4X strategy is no joke. And any development endeavour down a path of 4X where new ideas and new IP is concerned, is likely one of the most daunting in all of game development. Get it wrong and the die-hard community will lynch you. Get it right and their expectations amplify to loftier heights. And if you've come from tested stock to branch out on your own... well, all eyes are going to be on you. As is the case with Old World from ex-Civ alumn, Soren Johnson and his studio, Mohawk Games.

Here's a snippet from our in-depth review of Old World via one David Wildgoose.

Old World is a turn-based 4X strategy game from Mohawk Games, the small studio founded by Civilization IV designer Soren Johnson, and it has just emerged from Early Access on the Epic Games Store, hitting version 1.0 on July 1. The imprint of Sid Meier's Civilization series is indelible upon Old World's hex-grid map, but Mohawk adds colour and detail with a layer of character interaction and development -- of courtly politics, sibling rivalry, familial favours, and simian espionage -- that borrows heavily from Crusader Kings. The result is a deep, complex and story-driven Civ-style game that succeeds at capturing at least some of what it must have been like to actually rule a Mediterranean empire a few thousand years ago.

You do many of the usual Civ things in Old World. You produce settlers to found new cities and workers to exploit the land. You train spearmen to defend your homeland and siege units to conquer your neighbours. You build barracks and shrines, theatres and libraries. You research new technologies and introduce new laws. And you erect ancient wonders like the Pyramids. If you've played a Civ game, and particularly the hex-based, one-unit-per-tile mode of the most recent series entries, then the early turns of Old World will feel very familiar.

Click here for our full Old World review.

AusGamers newcomer, David Wildgoose, basically put me onto Civ and 4X gaming back when I was a snot-nosed Nintendophile (remnants of which still emerge from time to time), and so it was a no-brainer to take on board this in-depth interview feature he prepared for us on Old World, a 4X strategy from ex-Firaxis designer, Soren Johnson.

For the strategy heads out there, a lot is spoken of here in terms of decision-making in a larger, more macro-focused "for the empire" sense. Here's a snippet to get your reading orders ready:

Old World's Orders system resets the way you manage the affairs of your empire. In Sid Meier's Civilization series and other similar strategy games, units are discrete entities; every archer can move and attack, every builder can move and improve a tile, every missionary can move and spread your religion, with each action drawing only from an individual unit's movement points for that turn. In Old World, all such actions draw from a collective pool of orders shared across your empire. So, if all your archers are moving and attacking, you won't have enough orders left to also move all your workers to improve tiles. You quite literally cannot do everything.

Click here for our full Old World interview feature.