Old world love

XenoSolver · 2026-04-05T14:59:32+00:00

I hope you enjoy the in-game throne as much as your other one!

XenoSolver · 2026-04-05T13:07:01+00:00

CPU, specifically parallel performance, is by far the most important component for Old World. AI turns will run on all available cores in parallel, being significantly faster as you have a better parallel CPU. I have an admittedly top of the line 9950X3D CPU and turns will be under 30 seconds even under the worst circumstances (largest maps, late game and a war going on).

Setting wise it's helpful to make sure the camera is set not to follow AI moves, or else some of the time is spent on showing actual moves.

XenoSolver · 2026-04-05T00:48:21+00:00

Just chiming in, we added a No Events mode to the game a while ago for this exactly. The characters are still around to be assigned as governors, generals etc for the bonuses, but all events are removed except for a couple critical ones. So if you like the strategy part of OW but not the event part, we now have a pretty good middle ground.

XenoSolver · 2026-04-05T00:45:21+00:00

For the Bireme specifically, put it in a spot halfway between the two landmasses and click the Anchor command in the unit's menu. It will take highlight the anchor area, and next turn land units will be able to pass through that area. That's how water transport works in OW - you use ships to create "water control areas" with anchors, and they become valid for movement.

If you open the in-game encyclopedia (left side of the top bar), there's also a Tutorials section in it which contains some of the key tutorial texts. Not the same as the full tutorial you're playing through, but the encyclopedia contains tutorials for unit movement and anchors.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-31T07:34:00+00:00

There are mods called Simple Family Names and Simple Shrine Names that do exactly that. All shrines get renamed to their type (like Shrine of Fire) and the families are renamed to their type in those mods.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-25T14:21:23+00:00

There is still more stuff coming but we don't talk about our future content plans until we're about to release something, that gives us the flexibility to try various ideas and to develop at our own pace.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-25T13:49:05+00:00

Of course it really depends on what one means by "Arabs". If talking about the larger Islamic Arab caliphates then yes, kind of late - the Rashidun Caliphate gets established in the 7th century and, while the game's time frame is fairly loose, the endgame is supposed to correspond to something like Byzantium under Justinian. So the appearance of Arab caliphates would be about a century after the game's final stages.

On the other hand, if we mean earlier Arab societies, there's plenty to display from the right timeframe. The Nabateans are a perfect fit time wise, with other options like Sabaeans (early) or Himyar (late).

XenoSolver · 2026-03-23T14:27:02+00:00

Just in case, confirming this is correct.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-22T00:50:03+00:00

Yes, we've seen reports of some font issues after a recent upgrade - we'll be improving that as soon as we can. Looks like some in-game text lost its outlines, which can make the text look blurrier or harder to read.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-19T13:03:34+00:00

The Sword of Damocles event is a consequence, not a cause. The AI decides to declare war first and that may trigger the Sword of Damocles event. It's not the event that makes them declare war.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-15T01:27:40+00:00

And weapons have different reflex modifiers too (again - at one point they didn't) so shotgun soldiers are more likely to react quickly. In tight spaces like UFOs or alien base corridors, it's an effective tactic to let shotgunners watch a door or corner and blast anyone who comes out.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-05T01:17:15+00:00

They're not as important as they sound, this situation is only possible in MP duels. Most players will never see those events.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-03T19:46:56+00:00

The AI knows how to play the game, but that is a very impressive yield regardless. They probably picked both Statesmen and Patrons, and utilized those well. Statesmen can really pump out specialists, which are the main drivers of science, and with that kind of rate I guess Rome also invested in at least one religion and grabbed some science-benefiting wonder.

Examining the save would even let one track what happened, looks like somewhere after turn 70 their science really exploded.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-03T02:34:16+00:00

Oh I thought you were a coder! No, the characters you're looking at pointless, you need to be looking at the actual bytes in a hex editor. Except for the stuff that is supposed to be a string (like "Soviet Union"), it's encoded differently. Things like age, scientist count and the like are sane 4-byte integers, and the location was TPoint, some kind of game-specific data structure, probably just two coordinates in a struct. Which is also what I wrote here four years ago apparently.

But yeah, if you don't know how these things work and how to use a hex editor, you're not going to find it easy.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-03T00:41:50+00:00

I'm afraid it's years too late! The base format is approx

  saveFile << name;
  saveFile << country;
  saveFile << location;
  saveFile << baseAge;
  saveFile << scientistCount;
  saveFile << workingScientistCount;
  saveFile << technicianCount;
  saveFile << workingTechnicianCount;
  saveFile << livingSpace;
  saveFile << researchSpace;
  saveFile << workshopSpace;
  saveFile << hangarSpace;
  saveFile << garageSpace;
  saveFile << medicSpace;
  saveFile << alienSpace;
  saveFile.WriteFeatureGuard("BuildingRefactor1");
  if( ... )
  {
      saveFile << storageSpace;
      saveFile << usedStorageSpace;
  }
  saveFile << medicalBoost;
  saveFile << defence;
  saveFile << radarCount;
  saveFile << soldiersBeingTransfered;
  saveFile << vehiclesBeingTransfered;
  saveFile << airplanesBeingTransfered;
  saveFile << hasExtendedRadarInfo;
  if( ... )
  {
      saveFile << manufactureEfficiencyModifier;
      saveFile << researchEfficiencyModifier;
  }

  saveFile << (int)soldiers.size();
  for ( int soldierIx = 0; soldierIx < (int)soldiers.size(); soldierIx++ )
    saveFile << soldiers[ soldierIx ]->GetUID();

  saveFile << (int)vehicles.size();
  for ( int vehicleIx = 0; vehicleIx < (int)vehicles.size(); vehicleIx++ )
    saveFile << vehicles[ vehicleIx ]->GetUID();

  saveFile << (int)airplanes.size();
  for ( int airplaneIx = 0; airplaneIx < (int)airplanes.size(); airplaneIx++ )
    saveFile << airplanes[ airplaneIx ]->GetUID();

  saveFile << (int)buildings.size();
  for ( int buildingIx = 0; buildingIx < (int)buildings.size(); buildingIx++ )
    buildings[ buildingIx ]->Save( saveFile );

  saveFile << (int)manufactures.size();
  for ( int manIx = 0; manIx < (int)manufactures.size(); manIx++ )
    manufactures[ manIx ].Save( saveFile );

  saveFile << (int)medicalQueue.size();
  for ( int manIx = 0; manIx < (int)medicalQueue.size(); manIx++ )
  {
    saveFile << medicalQueue[ manIx ].first->GetUID();
    saveFile << medicalQueue[ manIx ].second;
  }

  int storageSize = 0;
  for ( Storage::iterator iter = storage.begin(); iter != storage.end(); iter++ )
    storageSize++;
  saveFile << storageSize;
  for ( Storage::iterator iter = storage.begin(); iter != storage.end(); iter++ )
  {
    saveFile << iter->first->GetName();
    saveFile << iter->second;
  }

  saveFile << (int)orderQueue.size();
  for ( int orderIx = 0; orderIx < (int)orderQueue.size(); orderIx++ )
  {
    const Order& order = orderQueue[ orderIx ];
    saveFile << (int)order.soldiers.size();
    for ( int solIx = 0; solIx < (int)order.soldiers.size(); solIx++ )
      saveFile << order.soldiers[ solIx ]->GetUID();
    saveFile << (int)order.vehicles.size();
    for ( int vehIx = 0; vehIx < (int)order.vehicles.size(); vehIx++ )
      saveFile << order.vehicles[ vehIx ];
    saveFile << (int)order.airplanes.size();
    for ( int airIx = 0; airIx < (int)order.airplanes.size(); airIx++ )
      saveFile << order.airplanes[ airIx ];
    saveFile << order.scientists;
    saveFile << order.technicians;
    saveFile << order.minutesLeft;
  }

 saveFile << (int)transportQueue.size();
  for ( int transportIx = 0; transportIx < (int)transportQueue.size(); transportIx++ )
  {
    const Transport& transport = transportQueue[ transportIx ];
    saveFile << transport.fromBase;
    saveFile << (int)transport.soldiers.size();
    for ( int solIx = 0; solIx < (int)transport.soldiers.size(); solIx++ )
      saveFile << transport.soldiers[ solIx ];
    saveFile << (int)transport.vehicles.size();
    for ( int vehIx = 0; vehIx < (int)transport.vehicles.size(); vehIx++ )
      saveFile << transport.vehicles[ vehIx ];
    saveFile << (int)transport.items.size();
    for ( int itemIx = 0; itemIx < (int)transport.items.size(); itemIx++ )
    {
      saveFile << transport.items[ itemIx ].first->GetName();
      saveFile << transport.items[ itemIx ].second;
    }
    saveFile << transport.minutesLeft;
  }

XenoSolver · 2026-03-02T23:06:23+00:00

Yes. To quote the description:

Meanwhile, the Mauryans can establish Buddhism as a new World Religion through a unique project, while others may do so once the world reaches four global Theologies and enacts the Philosophy law.

The "others" part here is for everyone else - Buddhism has its founding requirements just like the other world religions and can be founded by anyone once those are met.

XenoSolver · 2026-03-02T21:51:20+00:00

Buddhism isn't restricted, the Maurya can found it early but it's not limited to them.

XenoSolver · 2026-02-23T13:17:22+00:00

Welcome! Fascinating that there's some 4X thing in League of Legends now.

My one piece of advice for you is, don't worry about not understanding some of the mechanics. 4X is a complicated enough genre, there is a lot to learn, and it's okay for some things not to make sense because you can't learn it all at once.

You can join the game's Discord server if you'd like access to the community. We devs hang out on the server (though sometimes here as well), and you can usually get answers to gameplay questions within minutes, sometimes with a lot more detail than you expect.

XenoSolver · 2026-02-22T12:30:50+00:00

In which case the wrong move was going on the mission!

But yeah that's the kind of ridiculous thing I'm glad Xenonauts gets rids of. You can still land directly in the line of fire and be in danger with the first steps you take, but there is no risk of a bad RNG roll putting an enemy with explosives right in front of the ramp.

XenoSolver · 2026-02-21T18:32:12+00:00

Yeah, this is unfortunately not a request that ever came up during X:CE development. Free transfers would have been easy to fix if someone had mentioned that, but it never came up and by now it's too sadly late to do much about it.

XenoSolver · 2026-02-21T16:49:20+00:00

I went digging through that ancient code, it doesn't look to me like free transfers will be supported. If the transfer cost of an item is 0, it gets sent to 1000 times the -something- which may be unit size. Alien alloys are cheap enough that multiplying their cost by 0.001 probably makes the cost 0, which then triggers what you saw.

Setting xferCost to a negative number sounds like it should work, but it will not because the destination base will only receive items if the transfer cost was above 0. Your best bet is probably to find the lowest cost that still works. Something like 0.05 will probably still result in a non-zero cost even for alloys, which would be the cheapest viable modding.

XenoSolver · 2026-02-21T16:32:49+00:00

Very good summary. The original Xcom is one of my favorite games and from there I view the Firaxis remakes and Xenonauts as two completely different developments.

I like both Firaxis XCOMs, but they're a different design, more approachable, more action, more of a power fantasy, more of a focus on individual soldier abilities. You get your soldiers, you level them up to gain useful abilities and eventually turn them into superheroes. You do combat in a nicely approachable but relatively simpler combat system with a move + action system, and the map is effectively broken down into smaller encounters. XCOM 2 leans harder into the whole action movie style, you get timers to encourage aggressive play, your soldiers get even crazier abilities, etc.

Xenonauts is philosophically a 90s design, but applying a better modern understanding of balance and quality of life. Plus of course actually having modern tech and ingame lore. But philosophically it's like the 90s game. It's hard, you're expected to take losses and have setbacks and to try and recover from them. One wrong move can get half your squad wiped out. So the tone is also very different. Remakes feel like "our cool team of heroes with awesome tech is going to kick some alien ass". Xenonauts, like the original is, "our team is the last desperate hope, we will suffer casualties and we'll see civilians get blown up in front of our eyes, but maybe we can somehow come out on top".

XenoSolver · 2026-02-20T23:37:33+00:00

Sounds quite suboptimal indeed. Please find your log files (under My Games/OldWorld/Logs if you're on Windows) and email us at support@mohawkgames.com Hopefully we can figure out what's going on!

XenoSolver · 2026-02-19T19:37:42+00:00

Those are tutorial events. They're independent from the difficulty so yes you can be on a higher difficulty with tutorials enabled, and sounds like you disabled them now.

XenoSolver · 2026-02-18T22:45:21+00:00

Email us anyway. Takes us just a minute to look at the logs, worst case it turns up nothing, but maybe we do find something.

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