Parents' Guide to Old World - The Sacred and the Profane

New mechanics and events keep this historical strategy game feeling fresh. Old World - The Sacred and Profane takes the excellent foundation set up in the base game and adds a new layer of interaction with the expansion of the religion mechanics, which goes a long way in keeping each scenario feeling unique. The basic format of a campaign remains the same: you pick a civilization and try to grow and expand your empire while completing personal goals for victory points. If you gather enough victory points or conquer all of the other civilizations on the map, you win. The game scales back from something like the Civilization series, and places a greater focus on your life as the leader of the empire, and the new religious mechanics add a bunch of interesting wrinkles to both the personal and overarching strategy of the game.

The most interesting addition is the inclusion of over 350 new events that pop up depending on the circumstances of the campaign. These can range from the birth of new religions, to conflicts between rival religious groups that are mingling in your territory. Having so many more events in rotation means that you are much more likely to have games with dramatically different developments than before, and it encourages new and nuanced ways of strategizing. Just having a simple goal of getting every member of your court to convert to Zoroastrianism changes the way you interact with your council, affects how you pick marriage partners and advisors, and might risk consequences from the new religious dissent mechanic. Combined with new historical characters, new character traits, and new city projects, these new features all add great flavor and nuance to the already excellent strategic core present in Old World.