Old World March 25th Updated Test Build

Old World test branch update 1.0.82852 Test 2026-03-25

To switch to the test branch, right click Old World in Steam and select Properties, open the Game Versions & Betas tab and select 'test' in the version list.

Design

• Crossbow strength reduced to 6 from 8

• Polybolos strength reduced to 8 from 10

• Windlass now requires Coinage instead of Manor

• Windmills require Windlass instead of Hydraulics. Watermills are still available at Hydraulics

• Free Court Soldier moved from Infantry Square to Stirrups

• Free Court Merchant moved from Chain Drive to Cartography

• Free Court Merchant moved from Fiscal Policy to Manor

• Free Longbowmen moved from Manor to Battle Line

• Free Horse Archer moved from Land Consolidation to Composite Bow

• Schemer order buying now costs an extra Legitimacy point every time it's used. Cost increase resets for each leader

• Lowered civics cost of Fisher, Trapper, Rancher, and Gardner specialists to match other rural specialists

• Judaism no longer requires Labor Force

• Kartir event triggers less often

• AI no longer gets shrines and pastures for free as part of their initial development handicap, to prevent very early religion founding

• Game of the Week no longer varies city site numbers

Programming

• AI no longer skips laws and basic improvements in order to save for future Wonders

• AI pushes culture harder in its highest culture cities

• Non-raider tribe AI tweaked to keep them more focused on nearby targets

• Pathfinder tweak to prefer single tile paths whenever possible

• Border renderer and shader optimizations

UI

• Added player option Manual Bonus Placement. This skips the popup prompt when placing a bonus improvement from an event or city founding bonus

• Tribe sites now display both Next Unit turns and Development turns

• Road map pins now appear with the Contextual Map Tacks option enabled when Engineer units are selected

• Added tooltips to ping improvement dropdown

• Renamed 'Exploring' trait to 'Traveling Afar'

• Adjustments to reduce blur on text displayed on world UI

• Reintroduced very simple lighting to the minimum detail level for standard shaders

• Removed random option from City Site Number options

• Added explanation to non-city site camp tile tooltips

• Improved helptext for General traits which aren't valid for some units

• Worker positions with and without height overrides are no longer mutually exclusive

• Cities owned by Tribes or in Anarchy now show in the Timeline Screen

• When gifting, hiring, or recruiting a unit, the helptext specifies that the cooldown is for the unit (and not the action)

• Disabled Mirror Map option on Desolation & Ebbing Sea mapscripts (Wrath of Gods)

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed Cyrillic text display regression

• Fixed text outside of viewport bounds sometimes not clipping

• Fixed custom overlay icons not showing correctly on first opening

• Fixed barbarian widget sorting incorrectly with rivers

• Fixed barbarian widget cutting out the revealed-not-visible effect past the edges of the icon widget

• Fixed pathfinder avoiding ZOC tiles from unseen units

• Fixed color of requirements for adopting State Religion when you have no cities of that religion

• Fixed units getting temporarily rendered twice when upgrading

• Fixed AI sometimes moving its ranged siege units when it doesn't need to

• Fixed characters getting randomly married if currently targeted by a marriage mission

• Fixed skull highlights for attack previews

• Fixed fog of war revealing the same tiles multiple times

• Fixed rivers not updating their appearance in sync with changes to terrain detail level

• Fixed world pins over vegetation having the shadowed outlines of vegetation drawn on top of them

• Fixed volcano effects sometimes not applying to mountains when the volcano is on the edge of the map or in MP games

• Fixed AI saying it