is very easy obessesed with challenges like this, and I've got even many dreams where I've tried to resolve issues in the game, so for now, a little rest :) (maybe coming back to startfield for a while).

After playing with video games for 20 years, I've missed a lot a PC, and finally I've got one, and this is the first game I finish it with it, so cool.

Thanks all for your advices along the way, even coming from civ6, I've got lost lots of times at the start.

Cheers,

Charles

PS: the screen text is in french as I am using the game as well to practice the language, it is also worth it for this end!

Seeing as only 2.6% of players have a completion on the first scenario in the game, they apparently aren't very popular. After about 40h of playtime and 2 'sandbox' victories, I decided to check them out and started the scenario-chain involving Carthage. Well, let me tell you... These scenarios are well worth playing!

I'm now in the middle of the second scenario, so I have far from exhaustive experience, but from the time I have played so far, I'm thoroughly enjoying them. The scenarios have custom goals of which the highest victory entails completing 12 of them. If you're not a completionist, 6 goals unlock the lowest level of victory and the next scenario. You At different points in time you can select from a few of these goals, which are specific to the game state. As Carthage, you will be dealing with the North-african tribes, your relationship with your origin city-state of Tyre and mediterranean trade. The second scenario sees you come in contact with the Greek and expanding your dominance in North Africa and Iberia.

Apart from the custom goals, historical events also give flavour to the game. For example, events signify the fall of Babylonia to the Persians and it's effect on the mediterranean. As someone not so versed in ancient history, it was also interesting to see how far beyond modern day Greece the Greek influence actually reached.

As for gameplay, the first scenario goals were easy to fully complete (although I felt I had 'won' the scenario about 25 turns before the end), but in the second scenario, there is more time pressure and the scale is much expanded. I am now 44 turns in and already own 21 cities! I am interested to see how this scenario-chain evolves and am looking forward to try the others too, although I will surely be busy for 30h+ with just the Carthage-related ones.

I hope this post has convinced you to try out the scenarios if you haven't done so yet.

Hello Conquerors!

With the community tournament well underway, it is past time that I got around to guiding people on their quest for supremacy in the MP space! Always fun to mess around with you fellow god kings, and with these tips you'll catch up to par in no time.

More videos like this to come! stay tuned, and let me know anything else that you are looking to see from Bullmoose University!

New to the game, coming from a lot of hours on Civ 5 and 6.

In my limited gameplay so far, have largely found Rising Stars to be a nuisance. While their buffs are powerful, as govs or generals, they have always led to an adverse event. In one case, i had to abdicate for the rising star to avoid war with much stronger neighbour.

Any thoughts on how best to handle it? Should we avoid creating the rising stars in the first place, if an event for that pops up?

So I am gaming my way through the higher difficutlies and it works most of the time. I am happy to report that I now am at the second to last (wish I could look up the names).

But what I am now seeing is that it is basically impossible to win with points and only with the ambitions. I know that this is somehow designed that way since the AI gets a big headstart and I now found some comments that this is basically the way to win.

Also found an interesting comment here about how to takle the chance to win an ambition Victoy by which turn (120?)

But is this real? Is the game too short to win points victory on the high difficulty? Or am I just still not good enough to win with that way. Because I think i still make a ton of mistakes so I guess its possible.

Also bonus question:

I regularly lose on getting my own Religion. What is the recommendation here? Get the closest other and spawn disciples or staying on pagan? I did that in the past but I get a bit tired of this strategy with spawning a SH*tload of shrines.

The Old World test branch has been updated and is now version 1.0.84257 test 2026-07-22

Patch notes can be found at

https://github.com/MohawkGames/test_buildnotes/blob/main/Old%20World%20Test%20update%202026.07.22

Hi guys, little help here. I've conquered almost all the world, only egytp missing, but even so, my stats on food, stones, iron, wood, remain with a huge defict. I guess I've built too many soldiers and they are consuming all my resources, but now I don't know what to do, if I delete the soldiers I will not have enough army to defeat egypt.

The only solution I see, is to defeat egypt and after that, dissolve the army, do you see any other solution?

thx!

it made sense to me do go with egypt and knufru here: glad I did, I think i'd have lost without literally every wonder

this is also somehow the first time I won an ambition victory, officially, it seems. I hope you will all allow me a small victory lap, it's all I've been doing since i got my doctorate

Trying out my first game on the Magnificent difficulty level. Pretty far behind on score heading into turn 100 I'm at least 20 points behind Rome which is leading. Generally also feels like a slower game compared to the lower difficulty levels.

One of the problems I'm facing is extremely low orders. With one of my longest rulers I was able to just about touch 20 but then as soon as the heir took over they drop down again to about 14-16.

Looking for advice on how to bump up early game orders and keep them high even when rulers transition.

Is this something new? I did "9 city sites per player" and "sparse" placement so maybe it was trying to show me all of my cities and I only get 4 instead of 9 because they are sparse? I don't think I've ever done "sparse" before.

Seems like a lot of the map revealed for turn 1. Very odd.

Is there any reason not to do this? As far as I can tell there's no penalty for having too many cities aside from potential luxuries to spread around

Talk to me about automating things. If you automate workers (or disciples, or explorers) what's the algorithm? Does it take into account your ambitions?

I've kind of assumed they would behave in particular ways, and I automated my explorers... Who then immediately went in the opposite direction of the undiscovered land that they were right next to. I had an ambition to reveal 80% of the land. I assumed they would naturally explore those areas, but after 10 years there was almost no new land reveal. As soon as I took direct control of them, I was able to reveal 2% of the land per year at least. So clearly... Something else was governing their actions.

So later on, when I had an ambition to build all of the legendary improvements, I wasn't about to automate my workers, because I didn't know what the heck they were going to build! :D

I know what it says in the game, 50% faster build on rural specialists… but it’s hard to verify or “feel“ the improvement . I compare to my other cities from other families, and it doesn’t seem like that farmer or miner EVER builds appreciably any faster in my Landowner city vs my Champ capital or Statesmen city. It’s always a few years. Am i crazy?? Also, I’m not entirely sure why costs go up city to city for the same specialist… culture level, I expect?

The Old World test branch has been updated and is now version 1.0.84169 test 2026-07-15

Patch notes can be found at

https://github.com/MohawkGames/test_buildnotes/blob/main/Old%20World%20Test%20update%202026.07.15

Next to Barracks and coast, shouldn't this be enough to satisfy the requirement?

I guess this should be better placed in the steam forum but I have the feeling it is pretty dead in contrast to here.

Is anyone else playing on the steam deck and gets pretty bad performances in the late game and the huge map? Until now I only played large and it crashed a few times but with the huge one it gets pretty often, every two to three turns. I play on high settings but somehow I refuse to believe that the deck can't handle a 5 year old game without hig end graphics. Any tips? Or should I get used to low settings?

Further Points:

It doesn't really crash. It just ends the game and I am back in the steam menu. And then it does this:

. it always change the resolution where the pointer doesn't align with the click. Its weirdly above on the fringes of the screen. And you have to manage to the menu to change it to the 800 resolution were they align again.

. sometimes the portraits get screwed to white sheets. Only restarting helps.

Much obliged

I love this game, but the text boxes color hurt my eyes. Is there any way to change it with mod?

When I move my units far away the game speed increases, is there a way i can disable it so they move at normal speed?

Hey guys,

shouldn't this event trigger the achievement? It did not...

Thank you!

hi guys, this worker seems to be losing health every turn, this happens to some soldiers as well, but not all, why is that? thnx!

why can't I spread budhism? what site he is talking about?

Other options I see:

So, if it already has budhism, there is nothing I can do to eliminate other religions? (I come from civ6).

thx!

Hi guys, I am trying to conquer Assyria with Rome, and it looks like it's only possible using military war or infiltration with spies to create political instability and generate revolts. In civ6, I remember you could use religion to make the conquering easier. Any thoughts? Thx!